Alison Stewart: Listeners, the 2025 edition of the Public Song Project is now underway, and you can get involved for a chance to be featured on WNYC. Send us a song based on something in the public domain. It can draw from a poem, a book, a movie. It could be as simple as a cover of a song that you, your parents, your grandparents, or their grandparents grew up singing. You don't need to be a pro, just put your own spin on it, like Nation Beat did on this Duke Ellington song you're listening to right now, or like Eli Wing did with this Robert Frost poem.

[MUSIC - Eli Wing: Acquainted with the Night]

Alison Stewart: To find out how to get involved, go to wnyc.org/publicsongprojects. We're excited to hear your songs.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Tiny Desk Concerts first launched in 2008 as a novel alternative to [unintelligible 00:01:24] venues. The set was an intimate makeshift desk amidst office desks at NPR's headquarters. It's since become a globally recognized series. A big part of that success is thanks to Josh Rogosin. He is a recording and mixing engineer who works on around, oh, 800 sessions. He's also a judge for this year's Public Song Project here at WNYC and a longtime friend. He engineers small performances on a little show called The Bryant Park Project.

Josh Rogosin: Aww.

Alison Stewart: Aww. [laughs] Rogosin has now taken on his engineering talents from the office to the road with the series Global Sound Concerts. They travel and film live shows with artists in their home cities and in locations that matter to them. So far, their locations have included Spain, Mexico, and Australia. Here's the Aboriginal musician, I hope I pronounce this right, Juganji.

Josh Rogosin: Jungaji.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. Performing in Brisbane.

[MUSIC - Jungaji: Kalkurr (The Road)]

Alison Stewart: Tonight, Josh will be at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library at the NYPL for a free masterclass on recording and engineering. It's hosted by my other guest, Jenna Li. She's the program director for the NYPL's recording studio and media center, which is available for free to all New Yorkers. Welcome to the studio.

Josh Rogosin: We're so happy to be here.

Jenna Li: Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, our phone lines are open if you want to call in and speak to the man behind the sound of NPR's Tiny Desk. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. If you have a question about the NYPL's resources for musicians, you can call in as well. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You just came from recording something?

Josh Rogosin: Oh, my gosh. We had the most unbelievable privilege of recording in Astor Hall at the New York Public Library, the famed public library with the two lions out front, and you walk into this beautiful space with tons of reverberant, stunning sound. The trick was to find an artist that would fit into that location. I think we nailed it with a wonderful group called Little Kruta, a string ensemble of three violins; a viola, a cello, and a double bass, and of course, the stunning resonance of this room.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my gosh.

Josh Rogosin: We had to do it bright and early before the library opened at 10:00 AM.

Alison Stewart: Where did this idea for Global Sound Concerts come from?

Josh Rogosin: I really loved all the home concerts that were happening during the pandemic for Tiny Desk. I thought how interesting is it to actually go to the locations of where these musicians are from? People like Natalia Lafourcade, people like Mon Laferte, she was super pregnant walking through this stunning church, and it was so visceral. I love that they recorded in the style of Tiny Desk, but where they were living or where they were from, and I just loved that. I thought, "What a cool thing to do. Why don't I create a show that's if Anthony Bourdain had a music show? Let's discover culture through music as opposed to discovering culture through food." Hence Global Sound Concerts was born.

Alison Stewart: I want to play a clip from your series. This one is called Gypsy Jazz in a Mexican Cemetery. Who's featured in this video and how did you discover them?

Josh Rogosin: This incredible duo from Todos Santos, Mexico. Someone in Todos Santos, where my parents actually relocated to Baja, and one of their friends were like, "We just had this duo play at a wedding, or I forgot, it was like some sort of party. They're incredible. You have to check them out." I heard their music, and it's just clarinet and gypsy guitar. They were playing all this amazing Django Reinhardt and gypsy jazz stuff. I didn't know why, but I just wanted to choose a really interesting location to record them. I'm like, "Why not do it in this super old beautiful cemetery? I'm not sure why, but I really think it works."

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen.

[MUSIC - Pargazz: I’ll See You In My Dreams (Django Reinhardt)]

Alison Stewart: Josh, what tends to surprise you about the work that goes into a Global Sound concert or even a Tiny Desk performance?

Josh Rogosin: What's amazing is everywhere I travel, there is music. Everywhere I go, there's good music, and they don't have to be famous. They just have to be passionate and care about what they're doing. That duo is Óscar Loredo playing gypsy guitar and Carlos de Santos playing clarinet. I just found them in this tiny little Baja town of Todos Santos, Mexico. It's just incredible how much talent there is in the world. That's what's exciting me about your song project, where people are going to be submitting in the public domain-

Alison Stewart: It's pretty cool.

