New Room: Behind The Curtains Media Recording Studio – Park Slope, Brooklyn

What does a touring musician who spent 10 grueling years on the road know about starting a recording studio? You guessed it: a TON.

Meet Mike Abiuso, who feels an equal pull to music AND music business. It’s manifested itself in Behind the Curtains Media, his multifaceted artist empowermenter that comes complete with a recording studio.

Powered by equal parts sage experience and musical mania, BTCM is here to build up sound. Remarkably, Abiuso had the courage to launch in a pandemic year as he opened the BTCM studio for commercial use in mid-2020, complying along the way with lockdowns that delayed businesses of all kinds. The result is a safe space from both a creative and physical standpoint, and that’s something people crave right now.

Although the gear selection is choice, BTCM Studio is not just for recording and mixing audio. The Park Slope, Brooklyn facility is also video optimized for remote sessions and livestream performances

While Abiuso is overseeing recordings at the studio, his growing team has a larger strategy to offer alongside. Artist consulting, music PR, marketing, advertising, branding, and Spotify promotion are all available to the artist, as well as supporting BTCM’s own projects.

But back to that studio. Everything is set up to ensure that ideas can be captured quickly, not bogged down with the technicalities. That said, BTCM studio is a digital/analog hybrid room, converging Avid Pro Tools Ultimate HDX/Logic Pro X with Burl, Avid, and Mytek conversion, along with Inward Connections and Soundcraft analog summing and mixing. Monitoring includes PSI, Adam, Yamaha and KRK, overseen by a Crane Song Avocet IIA monitor controller.

The mic pres and outboard, microphones, and amps grow from there in a large gear list. Reason, Albeton Live, and Garage Band are onboard. There’s also a French Horn, euphonium, 14 guitars, and a whole lot more at the ready.

Above all, BTCM is on a vision quest for studio vibe, aided by Abiuso’s open mind. That also counts for BTCM’s open air rooftop lounge, a transporting place with its own colorful back story. If you’d like a sonic perspective on all this, check out Abiuso’s Soundcloud set of recording credits.

A sense of humor hurts not here, as you might next detect. Part free association, part state of the art, prepare to be Behind the Curtain…

Plenty of headroom: Mike Abiuso at the Behind the Curtains Media recording studio.

Facility Name: Heyo, Mike Abiuso here, head producer and CEO at Behind the Curtains Media, thanks for sitting down to chat with me!

Location: We’re located in Park Slope, Brooklyn in good ol, NYC!

Neighborhood Advantages: Sitting conveniently on the lap of the F, R and G train (but not close enough to pick up in a microphone), the neighborhood provides a plethora of food, drink and entertainment options in a variety of price ranges.

There are endless bars and venues (The Bell House, Union Hall) for music, comedy and art; Breweries (Other Half, Six Point, Strong Rope, Five Boroughs, Threes, Circa), Prospect Park is a beautiful walk and just a stones throw away is the National Historic Landmark of Greenwood Cemetery. The studio itself is located in King Killer Studios, a compound for all sorts of creative, which I find very intriguing and inspiring!

Date of Birth: Behind the Curtains Media was birthed like most births occur…unexpectedly while in a van on tour back in 2014. It settled into it’s home here in Park Slope in 2017, where we’ve been operating as a full service music promotions company—more on that in a minute).

Opening a Studio in a Pandemic: We had been recording our personal projects here for a while, but this July we made a bunch of upgrades, took the next step, and made ourselves available as a commercial studio.

Behind the Curtains Media is a place where musicians can come to feel safe and open up in order to be able to inspire creativity. That safety most definitely extends from both a mental standpoint and now a physical standpoint. Both are treated and respected with the utmost detail, which was my biggest concern when opening during a pandemic.

Musical instrument, amp, and many other options abound at Behind the Curtain.

There was a lot of discussion and planning for the reopening of the studio in order to maintain a very high level of safety and comfort, and I feel at this point we’ve got it down to a science. With the virus came the installation of hands-free doors and sanitizing stations. Masks are required throughout the studio and we’ve likewise been wiping down our mics, pop filters, guitars and pianos religiously.

New opportunities I saw are in video production. Two avenues of focus are remote sessions and livestreams. Since reopening, I’ve invested in lighting, cameras, iPads, a Zoom account, an (Audiomovers remote collaboration) “LISTENTO” account, Blackmagic live video switcher, hardwired Internet, Webcams—you name it.

The goal with remote sessions is to make the experience as close to in-person as possible. We had an amazing EDM producer Rémi Zoom in from France to co-produce vocalist Ivan Theva under the wing of Adam Malka. The band Bad Bloom from Rochester Zoomed in to co-produce with drummer, Emmett Ceglia. Kate of Bad Bloom enjoyed her experience so much that she actually wrote up an instructional guide to remote recording.

Quick holler to good friend and phenomenal musician/producer, Matty Amendola—owner of 825 Records down the road from my apartment—who boiled a pot of water right under my ass to get me cranking with some of his remote recording techniques and plugins. Love you Matty!!!

A lot of the artists I record are accustomed to performing live, then coming in to record. Since “performing live” became a very difficult task, we’ve noticed home live streams becoming a thing and felt, “Hey, these musicians need better sound so I can enjoy this more, they could also use better lighting…heck, they could use a better location so let’s get em down here!” This is very much a new addition, but we’ve had Rachel Norman and Bullpup do a live stream in our courtyard and Emmrose just did a live stream from our live room. Here’s a little video that Rachel and I did while we had the stuff set up!

Something that may be worth sharing in addition to “opening in a pandemic” would be our closing during the pandemic. The studio is definitely not considered an essential business, so we had to deadbolt the door for a few months earlier this year. I must give a shout out to my good friend (and previous band mate/vocalist of The Gay Blades), James Wells who works at Human Worldwide Music and Sound Design. James saw that I was closing and suggested bringing home essential remote recording gear and woodwind/stringed instruments in order to be able to score uplifting music for commercials.

At the time, I thought it was a bit crazy, as I assumed we would be closed for a week or two, but I ended up working from home for months, so it allowed me to not only record pieces for his company, but it allowed my good friend Chris Bordeaux and I to remotely score a few short films, I did a few pieces of music for the company Signature Tracks, a few for Secret Road Music Licensing and Publishing, in addition to recording remotely, mixing and mastering music with others from home. I was shocked when a track called “The Grass was Greener” which Emmrose and I did 100% remotely ended up on two Spotify Editorials!

Facility Focus: I have recorded, produced, engineered, performed, mixed and mastered hundreds of songs across all genres and have likewise scored a handful of films and commercials.

Audio matters much at BTCM studios.

I would say I feel the closest to producing, writing, and scoring, but that definitely doesn’t discount my passion for mixing and mastering. In a perfect world, I’d have an engineer align drums, tune vocals and handle all those tedious—at times monotonous—yet extremely important tasks.

What’s Your Story? I’ve had a guitar in my hand since fifth grade and a 6-track tape recorder on bands since 8^th grade, I went to college for audio production, composition and performance on guitar and walked out the door with a degree in music education in 2006.

For the next 10 years I toured in the bands Kiss Kiss (Eyeball Records), The Gay Blades (Triple Crown Records) and The Venetia Fair (Red Blue Records). I’m now 36 and still can’t get away from this industry. That’s essentially how it all went down. What we are expanding at the moment is the ability to help our artists gain traction and income by-way of sync licensing, since selling merchandising on tour has come to a halt and streaming percentages are in shambles.

What Makes This a Media Company: We do all of that good stuff — artist consulting, music PR, marketing, advertising, branding, and Spotify promotion!

My last years of touring with The Venetia Fair we had parted ways with our label, so I began taking on the role of our band’s publicist in addition to the numerous bands we toured with while getting help and guidance from our previous publicists who are also some of the best in the business, IMO: Chrissy Borsellino (WMA) and Jen Appel (Catalyst Publicity Group).

I felt that my connections with writers and journalists were particularly strong being that I was able to meet with a lot of them in-person since I was constantly touring. They quickly became friends that I enjoyed catching up with on a regular basis as opposed to just a “Hey, can you feature this artist, k, thnx, bye.”

It was great and I loved it, but there are only so many hours in a day, and I really found myself missing the creative outlet in music, so I decided to pass the torch and work alongside my partner in crime for eight years now, Miss Hanna Yando, a PR major and a strategy guru! She handles all publicity campaigns and marketing alongside our artist consultant and Spotify promotion wizard, Suzanne Torrison who is our latest addition to the team—more on them in the “Key Personel” chapter of this interview.

Take a video tour of BTCM studio:

Clients/Credits: Some higher caliber artists I’ve produced include Cyndi Lauper, Sara Bareilles’ cast from “Waitress”, Dez Cadena (Black Flag / The Misfits), Jennifer Holliday (Grammy award-winning singer/actress), Jim and Jeannie Gaffigan, Daymond John (Shark Tank), Brian Wolfe (St. Vincent), Eric Nally (Foxy Shazam).

