 With a career that spans over 30 years this legendary producer and recording engineer has accumulated a dazzling list of credits that includes rock stars Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Skid Row and countless other bands. Wagener’s first taste of the industry was working as an electronic engineer at a German company called Stramp, who manufactured guitar amps, speaker cabs and studio and live consoles.
Wagener’s first trip to Los Angeles was a visit to his close friend Don Dokken and this short break inspired Wagener to take the plunge and relocate from Germany. Once in L.A. Wagener refined his engineering talent and produced the first of many albums; Dokken’s Gold selling debut "Breaking the Chains". Michael’s expertise continues to be in demand, his time occupied with an assortment of studio bookings, audio engineering consultancy and workshops. Michael takes time out from his busy schedule to discuss his views on music software.
FX - What projects are you working on at the moment?
MW - Right now SkidRow is in the studio and King’s X is coming in the fall.
FX - How did you first get involved in sound engineering?
MW - I was building amplifiers and mixing consoles and found out that using the equipment was more fun than building it, so I opened a studio in Hamburg Germany
FX - How have advancements in music technology, particularly in the software domain, affected your production technique?
MW - The most obvious change is the visual editing approach, and the most important change is the “UNDO” button.'BFD - In one word awesome! I am royally impressed. I’ve never heard “canned drums” sound so natural.'
FX - What was the first software program that you used?
MW - If I remember it right it was an early version of Performer.
FX - What are the essential pieces of equipment in your studio?
MW - I think every piece is essential, but the centrepieces are the two Sony consoles and the Euphonix R-1 recorder. I am adding Nuendo as recording software to the setup, which will add a whole set of new features to my current way of working.
FX - What FXpansion products do you own and what engineering techniques do you use with them?
MW - I have all the BFD drums and expansion kits. I am working on an “electronic” drum setup, consisting of a live drum set with triggers permanently mounted and a trigger to MIDI converter to record a MIDI track alongside the live drum tracks.
FX - Being an extremely well respected recording engineer how do you find software drum plug-ins compare to a real drummer?
MW - In the past I never liked drums “out of the can”, but BFD changed the rules for me. I find them to be the most natural sounding drums, generated inside a computer.
FX - What would you wish to see from software developers in the future?
MW - A program which would convert any session file from different audio programs (DAWs) into any other session file.
FX - What have you got lined up for the rest of the year?
MW - The studio is booked solid until the end of the year and in between projects there are a few more production workshops planned for 2006
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