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The most important things in producing is making the music sounded "not producing"
BIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY
Sylvia Massy is an American music producer, mixer, engineer, and author known for her unconventional and innovative approach to music production. She was born in 1985 in Ashland, Oregon. Massy grew up passionate about music and sound. Sylvia Massy started her audio production while working for the college radio station in Chico, California. After that, she got her job as an assistant engineer for the Starlight studio in San Francisco and various studios around the Bay Area. She met Matt Wallace, an early mentor who taught her about tape alignment, microphone placement, and mixing during this time. After that, she returned to LA and started working for Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. This is where she first connected with the bands Green Jelly and Tool. Massy's professional journey in the music industry started in California, where she worked at various recording studios. She gained recognition for her distinctive production style, characterized by her willingness to experiment with unconventional recording techniques and equipment. Over the years, Massy has worked with various artists across different genres, including rock, metal, alternative, and electronic music. Some notable artists she has collaborated with include Tool, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Prince, and System of a Down. Her contributions to these projects have earned her numerous awards and accolades in the music industry. She is now an owner-independent producer of RadioStar Studios in the Weed Palace on Main Street. This is also the place where she met her husband, Greg Shivy.
HER CAREER
HER CAREER
CONTRIBUTIONS
CONTRIBUTIONS
Massy has always been the person behind successful albums and recordings of many artists, but among them is the album Unchained by Johnny Cash, which won a Grammy in the category Best Country Album in 1997. In the same year, Massy was a co-producer, engineering and a mixer for Foo Fighters, Patti Smith for the Besatie boys in New York with producer Pat McCarthy. Going into the 90s, she had produced for Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Svendust and Powerman 5000.
RADIO STAR
RADIO STAR
Even though she made a lot of recognition during the time she was in LA, Massy still decided to leave the big city and go to the quiet mountain town that does not even have the stoplights. In one of her interviews, she once said, “When I left L.A., I had a little house with half a yard in West Hollywood," Massy Shivy explains. "I would sit in traffic all day. I would drive a long way to work in a studio I was never really happy with. I wound up dragging racks and racks of gear into studios, so I'd have what I needed because no studio was set up the way I liked it. I was ready to leave." Therefore, she chose to open her new studio in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, an area very much like the place where she grew up in Colorado. Five years laters, the Radio Star became a studio, a record label, a video production company, a merchandising outfit and an equipment manufacturer. More than that, Sylvia Massy has helped the artists get to the major label when recording at Radio Star. It’s also a place where she gives opportunities to the kids to learn more about music industry.
ABOUT HER PRODUCTION
One of the interesting and unique things about her music is its radical creativity. A producer or recorder doesn't always need expensive microphones or walls don't have to be at special angles to make the music better. She always takes advantage of the sounds from the objects around her or uses an existing sound to create new sounds suitable for the music. Furthermore, when Sylvia Massy came to the production, she always wanted to capture the artist's intent and inspire them to step out of their comfort zone. Because there’s the difference between proper recording and capturing true humanity, she once said. Therefore, Sylvia Massy is famous for using unusual techniques for recording and is extremely good at drawing artists out of their comfort zones and capturing their best performances. The video below is one of her interviews at Berklee College of Music, discussing how she would demonstrate her ideas on producing new musical sounds. According to Billboard Magazine, Sylvia Massy has always abused analogy in music engineering. She felt more comfortable editing in analog mode than in digital mode. It made her feel real and more natural, she conceived. Music should come from the heart, so it does not need a lot of digital reverb. Making the produced sound like “not “producing sound” has always been her goal. She once said, “I think a lot of the 80s records were maybe overproduced, and many people are trying to get back to organic rock, and I appreciate that.”
REFERENCES
Forlenza, Jeff. “Sylvia Massy Shivy’s: RadioStar Studios.” Magazine. New York, Vol. 30, Issue 8, pages 46, Aug 2006
Jones, Sarah. “Sylvia Massy”. Magazine. Electronic Musician, New York, Vol. 32, Issue 3, pages 42-44, Mar 2006.
Business Wire, “Top Rock Engineer/Producer and Industry Maverick Sylvia Massy Launches Indie Label National Recorder.” 03 Oct 2006
Gillen, Marilyn. "Massy rides the latest alternative wave." Billboard 105, no. 42: 71. 1993.
https://www.proquest.com/docview/227019948/fulltextPDF/318DC61A898E402CPQ/1?accountid=9840
Berklee Online Take Note. “Sylvia Massy on Her Career in Music Production”, February 08, 2023
https://online.berklee.edu/takenote/sylvia-massy-on-her-career-in-music-production/
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