Life & Work with Sean Giovanni

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sean Giovanni.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was very fortunate to find my passion early in life. My first attempt at creating music came in an art competition in 1st grade. I wrote a song and recorded it on a “my first sony” cassette recorder and got first place! That experience sparked a passion in me for writing, but it was very much a hobby at that age. Around middle school, I started getting more curious about how I could have a career in the music industry. I saved up some money from cutting lawns around the neighborhood and creating a make-shift studio to start experimenting with recording. I remember being intrigued by the emotional impact of sound and loved the idea of being able to take an idea and turn it into something tangible that I could listen to. In high school, I started taking the recordings I was making with my friends and found a local studio that could transfer the cassette tapes to CDs. I got some help from friends selling CDs around the local schools, and that experience solidified my mission to figure out how to make a living with my passion. After high school, I attended a small trade school for audio engineering and then headed out to Nashville.

I moved here for an internship opportunity at a major recording studio. Unfortunately, the job fell through after I got to town, and I was quickly humbled by how challenging the industry can be. After being unable to find a job in a studio, I picked up a gig at a nightclub as a DJ. I started focusing on freelancing in my free time and set up a make-shift studio in an apartment on music row. Slowly but surely, I started connecting with artists and working towards building enough of a client base to make production my full-time job. During that period, I became inspired by the collaborative nature of music production and set out to start my company, The Record Shop. I wanted to develop a community of creators that could support artists in all aspects of achieving their artistic vision.

Over the next few years, I hit the ceiling with the “gig to gig” career path and focused my intention on building long-term relationships with artists to grow our careers together. Fortunately, a few artists started to gain some traction, and new, valuable doors were opened for The Record Shop to evolve. Around four years into my journey, I was able to shift to working full time on the business and took out a lease on my first studio in the basement of a rental house. It was there that I met my friend, Peter Keys, who introduced me to an artist named Sinister. We did some demos together, and his manager, Charlie Pennachio, heard what we were doing and came by for a session. Charlie, and country artist John Rich, we’re leasing a private studio in town and needed an engineer to run sessions. I was fortunate to get the gig, and that relationship led to some of my first experiences working on major records.

Things started picking up from that point, and around 10 years into this adventure, I realized it was time to take the next step in expanding the business by acquiring our own studio space. Since then, we’ve continued to explore new ways to offer valuable resources to our partners. We recently expanded our video work into a live broadcast, which has been a very challenging and rewarding experience. Over the past few years, I’ve also become very passionate about mentoring the next generation of the industry and have hosted workshops for The Recording Academy, The NAMM Show, The Blackbird Academy, and several universities. I try to stay in the mindset that this journey is just getting started, but it’s been a wild ride!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I used to think that there would be a point in my career where I’d “make it.” However, the more success I was blessed with, the more I realized that there’s never a “summit” in this industry. On the other side of every peak, there’s always been a valley or another, a higher peak waiting for me.

My first lesson in this came about a year into my career. Things were starting to gain some momentum with my freelance work, and I was beginning to find some hope that this dream really could work out. One night, I came home from my DJ gig and found my apartment door was unlocked. I walked in, and everything except my clothes was gone. For a moment, I thought, that’s it; this just must not be meant for me. I called my parents, and they helped me off the ledge. My Dad came down the next day, helped me figure things out, and got some gear to get back to work. I remember sitting on the balcony of that building, looking down the music row, and agreeing with myself that I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of fulfilling my dream.

The next major lesson in navigating this rollercoaster was when I leased my first studio. It was right before Christmas, and I had just signed a lease on a studio that I could barely afford. My only truly reliable income outside of freelance work was a DJ gig downtown. I was getting things packed to start moving out of my apartment when the club manager told me that the club would be closing soon and they had to lay me off. Panic immediately set in. I had no idea how to make up that lost income to afford the lease. Fortunately, before I called the landlord to beg my way out of the contract, I thought back to that night when my apartment was robbed and convinced myself I’d figure it out somehow. I started making calls to every prospective client I had recently been in talks with and was able to close a deal to start a project on New Year’s Day that would take care of my rent for a few months! That week, I learned the importance of not waiting for catastrophe to strike to follow up on leads. I created a system for follow-ups that I still use today to ensure that an opportunity doesn’t fall through the cracks.

The biggest challenge has been practicing what I call “patient persistence” As a creative, I have big dreams and a relentless desire to see them come to life. The more success I experience, the more I see how much is possible and the harder it is to let the world deliver what it intends to when it intends to. However, I’ve never experienced these goals come my way by solely being patient with them. So I focus on a “patient persistence,” where I am intentional about scheduling time to take at least one action each day that has the potential to inch me towards my current goals. That plan works excellent when I successfully separate the outcome from the action. The struggle is not to get caught up in the result but to stay focused on the work at the moment. I think that will be a lifelong battle.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
When people describe my work, I hear most often that I “create moments” in production. I think about sound and the arrangement of a song visually. I visualize the “shape” of the sound and the “mood” that the sound or arrangement lives in. With that, I’d like to think that I specialize in telling stories through sound. I want to understand the music I’m working on in the same way the artist does internally. I have several processes that go into me getting inside the mind of the artists, but overall I think it’s a lot about paying attention to the details. For me, it’s not about the latest technology or equipment. While those are helpful tools, and we have a lot of them, I think the most powerful music connects personally with the audience. That connection is what I try to chase down on every project.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and can you share any important lessons or epiphanies with us?
Crisis equals opportunity, and we shouldn’t wait for a crisis to be searching for opportunity. I’ve always tried to maintain awareness of opportunities for us to shift with the industry. However, when business is good, and the work is overflowing, it can become easy to get so lost in the current workload that I lose sight of the next move. During Covid, I had some forced time off that allowed my mind to wander onto, “what’s next?” That contemplation led me to take a more serious look at the opportunities within live streaming and live broadcast. I invested in building an integrated system for virtual events in the studio while having an option for it to be mobile. As everything went virtual, we built some incredible partnerships with organizations in this space. Since then, it has become clear that this technology will continue to be valuable post covid, and it was a great lesson in staying in touch with new ways to evolve.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: therecordshopnashville.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/therecordshopstudios
• Facebook: facebook.com/nashvillerecordingstudio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTJePvkcjCDSRILf9_yoaNA