A Tale of Two in One: Great City Productions’ Dual Mission

CHELSEA, MANHATTAN: Balance is about more than what goes into the left, right, center and rear speakers. Just ask Britt Myers, who built Great City Productions into a rarity of a hybrid in the heart of Manhattan. Recently built out by Fran Manzella and newly endowed with an SSL Duality, Great City handles both music recording/production (Chairlift, Suzanne Vega, Robbers on High Street, Mates of State) and post (Coca Cola, Cartoon Network, Target, Rockstar Games) with equal aplomb.

Myers told us exactly how he gets the left and right brain to play nice – read the below and be enlightened.

Q: You wear more than one hat at Great City — what’s your title?
A: Owner/producer/engineer/sound designer, and like many small businesses, everyone here has responsibilities that exceed their title. I’m managing and running the business, but at the same time I’m running sessions 10 hours a day. It’s a tall task. I feel like I have the internal capacity to do both of them well – but apparently there’s only 24 hours in a day.

Q: How did you get the ball rolling on such a busy schedule?
A: I started Great City in August of 2003, when I was a freelance engineer. I had been doing a lot of work out of my apartment, which was frustrating and obviously limiting. I was looking for a space that was built out already to move my gear into, and serve as a nicer environment for clients, and I found this space (on West 26th Street).

It started out very simply. Just four walls and a lot of space, and it grew from there. I just felt like the longer I could stay in the game, and the longer I could work with indie artists, the more chance I would have that one of them would be very successful. I’ve just been doing my own thing, working with the bands and labels I think are doing a good job.   

Q: Great City is pretty unusual, in that you also do a lot of sound-for-picture work in the very same facility that you make rock records in. How did post get into the mix?
A: I always had been into sound design. I took a lot of electronic music courses in college, and as I got into post production that skill set started being useful.

We were very lucky that when we started doing post production work, we had some connections that were able to bring me business. Obviously, it starts very slowly, but it quickly revved up, and I was able to get a number of consistent clients.

That nicely balanced the music work I was doing. I realized there was a real business in it, and that I really enjoyed doing post. It never felt like a compromise that I was doing post production as opposed to music. I really enjoy post mixing and sound design, and if I didn’t, I don’t think I would have done as well with it.  

The balance between post and recording is something we take great care in handling. Our Website immerses people in what it’s like to work here, but once they’re actually at Great City, post and music clients require different things from a technical perspective. We’ve made sure that each room is at parity with each other, doing post or music. Studio A is an analog console, better suited for music, but then again that’s where we worked on (the Spike Lee joint) Passing Strange. That room is set up for 5.1.  

The post environment is obviously very client-services based, just like music is, but musicians are often used to a grittier, more spare experience. The musicians who work here love having all this stuff: a great environment with sunlight, snacks and drinks – being able to relax and have the sanctuary of sorts that the post clients expect.

Q: Tell us about the 2009 buildout – what is the updated Great City facility equipped to do?
A: We added a new control room and a new live room. The new control room has a 48-channel SSL Duality, a load of lovely outboard gear, and surround sound with K&H 0 300 D speakers, and it’s fantastic.

The SSL Duality is amazing. I spent my whole life mixing in Pro Tools – we have an Icon in B – but there’s just no sound comparison to Duality. It’s just night and day, because it’s so easy to make things sound good. Not only that, but I feel like working on a real console, rather than a tape machine on a computer, has dramatically improved the workflow. It’s improved everything about me as an engineer. 

Q: Why did you choose Fran Manzella to design the buildout?
A: Fran did the acoustical design for Studio B, which had been built out previously. I just enjoyed working with him, and it seems like everyone I know can’t say enough about Fran and the work he does.

The live room and control room sound fantastic. The live room is not a huge room, but it has a life to it, and the sound moves around in a very pleasing way. The way he designed the acoustics in there, it just works really well for the size. Drums sound great in there, and so does our Yamaha C5 grand piano. The room also has Foley pits. It was really important to cover the bases.  

Q: Why do you think Great City productions has managed to hit the “sweet spot”? It can be hard to stay busy in one sector of music production right now, let alone two.
A: It’s hard to say. Everybody here – myself, Chief Engineer Ian Stynes, our office manager Samantha Stratton, our editors – all care about making things work. Everyone is very involved, very focused, and we really go the extra mile for every one of our projects.

The challenges are endless. Running a business is a full-time job in and of itself. It can be exhausting. But creatively I often feel enriched. I really enjoy the work that I do, the clients that I have, and I get some satisfaction out of a relatively small cultural contribution. If I hear my work on the radio or on TV — once I get past analyzing how it sounds! – the whole experience is very rewarding. – David Weiss