How did you first get into production and engineering?

I think it actually evolved around the love for all types of music. When I was 7 or 8 years old, I was already a huge music fan. I was starting to collect records just like my parents and I remember seeing concerts like Creedence Clearwater Revival sitting on my Dad’s shoulders as a little boy. Even though the music was really loud and crazy at those shows, there was always this underlying rhythm that stuck with me. Through years of collecting a massive pile of 45s and LPs, listening to the radio, and recording myself along with the radio, I got pulled in deeper and deeper.

As far as my musical background, I got a drum kit when I was a kid, and there was always a piano in the house and I would bang around on that. But as far as formal training I only had basic music and theory classes in school and playing drums in local bands. I never did that lesson thing per se.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up on the East coast of Florida. We moved around a bit because my Dad worked as a mechanical engineer for companies associated with NASA. Right after high school I hit the road.

Hit the road?

I had a passion for architecture and design, so I was off to the University of Tennessee. That led to a few smaller colleges until I headed out west to college in San Antonio, Texas. I was about 20 or 21 years old and I was trying to find my place in life.

Around that time I was really getting into the technology side of music and listening to bands and artists who were making more machine-driven, technology-based synthesizer music. It was the mid-'80s when Jan Hammer, New Order, The Art of Noise and those type guys were doing this really cool esoteric music that was also super rhythmic.

While I was in school I took up a hobby - synthesizers and step sequencers and all that early technology in the mid to late eighties. Also, I would hang out in the college computer labs and use the computers to start learning basic sequencing.

Primary influence?

I know Vangelis and the movie Blade Runner were a huge influence. I knew that the Blade Runner soundtrack was all keyboards, so I wanted to know how it was done. I read Keyboard magazine constantly and poked around music stores and looked at $5,000 keyboards I couldn’t afford, and eventually bought a Yamaha DX21. I took that thing home and spent every moment I could outside of school tinkering around with it and writing the most horrendous layered compositions with a beat up 4-track.

It was all kind of twisted. It wasn’t even planned - I just did it out of a passion for what I heard on the radio. I never really stopped, ever.

But then it grew into something more?

In college, I would listen to bands like Depeche Mode, Howard Jones and Level 42 and put music like that together in a sequencer. People heard what I was doing, and I started getting calls. I was in Atlanta by that time and working partly as a session player on keys, but mostly I was a programmer.

I remember hauling around huge racks of Akai samplers and boxes of 3.5" diskettes and mondo Roland keyboards with sync boxes. Being on call all the time really provided me with the experience that I needed. I was suddenly sitting in the studio beside artists like Bell Biv Devoe, Babyface, and uber-programmer Mike McKnight. I was just a techie-programmer at that point, but I was watching how things were produced, how the producers worked with engineers, and who was mixing the records and with what gear.

And through that, you got to know some pretty big names.

Right off the bat I got to know some really talented engineers. The Atlanta scene was burgeoning in the early '90s. Dallas Austin had hit the scene along with Teddy Riley’s new sound and had really made a name for Atlanta in R&B, Hip Hop and New Jack Swing.

LA & Babyface moved their whole production team to Atlanta right at the time that I was knee deep in the studio scene, so I met some of their principle guys and started working with them. I got thrown into the fire immediately. I’d be sitting in the studio programming bass lines for Peabo Bryson or Whitney Houston. I’d be flying background vocals around in the Akai samplers for Boyz II Men.

The pressure was on, but I got the job done somehow. Being a MIDI programmer early on gave me the eventual knowledge and desire to work as a producer and engineer. I used the experience to learn about working with large format consoles, syncing and effects, how to re-amp sounds, and how to create certain sounds and textures by comping tracks while mixing.

Would you call these people your influences as a producer?

Absolutely. Teddy Riley, Daryl Simmons, Babyface, Rodney Mills & Thom "TK" Kidd were all mentors. Working with and learning from guys like that in an isolated studio 24 hours a day was a huge learning experience and kick started everything for me.

When computer sequencing started moving forward, you had to get on that train or you weren’t making a solid living at it. It was both technical and tedious at that time - you used to have to have your racks of samplers and synths delivered to the studio - but these days it’s a more fluid system.

While we’re on the subject of technology in music, do you find that you write differently while using a sequencing setup as opposed to sitting down in front of the piano with a pen and paper?

