Ive struggled with working on headphones for years, they always felt so unnatural to me and nothing I ever did on them would translate. I’ve been in a lot of situations where i’ve had to track on headphones because the band was in the same room as me or we ran out of space at whatever studio I was working in. Sometimes id just have the vocalist come in the control room with me and sing live with the band for them to have as a reference track. Every time I would try to mix solely on headphones id struggle with translation and would just go back to the speakers. Id still check on headphones to make sure my mixes sounded good on them but that was about it. I’ve tried a ton of different kinds of headphones and even got used to a few pairs of them and grew to like them, but none of them can even come close to the Audeze line of headphones. I got turned onto them at an AES show a few years ago but since I hated working on headphones I could never justify investing any more than a few hundred dollars into them. When I moved out here to Portland I decided id give headphones another chance, I was bouncing around to a few different studios and I decided I should finally have a pair of headphones that I totally trusted since id be unfamiliar with every new room I was working in. I reached out to a few friends that I knew were using Audeze headphones and got some advice. I decided to go with the LCD-X headphones after doing a ton of research and not quite knowing what to expect.

When they got here in the mail I was in the middle of tracking an album so I decided to bring them to the studio with me to try them out. The evening before I listened to a few records I knew very well on them to see what they sounded like. I was pretty stunned, I was bouncing back and forth between them and my beloved Neumann KH120 speakers and I was surprised at how similar they sounded. These were the first headphones that sounded like speakers to me. There was no hyped midrange, top, or bottom end like I was used to with most headphones. I actually found that they had a ton of low end but it was extremely accurate low end. The LCD-X headphones are open back but not like any open-back headphones I’ve ever heard, most of them sound thin to me and I could hear a ton of background noise. It’s almost like there’s some noise cancelation going on during playback but when I stop the music they feel open, natural, and comfortable. I tried to work on some mixes with them early on and was always surprised when id listen back on my speakers and love what I had done. I do have to admit them being open back doesn’t always work to my advantage. I cant use them at the airport or in a crowded space because you can actually hear the music quite clearly from the outside even at a low level, and I can hear just enough of the background noise to make it distracting. They are also massive and heavy so these aren’t exactly the kind of things you wanna take on a walk or run. They sound best with a great headphone amp. Ive been using the amp in my Kush main gain, I’ve also used the SPL monitor with them quite a bit. These things have completely changed the way I mix, I can get mixes started on these while I’m traveling and make decisions that I trust. Now that I know them pretty well I’ve also done a ton of mixes entirely on them. These headphones cost a fraction of what a good set of speakers with a sub cost, and they fall right in the middle of the Audeze price point. I can’t recommend them highly enough!

In early 2020 with the emergence of the coronavirus, all of our lives were thrown for a loop. I had month’s worth of recording sessions canceled on me almost overnight. I remember leaving my phone in another room and going back to it every few hours to find texts and emails postponing or canceling all the work that I had lined up for the next several months. At first, I started to panic. I took an inventory of all my gear and I was fully prepared to start taking photos to try and sell it all off to pay my bills. A few weeks into the shutdown more and more people started to make music at their homes. With no work and with stimulus and unemployment checks starting to roll out musicians started to be very productive and I got asked to do more and more to do remote mixing and mastering work.

This turned out to be a blessing and was also the spark for my move out here to Portland. I realized I no longer needed to be tied down in one place anymore as long as I could comfortably produce work that was of the same quality as I could at my studio. At the start of the pandemic, it was unclear if I would be able to get into the building that my studio was in so I took a few pieces of gear home with me so I would be able to have a workspace in my apartment. I was able to get to a place where I could mix at home and only go into the studio one or two days a week to check my work on my speakers before sending things off. Now that Im living out here in Portland I still travel every few months to do some recording elsewhere. Just because im not in my studio doesn’t mean all my work has to come to a standstill until I get back.