On the other side of the coin, Emmrose (age 17), is an artist that I started working with from the ground up about three years ago who is gaining some very promising traction as well!

I’ve done a handful of music scores for both short films, feature films, music for commercial, podcasts, blablabla, probably just as boring as everything else I’m spewing, but I can give details on each upon request. An interesting task I had taken on was to replicate 25 pop songs for Broadway Asia’s “China Goes Pop” in one month. Included were songs by Michael Jackson, Queen, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams, Bruno Mars, you name it. It taught me so much about songwriting and production!

For Example…Here’s some stuff!

Key Personnel: I usually handle all things audio-related on my own without the help of an engineer or intern, as I feel it’s important to me to maintain a small, intimate vibe and energy to allow artists to feel the most comfortable.

Willie Chen has helped inspire me to expand the studio by bringing in a ton of gear. My go-to engineer, Alan Labiner does all the studio wiring and layouts, Dave Bradley helps with all of the studio construction, Paul Powell assists with all software updates, issues, suggestions, and Steve Sopchak of The Square Studio (Ice Nine Kills / Motionless in White) teaches me everything I need to know about everything in the world of audio—and in the world in general.

We have a really amazing guest producer named [THE] Jerry Farley (Madball, Sick of it All, Every Time I Die, Lamb Of God) come in and take on some heavier projects in evenings. A recent project of Jerry’s is Jigsaw Youth who I absolutely adore! Some other guest producers at the studio include Emmett Ceglia, Jake Zavracky, Kyle Therrien.

Industry professionals that I surround myself with are Hanna Yando as I mentioned earlier, who has been my wing woman since Day 1, Suzanne Torrison just hopped on board with us and has been taking on a ton of consulting, branding and Spotify promotional campaigns. Alex Cooley has been handling all internal video editing and Tony Hurtado is a new videographer that we absolutely love working with. Tony shot a studio tour video that we have on the site which IMO looks sooo dope. Check his stuff out at @KneethStudio!

There’s a long list of industry professionals that we work with remotely in addition to a handful of writers and contributors to an online music blog I started called SwitchBitch Noise.

System Highlights: I personally use Pro Tools HDX Ultimate with an analogue Avid 16×16 I/O, a Mytek 8×8 I/O and a Burl B2 Bomber.

There is so much key equipment. What people have mentioned thinking is “fancy” is our UTA Unfairchild 670m II compressor and “Sinache,” which is the name of my AEA a440 ribbon mic. I try and do at least one thing new and different each session to keep things interesting and potentially open up a new love for a certain piece of gear, or micing technique.

As of late I’ve been fully addicted to the Rupert Neve Shelford Channel. I could go through gear all day, your best bet is to look for your personal favorites via our gear list HERE. I’ve always wanted to host a contest where artists and/or producers go through our gear list and select a chain that they’d like to hear and we see which one sounds best…could be via zoom/listen-to and could be live with a vocalist or outboard mixing something already tracked. Who wants to help me make that happen?

Distinguishing Characteristics: Oh man, yea I think there are so many unique elements to this place. Starting with the live room, for one, it’s long, half brick, wood defusing ceilings with absorbent foam in between. The brick has a few acoustic treatment panels that can be added or removed if looking for a tight or live sound, and we just partnered up with our friend Matt Ernst from down the hall who has a huge room to track drums in and also host live streams in which clients can now book as well!

Drums are part of the fun!

Vibe is something that we’re always on a hunt for, whether being a sonic vibe, body language vibe, attitude, lighting, you name it! We can wake your ass up with a freezing cold room, lights blasting, volume up, iced coffee, or mellow you our with dimmed lights, candle lit live room, fading LED lighting, CBD oil, hell, I’ll throw in a nice massage if it gets a perfect performance out of you!

Being a music education major that threw the teaching idea to the curb left me with a ton of instruments and skillsets with all those instruments that have been extremely useful in the studio setting.

I think our studio may have more instruments than any studio I’ve been to (2 trumpets, French horn, trombone, euphonium, violin, cello, 14 guitars, you name it). Being able to navigate some of those instruments is both a blessing and a curse as my job can go from producing a band and making them sound great to and all-in-one engineering, composing, performing instruments, arranging, mixing and mastering gig…all while cracking jokes and attending questions of, “Can I wear your leopard scarf?” “Can I have some of Big Sal?” (more on Big Sal to come).

The options are ultimately really great as an artist can choose if they want to use their band, hire their own musicians, I also have a huge Rolodex of musicians for hire. I can quickly program any instrument, or I can attempt to perform the real thing. I don’t charge more for any of this, which can save an artist a ton of money, but if I were to write and perform parts, I would hope to maybe be compensated with some writer credits for when the artist blows up.

