Hackensack's music manTuesday, July 27, 2010
BY RICHARD NEWMAN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
Name, job title: Jon Witte, independent recording engineer, The Music Machine, Hackensack
Time on the job: 25 years
What is the job? Witte makes compact disc recordings for professional and amateur musicians in his own commercial studio. These include demonstration recordings, "demos" for bands, singer songwriters and student auditions. Recent customers included a high school chamber music group that wanted a keepsake recording and a bagpipe marching band that made a rock-and-roll CD. Witte schedules recording sessions, records and mixes music, advises musicians on production decisions, and coaches them on playing and singing. He is a musician himself and sometimes provides accompaniment on guitar, synthesizer or trumpet and finds session players as needed. He also repairs electronic gear. "You wear a million hats," he said.
Recording engineer Jon Witte in his Hackensack studio, The Music Machine.
Most difficult part: It's hard to make decent recordings for customers with subpar skills, he said. "I can make people suck less, but there is only so much you can do."
Also, "you have to do everything yourself and you don't make any money," he said.
Most rewarding part: "When you're sitting in a room recording a really good artist and you know no one else has seen or heard this, and you're capturing it. For me, music is what drives it on. As long as you are working on music it's never really a bad day."
Who can do this job? "You have to understand music and technology. You have to know the language of music. Many, me included, are mostly self-taught."
What do most people ask you about your job and what do you tell them? "A big question is have you recorded anyone famous and I say, well, no, not really, not yet. I tell them about the Papa Hoodoo Medicine Show, a local jam band that's pretty well known. I tell them about Jeff Lawrence, a great jazz artist from Teaneck."
Background: Bachelor's degree in music composition from Montclair State College, where he ran the campus recording studio that had a four-track reel-to-reel, a small mixer, a Moog synthesizer and an Apple IIe computer. Early in his career he worked weekends as a sound man for a wedding band.
Salary: The average annual pay for sound engineers is around $40,000 and those with experience who work for big studios make $80,000 or more. But as an independent sole proprietor he says he has never made that much.
"Most of the money goes right back into the business," he said. "I'm lucky my wife has a good job."
On the Job appears Tuesdays this summer. E-mail: newman@northjersey.com
http://www.musicmachinestudio.com/