I put together a solid and reliable mobile rig that works very well for me. I got a pelican 1510 case that fits everything I need in it, the case is small enough for me to bring on flights as a carry on but im still able to get everything I need in it. In my case are my Audeze LCD X headphones which are the best headphones I’ve ever worked on. I’ve had a pretty hard time over the years being able to reliably mix on headphones but these Audeze headphones are amazing, they translate really well and I rely heavily on them whether I’m traveling or not. Next, I have my SSL 2 interface, it’s a small 2x2 bus-powered interface that sounds great. It’s super affordable and suits my travel needs perfectly. At my home mix room in Portland and my overdub studio at 37ft in Boston, I have Universal Audio interfaces but I also have a UAD DSP accelerator that I bring with me when I travel. This allows me to run my beloved UAD plugins no matter where I am and also takes the load off my 2015 MacBook pro that still works great when I’m on the road. Every once in a while ill also bring my IK Multimedia iLoud Micro Monitors These speakers are amazing and I’m seeing them more and more at studios as a second or third set of speakers. I’ve got them set up in my mix room and for the price you really cant beat how good they sound.

I love that technology has afforded us the ability to be able to still be productive while traveling. The power that these inexpensive tools has is unbelievable and i’m still in awe that I can put together a mobile setup for under $5000 that would have rivaled any $250,000+ studio just 15 or 20 years ago.

Before getting into the studio with an artist or a band I try to be as prepared as possible. This usually starts with a phone call or a video call to go over all the details of our sessions together. I tend to record a lot of artists that travel here to Portland from out of town to record, I also regularly travel to Boston, New York, and Los Angeles to work. Because of the travel I usually have to work in pretty strict timeframes when it comes to studio time. This is one of the many reasons pre-production is so important to me.

Having a good grasp on the arrangements and ideas for the songs we’re going to be working on ensures that I’ll be able to have everything ready to go to make the process of recording as smooth and easy as possible. With so many artists having access to their own home studios I can have them make demos that are great representations of the songs. At the bare minimum, I can have them make a simple phone recording that works just as well.

I recently recorded a song here in Portland at Jackpot! with an artist I had never met or worked with before, he flew in just for the session, and we had a limited amount of days together in the studio. We started talking and sending emails a few weeks prior to his arrival. He sent me a great demo of the song we were going to be working on, as well as a few references tracks to inspire ideas. We talked on the phone a few times and eventually met up for a drink the day before our session to get to know each other a bit before hitting the studio. By the time the first day rolled around, I had the pro tools session prepped with the bpm, tracks, and markers made for the arrangement. I set up the studio with mics on everything I knew we would be recording so that we could bounce around to different instruments and parts quickly. I had a whole template made for myself to make sure would be able to work as fast and efficiently as possible. We had a great weekend and were able to work fast to make sure we captured all of the ideas and parts we talked about during our pre-production meetings. On the last day of recording, we finished with some extra time, we were both super happy with how the song turned out! We used this extra time we had to make a killer rough mix on the console which will definitely be a great starting point for the final mix.

The speed that we were able to work at and the fact that we were on the same page throughout the entirety of the sessions would not have been possible had we not been prepared through pre-production. We didn’t have to spend extra time deciding what guitar amp to use, which keyboard sounds we were looking for, or what kind of vibe we were going for. All of that had been decided beforehand. All of that being said the doors were very much still open to spontaneity and we were had plenty of time and space to explore new ideas. We weren’t sure If we were going to be recording bass but I still had everything patched and ready to go to record bass just in case it came up. I walked into the live room at one point to get ready for the next guitar part we were set to record and I came back into the control room to find the artist had come up with a bass part on his guitar and wanted to get it down quickly before he forgot it. Since I was all ready to go we were able to dial up a sound fast and get it down immediately.

