el final de mezcla

according to my free online english to spanish translator, that basically sums up last thursday. this also sums it up:

when last we visited, you will remember how well the mixing was going. the thing i didnt tell you was that I actually was regularly recieving emails saying "sounds great! i love it!"

hmmm, i guess the love between a client and a mix is a fickle thing. because come thursday morning, i was out of a gig. the funny thing was how the client said "i love the mixes, i think it just might be fun to see how so and so would approach things."

anyway, i had a great couple of days off and frankly, i dont really care. if i wasnt getting it the way they wanted it, then they should go to someone else.

next week - ACTUAL TRACKING WITH LIVE MUSICIANS!!!

stay tuned

Can you guess what mixing is???

look, i don't want to be redundant here, but come on.

i know, you will accuse me of being stuck in a blog rut here, but mixing is killing me, slowly but surely.

check out this guy - i have no idea who this guy is, but see how much fun he's having? yeah. that's not reality.
here is what mixing is to me - start at 9:30/10am or so, work for 3 hours until i think things are sounding good. put the mix on cd. go out to the car for the drive to get lunch. check the mix. have ego beaten down by car stereo. drive back to studio while considering other career options. eat. work on mix more. work on mix even more. print mix thinking it sounds great. start cleaning up tomorrow's mix. close things up. drive home listening to mix. consider driving into oncoming traffic due to how bad the mix sounds. repeat.

believe me, i work really hard on these mixes. and i must say that people tell me they like my mixes and many have been very complimentary. also, i will say that there have been occasions where ive been satisfied with mixes.

this week has not seen any of those occasions however. MIXING IS SOOOO BORING!

it's on

the gauntlet has been thrown down. these pictures are not from my session. goodness knows im not lucky enough to actually be recording anything now. nope, im stuck in mixville, and this town is dull and lonely.

the above pictures are courtesy of my good friend and fellow engineer/pessimist michael greene.

apparently, mike was envious of my X-TREME PIANO MIKING* and decided to get all up in my grill and challenge me to a good old fashioned MIC-OFF**. In addition to the 7 mics you see there, 5 on stands, 2 on the little black bar across the piano, Michael had 2 rooms mics up. That bests my latest X-TREME session by 2 mics.*** This is unacceptable.

So today I am introducing the latest in a long line of JuniorAudio innovations. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce - XX-TREME PIANO MIKING!!!****!!! (the first 3 exclamation marks are actually part of the name!! that is even X-TREME PUNCTUATION*****!!!)
XX-TREME PIANO MIKING!!! is just what the Greeks imagined when they envisioned our modern day of studio recording. THAT'S RIGHT! 20 MICS!!!!!

yep, the next lucky piano player that records with me will be mic'd up with no less than 20 mics, mark my words.

you're goin down greene, and i'm sendin bestor down with you.

j.a. out



*trademark junioraudio industries 2008. all rights reserved
**trademark mjuniorgreenaudio industries 2008. some rights reserved, others available.
***did I happen to mention that the piano in the picture was mic'd for a one Mr, Kurt Bestor????
****trademark xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx industries 200x. all rights extreme.
*****trademark junioraudio publishers 2008. alright.
******not yet trademarked.

The Narcoleptic Mixer

it's that time again. mixing time. so as of now, i'm 9 songs into the 11 that have to be mixed for chris merritt.

chris listens in amazement at the sonic brilliance of my mix masterpiece

and now for a small tutorial.
first, if you need to know a little about what mixing is, click here.

second, these are faders:

faders are like volume knobs, push them up-things get louder, pull them down-quieter.
there are many faders, because each one controls one track. the track could be one instrument, or one microphone of many on a given instrument, such as in the world record setting chris merritt micropalooza.
now, the system that i'm currently working on has automated faders. this means, as i am mixing, i can move a fader to adjust for say, an extra loud guitar note, and the computer will remember that move, and "play" it back for me next time. the act of adjusting the fader is sometimes referred to as "riding" the fader. this way i can go through the song and make all those moves and when i'm done, they are all memorized by the computer.
on the computer screen, the computer draws a line that allows you to see where you moved the fader up, and where you moved the fader down.

that bump you see in the volume line is what happens when you fall asleep while riding a piano track on an extremely long song. the left side, or TREMENDOUS increase in volume is me falling asleep. The right side, or frantic volume reduction is me waking up in terror at the extremely loud noise.

lurssen mastering

the mastering went very well. paul's album sounds great, and gavin proved again that he is an amazing engineer.
the thing is, mastering sessions are boring. i think that really we arent even supposed to be there. certainly gavin didnt need us there, and would probably prefer our absence. but we went, and i was again reminded that i should spend the time during the mastering session at guitar stores or in amoeba music.
here is what we did during the 8 hour mastering session:


yep, we interneted. we even spent some time IMing back and forth as we sat next to each other. i'm happy to report that i reached the end of the internet. such was not the case for dustin who brought a pc laptop and couldnt get online. we had a good time ridiculing him, and gavin even got in on the act telling dustin "hmmm, im not sure ive seen one of those in here before."


