Morning Estrada

By Recording Connection 

Recording Connection graduate, Morning Estrada, has not only worked with today’s most dynamic and prolific artists– including Rosalía, Aminé, Brandy, Trinidad James, Tech N9NE, and Jessie J– but has racked up several American Grammy nominations and a Latin Grammy win! We sat down with our crowned prince to discuss his success and his advice for students following in his footsteps. 

How did you originally get interested in music as an industry?

I just would buy CD’s and read where they record, the studios and what area they were in. The engineers, I would read about [them] and the producers, the writers. I would love to open up a CD and just read all the credits…As I bought different CD’s,[I] started noticing certain names would pop up and stuff. Like, ‘Oh, that writer was part of this song too. That’s crazy, and they’re totally two different artists, two different parts of the world.

But you didn’t jump headfirst into music, right? You started out going to a traditional college. 

I was in school, but I was to a point where I was like, ‘You know what, this is probably not going to be for me.’ It’s too expensive. That’s when I found you guys. What really struck me was the fact that you actually do a one-on-one mentorship instead of like the other schools. So it was different for me to hear the way your school was structured. It was like, ‘Whoa, I can actually learn one-on-one and it will actually be more affordable for me to be put into a studio right away.’ It was like a no-brainer at that point.

That’s about when you met your mentor, Donny Baker. How did the initial meeting go?

He first interviewed me and asked me what I was passionate about, how much [time] I wanted to dedicate to it, and what I was doing also outside of the music. He’s like, ‘What’s your day-to-day type of thing?’ And I explained I worked full time at Bank of America. So he just said, ‘Okay, well do you feel like you can dedicate some time to this?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, of course, of course.’ He’s a really good guy.

Once onboard you gave it your whole life…

Any chance that I had, any downtime outside of Bank of America, I would try to record. It really just was all practice, practice, practice, practice until I couldn’t stop. And eventually there was a point where I would go to work and would be like, ‘I can’t wait to leave to go work on more music. The studio had signed a few writers, like one or two artists, and then a couple producers. And basically I was there every day. Even if Donny didn’t call me, I pretty much was over there for like four straight months.

Around here you had a pretty life changing moment, can you tell us about that?

I walked into the studio and Trinidad James was standing there. We had the session, I think we recorded, like, two, three songs that night. And at the end of it all, Trinidad said, ‘I really like working with you. There’s a nice vibe. I felt like you have everything under control here.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.’ After maybe a couple sessions, he asked me, ‘Hey, would you mind being my engineer out here in L.A. whenever I come to L.A.? I’m looking to move here in the next month. So you definitely would be more of my day-to-day engineer.’

And of course, ecstatic, I was like, ‘Yeah, heck yeah. Of course, I’ll be there.’ He also asked me, ‘Hey, are you knowledgeable, maybe setting up a studio at home for me?’ So I took Trinidad to Guitar Center, we bought him a whole setup, and we would record at the house, like, every day when he first got here. We’ve probably got way over 100 tracks now, and just countless hours of work.

Well all that work paid off! Congratulations on your several American Grammy nominations and Latin Grammy win!

Thanks. It’s just been a really big year. I went from being nominated the previous year in one category in the American Grammys, to having three new nominations and one win in the Latin Grammys for Best Urban Song for Con Altura by Rosalía [with J. Balvin, Frank Dukes, and El Guincho].

The past few years have been pretty amazing for you. How does it feel? 

Last year, when I got the [Grammy nomination] certificate that came for Camila Cabello’s album Camila, I was just in shock when I saw it. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I never even thought this was possible.’ And then, this past year being nominated for the Latin Grammy Awards and for the American ones. I was just in shock. To actually be honored and notified like, ‘Oh this song was a really good song and it’s Grammy nominated,’ it’s like, ‘Whoa, this isn’t me working in my bedroom anymore. This is the real deal.’ 

So what does your family think of your success? Just a number of years ago, they weren’t so sure about your choice to learn audio engineering.

My mom sometimes gets [artist’s] names mixed up, but with Instagram and everything, I show her who they are, and she follows them. In the beginning she was like, ‘Okay, we’ll let you do this. And in a year or so, you’ve got to go back to regular school and get a fulltime job.’ After that year and a half, things started happening and she was like, ‘Whoa, you have your own business. You operate your own business.’ And now she’s like, ‘Whoa, you’re actually busy all the time.’ I think that’s just a shocker to her, just because of the fact that my life has changed so much. She saw me grow up. In high school I wanted to be the party animal. I wanted to go out all the time and party, party, party. I really found my passion because I’d rather do this than anything else now.  

You’re passionate about the process…

In the beginning of Recording Connection, you want to go from learning how to push the ‘record’ button to, ‘Now, I want to record the top artists.’ And it doesn’t work like that. You have to really, truly fall in love with the process. I think that’s why Recording Connection works so well, because it’s not like, ‘Hey, you can do all your lessons in one day.’ You kind of go at your own pace. You can sit back, read the material, or go over whatever you learn and practice it because you have access to the studio as well as the program. So yeah, I think it’s just falling in love with that process, really. 

So besides getting one’s technical skills down and working really, really hard, what else should up-and-coming engineers be good at? 

You might not know your tools in the beginning as you’re learning everything and you’re figuring stuff out, but don’t ever let that stop you from actually reading the room. Not every artist can be musically inclined, but they definitely know the vibe or the energy that someone’s putting off. You also have to know when the artist is trying to think or come up with something. You don’t want to be like, ‘Hey, did you watch TV last night? Did you watch that episode of Friends?’ You have to understand when to be able to speak to them and stuff like that. Yes, knowing Pro Tools, and all the tools, and how the gear works, that’s great to know. But if you can’t read the room, people will not call you back. If you’re just sitting there like a bump on a log, on your phone while the artist is trying to talk to you, and you’re texting people or laughing at Instagram, that could really set an artist off to be like, ‘I don’t want to work with this person anymore. Call the next engineer up.’