I feel very lucky to have learned early on from a great mentor that pre-production is crucial to a great recording. It also shows the artist that you’re working with that you care deeply about the songs you’ll be working on together. Putting in the extra time and effort goes a long way. I feel that pre-production is such an important part of the process and makes for a much better product that me and the artist will be super proud of in the end. Released music is (hopefully) forever so I feel it’s incredibly important to always put my absolute best into everything I work on.

In modern times with recording technology and equipment being so accessible, there are so many ways to learn the art of recording. We can learn in school, from a mentor during an internship, on the internet, or by ourselves through trial and error. Most of the time the focus of these “lessons” is technical and involves gear. I feel very lucky to have had a technical education at an audio school, but also simultaneously had internships with amazing producers who were true artists with sound. My mentors very rarely talked about gear or the equipment they used in the early days when trying to explain something to me. They always talked about a feeling or vibe they were trying to capture with the technique they were using. It was only later on after I started to understand how sessions were run, and had a good grasp on studio etiquette that gear would enter our conversations. It makes sense why so many traditional paths of learning recording only focus on the gear, it’s because the art form of recording is really so esoteric. It’s also why engineers wore lab coats in the early early days of recording, it was looked at as a science and the musicians were the artists. People don’t often think of engineers as artists but we absolutely are, were helping paint an auditory landscape with sound and done well it translates through speakers to evoke emotion. The musicians and artists we work with are absolutely vital for us to be able to perform our craft, and we have to work together in perfect harmony to succeed. The gear needs to be absolutely invisible to the artist in the room while they’re performing, I think it even needs to be invisible while they’re in the control room listening back. It should be as if they’re sitting in an empty room completely immersed in listening back to what they’ve just recorded.

In March of 2020 just as Covid was starting to wreak havoc on the world all of my work turned remote, and I was unable to go into my studio for weeks. I had quite a bit of mixing to do and was feeling pretty uncomfortable about having to do it entirely in the box without some of my key pieces of gear. Searching for inspiration I somehow stumbled on a new plugin company called Baby Audio they had a deal to get all their plugins for $120. All of their plugins are one of a kind, they all felt like new innovations the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. It really feels like they take the approach of creating new tools instead of just recreating “clones” of classic gear. At the time I got the bundle I had just started mixing an EP for the amazing artist Laura, Laura! and the new plugins that I had just got made it on every single song on the EP. I feel they had a huge impact on my creativity in the mixing process. Recently they released a plugin called Taip which they’ve coined as an AI powered tape plugin. I love using tape emulators on my mixes, I tend to use them to saturate and compress groups as opposed to individual elements. With Taip I’ve found it’s extremely useful on individual elements in place of a compressor or eq. I love using the glue feature and drive features to compress and control dynamics and the presence and the high/low shape knobs to eq. It’s really nice to see a tape emulation plugin that doesn’t use the words bias or ips. Most people that are going to be using these plugins have never worked on tape and have no idea what these things mean, Baby Audio has done away with those terms and labeled things simply as they are.

This is my first summer here in Portland and It’s also one of the busiest I’ve ever had. I’m having a blast exploring this part of the country and I’m really enjoying my first summer outside of New England. I’ve had the opportunity to work on some amazing music since I’ve been out here.

In early June the great Brooklyn-based band, Pons came out here to make an album with me. The record is awesome, It’s a concept record where every song flows into the next which was definitely a challenge in itself to wrap my head around. We spent four days at the legendary Jackpot! recording studio here in Portland. We did basics and also started to dig into overdubs there. Jackpot! Is by far one of the easiest studios I’ve ever worked at, owner Larry Crane has a wealth of experience making records and he’s outfitted his studio with absolutely everything you’d ever need and more to make an awesome record there. After we wrapped up at Jackpot! We went over to another awesome studio here in Portland called The Hallowed Halls. We spent the next couple of days making our way through the rest of the guitars, vocals, and keyboards. Hallowed Halls was super fun to work at and the super cool relaxed vibe of the studio definitely translated to the sound of the record.

