8 minute read
Inside on the cover
from MIX 557 - May 2023
by publications
John McBride offers up an all-access pass to the wide wide worlds of music, recording and live sound—from his worldrenowned Nashville studio—with a little help from his friends
Alittle more than 20 years ago, John McBride opened the doors to Blackbird Studio in the Berry Hill neighborhood of Nashville, and within just a few short years, by whatever metric these types of rankings are measured—whether mic locker, room acoustics, outboard rack, console, all-around vibe, the engineers and producers who track and mix there, or the artists who record a hit album during their stay, and then return for another go—he built it into one of the world’s premier recording facilities, one that fits comfortably in conversation among the likes of Abbey Road, Capitol, United or The Hit Factory.
Then 10 years ago, after many years of planning and research—first pointed in one direction and then shifting to another, thinking about partnering with an established institution and then deciding not to, going back and forth on the best length of time to complete a course, and finally settling on an optimum number of students entering each new class—McBride bought the building next door to the studios and opened The Blackbird Academy, offering an advanced and unique classroom-meets-studio curriculum, as well as a classroom-meetstour model for the Live Sound program. The Blackbird Academy has produced four Grammy winners, and the Live Program has well over 90 percent of its graduates working. This month, McBride opens the curtain on Act III of his audio life, dubbed Inside Blackbird, an online venture that he figured would be a natural blend, even an extension, of the first two acts, just with more video. But as he got deeper into planning and development, learning what it takes to create a meaningful, active, content-rich website targeted at all things music and recording, he quickly realized that a) it’s a helluva lot more work than he expected; b) he was entering familiar, yet uncharted, territory; and c) it might yet prove to be his most ambitious and personally rewarding Blackbird-based enterprise to date.
“Every five years or so, I try to take a few steps back and look at my life, my career, my bills, whatever I’m doing, and I try to look at it as a whole,” McBride says. “Another way to do it is to take a piece of paper and write down the things that are going well in one column and things that could be better in the other. Whatever way you do it, it gets you thinking about your experiences. I remember about six years ago, the first thing that came to my mind was that people want more access. You see this when you’re on the road and you see it when you’re in town, in whatever field you work. It’s the idea that ‘the front row of the show is great, you know, but I’d really rather be backstage.’ As human beings, we want that connection, that thing that brings us closer to something we love.
“So I thought, ‘Well, you know what? I love music. And I have access,’” he continues. “Access to a great studio, to gear, to microphones, to players, producers and engineers. To songwriters, label people, management executives, to other artists. I should start filming some of the processes that go into making a record, or that go into putting on a concert—all the things that people think about when dealing with the reality of daily life. Maybe we could construct a curriculum around that, I thought, and if we had these incredible videos, this great content aimed at education, then maybe I could license it to universities around the world. There’s roughly 9,000 universities out there. That’s a big number. We didn’t end up going that route, but education was at the heart of the plan from the beginning, and it still is.
“I also have to admit that much of this goes back to the 21- or 22-year-old me, who at the time knew enough about audio to go do a show. Then the first time I went on a tour, I found that while I knew about audio, I couldn’t set up a drum kit if my life depended on it. I didn’t know about building keyboards. I didn’t know which guitar pedals were the coolest. I just didn’t know enough, and I didn’t want to just be the ‘audio guy.’ If I would have known then what I know now, well, I’d have talked to the drummer about his kit, or the guitarist about his strings or where he likes his mic. I would have been the perfect audience for Inside Blackbird. Now I want to inspire people starting out in music, give them a head start on their career. I want them to see and hear the passion that drives all these musicians and engineers we talk to. I want to do anything I can to heighten people’s knowledge of great music and great sound and see if it may be a career possibility.”
WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?
The simple description would be that Inside Blackbird is a subscription-based website that produces and hosts a collection of video interviews with the talent involved in making a record or putting on a live concert, along with technology demonstrations featuring new and classic products, with context for each one’s place in the recording chain and visual examples of how it might be used.
The navigation structure is topped by four main categories—Studio, Live, Diaries and Resources—with each category broken down into headings such as Mixing, Producing, Vocals, Instruments, Plug-ins and Gear. Click on any one of those, and dozens of videos pop up, ranging from trailer-type soundbites on a very specific topic, to 90 minutes with Al Schmitt and Niko Bolas setting up mics, Trina Shoemaker or Sylvia Massy talking about engineering, Nathan Chapman showing how he comps vocals in Melodyne, Desmond Child on songwriting, Yelawolf on life and music, or ace Nashville session guitarist Tom Bukovac detailing how he crafts a song from start to finish, then taking the audience inch by inch through his pedal board.
