Chopping It Up With Legendary Engineer Bruce Swedien at Westviking

Sit back and imagine a young aspiring baseball player getting the chance to play a game with Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio. You know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about a once in a lifetime experience. In my story Bruce Swedien was my Joe DiMaggio. A while back when I began to get serious about studio engineering I started looking for influential people to follow. After reading about the recording industry and studying older recordings I found one engineer who really caught my attention. Here is the story on how I was able to meet my recording studio hero.

There was a moment in my life when I realized it was time to get serious about both my education and love for studio engineering. Soon after I perused a degree in Recording Arts from Full Sail University. Due to my professionalism and outstanding academic performance I quickly became known by the staff. Before I knew it I was being invited to some very special private meetings called “Green Rooms” where I had the opportunity to speak one on one with some of the best in the audio world. Lo and behold my second Green room event was with Bruce Swedien! During the meeting Bruce talked about his start in the recording business, working with Bill Putnam, Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson.  He instilled a sort of pride and understanding for our roll as recording engineers.

I ended up graduating top of my class with various awards for my outstanding performance in both the classroom and professional studio environments. After receiving my degree I decided this would be a good time to hang around Orlando and do a little site seeing.  This would turn out to be a very wise decision indeed.  A month later I get a call from an associate at Full Sail asking me if I would like to take a trip and visit Bruce in his newly built custom recording studio in Ocalla Florida.  I didn’t even let the nice lady finish her sentence before blurting out YES!

We arrive at his Westviking Estate early around 9am and are greeted warmly at the door by Bruce and Bea Swedien. We make our way to the studio behind their house and proceed into the live room. Bruce walked us around and showed us the custom details of the live room and machine room. He went into great detail about the importance of proper studio acoustics and design. Yes, I was soaking it all in like a sponge… no wait… a Shamwow. We then proceded into the control room where we are greeted by a beautiful vintage Harrison 32c console nestled into his custom designed ASC Attack Wall.

Bruce sits down at the console and we all sit around him and he starts telling us stories about his recording adventures. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, Bruce breaks out a bunch of  DAT tapes and we critically listen to various historical recordings. I can’t even begin to explain the kind of wonderful feeling these recordings have.

After listening to a few DAT’s we than focused on his console and outboard goodies. If I had to use one word to describe Bruce in the studio it would be…  precise.  He has only what he needs and he knows how to use it.  A few quotes I remember are…

“Pro Tools is a glorified tape machine”.

“The eq on the 32c will make you cry”.