I took a few days off after wrapping up tracking the Pons record before I went back to Jackpot! to start an EP with Boys Cruise. Conveniently Pons and Boys Cruise share two members and since they were already out here they decided to spend an extra week recording. The Boys Cruise EP is awesome. We made a full-length late last year but this EP is a totally different vibe. We really wanted this EP to feel live, like everyone was playing in the same room (which they were). After we wrapped up at Jackpot! we once again went over to The Hallowed Halls to wrap up the rest of the overdubs. As of today, I’m chipping away at mixing both of these awesome projects.

While I was in the middle of recording the Pons record I was asked to be a house engineer at Jackpot! To say it was an honor would be an understatement. I’ve been an avid reader of Tape Op magazine since I was a teenager, and have always found massive Inspiration from reading it. To be able to work at the studio that Larry created is an amazing and inspiring experience.

After I wrapped up with Pons and Boys Cruise I took a trip back to Boston to make a record at my “alma mater” 37ft Productions with Boston-based band Rootiger. my studio partner Sean has made some amazing changes to 37ft, some of which include new floors in the live room, and a raised ceiling. It felt awesome to be back recording there after freelancing at so many other amazing studios out here in Portland.

After I got back to Portland I finished up revisions on a couple of long-term mixing projects I had been working on during my early days here. Some of those artists include Patrick Greeley, James Burke, Muggs Fogarty, and Maria Earabino aka Laura, Laura! All of these projects are set to be released in the coming months and I think it’s some of my best mixing work to date.

In early July my new friend James Davis made the trip out here to get started on his new album. I mixed an awesome EP for James in the spring, and I was super excited when he asked me to make a full length with him. We went over to Halfling Studio here in Portland to do the basics. I was introduced to the folks at Halfling through my amazing friend Jeff Lipton of Peerless Mastering in Boston. A few months after getting here I had an awesome session at Halfling helping Portland legends Sleater Kinney record their performances for the Colbert Show and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. I was super excited to be back working at Halfling after a few months away. I employed the awesome drummer Paul Pulvirenti to play on the basics for James. I met Paul at Jackpot! A few months prior when I was working on a single for Portland-based band Silvertongue. Paul was so awesome and easy to work with that I wanted him to be a part of the project with James, It also didn’t hurt that Paul played with the late Eliott Smith and James finds a lot of inspiration from Eliotts music. After doing basics we once again went over to The Hallowed Halls for overdubs. James ended up staying out here for an extra few days after we finished up recording to play a show with my pals in Silvertongue. One day we had some downtime so we went over to an arboretum near my house to record a song outside. This is where the Arboretum Sessions were born.

That’s it so far! I’m sure I missed a bunch but It’s been super busy and I haven’t had much time to sit down and collect my thoughts. I’ve been hunkered down most of the month mixing and I figured now would be a good time to get this all down. I’m super excited to see what the next six months here in Portland will hold!

On February 22nd, I moved from my hometown of Boston Massachusetts to Portland Oregon.  The move had been in the works for well over six months and we had been talking about moving away from Boston for years.  I love Boston and it was an amazing place to grow up, go to college and start my career but I felt stuck being in the same place for so long.  I had been visiting friends in Portland every chance I got and I fell in love with the city.  It has amazing music and art scenes and the people are unbelievably nice and welcoming.  In March of 2020 when we went into lockdown I had months of recording sessions cancel on me almost overnight.  I panicked, I have a lot of overhead renting an apartment and a studio space and I had no idea how to make money.  Live sound had always been a saving grace for me in the past before I was able to go full time with studio work but without concerts, I had no idea what else to do.  After a few weeks, the remote work started coming in and I realized how much of my work was and could be remote.  I worked steadily throughout the summer into the fall mostly remotely and I loved it.  After a while, I started to realize I would still be able to work and do what I love every day in a different city.  I have been working out of 37ft Productions for the better part of 7 years, and I have been a partner there since 2016.  I love that studio, it was the best place for me to learn and hone my craft but I did want to see what lay beyond those walls.   I started to look into what It would be like to rent a house in Portland and build out a mix/mastering room there.  

