The following projects are just a taste of the things I've been up to lately. My server can only handle so much. Some projects will feature an additional link that will take you to the artist or project's own site where more samples may be available. Bear in mind that these, and any MP-3 that you listen to have been compressed...that is, compromises have been made to audio quality in the interest of small file sizes. In English, this means that the quality of audio you can download from the web is generally not nearly as high-quality as what you put into your CD player at home. Enjoy!
PowerFlower
PowerFlower's music can be LOOSELY described as "indie rock", but The Death of My Guitar shows a wide range of appealing styles. We have been slowly, carefully, and methodically crafting and re-working this album over the past year.
As of this writing (March '07) we've completed our "in-the-box" mixes for all tracks and have sent those mixes back out of the computer on separate digital-to-analog outputs—one output for each track of music—to individual channels on my analog mixing console, and then from the console's stereo outputs to my 1/4" stereo tape machine for posterity.
This process is called "analog summing" and yields a great deal more clarity and "weight" to each individual track versus allowing the computer to do all the math on making a stereo track out of all those sources. On bigger mixes the effect is quite noticeable...not as much on sparser arrangements.
| Hollywood | Station Break | Alienation |
The Paul Bertolino Juggernaut
Paul Bertolino's repeat presence at both The Blue room and now at Great Magnet has been a double-blessing. Not only has he been a staunch and constant supporter of my recording endeavors since the early days, he also happens to be just about the most talented individual that I've had the pleasure of recording thus far. His songwriting and vocal skills are truly world-class. He's also a terror on drums and has serves as a session ace for me more than once.
Paul and I first connected through our mutual friend and brilliant bassist Nathan Alfaro, whom I'd been playing music with myself. Paul and Nathan are in a brilliant retro-power-pop band called The Sleaves, and as such they've now recorded two albums with me...their eponymous debut E.P., plus the full-length Heavy Sunshine.
Paul and Nathan have also helped me record a cover tune or two over the years to demo new studio gear, under the moniker The Blue Room All-Stars.
Paul has now become the very first client in my new space, and has scored a record contract through Antenna Farm Records to record his full-length solo debut—Inner Soundtrack. Record release date is set for February 28th, 2006!
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Fall For It
Inner Soundtrack |
Wind & Wear Out
Inner Soundtrack |
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The Blue Room All-Stars |
from Heavy Sunshine |
from "The Sleaves" |
Pulse Rite Bullet Vibe
SF Punk with a tinge of eighties-esque guitar texture in a Steve Stevens kinda way! Although there is definitely something to be said for a drummer who can come back from a fill on the one, we'll forgive him as he was going for a record for studio beer consumption that day and this shit just totally rocks anyhow. Alert Guinness. For more sordid details check out my Pulse Rite Bullet Vibe session journal HERE.
| Magic Hand Puppets |
The Music Club
A quartet of kids from Petaluma's own St. Veincent's High School. They spent a weekend doing a 6-song E.P. full of adept and charmingly-fragile songs with a depth that belies their young age. For more tunes check out their MySpace page.
Brent discovered me by way of Paul Bertolino and wanted to record an E.P. with me of primarily acoustic material with simple arrangements and very little in the way of instrumentation. The album is basically Brent's tribute to life with his new family (wife & toddler). The crazy bastard commuted from Sacrament to Petaluma (a two hour drive each way) at least 1/2 dozen times.
These guys play punk rock that somehow manages to be rather catchy and at the same time completely raw and nasty. You love long time. For the most part they recorded their yet-to-be-titled 14-song album in one eight hour session. There were a few brief overdub sessions to fix boo-boos and then we mixed it in one more day as well. Commando recording!
Monette Shirley
A sample of work from the forthcoming album by Bay Area siren Monette Shirley. Monette belts 'em out like the big leagues and keeps herself busy fronting various local bands playing covers as well as her own original material, such as the propulsive folk-rock tune below...
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Roddy Love
Nashville jingle-meister and country-rock song stylist Roddy love divides his time between being a third-generation western artist by day and songwriter by divine intervention. He and his wife front the country rock ensemble Love to Love and also spend lots of time organizing various commercial endeavors for the music industry such as 30-second commercial spots, international tours for other musicians, and soundtrack work. The song below is a piece written for an upcoming independant film. We used an electronic Roland V-Drum kit (not my favorite thing to do), but gussied it up with some analog tape and some re-amping techniques for a fairly convincing rock drum sound. Cuitar courtesy of Yours Truly. Bass work by nathan alfaro and drums by Drunk Mitch of the Monette Shirley sessions.
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KP and E-Low Featuring Mouthpiece
If you had told me a year ago I would soon be producing hip-hop artists and actually enjoying it I would have told you to go have your head examined. These guys are a dream to work with and have actually taught me to fully appreciate the genre with their abilities to compose amazing rhymes on the fly!
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Geoff Ellsworth
Wildly popular among incredibly obscure fringe groups, Geoff Ellsworth is a renaissance man of musical theatre. He is most recognized as frontman for The Towne Dandies..."A Voice of Reason in Cyber-Western Entertainment," Originated in 1996 by Napa Valley artist Geoff Ellsworth and original member Steve McElroy, to create post-apocalyptic entertainment and art for the whole family (though not necessarily at the same time)
For my part, I helped Geoff put together a children's album for sale online, which was is many ways neither for children nor an album. Discuss. Possibly this is not the finest example of engineering prowess, as many of the tracks came to me from Jeff in the form of the demo program on his Casio Keyboard. I embellished when I could. Mostly it's just fun to listen to.
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Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival
This year I was asked to coordinate sound design and scoring for the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival's production of William Shakespeare's Tempest. It is truly Shakespeare's most sound-driven play. When the smoke cleared, the final cue list required 70 individual pieces of sound, ranging from vocal music to sound effects to "orchestral" movements. It was truly an excercise in musical cross-training. Much of the work was done completely within the computer using midi sequencing, though even these pieces were riddled with analog samples. Often it was traditional greek versions of modern instruments such as lute, tympany and what have you. More work was done as non-sequenced digital multitrack recordings of real instruments, and then there were the many, many sound effects, gathered from online archives as well as in the field. Following are but two of the many cues done for this massive undertaking.