In The Mix

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Music University

Hey guys, just getting back in from the Music University seminar were Miles Leslie and myself spoke on engineering and mixing. It was really cool coming back for a second time to speak, the first time as a intern, and now as an established freelance engineer. Miles and Les were great sports, they were up from the previous night working, and just stayed thru this morning to speak. I know they had to be tired, but they still answered the questions and put on a show lol. Some of the other panelists were producers and executives so it was cool seeing all those guys in the same building chopping it up. Got a couple of offers to track and mix some stuff so it was pretty productive.

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Las Vegas Sun Article

I almost forgot that while i was in Vegas recording, they did a story on The Studio At The Palms in which we were recording, well actually just listening that day, to some of the tracks we had recorded the past 2 weeks. I strolled into the other studio to mess around and the photographer actually sneaked some dope pics of me. I actually play, have since high school. Pretty cool story on easily my favorite studio outside of Georgia. Check it out here:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/feb/04/casinos-cradle-sound/

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Silent Camp Out

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!!

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PWR 9K

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!!!

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Why ya boy has such garbage bag pics.....

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!!!

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SSS Upgrades...

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...

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Mobile Mixing

I wanted to do a post outside of the studio but while i was stil working. Nowadays I spend alot of time doing stuf outside of private studios and comercial places that I frequent. Me and Miles both have rigs set up at our respective cribs and I like to have another option to do smaller things like edits and maybe even some mixing with smaller sessions. I have an mbox pro that i recently retrieved from a producer friend after letting him borrow it until he got his hands on a decent interface for his logic setup. Its nice being able to do smaller projects while im on the go. I pend alot of time away from my house unless Im tracking there or mixing a larger session. I had some mixes I needed to finish for The homie Don Cannon, just mixing some beats he had done in the recent weeks. I have PT version 7.1 running on an older macbook pro with tons of cracks on it. Shoutout to Miles it was his old mobile joint and Ive had for a while now. I pretty much use it to edit and do lil roughs here and there. Its actually pretty dope as you can see from the pics I got a lil mix going on this bad boy and its quick. It has alot of plugins I like to use and for the most part I do it all in headphones until I get it where I think its close then I bounce all the tracks down and burn them onto CD to listen to in the whip. Pretty easy days work I might add.

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Track Record....well, sort of

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

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Lock it up..

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.

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Back to Paramount...

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.

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Henson

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...

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you dont' see this every day...

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!

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Paramounting...

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

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Mobile pics from paramount!

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Randomness.And Pics to boot.

So i spent most of my day sleeping and chilling till it got close to game time. Went to a party with Ryan Good and My Arie. Had a blast, JoJo knows how to throw a party, felt like half of Atlanta was there. We slid out during halftime to watch the rest of the game at PWR with the crew. I find it important to balance work and just being around your peeps and enjoying the downtime. I usually take my sundays off to be with my friends and see whats going on and whatnot. Funny how i always end up at a studio some way some how lol.

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Day 3 At Triangle Sound

Our last days pics from another night working with Justin and AJ. Had a great time working with him, and cant wait to see whats next for him. I got the habg of this whole slide show thingee now, ya boys making progress now lol.

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At Redzone With AJ

So another night of work, back at it with AJ now that hitland is once again consumed by water, were up at Triangle studios working on another project. We are gonna be here for the next 3 days working on demo's and maybe cutting with said artist on Sat. Here's some pics of the nights work. Enjoy.

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Doppleezy

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.....

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