Moving across the country isn’t cheap or easy but I was surprised at how well it worked out.  I had been toying with the idea of driving out in a rental truck or an RV with a trailer to take my gear and apartment with me.  After years of touring in bands, I realized I did not want to be on the road again.  It was fun when I got to play a show every night with my best friends but I didn’t want to do it without playing.  I decided to use a sound company called Sound Moves to get my gear out there.  They were amazing, I shipped two large flight cases packed to the brim with gear speakers and cables out.  They arrived fast and completely undamaged. I can’t recommend them enough, if you ever need to ship instruments or gear anywhere for sessions or concerts definitely get in touch with them.  

Setting up my room here in portland was a crazy learning experience.  I had been working primarily out of the same room for almost 7 years.  I know my room in Boston like the back of my hand, I know exactly how it sounds, and I’ve learned to work with its anomalies over the years.  The first thing I did here was set up my speakers without any treatment in the room and listen to some music.  I immediately knew that I was going to have some problems primarily in the bottom end.  I had ordered some cheap panels on the internet that arrived just a few days after I did.  I was in the middle of a ton of projects throughout the move and I didn’t want to have too much downtime before I could start working again.  I put up a few corner traps and some panels on the side walls to try and grab some early reflections.  They worked out alright but they didn’t help too much with the bottom end.  I was losing a lot between 50hz and 100hz, some pretty important stuff.  There is a large window that takes up almost the entire right side of my room so hanging more panels wasn’t going to work.  I decided that id need to build some stands to put panels on so I could have them on the right wall in front of the window.  I built the stands out of 2 by 4s and I used some wall hangers I had leftover from the panels I ordered online.  I ordered some Owens Corning 703 from ATS Acoustics at a really reasonable price.  I was able to get 6 24”x 48” panels for $75, a fraction of what I paid for the premade ones.  I was able to cover the panels in fabric using an adhesive spray.  When I build more ill definitely be building frames for them but these are working out great for now.  

After I had my new panels up I was still having some problems with my low end so I decided it was finally time to get the matching sub for my speakers.  I have a great sub in Boston that pairs with my Dynaudio BM15a’s. My Neumann KH120as are my primary speakers here and even though they put out a lot of low end I needed some more to be able to accurately know what was going on.  Neumann just released a sub called the KH750 with DSP built into it.  You’re able to use the DSP in the sub on your main speakers as well and since it also acts as a crossover It was a no-brainer for me to order one of these.  Within minutes of setting it up, I knew it was going to be a lot easier to work in here. I did some listening and was super happy with how it sounded.  I shot the room using Neumanns MA1 measurement mic and I was amazed how much the sub helped with the cancellations I was having.  Neumann has software that pairs with the DSP in the speakers via ethernet.  It allows you to change up the “recommended” curve quite a bit.  I had never used DSP for room correction in my own setup. I tried Sonorworks but really didn’t like what it was doing.  I’ve always been a believer in treating the room before resorting to eq and I feel like I did that to the best of my ability.  I’m in a rental so there’s only so far I’m able to go with properly treating a room.  My next studio will definitely be in a place that I own so ill be able to approach it differently.  This room is going to continue to evolve, change and improve for quite a bit but I’ve been super happy with the mixes and masters I’ve been doing in here when I take them out. 

The Portland audio community has been incredibly warm and welcoming to me since I got here.  I reached out to Larry Crane at Jackpot! Recording and Justin Phelps at The Hallowed Halls and both welcomed me to the city with open arms and are allowing me to freelance out of their studios.  I’ve already booked a bunch of time at both for records ill be producing in June.  The city has an amazing music community and I’m so excited to be able to go out and see bands as soon as the pandemic is over.

