RS: OK, let’s talk about your studio a little bit, are you Mac or PC?
Josh: I’m Mac at the moment, but I’m going to add a PC in the next probably month to six weeks.
RS: On the Mac are you using Logic or ProTools?
Josh: I’m using both. I have two ProTools Mix Plus systems, and I probably spend about ninety percent of my time in ProTools but I do still use Logic occasionally.
RS: And you're going to add a PC to the mix, what’s the PC going to do?
Josh: I’m going to buy a PC laptop and it’s going to act as a portable sound module. I’m going to get like a Sony Vaio and put Giga Sampler on it and a bunch of software synths, the Native Instruments package, Battery, FM7 and so forth. I digitally connect that to my ProTools rig and I just basically use it as a big sound module.
RS: At this point do you have any gear you use in your studio that’s not inside your computer?
Josh: Oh yes. I love old analog synths, so I have a Juno 106 and I have an Oberheim Matrix 6 and an Alesis Andromeda. I still believe that the old analog keyboards are the best thing to use for an analog keyboard sound. There’s some really nice software synths and modeling programs, but I really don’t think that anything truly sounds like a Juno.
RS: Would that be your favorite piece of gear?
Josh: Yes, I’d say that the Juno is my desert island keyboard.
RS: OK, while we’re talking superlative, thinking back to the remixes you’ve done over the past, I guess it’s three years, what’s been the hardest remix for you to do?
Josh: I would say that one of the harder mixes that I had to do, and this is really about the vocal, was Celine Dion’s song “A New Day Has Come,” that I did with Mike which we did it in 2002. The reason it was difficult was that the original version of it was in 6/8 time, and although the vocal I got was a vocal that had been edited to 4/4 time, it still had a lot of work to be done for it to fit into a 130-132 beat per minute range and feel like it wasn’t dragging the track down. I think I spent probably the most time I’ve spent editing a vocal on that particular record. The thing about when I do remixes which I really feel that this is a result of me having gone to a school for music and actually scored music for jazz bands and that kind of thing is you work from what you hear in your head and most of the time when I do a remix, whether it’s a club mix or a pop mix, when I just sit and listen to the vocals I usually hear about sixty to seventy percent of the record finished in my head. Then it’s just a matter of going to your sounds and putting it down, but I always have a game plan. I don’t think that you can ever do a really strong remix without going into it with a game plan.
RS: OK, speaking from that direction, what advice to you have for up-and-coming remixers/producers?
Josh: I think that what's really lacking right now and it’s been this way for a while, is that a lot of the music that’s being put out is not that musical. When you kind of take a look at a lot of the music that’s played domestically, it’s very drug-induced music where you might hear a guy spinning six hours of dubs and you don’t know where one record starts and one record ends, and I understand that that’s a scene in itself. I’d like to see more people take a shot at learning to play keyboards and taking some classes in beginning piano and musical theory. The best piece of advice that I can give anybody, regardless of what style you're doing in music, is you need to be as self-contained as possible. The danger for people that only DJ, only program or only sing, is that that’s all you do. I’m fortunate that I’ve developed a lot of skills simultaneously and that wasn’t really part of the game plan but I’m able to engineer my own records, play the keyboard sounds for them, put the guitars down, mix them and all that. It comes down to the more skills you have, the more you can stand on your own two feet better.
RS: Well how about this, what was it like the first time you heard one of your remixes on the radio?
Josh: I can tell you exactly what I was doing too. The very first remix that I heard of mine of the radio was the S Club 7 mix that I did with Mike. I was driving back with some friends from Tarrytown in New York into the city on a Friday night, and we had it on KTU and it came on and it was a really great feeling. I’ve been fortunate enough to hear a lot of records I’ve done on the radio and given the state of affairs with Clear Channel and station monopolization, I feel very, very fortunate that from time-to-time I’m able to turn on the radio and hear something that I did. It’s very difficult for anybody to get anything played anymore, and so it makes you feel good, when you get to hear a track. The very first time was really, really special because that was first time I’d every heard anything of mine of the radio.
