Three decades. Three chapters.

I started in recording studios. Not the mythology of studios, the actual rooms. Cables on the floor, a console that cost more than the building, and an artist on the other side of the glass trying to get the thing in their head onto tape. For 30 years, that was my life. Engineer first, because that's how you learn what a record really is. Then producer. Then songwriter, once I understood that the sound only matters if the song holds.

Three decades behind the boards gives you the one thing no tool can: taste. You learn what a great take feels like the second it happens. You learn that the gear changes every few years and the fundamentals never do. Those years are why I'm a Voting Member of the Recording Academy (the GRAMMY organization) and why I know the artist, not the equipment, is the whole point.

Here's what those decades taught me about gatekeepers: they don't disappear. They adapt. Right now the labels, the platforms, and the studios are all racing to own AI. I'd rather put it in the hands of the artists. Digital recording democratized music production. AI is democratizing creativity itself.

That's why I serve on the Creative Advisory Council at SIQA, creators of the world's first AI music charts, helping define what it means to be an AI creator. But this chapter isn't about my credits. It's about yours. I spend my time on three things now: