please stay tuned for an important service announcement...

stephan jenkins of 3rd eye blind

ATTENTION ANYONE I'VE EVER HAD THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION WITH -

me - "third eye blind sucks"

you - "really? i kind of like that one song"

me - "well then clearly something is wrong with you, because they are the worst band in the world. second only to 311"

you - "hmmm, well, that singer is really good and that song is super catchy"

me - "you are dead to me"

look, i know we went through some rough times. but seriously, i could not justify associating myself with you after you displayed such a reckless and harmful love of total crap music.

well, im giving you one more chance to redeem yourself (i'm looking at you dustin). go here, listen to 'nondairy creamer' and then in the comments section please explain why you were wrong, why you were nearly as retarded as mr jenkins himself, and why you are sorry for ever supporting such sonic injustice. then maybe, MAYBE, i will forgive you.

man, that song is terrible.

the return of the neon trees

thank goodness for the neon trees. things slowed down big time come october and i suddenly found myself quite unemployed when along they came.
we started out with overdubs on 4 more songs from their la drum sessions.

branden played the burns bass through the svt for most of these songs


tyler, elaine and chris show how glamorous the studio experience is


nate from code hero came to hang out

the following week we got to work on 6 new songs. it was great to get to track some drums and help build these songs ground-up.

overheads-u87s, kick-beta52 and blue mouse, snare-audix d1 top 57 bottom,
toms-audio technica atm25s, hat-414, ride-km184, front of kit-aea r88, room mics-blue kiwis

bass on the new tracks has been mainly branden's new lakland pbass through the svt, the b-15 or the sansamp bass driver, which really sounded great.
guitars - mostly les paul or 335 through the hiwatt, the orange and occasionally the silvertone 1482. also, a bit of jazzmaster snuck in there.
keyboards - direct with a lot of echo farm, amp farm, pitchblender, and massey tapehead.
vocals - wunder cm7-adesigns p1-chandler ltd-1 for eq-germanium compressor-distressor-apogee

more vocals to record tomorrow....

don't feel bad, i'm bored of my blog too.

things have been slow. this is joel pack playing his guitar.


that is joel stevenette. this was a joel² session. below we see craig poole. that is actually his normal face. he always looks like that.


these are the neon trees.


here we have two pictures from that latest appearances by paul jacobsen and the madison arm.
these shows were so good that you are stupid for not being at them. unless you were, then you are quite intelligent.


so yeah, did i say that things have been slow? i have a weird job that way. weeks and months of barely being able to find time to get gas in the car gives way to 3 weeks of basically nothing to do. luckily, i had someone who was willing to rent my studio, thus taking care of most of the rent.
but now i'm back to work. you'll never guess what i get to do this week. that's right, im staring down the barrel of at least 2 solid weeks of mixing. hurray. im not complaining, at least not as much as im capable of.
i will be mixing albums/eps for her and them. so yeah, back to work.

also, may i just say that the other residents in the building in which i work are such complete, well, i best not say it, but let's just say they are making me insane. surely someone at the top of this company must have sent out a memo commanding everyone there to act like a total idiot, drive an enormous lifted truck with huge wheels, wear a baseball hat cocked to one side, and never open the door for anyone. especially if that anyone is pushing an roadcase which is piled high with other gear, while holding 2 guitars in his hands.
also, all huge trucks must be parked with only two wheels on the actual pavement.


i have been taking these pictures with my phone for a while now. i figure one day i will just post like 300 of them, to really prove my point. these are from different days by the way.


oh, before i go, i should really put down this great story. during the winter, the alarm system selling, baseball hat to the side wearing, huge truck on the curb parking wankers really go to town. they love to put two wheels of their monster trucks up on the big snow drifts that the plows pile up at the end of the lot. anyway, last year i was just getting to work and i heard this huge noise and looked to see this guy trying to put two wheels of his truck up on this snow bank. this thing was at least 4 feet high, maybe higher. anyway, he made multiple attempts. he kept backing up and then gunning his truck at this snow hill but the truck kept slipping off. lucky for me, he was very determined. he tried and tried again. he was a real example of stick-to-it-tiveness, but that truck was not going. anyway, he finally managed to get this thing up there and at that point we had a truck that was basically at a 45 degree angle to the ground, and he was on the lower side. on snow. near ice.
this total retard opens up his door to get out. the door, being extremely gravity friendly takes off at a 1000mph and promptly hits the ground, putting a very sizable dent/scratch down the entire edge of the door. but it didnt end there. gravity also had its way with Joe Douchebag who followed the door's example and came flying, ever so un-gracefully out of that truck, landing pretty much on his head on the ice. i think he would have suffered some brain damage, but luckily, the bill of his baseball hat was off to the side in just the perfect way so as to cushion his fall sufficiently.
but we arent done.
the best part of the whole thing was when, once on the ground, mr alarm was showered with everything in his truck. and he had a lot of crap in there. cds, a backpack presumably carrying a laptop, pens, paper, A MOTORCYCLE HELMET!!, i think there were some socks, etc etc.
i distinctly remember how seeing that reallly made my day. bring on the snow.

i'm lazy. blogging is hard. here's some stuff.

