past studios

after many conversations with friends who do what i do for a living i have come to one conclusion - there really wasnt any chance we/i would/could do anything else. you have to be part geek to be way into the gear, part nerd to be way into the science behind sound and electronics, part artist to be into the music, part slacker/hipster to be in with musicians, and part super workaholic to meet the deadlines and come through for clients. as an added bonus for my clients i add in part super sarcastic and occasionally humerous, part moody with occasional post 10pm grumpiness, and part ultra dedicated to their projects.

hmmm, im rambling. the point was/is that ive wanted to do this for as long as i can remember, and frankly never considered doing anything else.

so to celebrate the purchase of my new photo scanner, i present to you a history of my studio spaces.

first up - basement tapes recording version 1

for my middle school graduation my parents bought me a little fostex 4-track cassette machine. later, in 10th grade i think, i upgraded to a fostex open reel 8 track and a 12 channel fostex console. at first i set it up in chris peterson's living room. i'm not sure how long we had it there, but we made some recordings. they weren't good. i won't post them here.
at some point i moved all the gear into my family's basement. my sister especially enjoyed this arrangement as the two small rooms were right beneath her room.

this is our first setup. very professional


once the desk was built things definitely improved


this is brian holmes recording a vocal in a box during the making of the poke kick touch album-1992
there is no way that box made it sound better


drums for thom moore's first band in the basement studio

next - off to usc. although i spent many, many, many hours in this studio, i only have about 2 pictures of me there. here is one of them. i am glad not to have to ever go in that studio again.

levi nunez, me, and brian holmes recording some early wobble shop stuff

600 miles northest - basement tapes recording version 2. graduated from usc, bought some more gear (tascam 3500 console, 3 adats, etc), and moved to provo utah. i had a little money saved and i moved into a very rundown storefront downtown. i planned on staying for 4 months.
i dont know how big this place was, but it was fairly large. it was previously vintage clothing store called truman edsels, although it didnt seem that anyone had set foot in there for 10 years before i moved in. the rent was $250/month, which somehow actually seemed high.
there was of course, no shower, and the bathroom had to be completely rebuilt, in addition to new carpet and paint needed in every room.

in the control room


the studio at truman edsels. the really classy part of this studio was the shower i built. it, along with a sinki put in, were located just to the left of the frame. so you could record and shower at the same time. although no one ever did.

2 doors north - after a few years a space just 2 doors away opened up and it was so much larger, yet only $100/month more. thats right, $350/month for what must have been 1500-2000 square feet or so. at this point i think i had managed to save up about $2500 or so, and this was really all the money i had in the world. not questioning why the rental company would only give me a month to month lease, i dove into this place, sinking my massive savings into the renovation.

i'm fairly sure that our sound insulating material was not up to code. not being able to afford doubling up the sheetrock, or having the walls filled by an insulation company, we found old couches, cut the foam up and stuffed it into the walls!.

the new control room

this is the drum setup for the one and only session that happened in this studio. why only one you ask??

yep, within 2 weeks of actually finishing the studio, i was informed that the entire block of buildings was to be torn down. that pile of rubble on the left was the new studio, while the door on the right was the back door of truman edsels.

off to orem - after losing my amassed fortune, sarah and i, newly married, rented a house in orem, utah. most of my time was spent working at larger studios in salt lake, but we did some work to turn the bottom floor of the house into a studio. i must have recorded at least 6 or 7 albums in this studio

dan reneer and i model our newly created bass traps


the studio room at the orem house

back to downtown provo - so orem was so boring. i suspect it may still be. regardless, our landlord found out we had the studio downstairs and didnt want us there anymore, so we had to find a new place to live. continuing my tradition of building studios in old clothing stores, we moved into 39 west. this house was the best. the rooms just seemed to encourage you to make music. it really was such a great place.
in the beginning sarah and i lived upstairs, which the studio took up most of the downstairs, with the control room at the back of the house in a screened porch turned addition.

george brunt and chris peterson during the recording of sunfall festival's monday 23 album


craig poole, jay lawrence and rich dixon

the control room at 39 west. i have no idea who these guys are


at some point, we made an offer, bought the 39 west property and decided to do a full-blown renovation. this picture comes from sessions for an album by the baho quartet. this room had been torn apart, the ceiling was gone, the roofers had the roof completely torn off and you could see the sky clearly from this room. but we needed another space so we put the drums in there, and it sounded great. the only down side was a little rain on the drums.

june audio - after the remodel, this became one of the coolest studios ive worked in. it sounded great, had a great vibe and the location was great too. things could get a little small once we loaded a lot of gear in, but it was a hard space to beat for album work.

after 4 years or so we sold the place and it later was moved to the new building, which is where i rent a room now. the gear is still great, the room isnt as good, the location isnt as good, but there are way more lame alarm salesmen around.

so, yes, i realize this might be the most boring blog post ever.

odds and ends

thanks to hilary for my newest console-top friends

new mics-lomo 19a9s

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.