CarlTones Music

Where YOUR music matters first!

Crafting music that speaks to the heart, mind, and soul!

About

Meet Carlton

Carlton Campbell is an American multi-instrumentalist, engineer, songwriter, and producer best known for his work in sacred steel. He is a member of the family band The Campbell Brothers and serves as Associate Director of Technical Arts at Houghton University, where he educates & mentors students in music production and performance.Carlton has been most fortunate to collaborated with a wide array of notable artists, including Robert Randolph, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, John Medeski, Sonny Landreth, and Charlie Hunter. He has appeared on national television, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and his recorded performances have featured in television series such as CBS, "The King of Queens", HBO's "The Sopranos", and CBS's "Joan of Arcadia". His music combines the traditions of gospel, jazz, blues, country, rock influences, extending the reach of sacred steel beyond its Pentecostal roots.

No two sessions are exactly the same — and they shouldn’t be. Every client brings something different to the table, and the drum tracks need to reflect that. At the same time, most modern projects don’t have the time or budget for endless mic tweaks or rebuilding a kit from scratch between songs. So the question becomes: how do you keep things moving while still giving clients real flexibility?For drummer Carlton Campbell, the answer is a streamlined but open-ended approach. He tracks with an “overcapture” setup — more microphones than any one mix will likely need — all running at once. Some lean warm and vintage, others are tighter and more modern. There are room mics that can sit back or explode with space, close mics that capture different angles of the kit, and character mics that bring in grit, saturation, or lo-fi edge when needed.Instead of constantly reworking the entire setup, Carlton makes smaller, intentional changes as he goes — adjusting snare drums, cymbals, tuning, or dampening to suit the song. The core mic layout stays consistent, which keeps the workflow efficient and lets him stay focused on feel and performance.What that ultimately gives the client is options — a lot of them. At mixdown, the drums can be shaped in different directions without needing to retrack anything. It’s a practical way to stay flexible, without slowing the session down.Check out some of his remote session work!

The GEAR

The the tools that help Carlton with production and remote recording sessions

  • Interfaces/Conversion:

  • Antelope Audio Orion 32+

  • Antelope Audio Zne Quadro

  • Microphone Preamps:

  • Vintech Audio

  • Universal Audio

  • Audient

  • Warm Audio

  • Outboard Gear:

  • Rupert Neve Designs 5057

  • 3 Distressors

  • 4 DBX 160a's

  • BlackLion B172a

  • SPL Transient Designer

  • Drums:

  • Yamaha Absolute Hybrid Maple

  • Yamaha Birch Custom Absolute

  • Yamaha Oak Custom

  • 1960's Rogers Holiday Kit

  • Various snare drums from

  • Yamaha, Ludwig, Pearl, Tama

  • A wide variety of Zildjian Cymbals

  • Microphones:

  • AKG 414's

  • Audix D series

  • Audio Technica 4050's

  • Lawson 251

  • Lauten Audio Snare Mics

  • Shure Beta 91a

  • Shure KSM 32's

  • Shure KSM 141

  • Shure SM7b's

  • Shure SM57's and SM58's

  • Plugins:

  • Waves Mercury Collection

  • Slate Everything Bundle

  • SSL Everything Bundle

  • McDSP Everything Bundle

  • FabFilter Collection

  • Plugin Alliance Collection

  • East West Reverb Collections

  • Sonnox Collection

  • Native Instruments

  • and a host of others

Cras eget

Let's Connect

Would love to be apart of your project! Let's converse to make it happen!

Sem erat

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Carltones Music © 2026. All rights reserved.