April 1st 2005, 11am. I’m pushing bacon around my plate with a disinterested fork. I’d just lost years of emails, followed by my appetite. “They must be on my hard disk somewhere,” I pleaded, hoping it was a date prank. “Yes and no,” my IT buddy replied, sipping his third short black. “That’s what happens when Outlook crashes — they’re there, but they’re irretrievable. You eating that bacon?” “Nah…” It vanished in a blur of cutlery, caffeine and disgruntled seagulls. “It’s 2005, dude. The internet is fast enough. You should be on webmail…”

Back at the IT workshop, I’m expressing my disdain at the clutter and clunkiness of Hotmail and Yahoo. Webmail? Urgh. “Have you heard of Gmail?” he asked. “It’s coded to be fast and light, with none of the ‘bloat’ of those others. It does this cool thing that keeps all related messages together as a conversation, and super fast searching because it’s from Google — the search engine guys. Plus they give you 1GB of free storage that’s going to get bigger over time, so you’ll never have to delete things to make room for new messages. It’s invitation only for now. Interested?” I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of storing my emails outside my computer, and yet I’d just lost them all because they were stored inside my computer. “Sure, invite me…”

A moment ago I searched Gmail for my oldest message: April 1st 2005, 1:06pm. It’s from ‘Gmail Team’ and the subject line opens with “Gmail is different…” Fourteen years, six computers and 11GBs of emails later, Gmail has not lost a single message. I found the oldest one in seconds with three taps and a swipe, and I could do that from any computer anywhere in the world — as long as it’s connected to the internet and I can authenticate my identity. Welcome to cloud storage. You’ve probably been using it for years, whether you realised it or not.

Last November I wrote about my transition from laptop to iPad [‘On The Go’, AT130]. This excerpt from the closing paragraph reflects the last traces of my ‘pre-cloud’ thinking: “My transition from OS X to iOS has been so successful that my Macbook Pro and hard disks now live in a storage locker in Bangkok, coming out once a month to archive recent recordings and videos.”

There’s something falsely reassuring about having everything stored in tangible little boxes. I’ve got 5TB of content spread redundantly over three spinning drives. To satisfy my pedantry for collections, they’re all Seagate ‘Backup Plus’ 4TB drives with anodised aluminium finishes — one black, one red and one blue. I’ve named them simply Black, Red and Blue, and changed their on-screen icons to represent their colours — anyone who works with multiple drives will appreciate that. After each expedition I spend ages shuffling things between them so that every audio and video file is stored on at least two of the three drives. If any one of those drives crashes I won’t lose anything, except perhaps the drive itself. When finished, each drive gets enveloped in bubblewrap and placed in a zip-up hard shell along with its USB3 cable and a bag of silica gel. I probably should use Pelican cases, but that’s another matter. Whenever I take the drives out of their storage locker I handle them like eggs, and I panic whenever I hear of floods, earthquakes or hotel fires because it reminds me that I’ve got all my eggs in one basket.

Meanwhile there’s my iPad Pro; a post-‘social media’ design that is all about wireless connections, cloud storage and automatic backup. I take it with me everywhere. I’ve got 2TB on Apple’s iCloud, 1TB on Microsoft’s OneDrive and 100GB on Google Drive. That’s 3.1TB of distributed cloud storage at my fingertips as long as I’ve got a Wi-Fi connection — which is everywhere I go because the iPad Pro has a data SIM. I never worry about losing my iPad data because it’s safe and sound in huge distributed storage systems belonging to some of the Top 10 richest corporations in the world, whose wealth has been built on storing, analysing and exploiting everybody else’s data. Any event big enough to cause those corporations to lose my data, without advanced warning, will probably be so catastrophic that losing my data will be the least of my worries. Nuclear war, alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, the closing scene of Fight Club. Get the idea?

