Majestic Music and It's Founder
(only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry)
Angelo Montrone
Founder, Majestic Music
I'm fortunate to have had a career in music for the last 30 years. I've worked hard and gotten lucky. Getting in the studio with legendary producers such as Arif Mardin, Tommy Lipuma and Al Schmitt allowed me take part in making records for people like Roberta Flack, Anita Baker, Natalie Cole, Joe Sample, Wayne Shorter, Shirley Horn, Take 6, Dr. John and many others. I watched and learned the tricks of the trade, not just the nuts and bolts, but the Jedi stuff that happens at that level. We worked in many of the top studios, Power Station, Electric Lady, Hit Factory, Right Track, Oceanway, A&M, Capitol with incredible musicians like Jeff Porcaro, Vinnie Colaiuta, Will Lee, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, John Patitucci, Harvey Mason, Anthony Jackson, Nathan East and many others.
My Years at Sony
I worked for Atlantic, Elektra, Sony and several indy labels as a Producer and A&R person, scouting for and developing the careers of artists and doing production work -mixing, mastering, recording. I have listened thousands of demos and performances of bands, singers and musicians, and at this point, I know within about 15 seconds if someone has "it". One of those “it” talents was a then relatively unknown girl named Jennifer Love Hewitt, who I signed to Atlantic Records providing my first chance to produce an album for a major label. These days, those special quality artists are the ones we bring to Majestic.
As a Staff Producer and Director of A&R for a label called Or Music I worked with former Sony executive, Michael Caplan to discover and developed the careers of Los Lonely Boys (Grammy winners) and Matisyahu (Grammy nominated) who both had chart topping albums (the album I produced and engineered for Matisyahu, King Without A Crown was the #2 Reggae album of the decade ending 2010) and also did production for Tower of Power, John Cale, Alexandro Escovido, Semi Precious Weapons, Pitty Sing and others. During that time a song I wrote with Jennifer Love Hewitt, "Free To Be A Woman" became the theme song for the Style Network's "The Modern Girl" which aired for 2 years.
Live was good. We were made men...million dollar budgets, the best studios, the best musicians...but then it all came crashing down. The major labels, which were funding all of this begin to slip as the world transitioned from profitable CD sales to piracy and then to online streaming with tighter margins.
Still, we found a way. I went to Sony Music serving as A&R / Staff Producer. During that time I signed and produced Tina Sugandh (who has an album on Majestic), consulted for artists that included Ozzy Osbourne and Coheed & Cambria and did a good deal of recording, mixing and mastering, including more work with Matisyahu (Live In Israel, No Place To Be) and mixing our bands who appeared on Conan O'Brien and other TV shows. In 2007 I migrated to Razor & Tie, serving as Staff Producer / A&R Consultant for artists such as Semi Precious Weapons, Tina Sugandh and Simon Collins. During that time the song I co-wrote and produced for Tina Sugandh, "Break Me" went to #4 on the Billboard Dance Charts.
Post Sony Years
From 2002-2008 I had a production room at Avatar/Power Station Studios where I was doing a good deal of work. In addition to the artists we were working with, artists & bands like Steven Tyler, John Mayer, Dream Theater, Steely Dan and great engineers like Ed Cherney, Ron St Germaine, Elliot Scheiner etc. would be around making records. The interactions and knowledge shared was amazing. At night, after our sessions I would unwind by playing piano their live rooms, which are considered some of the best acoustic recording spaces in the world. This inadvertently ingrained in me what a world-class room should sound like acoustically, the knowledge of which I applied when building Majestic Studio. In fact, I used recordings I made there as a reference when acoustically tuning our Live Room A.
In 2009 I moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn and leased a studio that had been built by TV On The Radio (where they recorded Dear Science), which we called Majestic Music Factory. There I did production for Michael Jackson, Katia Cadet, Railroad Earth, Kina Grannis and others.
But budgets kept getting tighter, musicians were struggling and many of the great NYC studios closed because people just couldn't afford them. Along with that, sound quality of records begin to slip because those big studios had amazing equipment and amazing people turning the knobs, and when they were forced to do it at home in their computers something got lost. Also, technology allowed the mastering process to become abusive to music. Someone decided that if they just made the records as loud as possible by hyper limiting the levels into clipping distortion they would sell more!?!? I took a public stance against this practice known as the Loudness War because it was causing listening fatigue and degrading sound quality. Articles were written and some people got upset at me for taking a stand against the industry's BS, but no matter. Majestic's music sinks or swims on its quality, and our music boasts a wide dynamic range and realism that others who hyper limit can't match. But I digress...
So what does one do in the current music-making climate? Income from streaming is sketchy, recording budgets are non existent, artists are trying to make records in their bedrooms on their own, and even if an artist can manage to go viral on the web it doesn't assure a successful career. Importantly, there is virtually no guidance from experienced producers and A&R people who understand how to put the pieces together to help artist have successful albums and careers...
On top of all that, the general public is awash to the point of confusion with the infinite choices available from streaming services, YouTube etc. Who has time to figure out what's good, interesting, new and exciting?
Creation of Majestic Music
To address these challenges, I created Majestic Music. It is a home for music content creation where we bring together amazing recording artists, guide and develop their ideas and talent and record their music with audiophile sound quality. Our recording studio is designed to inspire with array of instruments and high quality gear. We also feature music made by our production partners that meets our standards of excellence.
The result is a niche world of quality music, here to be discovered and appreciated by those who find us and get what we do. Our methods are unconventional. In a world where artists are told to release their music on all digital formats (and make pennies in return), we do the opposite. Although we cast a net on social media and streaming sites with teasers, the full body of our artists' work is only available on our website (and iPhone/Android app). We are building our own world for music fans that is highly curated. It is here that you can fully discover and explore our ever-growing world of artists, projects, documentaries, jazz series, live streaming broadcasts, learn about our recording techniques and participate in discussion forums, Q&A's...
And it's all for you, so, please dig in and enjoy!