“I kind of accidentally fell into producing,’ claims Josh Wilbur. “I started playing in
bands in high school and then naturally gravitated to the other side of the glass. I
thought I was just an engineer until someone pointed out that I was really
engineering and producing the bands I was working with.’ That’s fine with Wilbur,
whose passion is great music and the creative process that brings it to life. In his
view, recording technology is merely a tool to elicit and record great music. He
started out in rock music, then moved to working with pop and R&B acts like NSYNC
and Lil’ Kim, and then Wilbur gravitated, over the years, back to his roots with rock
music.

On the way, he picked up a Grammy for engineering Steve Earle’s Washington
Square Serenade and has subsequently earned three Grammy nominations with
metal powerhouse Lamb of God. One of the hits from their latest work, “VII: Strum
and Drung,’ is up for a Grammy in the Best Metal Performance category. Wilbur
produced, recorded, and mixed the project, and, as with all of his recent work, he
used Metric Halo’s ChannelStrip plug-in on all the drums, guitars, and bass.

Other recent work of Wilbur’s that features Metric Halo ChannelStrip on all of those
“organic’ instruments includes Gojira’s “L’Enfant Sauvage,’ Hatebreed’s “The
Concrete Confessional,’ and Sons of Texas’ debut “Baptized in the Rio Grande.’ “I’m
especially proud of Sons of Texas,’ Wilbur said. “I think they’re a really excellent
band. I was able to get in on the ground floor with them and help them define their
sound.’

He continued: “I like to consider myself a “band-first’ producer. A lot of producers
get caught up in themselves and start thinking that they’re the rock star. I focus on
helping a band be the very best band it can be, period, without putting my stamp all
over it. The way I see it, if people start talking about the production, then I failed.
They should be blown away by the music.’ To that end, Wilbur is always
conscientious about making every discussion a two-way affair. Moreover, he works
hard to get the bands he works with to write and rehearse as a group. “The vibe is
almost always better when every band member gets to add their thing to a song,’
he said. “The modern approach of writing everything in a computer and then coming
into the studio to lay it down tends to make things stale and predictable.’

Wilbur is particularly pleased with how quickly he can get a great sound with
ChannelStrip. “I’m not going to sit there and fuss with things,’ he said. “I work with
my gut instincts. Either something feels good or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, I just
move on. ChannelStrip makes it easy to set a few controls quickly and to A/B
different parts of the plug-in. I rip through it and find the sound that feels right, and
then I’m off and away, on to something else.’