BTW, every artist blows up, I promise. It’s a myth that this industry is hard to break into. Are we fighting?

Inventions…from ceiling to floor, the studio has been attended to with meticulous detail to make every move conducive to creating at a rapid pace. I’ve been in too many scenarios where ideas flow and get turned down due to the setup time. Not here—drums are good to track live or program, iso-cab is hidden in the loft, mic’d and patched in—ready to go.

Need some time to write out some lyrics? We have two desks that are folded into the wall that can be pulled down and made into your personal office on a moment’s notice. Only in NYC do we know how to make the most of every inch! In addition to having a ton of vintage analogue gear, which are standard studio staples, we likewise keep up-to-date with the most modern production techniques and gear such as amp simulators (UAD OX), robotic mic’ing with the DynaMount (sponsors), and make any location an iso-booth for vocals thanks, Kaotica Eyeball (sponsors)! Additional sponsor shout-out, Third Rail Customs (pickups), Curt Mangan Strings and Wendigo Tea (which saved many of our studio vocalists with their herbal throat health tea).

The building is on fire, you only have time to grab ONE thing to save, what is it? My leopard scarf that is either around my neck or hanging on my chair behind me allowing for easy access/exit plans…also, Big Sal. That’s the name of the salad in the fridge.

Rooftop Lounge: Hmm, welp, I was on the roof one day—as many often are—and was like, “I think this wall goes into the studio”.

Thoughts turned into energy, which turned into action when my friend Roy Dalene offered me a brand new 6×4 window that he had from a construction site of his. I asked my landlord Dave Bunting (I love him and don’t know how/why he puts up with my constant over-the-top ideas) if I could ask Dave Bradley to come blast a hole in the wall and put a window in.

He shook his head disappointedly knowing that I will persistently follow through with all the stupid ideas I have and said, “Sure, dude, but you’re responsible for any potential damage.” GREEN FUCKIN’ LIGHT TO ME! Cut through the wall (luckily it wasn’t brick), installed the window, installed security, built stairs and a loft and now we have our own personal outdoor VIP lounge where singers can go warm up, bands can hang when not tracking to not distract me—and now as safety from virus—you name it! There’s a little indoor/outdoor couch, picnic table, lights, city skyline, we keep it neat AF!

Rave Reviews: People know that the studio is a very safe place for creating, experimenting and finding out what is actually inside of them looking to come out by-way of music. Things that some artists never even knew existed.

Part of the mic locker.

It’s a learning experience to some, therapy for others, but ultimately it’s a place that has a chameleon-like vibe suiting to all sorts of needs, vibes, genres and energies. Everything is done professionally and meticulously, but with some solid humor attached even if that humor is only to entertain myself.

You can see what peeps actually have to say if you come in and give our guest book a read. You can find some other kind words here.

Most Memorable Session Ever: I love trying weird, non-traditional ideas. I brought the mic snake onto the roof to record Rob Mitzner drumming. They sounded god awful up there, but we had a damn good time running up and down experimenting. I also ran the snake down the hall into my friend Matt Ernst’s huge drum room where we tracked drums for one of his rad bands called TEE TEE Summer. It came out so big that we started offering the use of his room as an extension of the studio for bands that want a large ambient sound on their records. Here’s a little clip LINK.

Something that everyone should know about me is that I LOVE TRASH. I love garbage people, I love dumpsters, I love Thursday because it’s trash day and I love micing up trash in the studio as seen HERE.

Session You’d Like to Forget: Hmm, an artist came in with an MP3 from another studio that she “had a falling out with” and asked me to re-mix and master it. That was an interesting conversation that I wish never occurred.

I bet Jon Garniss of Bullpup that he couldn’t finish a pillow-sized bag of spinach. He tried, didn’t finish and couldn’t move off the floor for quite some time. That was a bad time for all parties, but mostly Jon’s party.

Blatant Shoutout: Years ago I was on the Jimmy Fallon show for a thing Jimmy was doing called “perm week”. During the show, my friend Mark Oates got a perm, while myself and a few others were on stage for the reveal and were asked a couple of questions.

It was fun as hell, and since then, I often think of how fun Jimmy is and how musically talented he is, but maybe it’s just not in the cards for him with time constraints due to the success of his show (good problem to have). That said, I think we’d have a blast working together on something! I also wanna add that there’s a good chance I’d crush a Bruno Mars production. His music is so rad and I feel I could heighten it even further with a little love added to some certain details.

— Interview by David Weiss

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