Another New Beginning

Wow, WAY too long since my last post. Though there's a good number of reasons for the gap, I shall beg forgiveness from my 2 or 3 readers and endeavor to keep the posts more regular.

Some singer from some band in some song once sang that, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end". Very simple logic, but I don't think most of us ever really consider the profound implication of that reality. To quote George Harrison's album , "All things must pass". Some people get caught up worrying about endings, some are constantly waiting for something new to begin and still others are far too focused on the present to think about the beginning or eventual end of anything.

In the past year I've been in all three of those positions at different and for different reasons. I'm not going to get into a bunch of stuff from my personal life, since it's got nothing to do with sound, music of anything of the sort. Suffice it to say there's been some major changes in my personal life over the past year. New family members, new house, new car and a bunch of other ups and downs.

The one thing that is audio-relevant is my increasing amount work from the recording end of things. It started over a year ago with the recording of a Christmas choral show in Hammerson Hall. Pretty simple gig, show up, take a split, record it and mix it. All finished in about 3 or 4 days and it sounded good enough for the client to release a CD. This led to more clients coming into the theatre wanting to record their shows with better quality than a quick FOH mix. I've done a jazz-raga show, a few other choral shows, a folk-rock show and I just finished mixing down this year's show from my original client.

All this work has led me to invest more in equipment for the recording projects. Instead of renting everything, I now own almost everything I need to record, mix and master a project. Along with the new gear, there's also enough room in the new house for me to have a control room/mixing room and once I get finished the construction I'll have a tracking room for drums, an amp isolation room and a vocal isolation booth. Being a big believer in regarding computers as friends and not enemies, I have incorporated two computers into the process so far. One Mac running MOTU's Digital Performer for recording and mixing as well and some two-track editing software. I have a second computer running a few different applications including Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 4 which I am very impressed with so far. This will not only eliminate the need to cart guitar amps into the studio, it'll also allow me a massive amount of options for guitar tones. I'm also running M-Audio's KeyRig software for different keyboard sounds, Torq for DJ/remixing work and BFD for triggering drum samples.

So with all the possibilities looming on the horizon, I'm quite excited to see where this new beginning takes me. All I know for sure is that wherever I'm going.... things will sound good when I get there.


Song of the day

I was watching the Foo Fighters DVD "Everywhere But Home" last night and I realized how much I love their music. I hadn't heard a lot of those songs in years and it's really great to just sit back, watch and listen as a great rock band works its way though an amazing set of much and really put on a great show. So for today, our song shall be "Hey, Johnny Park".