Josh Rogosin: -pieces of work. Just to share that is incredible. I've been creating these contests where I've been traveling on Instagram with the hashtag GlobalSoundChile. It creates this wonderful community of a bunch of musicians who are uploading one-minute videos and like, "Oh, wow, what are they doing?" It went totally viral. I had over 1,000 submissions to the hashtag GlobalSoundChile contest.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Josh Rogosin: I'm like, "Wow, what a really cool way to create audience engagement and get people excited about making art together."

Alison Stewart: Jenna, let's bring you in here. You're the NYPL's program director for their Media Lab. You also worked at NPR Music and Tiny Desk Concerts. When you think about what made them special, what did make them special, the Tiny Desk concerts?

Jenna Li: I loved how intimate the sound was. People just came in and they were playing in an office space. They walked in and they were surprised by how stripped down the set was, how they didn't have any PA, and they were just playing their heart out, like listening to each other and playing right for an audience face-to-face, less than five feet away from them. It's almost like, as everyone says, performing in your living room. You got a really super intimate side of that performance played out in front of them.

Then Josh has been one of my long-term mentors. He really taught me a lot about audio engineering. I think he really brings out the intimacy and the sound of that space. It's so cool to see him on his next project or with the recording we did in the morning, like capturing the liveness of the room, like what the space actually sounds like, what the moment sounds like beyond just what you'd hear on a regular record. You're hearing a live intimate performance where someone's spitting their heart out in front of you.

Alison Stewart: You asked us for your favorite Tiny Desk concert, and the one you put on your list was Mac Miller. Why is that one special?

Jenna Li: I love the Mac Miller concert. I think he's joking. People are just locked into that concert with him. Obviously, Mac is a mainstay of the independent artist scene. He's really coming out with his own special story and heart. Love the background, love how he's joking around with everyone so intimately. I think Josh can speak more to that one.

Alison Stewart: How about for you, Josh?

Josh Rogosin: I think we caught that performance within two weeks of his untimely death. That was just such a like, "Wow, I can't believe we got that." Thundercat actually flew out. He was on tour to play bass for Mac. He specifically flew out just to play bass with Mac. You can see that camaraderie. I think that's what's so special about these live performances captured in an off-cuff way where I'm not using monitors, I'm not using a PA. It forces the musicians to like, "Wait a minute, we're just playing music together in a room, around a campfire."

When you strip away all that tech and you get rid of the headphones, there's something that happens. It almost just sort of like, "This isn't that serious. We're just having fun playing music together," even though this might be the most successful thing we ever put out.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Mac Miller on Tiny Desk.

[MUSIC - Mac Miller: Small Worlds]

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking to Josh Rogosin. He's the former engineer for NPR's Tiny Desk, creator of the new series Global Sound Concert, and he's a judge for the Public Song Project. Also here with us is Jenna Li, program director for the New York Public Library's Media Lab. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests in studio are Josh Rogosin, engineer and creator of the Global Sound Concerts, and Jenna Li, program director at the NYPL's Studio 40. You're the lead engineer, Jenna, at the Studio 40. First of all, what is Studio 40? Let's start there. [laughs] Let's start there.

Jenna Li: [laughs] It's a great place to start, yes. Studio 40 is a public recording studio. It's our flagship space at the New York Public Library, which is equipped with full equipment to do all kinds of music recording. We have drums backline for guitars, keyboards, everything you would want to do to record your song for free at the New York Public Library.

It's run by community engineers who train and learn pro tools, logic, Ableton mixing, how to run a sound check out of that space. We have computer labs with free access to software. We run a really vibrant, exciting, educational program where you can get your foot in the door to audio engineering, get a leg up as an artist in the city, all for free through the New York Public Library's resources. We're also inviting Josh in for a masterclass tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. That's part of our deep dive into other sides of the recording industry. It's a really wonderful community space for emerging artists all throughout the city.

Alison Stewart: It's one of the places where people who want to join the Public Song Project can go and record their masterpiece. We'll call it a masterpiece.

Josh Rogosin: For free.

Jenna Li: Absolutely, yes. We offer free recording time for artists in the city. You come, you get your library card, you do an orientation with us, and then you can book the studio and use the space. We have our community engineers who can help run your sessions with you. We've been spitting out masterpieces. It's a cool artist community.

Alison Stewart: Want to also let people know next Monday is our deadline for the Public Song Project.

Josh Rogosin: Oh, my God, sign up.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Why are you telling people to sign up? I'm curious.

Josh Rogosin: Submit. Submit. Because I think sharing and creating art is as close to God as you can get, if there's such a thing. I think any opportunity I love, now that I've left Tiny Desk and NPR, now I'm doing Global Sound Concerts. I'm really using it as an opportunity to pay it forward to inspire the next generation of audio engineers and musicians. Like, "Hey, let's go out and create some cool content." Like being at the New York Public Library this morning in Astor Hall on the famed 5th Avenue with the two lines out front. It was like such an iconic moment. I've never heard music in that space before.