I learned an immense amount throughout this whole process and I’m continuing to learn more every day.  I was initially very nervous to start working out of a new room that I didn’t know but I’m happier than ever with the work I’ve been doing in my new room.  I feel freshly inspired living in an amazing new city.  I had been delaying leaving Boston for years out of fear.  I’m also extremely lucky to have such a great studio partner that’s allowing me to retain my partnership in the business, ill be traveling back to Boston once a month to work on projects there for the foreseeable future. 

I’m always looking out for cool, new, and inspiring gear. I spend so much time twisting knobs and pressing buttons trying to hit that sweet spot. I want the gear that I use to be just as inspiring to me as the music that I’m working on. The Louder Than Liftoff Chroma is one of the most inspiring pieces of gear I’ve ever used. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked in some really amazing studios with some of the best gear money can buy. There’s something to be said for a piece of equipment that makes whatever you’re recording sound amazing from the moment you pull up the fader. Louder Than Liftoff came on my radar a few years ago when I was working on a studio build just outside of Boston. The owner of the studio had 10 of these interesting looking EQs called the Chop Shop. I was immediately intrigued. I go for pairs of things so I can see why he would have a pair or two of these EQs but not 10. After trying them out I totally understood, Louder Than Liftoff is making gear that is completely new and has its own identity. I’m pretty tired of reissues and remakes of classic gear that kind of sounds like that one holy grail compressor or preamp. I understand that these are tried and true ideas but the kind of sounds were capturing today aren’t the same as what they were recording 50 years ago. I want something new that takes this into consideration. I initially was interested in the Chroma because I needed a few more high-quality preamps. I had recently sold some gear and I was looking at a ton of different options for mic pres. I ended up going with the Chroma because it isn’t just a preamp. There’s a fet DI right on the faceplate, a high and low shelf on each channel, a color button that introduces an amazing interchangeable module into the signal path, a retro button. and an option to feed one channel into the other. There’s also phantom power, a polarity switch, and a high gain mode which I really appreciate since I’m a huge fan of low output ribbon mics. This thing sounds amazing on everything but really seems to shine on acoustic instruments. I love the high and low shelf and I really enjoy adding a little bit of the color. The color modules can be interchanged with any of the modules that Louder Than Liftoff makes, I chose the pentode module to start with which is a tube emulation. After trying it out during a few sessions I decided to try running a mix I was working on through it. I quickly realized that this thing was going to be on every mix I do going forward. I started a new mix with the high and lof shelf engaged and the color module on with the mix around 50% and the gain around 50%. I tend to tweak how much of the color module I use on a song by song basis but both of the shelves are a must for me. I find myself doing much less additive EQ on individual tracks, and I tend to get to a finished mix much faster. Recalls are super easy since the knobs are all detented. I’ve since become the owner of quite a few other Louder Than Liftoff products, I’m so happy I discovered this box. It totally changes the impact my mixes have and I love mixing into it.

Universal Audio has been working on LUNA for over a year. The illustrious company known for their unparalleled analog hardware, UAD line of interfaces and plugins unveiled that the mysterious LUNA was the companies first DAW at NAAM 2020. I had seen advertisements on the internet and in Tape op magazine for months before I knew what it was. To be completely honest I thought they were going to be unveiling some kind of new digitally controlled tape machine but I was wrong. Universal Audio boasts LUNA’s deep Apollo interface integration with zero latency while using the UA plugins during recording. In a world of DAWs this is very important. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I started messing around with a plugin after an artist did a take only to be greeted with horrible latency when they wanted to punch in a word or two. LUNA’s interface bears some resemblance to other DAWs but to me feels a bit more inspiring like Ableton. I really like that some of the shortcuts that I am used to using in Pro Tools also translate to LUNA. In the same vain similar editing concepts also exist. After downloading LUNA I imported some tracks from a session I knew very well. This was a song from a record I had recorded and mixed in the fall that had just been released. I wanted to test out the mixing workflow. I started without watching any of the tutorial videos that are easily accessible right in LUNA. I was able to work for quite some time without getting stuck not knowing how to do something. I had a lot of fun working in LUNA, I don’t think it’ll replace Pro Tools for me but I can see myself using it for pre production, or a situation where Im doing a mobile recording with just my Apollo. Let me know your experiences and thoughts about LUNA!

