I started playing piano when I was about four years old and I started playing guitar when I was about 15. At the same time I was doing classical music, I was playing in bands.

I got into hip-hop; I got a sampler and started doing drum programs. My first sampler was an Akai keyboard sampler. I don’t remember what that thing was called. It was 12-bit keyboard sampler - I think I got it in 1988.

Who are some of your mentors?

Along the way I’ve had a lot of different people I’ve learned from. When I was 17, I started working in a studio in Cincinnati with a guy named Mark Santangelo. His family used to put on the biggest R&B festival in the Midwest, which was called the Cool Jazz Festival.

He had a killer studio, and here I was, a 17 year-old kid that had a rock band, and played classical music. All of a sudden I was working with all these R&B groups and soul bands in Cincinnati. That opened up the whole world of studios to me.

There was a long time when I was recording and touring with reggae bands. I did a lot of stuff with a lot of the Marley family members, and I did some recording with Sly and Robbie down in Jamaica. I spent a lot of time with Bob Marley’s guitar player, Al Anderson, in the early nineties. I learned a lot from him about really being a professional musician. That kind of a mindset.

And what kind of a mindset was that?

I would say things to him about touring with big acts, about the fame and glory. I remember one time he said how it’s not all about that. When you’re playing on stage, and you have just the right blend of your amp, the monitors and what you hear coming out of the house, and it just all melts together. That’s what it’s all about at that moment. I heard him, but I didn’t really understand him - until I got on the road, did some big shows, and I experienced that myself.

Can you tell us about some of the projects you’ve got going on now?

The Vice is a young band I’m helping develop here in Miami, and I think they kick ass! I’ve also been doing my own production and writing. There are a couple of R&B singers I have been working with, and a couple of rappers.

There’s hip hop band out of Brooklyn that I produce called The Square Egg. We just made another album together a couple of months ago that was killer. It’s all live drums and horns, and the front man is a great rapper. He’s more on the philosophical, intellectual kind of tip. You can get their album on their website (www.thesquareegg.com).

You’ve got many projects you’re involved in, but do you have a particular focus?

The main thing I’m doing right now is working with [producer] Scott Storch. I used to come and play guitars for him here and there, starting with the Christina Aguilera album. I met Scott in Los Angeles about four years ago. I was working at Enterprise Studios in Burbank, met Scott, and we kind of hit it off. I played some guitar for Pink, and then I wound up doing the Christina Aguilera album with them. We just stayed in touch and did a lot of stuff with him in the meantime. On Beyonce’s album, I played on the singles "Naughty Girl” and "Me, Myself, and I”.

It used to be where if Scott needed guitars on something, he would give me a call. But this past year, he just said, "Hey why don’t you come be part of the team here, because everything is blowing up now.” I’m now working at the Hit Factory in Miami full-time.

What is it like working with Scott Storch?

I wouldn’t be working that closely with him if I didn’t have so much respect for him. He’s a true musician; he used to play keyboard in The Roots. A lot of times when we’re working, he’ll get a basic track going, and the two of us will actually jam on it. It almost feels like a band. He can do really simple killer hip hop track like 50 Cent "Candy Shop”, but he can also do really musical stuff where there’s a lot of chords and a lot of live organic playing.

Sometimes on a track, he’ll play on a real clavichord, and I’ll play a real bass and guitars. He might program the basic drums, but almost everything else is played live. He’s not sequencing the bass line, the keyboard parts, or the string parts. He’s actually just playing it straight into Pro Tools.

I’ve always been into a combination of the programmed and the organic. I’ve always been into that. One of the coolest things about playing guitar and bass with Scott is I really get to pull out a lot of styles. I’ve been playing guitar for so long. I have so many influences. You might think that since we’re working on R&B and hip hop stuff, I must be just playing funk all the time. But we just did a remix of that Jessica Simpson single, "These Boots Are Made For Walking.” I played country slide guitar on it. We also did a pure rock song with Twista, the rapper. We actually got a Marshall amp, we mic-ed it up and got a classic rock song. It’s a big chunky rock song, and I just get to rip on it.

How does creating a guitar track for hip-hop or R&B compare to creating a guitar track for rock?

If I were working on rock music, the recording situation would be completely different. A friend of mine who worked with the Foo Fighters told me how they take days to work on guitars for one song. I heard stories about The Rolling Stones where they would take weeks on one guitar sound to get one part on one song. That’s cool - I can understand that. They wouldn’t try a Marshall amp, they would try ten different Marshall amps.

