So we have shifted over to silent sound for the next few days.....more of the same project....but here's what it's looking like right now...
Here's Kory looking suspect (obviously busted looking at porn)...
My API's are in FULL effect too on the keyboard too, and the Neve 1073 on the MPC....sounding tasty...
....well...that's it for now, but i'm sure I'll have more thru the week....maybe even some decent quality ones if J comes by!!
Working along in 9000 at Patchwerk again....
...had a good 2 days over there with Snotty and Bangladesh....dude has a simple set up, but really knows how to make the most from his MPC...
...you know I had to bring some of my toys too....both gear and literal toys...
...everything was sounding good and working away.....nice few days.....and before anybody gets any bright ideas to hate on the pics....read the post below! I'm working on it alright!!!
Alright peanut gallery...as promised, it's excuses time....I know I don't have my pic game on point, but let me try and illustrate why....J did a great post about the mobile rig and working from home. Nowadays, even major label clients are cutting back and trying to save on budgets. Working at home studios is more and more common. Plus it's always great to do somebody a solid or give a homey price. Soooo...with all that in mind, I wanted to have a rig at the house that could handle all the same projects I'm working on at big studios, for mixing updates and new projects too. Behold...
The Rig...Mac Pro Quad 3.0 with 8 Gigs of Ram. Housing HD 3 PCIe Accel ProTools 8....
The Tower....All Apogee converters and Big Ben Clock. Neve 1073 Stereo Mic Pre (API 512s not pictured), Waves MAXX BCL for the loudness you need in your life, 2 Distressors for beating drums...
The Compy and Toys....NS 10s with a genelec sub, and more toys to keep me entertained that I know what to do with....
This is just to help try and explain WHY my pics (including the ones here) are so lame....ya boy is heavily invested in his future...and I hope blogging is a part of it...however, if this blog thing doesn't pan out, I hope I can keep the day job engineering. So if you'll keep putting up with a few more shitty pics, I'll save up for the camera....ASAP!!!
When you're patchwerk, you're patchwerk for life, but honestly, my favorite room to work at in Atlanta is Silent Sound Studios. It just has my prefered console and Mains speaker array. In addition to that, terrific outboard, a great staff, and good overall vibe. They always had a large ProTools rig, with a great selection of stuff, but until recently it was Power PC....TK (the owner), just MAJORLY uplifted his prada.....the only Intel HD 6 rig I know off. All PCIe, all accell. Screaming fast is an understatement....
And with dual displays.....
More Killface to keep everyone happy.....
Some of the Rack Array...
Along with some of mine...
....J has a great post about mobile rigs....I'm going to work up a post for that soon....Hope you guys enjoy...
Sorry for the delayed post...I was super tired making my way back to ATL....but had a really fun session my last night out there. It was with the cool new artist named Ahmad. He's got a great tone, and so much style it's ridculious. Dude came in rocking the dookie chain and kool moe dee glasses. I was like...."either dude is on some bullshit, or he's really fly". It was the latter.
The studio we were working on was cool too...it was the old Track Record...which was bought by producer Harvey Mason. Here's how it pretty much still looks, minus a different monitor for the computer rig...
but you know we were on the late night vibe tip....so here was us in action....
Also, I know i'm gonna catch super hell for this garbage pic, but there was the illest rack selection, because a great engineer named dave russel was camped out in there before us...
I could rattle off the list, but put it this way.....that many lights = hot shit in the rack. End of discussion.
A solid way to finish up that trip, but like I said, I'm happy to be home, and can't wait to see the folk tonight. Hollertreezadeez
You know what needs to come back....
Boosh, Sax solos....i'm in session right now, and we spent like 15 mins going thru keyboards looking for a saxophone sound that wasn't super fake and cheese dick...and I got to thinking...damn, what happened to all the Sax solos from the 80's. Everybody still remembers good guitar solos (J ....Van Halen sees you), but peeps try and front like Sax solos weren't the shit.
Matching your hoodie and shoes is soooo last year. Now a days, if you wanna be fly at the studio, you need to have all that, plus coordinating food. Hollertreezy....Oh, and that video is off the yelzabub J....get involved.
Back To Paramount today, but in the C room...which despite 3rd alphabetical listing, is the nicest room they have at Paramount...Nice 9000J SSL
...and a really big live room. To dark for a decent pic (don't wanna catch any hateration from Pratt about pic fidelity so i'm just not gonna post one....
Great set up for the Rack Gear in the C Room...
