From Musician to Producer

Twisting the dials on his equipment, senior Eric Trude’s voice reverberates between the walls of the cafeteria as students, teachers and parents observe in silence. Brad Stebner’s didgeridoo, an Australian instrument, throbs through the floors under heavy layers of distortion while the guitarist scratches out noise. Eventually, onlookers settle upon reactions varying between smiles, laughter, or the same shocked look. Trude’s band, Easy Bake Oven, played for a full six minutes before stopping. Their set included genres such as “power electronics” and “noise”.
“I wasn’t entirely sure that we would be allowed to finish our set, considering the type of music we were playing,” Trude said.
The band was playing at the Opus Coffeehouse, hosted by Oakton’s own Opus literary magazine.
Eric’s career began with the piano when he was young. Six years later, he started playing bass and guitar.
“My dad put me in piano lessons when I was four because while we were listening to the radio I recognized the similar vocal styles of two Pearl Jam songs,” Trude remembered.
After entering high school, Eric had an easier time finding and joining bands, such as Dark Alliance, a metal band that Eric became a part as a freshman.
“Local producers really got me to consider producing,” Trude said. “When I recorded with Dark Alliance, I started to get increasingly interested in the entire process.”
“I started a lot of my solo projects as a part of my technology classes—all of the projects were learning experiences,” Trude said. “But experience taught me the most, and it helped a lot that I used to be willing to work for free.”
After he finished performing at the Opus Coffeehouse, Eric offered to do some recording for the CD that will be included in the literary magazine this year. Two months later he was contacted by Opus and asked if he was still interested.
“They gave me no deadline or band amount, and the bands were all very ignorant about recording,” Trude said. “It made doing things difficult, and the work just sort of started to build up, but it got done.”
Eric recorded, mastered and edited the different band’s songs with them and mixed the music alone. “After all of the work was done, many of my own songs were rejected from the album for being ‘too radical’,” Eric said. “Quite frankly, I feel censored, and the album has become a poor representation of what I’d personally like to see in an artistic collection.”
When everything was complete, Opus thanked Trude for his services with a $150 American Express gift card.
“The recording process for four separate groups like that would normally cost something like $450,” Trude estimated. “But I see where they were coming from. They needed a backup plan, and that was me.”