I’ve got expeditions coming up that will push my total content beyond 6TB, at which point my hard disk system will need another drive to maintain its redundancy. I’m not going to buy it, because the notion of a personal hard disk archive is as dated as the word ‘dude’. The new stuff is going straight to the cloud. I’ll eventually migrate the older stuff over as well, because there’s no way that a set of mollycoddled hard disks in a storage locker can beat the reliability and global accessibility of the mass storage systems belonging to the richest corporations in the world, whose very existence relies on storing my data.

It’s 2019, dude. The internet is fast enough. You should be on the cloud…

My father was an arranger all his life, he’d played since he was a kid. He would arrange jingles and TV shows like Lassie here in Hollywood. My mother also worked for the I Love Lucy show. They were entertainment parents. My dad had his own studio at home and was always in there. I grew up in that studio. I didn’t know any different.

When I was seven, my parents took me, my brother and sister down to Guatemala. I lived my really important years between seven and 17 down there.

My dad was very taken by the Baha’i faith, whose principal belief is in the oneness of humanity and religion. They just decided to go somewhere they could help share that.

My life changed forever. I remember a hippy guy who lived next door to us would get into his old truck and play old Santana. My sister’s boyfriend used to play me Earth, Wind & Fire records, I remember a song called Brazilian Rhyme. It was really cool, but it didn’t have much Brazilian to it. My favourite song was Serpentine Fire, and I met Maurice White a bunch of years back before he passed. I asked him about that song, I said, ‘That song is insane. What were you guys thinking?’ He just looked at me and said, ‘It’s a tango, man!’ It keeps the groove going throughout the track, so you don’t feel like it has the stops, but it still has the tango syncopation throughout.

My parents are from California, I have no Spanish or Latin blood at all. I just grew up there and spent my formative years there. I feel like a Latino inside, my humour is Latino, and my American wife doesn’t get it.

When I came back to the US, I wanted to make music. I learnt more about rhythms and different musical styles when I came back to the US. Guatemala did have its own music, but it was more folkloric marimba music, kind of like my father’s job; straight ragtime. My dad found marimba music, swung it up, and made a bunch of records with all the classic marimba songs in Guatemala. His band was a big hit. He’ll be 93 in November, and though he doesn’t play with them anymore, his band is still really popular in Guatemala.

What got my foot in the door in the US was making records with Latin artists, but with an LA sound. It was groundbreaking because people from Latin America were sending out their songs to be produced in other countries like Spain or Mexico. No one was really making any records in the US, because there weren’t any producers doing it.

Then I started doing Spanish language versions for artists like Janet Jackson, and one thing led to another and I was producing the biggest Latin artists as well as artists like Bon Jovi, Brian McKnight, Boyz II Men and Michael Jackson. Everyone wanted to do stuff in Spanish.

I would make a mockup of the song in Spanish and give it to them beforehand so they could learn the song. Then when they came to the studio they’d have a little bit of an idea. We’d still go line by line, syllable by syllable and work at it. It’s a lot of work.

Because Spanish was my second language, I understood how to convey it to an American learning Spanish. I know the techniques to get the words right.

I remember Boyz II Men showed up in the studio, and I asked them if they had learnt it, and they said, ‘No man, we didn’t even get to hear it yet.’ Sometimes we’d get artists who had some Latino blood. Toni Braxton did such a good job that it became a big hit in a lot of Latin territories, even topping charts in Spain. Boyz II Men had big hits in Latin America, and their R&B style had a big influence on Latin pop. Now you listen to Latin pop and it has an R&B sensibility.

I think people in the US didn’t realise the potential for sales of Latin music. I remember when José Feliciano and Vikki Carr were the staples of Latin music and any time the Grammys came around they were always winning. It was like, ‘wait a minute, there’s a lot more out there then just those guys.’

If you could break Mexico with a Latin hit, that was great. South America was a little more in their world, so was Spain. In the beginning it was connected, but it wasn’t like it is now. Back then, you had to send physical records. Whatever the DJ wanted to play, they had to find it.

If you sounded Latin, yet made an American pop record, why couldn’t you reach multiple audiences?

