Val Garay: Working with ONE Mic
Posted on: November 24, 2009
Posted in: Artists, Big Ben, Featured, GarageBand, ONE, Products, Rosetta Series, Video, X-Series
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Apogee user and devoted fan since the 80s, Grammy-winning producer and engineer Val Garay graciously opens his studio to chat about all things gear and gold. With credits including 13 Number 1 albums with artists like Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, James Taylor, Neil Diamond, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Kim Carnes, Val’s more than successful track record spans the past three decades, and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. His studio integrates the AD & DA 16-X converters, a Big Ben, a Rosetta 200, a Symphony Mobile System, and most recently the new ONE, which he is “absolutely in love with.”
Video Transcript
I’m Val Garay. I’m a producer/engineer. I started many years ago at the Sound Factory in Hollywood, started as an engineer. The early projects that I did when I first started out were Seals and Croft. I did a record with them that had “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl.” Then, I started doing Linda Ronstadt records. Started with her with “Heart Like a Wheel.” I did all the pop stuff with her until she started doing Nelson Riddle albums. I did five records with James Taylor starting with “JT,” I did “The Pretender” with Jackson Browne, and then I built my own studio in Sherman Oaks called Record One and I started working there. I really started doing more production that engineering although I always did all my own engineering. I produced Kim Carnes, Joan Armatrading, Carlos Santana, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, The Motels- I did all their big hit records. It’s hard to remember them all.
And then about 6 years ago, I met Henry Marx and we started a record label and a studio here in Topanga, and I started developing artists. So i have a new artist named Bonnie Piesse whose record is about to come out. She’s Australian, wonderful singer/songwriter. I’m working with another girl right now named Katrina who is a great pop voice, kind of along the lines of Celine Dion. Then I have another girl singer named Erica Jane who came out of the Hip-Hop dance world.
The apogee gear that I have in my studio now is I have the AD/DA-16X converters and the Big Ben Clock, and the Rosetta 200 and the Apogee ONE, which I am absolutely in love with.
What I’m using the ONE for is, well, when I first got my hands on it, I didn’t quite understand what it was capable of. But the more I played around with it and watched a couple of how-to videos on the Apogee website, which were very good. It’s great because if you’re working with writers which I do all the time, and I write myself, it’s such a great tool with GarageBand. It’s unbelievable because you can do things in GarageBand you could never do before, i.e. record guitars right into GarageBand with your own guitar, plug it in. Do vocals, plug it in, and they sound great. Because a lot of people use GarageBand and they use the mic in the Mac computer and it’s okay but it doesn’t sound anything like this one. The mic in the ONE is unbelievable. Being able to play back from iTunes through the ONE with the converters that are in it, also unbelievable. Be able to record with it, and use the mic in it. The mic… we were sitting in a hotel room in Miami about a week ago and everybody was just unbelievably amazed listening on earphones with the mic open in the room… you could hear everything. But it’s an amazing tool, you can actually record a record with it if you wanted to. I suppose, i mean theoretically, that microphone sounds pretty amazing and you can plug anything into it you want and run it right into a laptop or regular computer. And, it’s not expensive which really amazed me.
The song you just heard in the video is “Soak It Up” by Bonnie Piesse.
Visit 321 Records here.