37 Studios is owned and operated by Matt Dalton of 37 Productions / Dirt Fest, and the bands Signs of Collapse and The Delivery. Since age 13, Dalton has been recording multitrack projects when his father, Dave, bought him an 8 track Yamaha cassette recorder to record the music he had been writing. He quickly learned the ins and outs of things like auxillary patching, sampling, bouncing tracks, and mixing down to 2-track. Pretty impressive for a kid who hadn't even hit high school yet. A skilled guitarist, drummer and vocalist, Dalton performed countless solo sessions through his teens, recording drums, guitar, keys, bass, etc, for songs he would pass around to friends and family for input. He started to get a feel for the amount of production it took to make a song really feel complete and polished through his recordings.
"I remember listening to albums as a kid like Angel Dust by Faith No More, Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins, and Transmissions From The Satellite Heart by The Flaming Lips, and it wasn't just music to me", says Dalton, now in his mid twenties. "I was hearing the guitar lines, but I was also hearing the layering it took to make the voicing in the guitar pop. I was hearing all the background noises, the reverbs and delays, the subtle nuances of human error that gave performances character and the automation of mixing that made things sound unworldly to me. It was no longer music; it was a complex creature I wanted to dissect."
Dalton gained his first taste of public acclaim when he upgraded his studio to the digital recording platform Paris tm , and engineered and produced his band at the time LeFT's debut full length We Deliver For You. The album was so popular in its area and on the internet that Dalton began getting calls and emails to produce other bands' projects. He quickly turned his bedroom in the basement of his father's house into a makeshift project studio and helped a number of bands improve upon the dynamics of their songs and performances.
Dalton's knowledge and skill as a producer/engineer was drastically improved when his band during the early 2000's, Arizing, recorded a 4 song EP with Grant Mohrman at The Method House studios in Waterford, MI. Mohrman has an impressive style that Dalton was drawn to and during the recording of the project, he learned a great deal of invaluable professional editing, mic, and mixing techniques that inspired him to purchase his own ProTools set up.
The real turning point in Dalton's recording career came when his brother Andy's then unknown band See You Next Tuesday came in to record what became a monster underground hit CD. The recordings received millions of plays on Myspace, and See You Next Tuesday exploded as THE premier metal/grind band, touring excessively and ultimately selling out of the CD they recorded at 37 Studios and signing to Ferret Records (Chimaira, Every Time I Die). Dalton, and his assistant John Dion, were immediately swamped with non-stop clientele seeking the quality of recording that they achieved for SYNT. Peer bands such as For The Fallen Dreams recorded with Dalton, which later aided in inking their deal with Rise Records (Drop Dead Gorgeous, The Devil Wears Prada). Red I Flight also recently signed with Victory Records based largely upon the recordings done at 37 Studios.
Dalton currently operates a 48 Channel ProTools studio with assistant engineers BJ Perry and Brent Allen in Detroit, MI.
