Final Exam – Sounds of Soul
Music and Technology major Andrew Morales-Martinez ’26 got a taste of his dream job in November 2024 when he and his classmates took part in two recording sessions at Second Take Sound, a Grammy Award-winning studio in midtown Manhattan.
The students, enrolled in Sound Recording III class, helped record a seven-piece band of pioneers in the Nuyorican genre — a New York-birthed mix of salsa, Latin jazz and Cuban music.
“It was great to see my future. Audio engineering is exactly what I want to do,” Morales-Martinez says. “The session was my favorite thing I’ve ever done in music and tech.” Being of Puerto Rican descent himself, Morales-Martinez was excited to hear the sounds of salsa he grew up with.
The band — led by Abraham Rodriguez Jr., an internationally renowned and highly sought-after Afro-Latin jazz musician — consisted of piano, bongo, conga, upright bass, trumpet, trombone and flute. The challenge for the students, who were charged with setting up the studio and placing microphones, was to capture all of the instruments separately in a small New York studio room where only the horns and flute were isolated, and the rest of the band played together in the main room.
The band was led by conga player and lead vocalist Abraham Rodriguez Jr. and also included Grammy-nominated flautist Itai Kriss and bassist Ruben Rodriguez, who played with legendary Latin jazz artist Tito Puente.
“Everything from the semester came together in this moment,” says class instructor Mike Flannery. “It was a huge challenge and a really good example for the students, who had to make sure they were picking up the sound that they wanted and rejecting the sound that they didn’t want.”
To achieve this, students applied their understanding of room acoustics and studio design, as well as their expertise in using different kinds of microphones and micing techniques.
“It’s not just as simple as putting a mic in front of an instrument; a lot of other factors go into it,” Morales-Martinez says.
According to Simone Giuliani, who will release the album later this year on his new world music label Yangchenma Records, the students got the job done. “I was just listening to the recordings; they sound great,” Giuliani says. “I’ve recorded in a lot of great studios, and I was like, ‘Wow. This is up there.’ It was a nice surprise for me.”
The musicians must feel similarly, as Rodriguez Jr. later did a vocal session at Stevens that was entirely run by students (see sidebar).
And while the Second Take session was mostly run by studio engineer David Turk — who offered up career advice and answered questions about equipment in the studio — some students stayed for an evening session and met the owner of the studio, who interviewed several of them for summer internships.
“Everybody wanted to help our students because they were so respectful and eager to learn,” Flannery says. “It was really inspiring to be around.”
Sounds of Soul
