Dawn Landes

Did you go to school to study recording?

I went to NYU for two years and then I dropped out and started working in studios. I had recorded my own stuff in high school on a 4-track, and then I took a film scoring class at NYU. I remember one of our tests was to make a score for Planet of the Apes. That was fun! That's were I learned Pro Tools. I took a MIDI class at NYU. It was called "MIDI For Non-Majors."

Does anyone give a shit about MIDI anymore?

I know! This was before Clive Davis got involved with the program. Before that they had no money. All of the equipment was terrible!

When I first met you, I think you were assisting at Stratosphere?

I was working at Stratosphere and a few other studios before that. I met this tech, Steve Masucci, who repaired the Chamberlin [keyboard]. I was asking him all these questions and he ended up hiring me as his assistant.

Were you running around, helping Steve do installs and repairing synthesizers?

Just a little bit. I also helped him recap a board — the pans on a Helios console.

At Henry Hirsch's Waterfront Studio? [issue #56]

It was at his old place in the Edison Hotel — same Helios though.

So you jumped into studio work.

I did! I made a lot of mistakes. Before Stratosphere, I got my first internship at Looking Glass Studios when I was in college. I was there for six months. I started assisting there. Then I went to Dubway — Great guys. Al Houghton taught me all about the tape machine. He's a real electrical engineer — kind of over my head sometimes, but really awesome. I was assisting at Dubway and Stratosphere Sound. Then just Stratosphere. Then I was the house engineer at Engine Room Audio. That was cool. Engine Room started out like this, as rehearsal spaces. Then Mark [Christensen] made a nice room.

I thought he was doing a lot of mastering.

That's his main thing.

There was engineering going on too?

Yeah, we had a Trident. It was a manufacturing house too. There were always artists in and out of there that I knew from playing and gigging around.

What kinds of jobs were coming in there?

I did some weird stuff there. I remember once a dude just brought in some vinyl and had me transfer it. Then he brought in his reverb unit — he was rapping and I was cutting up these things for him. It was low budget — he would book a couple of hours at a time. It was all misogynistic shit. That was a moment where I wondered what I was doing with my life! This lady did a seven-disc series of test prep CDs which took me forever. I did it in Logic and I had never used Logic before. It was pretty new age-y — singing bowls and gongs. The music was really beautiful, but I'd be droning out to her voice. The music made me feel really spacey. That whole time I was also working with Steve Masucci and Victor Van Vugt [issue #48], Gary Maurer and his band Hem. I started touring with Hem, and that kind of launched me for touring. I was playing glockenspiel, sometimes singing and playing guitar.

Have you learned from a lot of different folks along the way?

I've had some great teachers. Victor Van Vugt made me his assistant on a couple of projects, which was awesome. He had a little project studio on Christopher Street. I got to track at Jolly Roger in Hoboken. Gary Maurer put me on a bunch of recordings. We worked on some projects at Brooklyn Recording and Sear Sound [issue #41] — amazing.

Part of this game is getting out and meeting people.

Yeah, totally! I was basically working in studios for five years. I wasn't recording much of my own music — I was recording when I had time. It took me four years to make my first album — all done after hours. Now it means so much to me to meet people while I'm touring. I...