Dan Piscina began his music career as a teenager in Rome, Italy. He played guitar and sang in different bands throughout high school. Never satisfied with the way his bands’ music was sounding after spending costly days in various recording studios with unconcerned engineers, he decided to buy an eight-track and see if he could do a better job. He soon fell in love with manipulating recorded sound and began recording and mixing not only his bands’ music, but also several local artists and even his rival high school’s bands.
At eighteen, Dan packed up his garage studio and moved to Liverpool, UK where he attended the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts. There he studied popular music, sound technology, music business, and performance. He spent many hours in the school’s studios, with evening sessions often stretching into the early morning hours. He then attended School of Audio Engineering, Liverpool in hopes of further honing in his recording skills. Ultimately it wasn’t until he packed his bags and moved to Los Angeles that he really developed an understanding of the music business. This intercontinental move was fueled by little more than a response to an email he sent to Brian Malouf [engineer-Michael Jackson, Verve Pipe, Everclear, Pearl Jam, and many many others] asking for an assistant position, but proved to be an invaluable catalyst in Dan’s career in the American music scene. He went on to work for producer/former Columbia A&R head Marshall Altman [Kate Voegele, William Fitzsimmons, Natasha Bedingfield, Matt Nathanson]. He later joined engineer/mixer Joe Zook [One Republic, Modest Mouse, Katy Perry, Leona Lewis] as a second engineer. There he learned from incredible musicians, engineers and producers like Ryan Tedder, Butch Walker, Derrell Thorp, Greg Wells, Bob Thiele, Bryan Ray [guitarist for Paul McCartney, Abe Laboriel Jr. [drummer for McCartney], Brian Bell [Weezer], Ben Harper, Wally Gagel, Mike Elizondo, Mike Busbee, Warren Huart, Matt Hales [Aqualung], and many other talented artists.
After his stint at Zook’s studio and a year freelancing in Ottawa, Canada, Dan opened The Pool, his own studio. Since then he has divided his time between his studio [mixing songs and albums for artists such as Mike Viola and Dan Bern, Jill Sobule, The Walcotts, and Lukas Nelson], and working at the iconic Village Studios in Santa Monica with producer/engineer John Alagia [John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Liz Phair, Zac Brown Band, and Brett Dennen, among many others]. Together they worked with Dave Matthews Band, Rachael Yamagata, Liz Phair, and Lukas Nelson among many others. For the past four seasons, Dan has been the music department’s lead engineer for CW’s “Crazy Ex Girlfriend” starring Rachel Bloom with producers Adam Schlesinger ( Emmy and Grammy Award winner – Fountains of Wayne, Sarah Silverman, etc.) and Steven M. Gold (SNL, Tony Awards, Colbert Report).
Dan currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.