The guy who plugged me into A&M records started the Latin division with A&M’s founder, Herb Alpert. Herb had vision and was always looking for the next thing. This guy came along and said, ‘Let’s start a Latin division,’ and started it off by signing a band called Maná, which became big throughout Latin America. Much later on, I ended up producing their big single on Santana’s Supernatural and it won Record of the Year at the Latin Grammys. It was interesting how it came full circle years later.

I’m surprised by Despacito, because it’s in Spanish and it’s a global phenomenon. I think having Bieber on there made a difference. It goes to show that people don’t care, a record can be fresh. Everything’s a shot in the dark, you put your soul and energy into it and hope for the best.

In a world of borders and wall-building, we’re trying to break down that mentality with music that unites.

I was producing this one well-known artist in Puerto Rico, and her manager also managed Ricky Martin. He said, ‘I’d like you to work with this guy.’

I was reluctant at first because Ricky came from a boy band and I considered myself to be more of a producer of real, lead singers. Ricky is more of a package artist. He’s a great performer. He has amazing stage presence, is a great dancer, and is a great interpreter of music — he can bare his soul musically — but I wasn’t so much about performers as I was singers like Toni Braxton or Boyz II Men, Chaka Kahn or Brian McKnight. I get frustrated too, producing singers that aren’t really singers, it’s a lot of work.

Working with Ricky was a wonderful experience. We were able to do whatever we wanted. The label didn’t get it, they wanted him to be the next Julio Iglesias. They thought he was a crooner in the making. The breakout single was Maria, which the label didn’t even want on the record. I left it on the record anyway, and the rest is history.

Ricky was very busy at the time, we’d always get artists after a tour when they’re exhausted. They were pulling him everywhere — he was in a soap opera and had just done Les Miserables on Broadway. We had to boost his energy and take out the Ethel Merman factor that happens on Broadway; make him a cooler, smokey, rock/pop guy. It was a challenge to take some of the bubblegum out of his image.

Santana was the next project. He told us that when he was praying about the album the message he’d received was that he needed to step back and trust in his producers. He had been burned so many times by trusting bad producers and management. He’d taken control of his career, but when he met Clive Davis he decided to let Clive and myself take control. Our side was about honouring Carlos’ vibe. We had a great working relationship and connected on a spiritual level.

A friend of mine and guitar player, J. B. Eckl, was a hardcore Santana fan. When they asked me to meet Santana in the studio, I called J. B. down. The first thing Carlos does is pull out all these posters of paintings. We’re looking at all the colourful, crazy paintings and he said, ‘that’s what I want my music to sound like.’ We were realising that Carlos wasn’t your average artist. He was living, breathing and speaking on a different frequency. If we wanted to honour what he was looking for we had to get on that frequency. He would say something like, ‘we need to connect the molecules and the light.’ He would use a lot of terminology like that and we’d panic. Then we’d figure he was trying to bring some light into the darkness, or combine the material and the spiritual. He didn’t ask whether things could be pink or purple until about the third album down the way. Then he said, ‘it feels a little blue, could you make it a little more red?’ I looked at
J. B. — ‘it had to come!’

He would put his thumb in front of his face, with his pinkie pointing away so you don’t see the palm of his hand. Then he’d line his right hand up behind it so you could barely see that either. He would say, ‘my guitar sounds like this right now, and I want it to sound like this.’ Then he would fan his hands open so you could see the palms and fingers. He wanted his guitar to sound fuller, warmer, bigger. He didn’t want it to sound transistory, or thin. It’s all about the size of the sound. Carlos was very pleased with what we were doing, but it took some trial and error.

At the end of the day, recording his guitar boiled down to capturing not just the speaker, but the phenomenon produced in the room. Carlos would walk out into the tracking room and hear his guitar cranked. Then he’d go back into the control room where it was coming out of the big speakers, but it wouldn’t give that same effect. We needed to figure out how to capture the balance of the speaker and room with the right preamps.