we got done at 6:30pm. drove to pickup brenden and hit the road at 7:30pm. discussed whos idea it was to drive back the same night, ate in n out, decided it was a terrible idea to drive back the same night, listened to kathleen edwards and the adam carolla podcast. rolled into provo at 5:30am. went to work. im tired.

we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there

yes, that is a smokey and the bandit reference. yes, i loved that movie. yes, i might still love it. all of this is beside the point.

saturday we (dustin, paul, brenden and scott) left for la to master paul jacobsen's record at lurssen mastering.
we drove all day saturday, hung out all day sunday, are mastering right now (10:30 am - 5 pm or so) and then driving all the way back so as to not miss a day of mixing chris merritt's album. frankly, tonight's drive has ruined the other days because it is going to be one of those awful, arrive at 5am drives. but let us recap.

here we see paul dustin and scott heading out of provo


brenden ready with nintendo ds in hand and headphones for the many movies he will watch.


entertainment came by blindly playing songs on the ipod and seeing who could guess the artist first. dustin was the champion for most rounds, paul a close second, and i was simply awful at this game


Playoffs Sport Pub.

anonymous #1 - "we should really open a restaurant, these ribs are so good, i think people would buy these"
anonymous #2 - "i agree, but we need to make people work hard to find them, let's build in mesquite, nevada"
anonymous #3 - "hmmm, good idea, but they might find us if we are near the highway, how about waaaayyyyy off the highway, near a bunch of vacant lots and burned out office buildings?"
anonymous #1 - "perfect"

random paul shot

brenden and paul contemplate the horrendous drive home while bouncing on the trampoline

more to come...

pict your blog

the last few days have found mr chris merritt and crew back in the studio. group background vocals, wurlitzer, rhodes and even a guest appearance by nashville's own doug collins on guitar.

looks like there is a first for everything and this project looks like it might just end ahead of schedule. i know, i cant believe it either.

these things have happened in the last few days:

-my car broke down and went to the shop
-i finished mixing a jenny phillips track for DB at 3am
-sarah's car needed new brakes
-i drank several gallons of mountain dew
-sarahs car failed the utah safety check and thereby couldnt be registered
-sarahs car got a new windshield
-i bought ammonia at smiths at 3:30am and began peeling off the illegal window tinting on sarahs car at 4am
-benton pauls cd release
-sparks flew from my bass amp when powered on
-christian won project runway
-i watch project runway
-the control room finally reached 72 degrees

touché

saturday i put up a blog about how hot the studio was, about how i like to keep it cold.

the following monday, as i opened the door to the studio, i was nearly frozen alive. nearly.

the door swung open, and an icy cold blast hit me. the room was FREEZING! everything was cold, the guitars, the desk, everything was soooo cold. i looked at the thermostat - 50 degrees. set to 35, but 50 in the room.


50 is cold. anyway i had a good laugh about it. i wish i would have thought to pick up the camera right at that moment, instead it got all the way up to 56 before i thought to snap a picture.

so kudos to you, whoever you are, you got me. as a side benefit of your little joke, studio b is not equiped with a heater, so it took until nearly 8pm for the temperature to even crack 70. it was a cold day.

in recording news - PAUL JACOBSEN'S ALBUM IS DONE!!!! mastering monday, but the mixes have been printed. it only took 2 and a half years.

i'm not funny today, so dont expect much

in studio a , i've found that the temperature is usually higher than what the thermostat says by about  5-6 degrees. so when its set to 68 or so, everyone seems pretty happy and its seems about normal - 73 degrees or so. everyone except me. i want it cold. i want it 68 degrees always.
so, the problem is that for the last week ive spent in a, something has been wrong with the a/c.


thats right, 82!!!!!!! dont forget what i told you, that means the room is really 88 or so. yeah, its been miserable. i called the builder, and he said he'd have someone come fix it up, but man oh man, it has been like working in a sauna.

thursday turned out to be the last day of rhythm section tracking for chris merritt, one day ahead of schedule. we finished things off with a few overdubs on the upright - best $300 i ever spent.

we set chris up at home to do some vocals, so i had time finish the shupe record. by finish, i dont mean finish. what i mean is make more "final" mix changes, burn a "final" dvd and say goodbye, thanks, and then wait for the call saying there is more to "finish."  tonight we had to record more back vocals, and guitars. i wasnt supposed to work today, i had actually managed to have a saturday off, but after we "finished" last night at 1am, there were apparantly things that still needed to be done.
so now im "finished." i told ryan and craig that i wouldn't believe we were done until i saw the album on shelves in shrinkwrap. i thought that was funny until craig let me know that that hasnt stopped them in the past.