The Emotional Power of Sound in an AI Music World | Myles Wakeham

“If you’re a creator of sound, you’re in a blessed place, because you can not only communicate with somebody in that two-dimensional, ‘it sounds like this’ mode, but you also have the ability to touch their spirit. You have an ability to give them goosebumps. You have the ability to make them think differently about themselves, to question their belief system, right? Those things are powerful, and if we sit back and we defer them to a machine or a synthetic whatever, and we don’t pay the amount of respect for that, that very same society will rebel, and they will punk rock this.” – Myles Wakeham

This week’s guest is a professional recording engineer, producer, and the owner of Troubled Clef Studios, located in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He’s originally from Australia, but at the age of twenty-five, he found himself unexpectedly living in Los Angeles, which turned into working in some of the largest and most legendary recording studios in Hollywood throughout the 1990s. After thirty years in technology, music, and recording in the United States, he and his wife left the US for Mexico and began a four-year project to build one of the world’s most prolific recording studios, based on the legendary AIR Studios Montserrat studio, which recorded many of the hits of the ‘80s.

His name is Myles Wakeham, and he’ll be sharing what it takes to create a world-class studio environment, what challenges artists face in today’s world, and how AI is affecting what creators create. If you want to learn more about how sound is engineered to give you goosebumps, keep listening.

And if you like what you hear and you want to support this podcast, there are a bunch of ways to do that at audiobrandingpodcast.com, including subscribing to the YouTube channel, the newsletter, writing a review, or buying me a coffee. Because this takes a lot of coffee. Thanks so much.

(00:00) – From Orchestral Kid to Punk Rock

Our conversation starts off as Myles shares the start of his audio journey, and the influence that his family’s musical background had on him growing up. “It was kind of weird because I grew up as a kid in orchestra,” he recalls. “I played with my friends and rode my bikes and all that stuff that kids do… but growing up as an orchestral kid, you’re always surrounded by music.” He talks about the early days of CB radios and self-built computers, and how moving from Australia to the US, and having to wait for his green card, left him with plenty of time to spare. “I went bac