We probably used an SM57, we weren’t using ribbon mics. We’d move things around, and try to work out the best positioning for the amp. The speaker we used was a little Boogie cab. It wasn’t a massive 4 x 12 cabinet. The Dumble amp was also the magic. I wish it was easier to get a Dumble amp, but they’re very cost prohibitive. We ended up using the class AB Neve 1081s, which is not the same as class A, but they were beautiful.

That signal chain we landed on at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley was magic. It ended up being where he would record from that point on. People would say the tones we were getting on his guitar were the best they’d ever heard from him.

I had a Neve 8036 in my studio, and everything was done in analogue. It was the last thing I did completely in analogue on 499 Ampex tape, and a Studer A37. There was nothing like the sound of that Neve, I wish I could still have it, but it’s just not practical. If you listen to Primevera it’s indicative of a mix on that console. It sounds smoother than smooth. Every time we’d see Carlos after the album came out, he’d just look at us and say, ‘Primavera!’’

I started at Allen & Heath back in June 1983 as an R&D design engineer. We were an analogue mixer manufacturer. I remember at the time I insisted on getting a PC for my desk, and that was about the extent of our digital capabilities.

The company started life back in 1969. Allen & Heath had a great reputation for innovation. In the early ’70s Pink Floyd was touring with our custom-made quad mixer, complete with handcrafted panning joysticks!

Another example of early innovation was our MiniMixer, which was the first on the market to use transistor technology. People loved that mixer. When you’re striving to innovate there was an element of risk in those days. Customers loved what we did but had to put up with a certain amount of unreliability and foibles.

Even now I still hear from people who will complain about something that happened 40 years ago at some disastrous gig somehow involving an Allen & Heath console. People have long memories. It does remind me that you can never rest on your laurels. If things are going well, you still have to listen to your customers and be thinking about the next thing. You can’t have one bad day. If you’ve had a success you can’t sit and relax.

Allen & Heath’s first big break was with the System 8 studio console. That was followed by Sabre, which had a great run as a modular mixer with good sound and performance. It really tapped into the project studio explosion of the ’80s, integrating well with the 16-track tape machines of the day.

What’s the origin of our signature, super-light fader feel? It was back in the ’80s when people were sick of the stodgy and inconsistent faders of the time. We went searching for a reliable, consistent alternative and signed up with ALPS.

The first console that had ALPS faders was the CMC [which was also the first to use a microprocessor to leverage MIDI capabilities]. We’ve been with them ever since.

When ADAT came onto the scene, followed by PC software-based recording, we made an important strategic decision. We determined that with digital moving in so quickly, we would need to concentrate our efforts on live sound rather than the studio. It led us to release the GL2 [which combined front of house and stage monitor functionality into a single ‘dual function’ mixer — a big deal at the time], the MixWizard and the ML series [which put VCAs into the hands of a much larger group of audio people].

I came to arts school in Melbourne, then dropped out and went back to work in the Shepparton canneries to get some dough together.

In ’79 a mate who worked at the local TV station told me the ABC was employing technical trainees. We had a crack at it, but neither of us got a return letter. I kept ringing them, annoying them and sending them letters. Eventually around Christmas 1980 they suggested I come do some staging work.

My girlfriend’s mum told me, ‘you want to get your foot in the door any way you can.’ I did that and ended up at Ripponlea near Melbourne doing staging for Countdown.

I was 21 when I started on Countdown. I was a kid from the country, and when they opened the door to the newsroom booth I thought, ‘that does not look right.’ It was the size of a closet. Then they took me to the ‘big’ studio where they did Countdown. I thought it must have been huge to cross to all those different stages, not all squeezed into that small room.

One shift would be installing sets in the middle of the night, the other was wrangling props like Molly’s set.

A year later they had another intake and I got into a three-year training course. I moved into radio in ’84.

You almost had to wait until someone died to move up in the ABC ranks. The music production gigs were very coveted. I was lucky because I moved through all the networks and learned different skills as well as assisting the music production team.