To listen to the string ensemble stop suddenly and hear two, three, four seconds of decay, it was chilling. The fact that I can share that now with an online audience, I think is so special. I'm using an ambisonic mic, which uses four capsules to pick up the three-dimensional space. You're really going to get a sense of what it sounded like to be in that room at that moment with these musicians. It's like how journalism and music production, that's what I'm about. I'm capturing real moments in time that are live and ethereal, but that can be shared on the beautiful platform of YouTube, folks.

Jenna Li: [laughs] That's one thing I love about Josh is he's always coming up with crazy ideas. I said, "Can you give us some behind the scenes? Do you want to do a live recording? Can we do something so people see, peel back the curtain, do a deconstruction? What's in your bag? What do you do? How do you set it up? What are the technical steps to make the magic?" Josh is all about demystifying that. I was like, "Let's do a live recording. Let's do something." He's like, "Ooh, ooh, ooh. Can we do it in that crazy hall, in that space?"

Josh Rogosin: Yes, like, "Can we go on the famed hall in Astor Hall on 5th Avenue, in the classic library at Bryant Park?" She's like, "I guess we can ask." It happened. She made it happen.

Jenna Li: 6:00 AM, up and at 'em before the public arrived.

Alison Stewart: What are some of the common questions you get from people who are interested in engineering?

Jenna Li: Oh, wow. I think a lot of people come in thinking that engineering is behind a certain wall, or you have to have some sort of technical background or some sort of shoe in the door to be able to do it. Actually, as part of our orientation class, we teach everyone how to run a sound check, because whether or not you're in front of the microphone as an artist, whether you're behind the board, whether you're playing with faders, pressing buttons, plugging in cables, knowing each step of the process, I think really empowers you to feel like you can talk to the engineer and get the most out of your sound, or that you're not shut out of the technical process that comes to making the magic happen.

When people find out that it's not that hard, it's really quite simple, I think that that really opens a lot of doors for the DIY recordings that will get them in the door to more and more and more creation as artists and really enable them to get their voices out on the different platforms in the digital age.

Alison Stewart: Josh, what was helpful advice that you got along the way in your engineering career?

Josh Rogosin: That's a great question. To be prepared. To try to think ahead, like, what is going to happen? What are the possible scenarios that are going to happen when we roll into the New York Public Library and show up? What are the caveats? Make sure I have all the cables that I need to run all the different direct lines. Make sure that I have batteries and power. Make a test recording before I leave the studio to make sure that all the equipment is going to be reliable and working and maybe have a backup plan. It's always about anticipation. The more you plan, the smoother the gig will go.

Jenna Li: Josh really taught me that.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Jenna Li: When I started at NPR, I was like a little baby audio engineer, audio engineering assistant. We drove eight hours up to capture audio for the Newport Folk Festival. We spent eight hours in the car listening back to mixes for Tiny Desk and planning in our heads where every single cable of hundreds of feet of Cat 5 were going to go for this crazy recording gig. That is what laid the foundation, I think, for my technical background to set up the studio at NYPL. It was really those 8 hours, 16 hours in the car just thinking through audio problems and doubling up ways to do different things and being prepared by planning out [crosstalk].

Josh Rogosin: Yes. Newport Folk was three stages simultaneously. The stages were hundreds and hundreds of feet apart from each other, thousands. We had to run all these cables. All the audio would end up in the same place so that tune-in could switch between the three different stages whenever they wanted. We recorded every single set front of house and audience mics.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Josh Rogosin: It was just me and Jenna.

Alison Stewart: Where are you going to go next for your Global Sounds Concerts? What do you think?

Josh Rogosin: Oh, my gosh. Well, it's been amazing. I'm actually heading to Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, and I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. I'm going to go down there, spend some time with the students. That's what I love to do, is pay it forward, get some people excited, and find some artists to record with the students as an educational opportunity.

Alison Stewart: Oh, cool. That's me.

Josh Rogosin: That's really what's fueling Global Sound Concerts is just my desire to pay it forward and the actual YouTube page where I encourage everybody to check out the Global Sound Concerts YouTube page.

Alison Stewart: Pretty cool.

Josh Rogosin: I feel like they're almost just like an afterthought or a final landing spot for what I really want to be doing is just getting people excited about making content, making music. In this world, where we're all on our phones, we need great content that isn't just in-studio content. Why not make these wonderful field recordings that I'm so enamored with, and that's my specialty. I want to create a new curriculum for audio producers and engineers to actually do field recordings, not just in-studio stuff.

Alison Stewart: My guests have been Josh Rogosin and Jenna Li. Thank you so much for your time today.

Josh Rogosin: It was such a pleasure to see you. Thanks, Alison.

Jenna Li: Thanks for having us. Really appreciate it.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.