...I've always wondered why in more mix focused rooms, they don't have rack gear at ear height, thus allowing for adjustments at ear level, instead of hunched down in a rack....still not wasted space below either, some shelfs for storage and a credenza of sorts....
This is how we had the keyboard Set up...
...also, peep Alek TOTALLY addicted to imob on his iphone...I think he was in the middle of pulling off a diamond heist or something here...perhaps beating an old lady for her purse....who knows....ahhhh iphone. Ruining the attention span of assistants across the globe.
And here's me....
getting down to tuning the vocals....Well...that's it for now...more later.
Shifted over to Henson studios today....which is a really nice room.
They have a cool vibe, and everything is really well organized. Plus some nice rack gear too...
My assistant was named James, and he's cool as hell.
More to come...probably on the mobile blog tip...laters...
At Paramount A room...they have a cool SSL 6000. Which for anybody who hasnt' seen, it's quite close to a 4000, but with a 3 bus (A,B,C) master section instead of the 4000 "Quad Bus". It's pretty cool, a few difference in the master section....and the one here is modded out with E series EQs...which sound awesome for lots of stuff....
The coolest mod though is at the end of the desk...
....stereo channels! Kinda cool for a one fader EFX return..and his a sweet stereo spread pot instead of left right...
There was a decent rack selections too....sorry for the weak sauce pic though..
....still not up on my high rez pic game. And for all the readers that aren't teched out nerds...
...I been up in here trying to get a mothafucking scholarship!
Still over here at Paramount...which is part of a group of 3 studios, Encore, Ameraycan, and Paramount. They do a wide variety of types of music....hell, they are working on a Courtney Love record downstairs right now! (is that chick even still alive???)....so that's kinda cool to see. I THINK we may have a session over at Encore on Saturday, so it'll be nice to compare the different rooms, and share with Gridlock land...here's what it's been like so far....
Thats me looking suspect and Alek, the assistant who's cool, and hella knowledgable on some tech stuff....we nerd out. It rocks.
This is the desk upstairs in B, where we worked today...it's a SUPER old E series 4000 SSL...don't see too many of these, and in a 48 channel config too...
This is me fake stunting in front of Eric Hudson's keyboard set up.....kinda funny, come all the way out to LA to work on some more of the same stuff we were working on back in ATL last week. But it's been good.
Aight...more to come...Let's gooooooooooooooooooooooo
Shifted gears and slid over to Doppler today. Worked with another one of my clients today on his artist, Sweet Rush
....well this is half of Sweet Rush. Iman and her dog Chuck. Siham was there too, but she was too cool for school to be on Gridlock, maybe next time. Doppler is probably one of the only studio that hasn't bumped up the main rig to an intel based mac, so I wasn't able to rock off my boot drive (which is only intel compatible...I may set up a PPC one, but this is LITERALLY the only studio in town without intel, so it kind of pointless)....so unfortuanatley, no killface appearance today. Boo....just me....
Double Boo. As usual, I brought my gear for my mic chain...because I love the way it sounds paired with my mic, and in addition to that, it's nice to be comfortable using your piece, knowing exactly what settings work with whatever vocal performance, and just being familiar in general....also to have the gloomy bears on the defense tip, in case someone trys to fuck with your settings. Boosh!
We got it going good today, and finished up a joint.....hope they like it....and more to come.....
Okay...well, maybe it isn't that, but this is a shot of the writing room my client and I sometimes work when we aren't in Silent or PWR...
This is a small PT based rig that I put togther so we could do some demo song ideas. Kinda hard to tell from the garbage pic, but the studio is equipped with my mic, mic pre, compressor, converters, candle, cup of coffee, but most important is visible....Killface.
Yessir...the work up here continues...as it's been going well writing and getting some ideas together. I'm still slipping on getting my camera game up to par, so please forgive me for now....
This was our set up when writing with Eric Hudson. Dude is crazy talented, and is fun to record, because he doesn't sequence anything, he plays it all live...the closest thing you're going to get to rocking with a live band these days! He doesn't use any software synths (which I tried to help him get up on, cuz he travels a lot and his rental bill is SUBSTANTIAL), but uses the Fantom for a lot of horns, and the motif for a lot of stings and stuff. It was a good hang, and got some cool ideas put down.
I'm not going off on a rant here, but to all the folks out there recording...PLEASE keep those sessions well organized and labeled. There is nothing worse than working on a session somebody else recorded and see the tracks labels audio 1-97. Come on man....we are professionals here, this is our science. Scientist label shit. End of story.