One of the jobs was covering sport. I’d go off with Greg Miles and set up one microphone and a Sennheiser 416 hanging out the window to catch the crowd going off at the races. Footy, cricket, golf — the great thing about the ABC’s trainee program was you got a great background in radio production.

I recorded dramas and music for Sing, a program pumped through classroom loudspeakers. Then there was more art-related and classical program for 3AR, which became Radio National. Triple J didn’t get to Melbourne until about ’92.

In about ’88 or ’89, I started working with Chris Thompson who’d come back into Triple J to look after some live music. The ABC had converted a big old Greek picture theatre in Waverley into Studio 325, which was big enough to house the MSO. We did ‘Live at the Wireless’ from there, it had a Quad Eight console kicking around, then a Harrison Mk IV.

I’d do a session with a band and when it went really well they’d ask if we could make a record. I did a Kim Salmon with STM record called Hey Believer, and Spiderbait’s song Jesus.

Triple J was leading the ascendancy of alternative rock and grunge and I got to ride that wave. It was fortuitous timing really.

One highlight was when Chris, Leah Baker and I headed off to record Nirvana at the Palace. When we got there they said, ‘You can’t record it tonight, you’ve got to come back tomorrow night.’ So we got to stick around and see this amazing show. The audience was so keyed up to see the band perform.

The other act which blew me away was Jeff Buckley. He was a rockstar in the sense of that ’60s and ’70s bigger than life performer; really charismatic.

In the van we had a Harrison Mk IV, a couple of Otari MTR 90 tape machines, recording at 15ips onto Dolby. You had an A and B reel with 30 minutes on each, hopefully you’d kick off the second one with enough time to get the cross over.

Unearthed was used as a way to reach new regional areas. As the broadcast transmitter went in we’d announce the competition and get all those people on board.

It was a battle of the cassette bands. There was a panel of about six of us smashing through an enormous amount of material for a couple of weeks. Sometimes you’d only get 20 seconds in before you flicked it because it either wasn’t good or wasn’t Triple J.

Grinspoon won the first year we did it. There were two winners that year, the other was Ode to a Goldfish.

The deal was they recorded a track and it got airplay on Triple J; a massive opportunity for kids on the other side of the radio. I recorded both bands at Rockinghorse Studios. Grinspoon recorded two in the end, Sickfest was one of them.

They put on a concert at the uni in Lismore, and when Grinspoon hit the stage those kids went crazy. Phil was an amazing front person; he had long hair then and was really commanding onstage.

I did Silverchair’s Tomorrow EP. Grinspoon heard that and wanted to do an EP, which became Licker Bottle Cozy.

At Rockinghorse there was a big beautiful house associated with the property you could rent along with the studio. The actual recording room at Rockinghorse was fairly small. Skunkhour had been there before us and Grinspoon heard they’d set up in the house and run a loom down to the studio, which is what we did.

It sounds like three bands in the first EP and Guide To Better Living. Later on they ended up being more of a hard rock band, but Grinspoon could have been an amazing punk band because Phil has the snotty John Lydon snarl going on.

I went freelance for 10 years after leaving Triple J, but the last few years in the music industry have gotten so tight. I had a mortgage and twins, and was working studio hours, so I had to look at something more concrete. Luckily, I got back into the ABC at Radio National, and now Double J.

I’m doing a lot of stuff now that I was doing in the ’90s. We recorded at Bluesfest, and a twilight concert at the Taronga Zoo, where we grabbed Kurt Vile, Martha Wainwright and Teenage Fanclub.

Because the ABC OB truck is so huge and we’re not broadcasting live, it’s often easier to take a Digico SD11 and Sound Devices SD970 MADI recorder and set up side of stage or in a green room.

Like every media organisation the ABC is downsizing. Sadly the ABC doesn’t make a Countdown anymore, or any of those awesome shows like The Factory, Beatbox, or Recovery. The ABC doesn’t really do training anymore either. Music gigs in the ABC are very tight now. You’d have to be a very lucky individual to walk in off the street.