Studio Diary #01: Never Too Late

I’ve been studying classical piano since I was four, but when I started GOLDEN I didn’t know anything about recording. 

Engineering and producing my songs, was never what I had intended. It sorta happened by accident. Like most emerging artists I was on the search for the perfect producer, and really by sheer luck, I feel in with the crew of engineers at Electric Lady. 

My homie and fellow piano brain Grant Harding intro-ed me with Phil Joly who really gave me my first shot. Back then, since I couldn’t even open GarageBand I was writing songs & making GOLDEN demos with my voice memo app. I’d plug in my analog drum machines thru my Echoplex into a bass amp and my voice into a guitar amp and record the songs live- 

Back then, if I played a show it usually meant 250lbs of equipment coming along with a 100lb person in an Uber lol- 

(shoutout to Pete for finding & restoring my Echoplex)

But Phil would let me dip in on off days and we’d hook everything up in studio D upstairs and that’s when I started meeting other engineers there like Joe Visciano, Brandon Bost, Caleb Laven, Vira Byramji and Steve Vealey who were instrumental in helping me start and taught me pretty much everything i know in brotools. (yes brotools)

but even then, I didn’t really take on recording it and producing it all on my own til about Half way thru Running. And what that song is about kind of mirrored my life at the time. And when collaborators are working full time for the top musical artists and mixers in the world like Frank Ocean and Tom Elmhirst, you pretty much working 100 hours a week. And a lot of the first things i learned in pro tools like tracking my own vocals and etc... were mostly because they’d get the call and would show me how to keep going on my own. 

lol i think this mighta been the moment caleb tossed off Running to me (via Joe of course lol)

And all credit to them because they were honestly the ones pushing me to produce it myself before i was- and still to this day i don’t get out of a lot of pickles without them. Including this new song-

this is me in the staircase stoked to be at els haha

But what’s craziest to me- isn’t how far I’ve come in a year and half or how much I’ve learned in protools- what’s craziest is it’s how long i fought it for. 

As an emerging artist you swap a lot of stories with your peers - especially cuz we’re all in it together- and i dunno how many times I’ve heard “i’ve been waiting to finish the song”, “waiting to get stems” or the classic “if i could just find the right producer who gets what I’m doing” - honestly I’ve been there and said all those things too. 

I think a lot of fellow artist homies will agree with me when i say it’s kinda the worst thing in the world to feel like you’re dependent on someone else or something else to be able to record or work on a track. 

And honestly, I think it’s a dangerous spot to be in- needing someone else to figure out how your music should sound or finish your song. it’s sorta similar to expecting someone to read your mind. 

But all that aside- for real, as someone whose been on both sides, all I can say is that I had no idea how impactful, and honestly down right awesome it would be until i jumped in. And I’ll be telling y’all to jump in prolly til a die, cuz if you want to be a recording artist, it’s literally never a bad decision. 

And just like this new yam- if you haven’t started, IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO FIND A WAY OUT :) And i guess that brings us back to the real topic of this specific journal/diary entry … bailey finding a way outta producing & finishing this song lol

Up until this one- i think almost all of it I recorded at my studio in my apartment- 

My regular tools include:

• Aston Spirit Microphone (def- recommend this mic to any homies- and definitely over an SM7 which most people might recommend to you in a similar budget range)

• Apollo Twin (2 inputs) a great broke girls choice- esp if you need to run UAD and can’t afford a dsp box

• Wurlitzer 203, Moog Rogue,

And I use my OP1 by Teenage Engineering- which i use for pretty much most of my samples, pads, and weird sauce which honestly ends up being around 70% of the multi track. Here’s what the song sounds like without any drums, bass or keyboards. And shoutout to Soundtoys for one of my favorite plugins, Little AlterBoy- been really digging using that on guitars:

In general most of the cool production elements were what Bob Ross likes to call “happy accidents.” Largely on account of me producing by ear. And a lot of the decisions I made, like using pre-sequenced drum machines, sorta masked the fact that I have no drum brain at all. But anyway, that only goes so far, so i try to take it up a notch each time i start a new song. And this time it was live drums, my new favorite microphone (shoutout to the Peluso 22 251 ) which i used on my final vocal- all thanks to Quinn of The Creamery Recording Studio who told me to try the mic and let me dip in after hours to get it done <3

But back to drums lol. My homie Brian Chase came and tracked at The Creamery for a day. And the tracking went seamlessly.

But i had no idea how much i had opened a Pandora’s box until i was home opening up the session the next day. 

Suddenly it made a lot more sense why most folks these day are using splice and logic drums all the time. 

Guess i didn’t really think about how i was going from about 2 drum tracks to about 15 - not to mention that i had no idea how to EQ a snare or compress a kick, or etc… and It’s funny too cuz at the end of the day, it’s my first song without at least some drums anywhere. Very twilight zone. ha

(lol me steming out the drums for Will)

There were definitely a lot of times i thought i’d never figure out how to use them. And Shoutout to Joe V for timing them and getting them to a spot i could actually hear, and Will Hutchison (Bird Language) and Brian Zaremba (Middle Part) for being my arrangement and vibe gurus- the recording would be a lot more messy and muddy without them.

(bailey & brian weekly wednesdays finishing Never Too Late)

Anyway, since the yam took so long, there’s a lotta artifacts and etc.. so here’s some photos and a lyric video i made from the day we tracked drums. Shoutout to Kokie for shooting all the film photos and Preston for the vhs footage <3

Never Too Late - Credits

All songs written performed recorded produced by: bailey cooke (GOLDEN)

Album Artwork: Josh Lambert

Additional Production: Will Hutchison of Bird Language & Brian Zaremba

Instruments/ additional engineering: Christian Carpenter (bass), Brian Chase (Drums) Kyle Crew (guitar), joe visciano (drum engineering) quinn mccarthy (bass)

Mixing: Kenneth Gilmore   
Mastering: Idania Valencia, Sterling Sound

35mm Photography: Kokie Imasogie

VHS Videography: Preston Tietjen

Location: The Creamery Recording Studio - Brooklyn, NY