It’s not that McBride invented something completely new with Inside Blackbird. There are hundreds of sites that discuss pro-audio gear, and there are hundreds more that feature musicians explaining how they do what they do. It’s the deep level of detail and expertise that McBride coaxes out of his guests as an interviewer, as well as the passion he brings in his own demonstrations of technology, that makes Inside Blackbird stand out. That and the storytelling. Anyone who watches the Butch Walker video on being an artist and producer, chock full of his insights into guitars, is just as likely to walk away thinking about the hilarious and well-told tale of his first concert, KISS at Atlanta’s Omni Center, at age 10, chaperoned by his parents.
“About three years into all this, after recording a bunch of videos, people all around me kept saying that I should switch from the idea of licensing a curriculum to a subscription-based model,” McBride explains. “At the same time, I was finding that I wanted the content to be both educational and entertaining, so I took the edutainment approach. Then as we started back up, I couldn’t find anybody who wanted to do the interviews.
So I thought, ‘Well, you know what? I can study up, figure out some good questions.’ I don’t want to ask the same questions. Like with Billy Corgan, from Smashing Pumpkins. I looked up some interviews with Billy, and they all talk about the first three records, which were huge. They might talk about his guitar sound or whatever—and we do talk about guitar, of course—but I decided that I wanted to talk about his two kids, who are young. I wanted to talk about how you manage your life with all that’s going on, with half your life on the road. How do you manage that in your own head? I want to know, ‘Did you have a stereo growing up? What record did you play the grooves out of when you were really young?’
“At the same time, nobody in the world is as involved with every tiny sound that comes out of an acoustic guitar as much as Bryan Sutton,” he continues. “He gets sounds out of an acoustic that I didn’t even know you could get. So we talk about tone. We talk about the feel of the neck for him. We talk about what he looks for if he’s buying an acoustic, what’s going to sell him. Is it the volume? Is it the evenness of the strings? He goes into things that even musicians who have been playing for years haven’t thought about yet.
“Jerry McPherson goes into fingerpicking versus using a pick, and he explains it so beautifully. He talks about when you strum with a pick, there’s a certain kind of ‘shang’ in the sound. Then he plays with his fingers and you say, ‘Oh, lord, that’s so much more intimate.’ Most of the people I’ve interviewed are really good at explaining what they do and why they do it.”
WHAT WILL IT BECOME?
Inside Blackbird is already up and running following a soft launch earlier in the year, and it will officially debut in May at $15.99 a month, with free trials, discounted annual plans, breaks for students and all that you might expect. Two new videos are promised each week, on top of what is already a well-populated site. According to McBride, he has about 600 videos in the bank, including ones with Garth Brooks, Vince Gill and many others to be released throughout the coming year.
There have been delays and bug fixes, a few fits and starts, and there will be ongoing tweaks as the site itself figures out what it wants to be and as the audience sends in feedback.
Marketing plans are being assembled, across social media and in partnerships. He’s already formed deals or alliances with companies like Gibson and Steven Slate Digital. He’s talked with executives at Apple Corps and he’s entertained suggestions that he expand on the content he already has and create a 10-episode series for television, or more likely, a streaming partner. The potential audience extends way beyond pro audio, into guitars, drums, bass, keyboards and even the rabid fan. The potential audience is now worldwide. Who doesn’t want to skip the front row and go backstage? Who doesn’t want to be a fly on the wall when Dann Huff is in the studio, producing a hit record?
It’s not clear where all this will end up right now, but Inside Blackbird is packed with rich, one-of-a-kind content for people who share a passion for music.
McBride is the son of a Wichita State University Anthropology professor, so he’s understood from an early age that education is a lifetime pursuit, a work in progress. He’s also aware that Shakespeare’s best plays come in five acts. Stay tuned, there is certainly more to come. n
Deep Cuts: Technology
John McBride is a self-professed “microphone freak,” and Blackbird Studio holds one of the world’s best collections of quality vintage and new models, including an AKG C-24, Serial No. 1, a Telefunken 270 stereo 251, Serial No. 001 and more ribbons and large-format condensers than you could fit in a truck. All are given context, a history and put through the paces on Inside Blackbird.
There are also videos explaining how compressors work, then showing how they are applied. There are deep dives into preamps, delays, equalizers and everything one might expect. One of McBride’s favorites involves the differences in recording to the various analog tape formats.
“I love this video where we recorded eight tracks of a live band—bass, drums, B3 and electric guitar—playing a five-minute jam while simultaneously going to eight tracks of Pro Tools at 192/24, and at the same time to a 2-inch 24-track, 2-inch 16-track, and 2-inch 8-track machine,” he explains. “We made absolutely sure that each recording device got the exact same signal, and we did it with different mult outs by switching up the order of the machines. It was coming straight out of the [Neve 8078] console and nothing was played through any other device—straight into Pro Tools, and into these three tape machines. I gotta say, honestly, what we heard was kind of life changing for me. I won’t give it away, but I will say that I never, ever want to record again live without an 8- or 16-track 2-inch!”
At the end of the day, McBride realizes he is creating an historical document. “People like Al Schmitt and Michael Rhodes, who have passed, can still influence new people with their knowledge and experience. What is better than that?”