If I sit down at a grand piano, the chords are a little more expansive and spread apart. Your brain is sticking to the keyboard - you’re not going to the mouse or looking at a screen. I improvise a lot and typically center around jazz based chord structures for early ideas.

As a programmer you’re in loop mode, so you have a 2- or 4-bar arrangement that comes back around constantly. Maybe only two or three chords are playing in those four bars, but you’re ready to add something else regardless. So it’s more stream of consciousness at that point.

As a film and video composer I’ll sometimes work off of notation right on the screen in Logic 7. I’ll tend to look at things differently there. It makes it a lot easier, but there is something to be said about sitting in front of a Rhodes piano or holding a guitar for that matter. Guys like Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan weren’t working with DAWs.

It’s rumored that you have over one hundred synths.

Yes, I’ve got somewhere around a hundred synths, drum machines, and samplers. I have to say it’s also jointly owned in part by my close friend and composer Mitch Chastain as well. As far as gems, we’ve got a CS80, an ARP 2600, 3 Fender Rhodes, a pair of OB8s, 3 mint Minimoogs and of course the old Prophet 5 & 10. Early on in the '90s I came across a lot of gear. You’d walk into a pawn shop and find a MiniMoog for $150 or less. I just never parted with that stuff.

You’ve been working with noted vocal producer/coach Jan Smith for a while. How did that come together?

It’s a pretty cool story. Jan’s been a super talented vocal coach and producer/songwriter for years. I had a production studio where we would always pass, in a facility called Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta. I’d be working on a project in one room and she would be working on vocal production in the main room or somewhere close by.

In 2002, we were working on the same project and started chatting about the possibility of a production team. The idea was to bring together the rock band ala producer/programming guy and the vocal producer/writer (which was her background).

There had come a point in my career where it was time for a change, so we built a facility that adjoined her existing vocal coaching studio and called it Smith & Huston. In that facility we have the basic HD3 Pro Tools setup with dual vocal booths (so we can track guitars and vocals) and then all the MIDI programming gear as well. I have a semi-duplicate set up at my home studio downtown so I do a lot of the sequencing and composing there. It makes things smooth as a team and lets us work in other areas separately if need be.

She does all the vocal coaching with the artist one-on-one and then we meet in the middle and do the co-arranging and production. I’ll round out any programming. This setup lets us cater to smaller acts with more of a focus on themselves as the primary artist. We eventually found a niche with unsigned or artists who are looking to complete and promote their higher end demo projects. Working primarily with unsigned artists cuts the hassle of having too many people involved. We like it that way.

How are you using the iZotope plug-ins these days?

I use Ozone every time I turn on Peak 5. It’s also the first plug I pull up on the master bus when I get ready to mix a session in Pro Tools or Logic 7.

Everybody’s got their one piece, and that’s my go-to box for leveling. If I’m sending something out like a music piece for film or television spot for quick approval, I know the sound I’m going to get when I put it through Ozone. Ozone is my main studio processor minus the rack ears!

I use Trash a lot for my mashup remixes with Ableton LIVE 5. I’ll use it to get more of an impact on my loops or a trippy gated effect. I can open up Trash, make a couple of tweaks, come back ten minutes later and it’s still exactly what I want. Then I can save the presets and use them on something else. I keep the presets organized and recall them all the time.

That’s the beauty of Trash. I’m really into re-amping sounds and loops in remixes. I keep sets of Trash presets on call, and I’ve got a few to show some of how I do things.

Some producers don’t want to show off how they get their sounds.

There was a time when everyone kept quiet about their secret snare drum or re-amp tricks and drum kits. I figure why not share and help other people learn how we do things as producers and sound designers. I swap presets all the time with killer sound designers I know and it makes for good relationships.

Are there any current projects you’d like to talk about?

I just wrapped a film score for an indy called The Last Adam. What’s cool about it is I did a complete orchestral score for it, so it’s an interaction of some live instruments and tons of virtual string stuff.

I just finished up two music pieces for Time Warner Cable. Also, I'm just wrapping up two new projects for Delta Airlines’ agency, one of which is the score for the new Delta Destinations international inflight video called "Brand New World". I’m just starting the music temps on a TLC mini series on Israel and doing a whole bunch of sound design for the software companies I have relationships with. I’m just splitting time between the production artists with Jan and knocking out film projects and sound design stuff at my home studio. It never stops.

To learn more about Huston Singletary, visit Huston Music.