so I spent most of July and August working with Tyler Castleton and Hilary Weeks on Hilary's latest album. There wasn't much to complain about so Im afraid it didnt add up to a great blog post. Very pleasant funny people, enough time to get good sounds, fix stuff that isnt working, try things. anyway, what's not to like there??
here is Hilary laying down some piano, apparantly she hasnt played piano on here albums in the past, but I had her play on one of the songs I arranged. she had such a great touch, it just sounded better than if anyone else had tried. she was hesitant at first, but did great and the track came out cool-

here tyler and hilary discuss how handsome i am, and how many pearl awards i should win this year -

tyler came up with this ingenious solution to the problem of too much music for the piano music stand -

more brainstorming regarding my upcoming pearl award take, also, most likely some discussion regarding how great everything sounds as well as how attractive my socks are -

tyler, rob honey and mike dowdle -

todd sorensen wonders why mike greene can never get his drums to sounds so good! (cmon mike, that was clearly a joke) -

rich dixon -

last week i worked with mark owens and The Indio Bait. we recorded some drums while mark laid down some scratch guitars -

although i have no readers, i must mention:

a few weeks ago, some very good friends were in an airplane crash. they have survived, but are in critical condition with severe burns. please look here for updates and information, and please, if you feel inclined, donate to help.

shameless plug

so as some of you may know, i have recently completed work on the 3rd in a series of lullaby albums ive produced. it just showed up in the itunes music store and frankly, i think it is really good. not just good because it works like magic at putting kids to sleep, but actually really good.

great singers - (paul jacobsen, ryan tanner, amy gileadi, dominic moore, mindy gledhill, marcus bently, libbie linton, haley gibby, becky williams) good sounds, arrangements, etc etc.

please, if you have a moment, go check it out. i think you may like it, and so would your friends...hint hint...

it makes a great baby gift, it plays in all major brands of cd and mp3 players, and it will help you lose that weight!

if you simply must have a hard copy - they are available here.

long long long long day

ok, this post will just be about yesterday. not about the last few months of blog recess, but just yesterday, and if you are lucky, maybe some of today as well.

yesterday was the first of two days, today being the second, that i was/am to be working with sam cardon on music for a tv series called real families. i believe he has 9 episodes to do. i like working with sam on these film/tv things because:

a) it's fun to work with sam
b) i usually get to write some, and be creative
c) he understands my inability to play guitar in anything but the key of G with the occasional jaunt into the land of D
d) it provides plenty of well needed exercise for my vast collection of capos

continuing with the theme of lists, the things about this project that are/were unique/a total potential nightmare/kind of fun and exciting are/were:

1) we were to record at LDS MPS which for those of you not in "the biz" means the LDS church's motion picture studio featuring a recording studio full of some cool mics but only 2, yes ONLY 2, small mic stands.

2) by small i mean not really very small

3) by not really very small i mean good luck miking the inside of a bass drum or the bottom of a snare sucker

4) we were to record 45 or so cues in one day, then mix them the next. for those of you not in "THE BIZZZZ" a cue is a piece of music, usually somewhat short that you would hear in a movie or tv show. i was planning on just linking you to wikipedia to find out what a cue is, because that's what those of us in "le biz" would do, but stupid wikipedia is apparantely not in "el biz"

5) 45 cues is a LOT of cues. and by a lot i mean WAAYYYY more than i would ever imagine could be recorded in one day in a very familiar studio with all my equipment


the things that made this a total nightmare were:

I) i had to take loads of equipment from my studio to MPS, so much that Sam actually had to take some of it in his car

II) i had to show up at 7am to setup because:

a. i didnt know the room, the equipment, etc
b. i did not have time to go over the day before and set up due to the fact that at 1am on the night previous i was still recording my inadequate finger style guitar playing for another project.
c. dont even try to pretend that this sublist isnt awesome, cause it is

III) there were only 2 small mic stands (we've covered this)

IV) due to some miscomunication, the drummer showed up an hour and a half late, and I still wasnt ready for him

number V) and most distressing: for some completely unknown (even to those that work there) reason, the LDS MPS has decided that Pro Tools should be run on a PC. this is wrong. so so wrong. in addition to not running nearly as well, when one has worked 12 years with Pro Tools on a Mac, one begins to rely on certain quick-keys, as well as the basic layout and commands found on the keyboard. now, take that person, put him in a studio where he knows nothing about any of the gear, wait until he is 2 hours behind with a room full of musicians staring through the glass at him and now watch as he tries to change from the edit window to the mix window in pro tools. needless to say, a meltdown occured.

after that, the downhill spiral increased in speed. once things were running, slowly, but running, we tried a take. we got halfway through, pro tools crashed. opened it up, crashed again.

this is when the following series of events began:

one: sam decided the MPS thing may have been a bad idea
two: sam announced said decision and let it be known that our time at MPS had come to an end.
(sweet, are we going to get to go home early?!???!)
three: no
four: we were to pack up and move everything to june audio
five: apologies were made to those at MPS who had helped us so much, and 5 guys spent at least 20 minutes just packing up the equipment we had brought in.
six: drove to june audio, began loading in and setting up, this took nearly 2 hours. it was now about 1:00pm

so now we are ready to begin recording in our new june audio home. but first we eat lunch. so now it is 1:30pm and now we try to lay down a take. take 1 goes down fairly uneventfully, but there are mistakes and people are still getting to know the cue, so here comes take 2. take 2 is better, if not a tad light and uninspired. we decide to listen. things aren't sounding great. the vibe has left the building. back out, try another take. nope

and then.....

i) it begins to be clear that this isnt going to happen
ii) a decision is made to call it (awesome!!!! i'm outta here!!!)
iii) no. no you're not
iv) so, while my compatriots are released to the wonderful world of not working, (you know, trips to the mall, mowing the lawn, not sitting down, etc etc.), i settle in to get to know 45 cues.


hours worked over the 2 days:
day 1 - 16 hours
day 2 - 19.25 hours


some 'firsts' from the sessions:
- sam playing ukulele
- sam playing and keeping a toy piano track
- me playing ukulele
- intern pat getting paid for working


this post has become far too long and most likely far too boring. in the end on the bright side i think we did some nice work. on the not as bright side i think we only got through about 15 cues. sorry about that sam. ok, now i need to be done with this stupid post.

there, now maybe i'm back on the horse.

be back soon...

atherton at arts fest