Stopped by the office the other day for a nice biz transaction with Ben Allen...results to be posted shortly during my gear extravaganza post...and saw Monica and Brad and the Milk Money mascots Juno and Coltrane!
Well....that's what's been up for a few days....I'm working up that nice gear post....but will probably hit up some ridiculous topic like favorite studio foods first to balance out my nerdom. Hollertreezaleeezy 9000.
Gotta say shout out to Leslie for letting me get a few days in 9K....Always happy to work over there (and I dropped the Master Trim on the 2 Bus so my client can't beat up on the mains quite so much!). We've just been steady in here writing songs for various heads the past few days....it's been going really well. I'm actually very happy with how well my boot drive has been performing. Handy to have my version of ProTools up and roaring just like the home rig.
Snotty was also getting it in over in 995 working on some hot beats for the streets....making a hot hook too, shit should be my ringtone....here's me trying to jump in the chair so I can get some credit when it becomes a #1 smash world wide...
Working lots of places is one of my favorite things about being an engineer. I don't wanna get to lame sounding with it, but I think different studios have different vibes and different energy and can make creativity come in different forms. For a writer it could be new melodies, for a producer a new keyboard sound, and for engineers maybe different tracking or mix ideas. With all of that said, I like to have a few things that are always the same. (IE my boot drive and rack gear). I'll do another post soon about my choice outboard...but I also meant like having a vibe set up. Something I like doing is having my little collection of stuff around at different studios....BEHOLD!
I'm always bringing stuff like this around and setting it up....Not really for anybody other than me. Some clients kinda like them...some are freaked out by them....but its just my thing I like doing when I'm working. Well, that's about it for now...more to come soon. Shout out to Obama, like him, i'm trying to get mine in the '09
Alllllright! Legit Engineering post! (but only cuz J was trying to one up me with the Tony post....shout outs to Tony to, I know he's a regular to the blog). Got it in the other day up at Patchwerk 9000 working on some song ideas for a few peeps out there....Here's some low rent pics (you guys are just gonna have to get your deal with it on, J dropped a gem on a fly camera to make his post crispy cream, I dropped a jem on software that i'm using in the super lowfi iphone pic...)
...a bit hard to see in the pic, but I"m actually running ProTools 8 as I was talking about in my previous post. Most all studios (at least in ATL right now) aren't on 8, but i've gotten used to it, and have all my plugins are presets save on my home computer....so what I did was actually CLONE my internal hard drive from my rig, and carry that cloned drive to studios and boot off that. So in essenece, i'm only using their work rig for processing....all the software (OSX 10.5.6, ProTools 8, ALL MY PLUGINS, Logic, my personal itunes, etc...) is all off on my boot drive. So that's pretty cool...and handy.
Here's another in action:
this one you can also see something new i'm trying out...I'm having all the artists we work with sign my gear rack...only a few on there now...when it gets respectable I'll hit a proper pic then....
Alright team....that's about it for now...but I'll holler back with more soon......let's goooooooooo!
Aight...another lenient post about engineering...but I was hanging out with engineers all night!! My homie J got back in town, so tonight we had to kick it up at 6 feet under and get our scrimps on. After that is the obligatory return to patchwerk to hang out and watch a game of madden between Leslie and Snotty pop off....the proceedings:
yeah...sorry J, ya boy isn't rocking the Nikon D90 mark II beta lense phase omotoper camera....straight iphone status. Which adds the hot mysterious effect, no extra charge. Shit was proper. Well....that's about it, but more to follow. Actual work post tomorrow. Ya boy is back on the blog tip J! Only took 6 months! But we're back Mortamer, we're back!
(am I more like randolph in this pic?)
aight....so this is REALLY a studio based topic, but it's important to be able to let your mind relax after hours of hard work in the studio (or at least that's the bullshit reason i'm using to post this on the blog)....
And when doing so, you know it's all about iphone apps/games. Here's my personal favorite:
Tap defense.....what can you say other than this game is completely ill. Like, utterly and insanely awesome. You build towers and smite demons from getting into heaven. SMITE DEMONS SON. After a good round, I feel like silent Bob in Dogma...."holy shit, Silent Bob is an instrument of god?!?"
Not to be left out, is my homie's favorite game...
Crazy Penguin. I'm not gonna front...I don't have this one....so I can't comment too much, but I did see Jay rocking it one day and it looked pretty fresh....shout outs to the polar bear on the far right in the helmet making a face like he just dropped a hot one.
Well...I'm curious to see what everyone else does to pass time in the studio before cranking out the next hit. Let ya boy know! Hollertreezy.
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