Today we’d like to introduce you to Marty Bak.
Hi Marty, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
It all started when my parents immigrated from Poland into Canada when I was about 2 years old. My dad was a musician who played in wedding bands for years and continued to do so in our Polish community after the move. When I was around 9 years old, my older brother, Peter played drums in his grade school band, and it inspired me to take interest in music. Before my dad bought us a drum kit, I remember practicing the drumming motions with my mom’s wooden spoons and a bunch of pillows in our bedroom.
Years went by, and after playing in numerous bands with my brother, we finally ended up going into a recording studio. I was around 13 years old, and the studio we recorded at was Spectre Sound (yes, Glenn Fricker -the famous YouTuber’s very first recording studio). After watching him work, I very quickly decided that it’s a career I’d like to pursue. I ended up acquiring a recording application that I could simply load into my computer and begin recording. Once I hit that red record button, it instantly hooked me.
Naturally, I bought a few pieces of recording gear and started to record my own band. Slowly but surely, the gear and my experience improved over time, and so did “my sound” that began to attract many artists.
Eventually, local bands began to hear my recordings and wanted to book studio time with me. I never really wanted to start my own business at the time because the purpose of pursuing the recording arts was to make my own band sound great.
One of the first artists I ever recorded was a band called “Ashes of Soma” -almost immediately after recording with me, the band hit the radio waves and gained thousands of fans, massive tours, and officially began their professional musical career.
While all of this was happening, I was in school taking a Tool and & Die Automotive Product Design course at St. Clair College. Although it was an interesting trade to study, I had a strong affinity towards music and to one day become a full-time record producer -it just excited me so much more. About 3 months into the course, my friends took me to a Metallica show at the Palace of Auburn Hills. The night before going to the show, I had drawn up a sign that read “Lars, let me play your drum kit” -long story short, I got to play “Seek & Destroy” with Metallica at the end of the night with around 25, 000 people watching; it was incredible. Going back to school after this experience just wasn’t the same. I took this experience as a clear indicator that I should pursue music full-time. Shortly after, I dropped out of college and became a full-time record producer. To this date, I have worked with many major label artists spanning from Warner, Universal, Virgin, BMG, Sony including various artists such as Billy Raffoul, Tea Party, Autumn Kings, Sick Puppies, Elektra Mustaine, Classified, Kai (Methods of Mayhem), No Resolve, Onlap, Trevor McNevan (of Thousand Foot Krutch), The S’Aints, Lum, Diamond Café, and many more.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It certainly wasn’t a smooth road. Building up a studio and purchasing all of the necessary gear was not cheap. Although most of the gear was purchased second-hand on eBay and other online stores so I could save a ton of money, certain pieces of gear were simply out of the question. So what did I do for the gear I couldn’t afford? I learned how to build the gear gear at a fraction of the cost. Yes, it took some time, but I didn’t have a lot of money, so I started learning and building some of my own studio gear.
Another early struggle I had was learning how to get better at the recording craft. That meant striving to become great and more efficient at editing, mixing, and mastering music. These skills take years and sometimes a lifetime to learn and master. I never enrolled in school for this career, and there weren’t really any YouTube videos at the time where lots of knowledge could be acquired in a few evenings. It was basically all trial and error for years until I finally got good and consistent at producing records.
I’m grateful for a lot of the hills and valleys in my career because it helped build up character, patience, and problem-solving skills that still help me to this day.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I specialize in music production, mixing, and mastering. All of these services are necessary to give artists a pro sound, so SLR Studios is a one-stop shop to take your music to the finish line.
One of my proudest moments is when my partner and I created a microphone clip that is now known as the “AxeMount – SM-21”. While being immersed in the recording industry for over 10 years at the time, I noticed a specific guitar microphone technique where I was always using 2 separate stands. This made me think of inventing a microphone clip that simultaneously holds 2 microphones on a single stand. Fast forward years later, and we’ve partnered up with the biggest ribbon microphone company in the world that distributes the AxeMount across the globe. This includes Guitars Center, Sweetwater, Long & McQuade, Musicians Friend, and hundreds more stores across the world.
Another recent accomplishment at SLR Studios is the acquisition of a Dolby Atmos mixing system. It’s very similar to a traditional surround sound setup, but instead of 5 speakers surrounding a listener with a subwoofer, the Atmos system consists of 7 surround speakers, 1 sub, and 4 ceiling speakers (7.1.4). This enables us to mix music for listeners to create a fully immersive listening experience. For those unfamiliar with Dolby Atmos, music can now be mixed to hear sounds in front, on the sides, behind and even above you. Part of the reason the format is becoming so popular is because Dolby figured out a way to emulate this experience on headphones so that anyone with headphones could now have an immersive listening experience without having to invest thousands of dollars in a physical room with proper speakers. We’re the first and only studio to offer this technology and service in Windsor, Ontario.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
My favorite childhood memory was growing up with both of my brothers and music. We always learned new songs, guitar solos, riffs, drum solos, etc. It was all we could do besides playing outside and riding our bikes. As all siblings do, we had our fights here and there, but since all of us were musicians, music always brought us together no matter what.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.slr-studios.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martybak11/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slrstudios
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-bak-a6b05533/?originalSubdomain=ca
