Brad Timko

(upbeat music) - Hey y'all, come on in.

We're gonna head down to Studio B over here.

I would say my job at the moment is recording engineer, mixer, and producer.

So this is the control room here in Studio B.

This place was built out in the late 70s.

It's a really nice design.

This is the second location of Muscle Shoals Sound here in Sheffield, right on the Tennessee River.

(upbeat electronic guitar music) I started in Birmingham.

I was in college and I was at a pawn shop, and I found a Tascam 4-track machine that was cheaper than all the others.

And I realized it was cheaper because it didn't work.

So I fixed it, and now I thought it was so cool to watch the meters work and now to hear everything back and whatnot.

I never thought it was something you could actually do to, you know, for a job or anything like that.

And I was in a band years ago.

We went to record in a more of a proper studio, and I saw how it worked and what he was doing, the engineer was doing and stuff.

And I thought, "This is what I should be doing", 'cause it's right up my alley.

(upbeat electronic guitar music) I started around 2009 collecting equipment.

I had bought a small mixing console Pro tool system, microphones, all that.

I then went to intern at Ardent in Memphis in 2012.

And when I got back to Birmingham from that, I guess I was an, you know, so I thought I was an engineer now, you know.

And so that first few years were just tough, you know not much going on.

I had to learn how to maintain my equipment, 'cause I could not afford to hire technicians to fix any of this stuff.

It'd be really resourceful and worked out of there for a while.

Up until just recently where I've moved here up into Muscle Shoals.

(upbeat guitar music) The first Muscle Shoals Sound location was just a couple miles the other way.

They cut a million hit records up there, then they moved here.

This place was built out to a much more extravagant extent than the original one.

It's got excellent acoustics.

The live room sounds great with all the instruments.

The playbacks and mixing in this room is just awesome.

(upbeat guitar music) Lately, up in the Shoals there's been a bit of a resurgence in recording.

More and more people are moving here, setting up studios, or reviving some of the old studios.

It's also cool for artists and engineers to be able to live in a spot that's not too expensive and to be able to work.

It's also not too far from cities like Nashville, Birmingham, whatever.

It's not that big a deal for artists to drive up and record.

I mean, where else in the world can you be in a small town that's peaceful and quiet on a beautiful river and there's a bunch of different studios, and a rich musical history.

(upbeat music) The job of the engineer is to keep things flowing smoothly, keeping the artists comfortable and not having them not get bored.

And then also, having things sound as good as you can.

A typical tracking session day, I'll be up here the night before setting up all the microphones and instruments, getting all the patchbays set up, Pro Tools template.

So when the morning comes and the band gets here, everything's almost ready to go.

They'll get here, we'll get the instruments set up, drums, guitars, whatever.

Usually, we'll start dialing in some drum sounds, and I'm big on getting drum sounds as good as I can from the get go.

So it takes me a little bit to dial all that in.

(lively guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) You have all these different instruments whether it's a drum kit, you have multiple mics on it, guitar amps, keyboards, vocals.

All these different sources are individual channels on this mixing console.

You have to get all that to come together as good as you possibly can.

And it all gets sent down to a stereo mix, which is what you hear when you listen to a song.

And so the interesting thing is, between the artists, producer, and engineer, you're really creating, essentially two waveforms, that have to make people have an emotional reaction.

So depending on what you do in these rooms alters how that wave is shaped.

And if it's shaped well, then people get into it, you know.

If it's not, they don't even want to hear it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)