Since I’m working on a lot of R&B, pop music, and hip-hop, a lot of the music is created on intuition, and things have to happen quickly. If Scott says, "What about some clean funky part here?” I have three different ways I could accomplish that immediately. I’m not even going to ask him how to do it, because he’s going to accept whatever I come up with. I just have to make a split second decision and just do it.

But right now, it’s mainly about getting a good, direct sense. I have a few ways I accomplish that. I have a lexicon tube amp that is designed by John McIntyre. It’s a class A tube amp, but it plugs directly into the board or the system. You get that real tube amp sound, which I could get a lot of sounds out of.

Or I have also been using the Adrenaline Guitar Box, which is good. For me, I use it more for clean sounds, digital and cool effects. Sometimes I might just plug right into an Avalon preamp. Clean, high strat stuff.

What’s working at the Hit Factory like?

The Hit Factory has five or six different rooms. They are all ultra-modern, from smaller rooms to huge rooms where you could fit an orchestra in. We have a pretty big room over there; it’s got a 72 input SSL board, big speakers, and a big live room. We have one room that is ours, and on the other side of the studio Timbaland has a room where he’s camped out. It’s a vibe where everyone will drop in on each other and everyone can hear what everyone else is doing. It kind of makes a synergy. You get used to working with the same engineers, the same assistant, and you get a little family going.

When you’re not using software, what kinds of guitars and amps are you using?

I use different guitars, different amps and different ways to record things. It really depends on what the track calls for. Sometimes we’re trying to make it sound very live, very organic. Sometimes we try to make it sound very clean.

I have a couple of Fender Stratocasters that I use. I just put some Kinman pickups in one of my Strats. Chris Kinman makes the most kickass Strat pickups I have ever used. I just got them and I’m still tripping out about them. Strats are notorious for having a lot of hum. When you’re in a control room with all the electronics and the computer screens, it’s almost impossible to record a Strat. You have to walk around in a circle to find the perfect direction where it doesn’t hum as much. They sound like the ultimate Stratocaster pickup, but they’re noiseless.

Have you recorded any tracks with them yet?

I just did some new stuff for Jessica Simpson, and believe it or not for Paris Hilton. I don’t know when it’s going to come out, but I think it’s going to be hot, which surprised me. She can sing. She’s got some attitude too. It’s not one of those things where someone has to sing thirty times and you have to piece together and tune it. She actually has some vibe.

So yes, I use Stratocasters for clean sounds and Gibson for everything else. I have an old 335, and a Les Paul. I use those for everything from jazz, to soul, to rock.

How does the recording scene in Miami differ from bigger scenes like New York and Los Angeles?

The thing about Miami is that it’s a tighter scene here. In LA, there are many studios and a million people working on a million different projects. In Miami, there are just a few studios that people are working at. You have Scott Storch, you have Timbaland, Cool and Dre. You also have these guys called The Unusual Suspects; they’re coming up right now. I think it’s just a smaller scene, where everyone is aware of each other. In LA and New York, it’s more of the hustle and the grind since all the business people are there. Here in Miami, I think people can relax more and just make music.

How is Trash helping you in your producing and songwriting work?

For my own production, I’m using a lot of plug-ins. I’ve gone through all the guitar plug-ins that are out there, and I always think they sound a little fuzzy, digital, processed. I think Trash is the first one I’ve played through that just sounds great to me. My favorite thing has got to be the cabinet-modeling. It sounds very natural, very real, and it actually sounds like it has space around it. The distortions don’t sound synthetic to me, they sound natural; unless you want them to sound fuzzy and synthetic, then you can do that too.

There were dream features of mine that were already in Trash. For instance, a typical thing to do in pop-rock production is to play a part, double it, and pan it hard right and hard left. Lately, instead of playing it twice, people will actually play the part once, copy the same thing onto another track, shift it a little bit with delay, and then pan those right and left. It makes it sound a little bit cleaner and tighter. That is actually part of the Trash plug-in. If you go to the speaker modeling section, you can put it on as a stereo plug-in. You can choose how far you want the delay to be, and how far do you want them to spread apart. You get that instant monster, pop-rock sound.

I’m using Trash for huge distortion sounds. I actually just used it on a recording of the band The Vice. I like the way it sounds so much, I’m trying to figure out a way to make a recording rig with it.