Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Carollo.
Hi Christian, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve played guitar since I was a kid in the suburbs of Chicago, and playing in church was a big part of my life through middle school. When I moved to Franklin in 2017, I was still a somewhat cynical kid and pretty much thought music wasn’t a real career. But later, when I learned a friend of mine’s dad was a music producer, I thought an internship would be a cool thing to have. So I then proceeded to bother his dad until he let me intern for him. Then from the moment I could drive I was following him around and quickly became an assistant engineer for him. I then began to assist for his friends, and the connections kind of continued from there!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Yes and no! When anything moves from the thing you love to becoming the thing you work on, the relationship changes. There are plenty of nights driving home from the studio when the last thing I want to do is listen to another song. I’ve found that often when I get burnt out, I can reconnect to music with another genre or practice. If I’ve worked on country all day, maybe I’ll go listen to pop – or a podcast! Most of the time changing the format gets my mind back in it.
Similarly, I think probably the best thing about working in music is the community. At least in Nashville, your co-workers and clients often become your closest friends. Just as the relationship with music changes when it becomes a job – those relationships can require some intentionality as they change too. That can be work – but it can also be awesome.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a musician! The smaller boxes I tend to fit in are audio engineer, and guitarist. But of course I also produce and play a couple other instruments when the need arises (like most of us here in Nashville). On the engineering front, I work on a good amount of live video shoots where we’re capturing audio and video at the same time, on location. I also work on a lot of more classical styles of recording (strings, brass, woodwinds etc.) and everything in-between. Those two worlds specifically are pretty unique, and about as different as two recording sessions can get. In the classical recording world everything is pretty surgical -in the video world we’re hardly ever even in a treated room!
Getting to make noise with people I love is always so much fun – but if I had to pick a few highlights – it would be getting to work on projects for clients like Disney, Brandon Lake, Kristin Chenoweth, Michael W. Smith on the engineering side of things. On the guitar side of things it would have to be getting to play arena shows with a band called Next Level, and recently getting to play the Ryman with my church.
As far as what sets me apart, I love digging into the details of technology and engineering principles until I understand it, and then putting that away and making music. Before you can improvise on an instrument, it’s so important to sit down and learn the chords and scales and licks. But, if you need to stop and think about those things when it’s your turn to solo, it’s already too late. Audio engineering is no different. You have to study what your options are: and then you have to be able to put the book away and perform. I love that challenge on both sides of the glass.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Yes! I’m currently launching an offering for my travel recording rig! For the last five years I’ve been working on the audio side of video shoots as an assistant and I’m now offering that service myself. I love to nerd out about the details but I’ll keep it short.
Basically I can setup a world-class studio anywhere where there’s power (actually, I could probably get away without power, so if you’re wanting to do a shoot in the woods let’s chat 🙂 Rupert Neve/AMS Neve preamps, and digitally controlled personal mixers. I can record full band/vocal/choir all at the same time with a setup that looks clean on video and sets up in under a couple hours. Please message me for more details would love to talk shop!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @christianmakesnoises