A few days after Thanksgiving this year I went on a trip to record my third record with one of my favorite bands Daisybones. When we started talking about making this record we discussed doing it outside of my current studio.  We made both of their previous releases there and were all extremely satisfied with the results. We all wanted this album to be different from their others, and we wanted to get away from our lives to work for a week straight. We ended up booking some more sessions about a month later to finish up overdubs, but the majority of the album was made during our weeklong recording retreat.  

We packed up our gear and went to a beautiful residential studio located on a horse farm in Middleborough Massachusetts.  Making a large mobile rig, and moving a portion of my gear to set up in a room I had only worked in a handful of times was a daunting experience. Thankfully it yielded some amazing results.  Working in a place I wasn’t comfortable in caused me to push myself, I know exactly how to dial in sounds at my studio. I’ve been working in that room for years and am extremely comfortable there.  I really enjoyed taking my self out of my comfort zone, it was exactly what I needed to do to make this record. We lived in the studio for 7 days, sleeping on air mattresses carefully set up in the control room, live room and lounge.  We would wake up in the morning and dodge mics and gear to make it upstairs for coffee. We ate, slept (barely), and breathed this album. We didn’t go home at night to our cozy homes and significant others, we didn’t sit in traffic on our way to the studio, we didn’t look at the clock at 8 pm and say “it’s getting late we better wrap up”.  We worked around the clock recording idea after idea, most days we would record for 15 hours. A snowstorm caused us to be locked away in the studio for 3 days straight, cabin fever started to set in. We quickly realized this and ventured into the small town closest to the studio for a hot meal. We then started making daily trips out of the studio for a small adventure each day.  The trips into town were an amazing and refreshing break, and a chance to take stock of what we’d been doing. 

Having no outside distractions while making an album is an amazing thing. I truly believe that because of the way we made this album it makes it that much more special. We isolated ourselves from the outside world and cultivated memories and inside jokes that will last us a lifetime.  I’ve made a few other albums this way and even brought another band to the horse farm a few weeks after my week with Daisybones.  

I love making records and exploring new ways to make them.

Often times as artists and creators we run into that terrible wall known as writers block. It happens to all of us and can be extremely disheartening and debilitating. When i’m having a hard time working on getting a song finished or struggling with new ideas, I take a step back and create something different. My newest source of inspiration has been visual art. I’ll come home from the studio after a long day of recording, mixing or making music and sit down and create. Our creativity wells are just like muscles, the more we exercise them the stronger they’ll be. I’ve found that creating something every single day is the best way for me to stay inspired and keep my ideas fresh. Being in a constant state of creation also induces creativity. Id rather come home after a hard day and flex my creative muscle than mope around and get down about myself. Shoot me an email and let me know how you flex your creative muscles.

2018 was a crazy whirlwind of a year for me at the studio. Im very thankful for all the artists that came to record with me, sent me music to mix or allowed me to contribute to their music in some way. I feel like i’ve grown immensely and learned so much. Im looking forward to all the new opportunities 2019 will hold.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year!

Over the past few years i've been constantly adding to, perfecting and changing my mix template.  I remember when I used to work on a console I didn't have a template, I just put if the faders, started patching gear and ran with it.  There were things that I would do every mix, and pieces of gear Id always use but it was never as simple or detailed as my mix template.  Every song, every album and every artist all come with their own challenges and they all need different elements of my template.  After every project I tent to update my template, it grows as I grow.  My template has audio tracks and aux tracks. The tracks all have plugins I know ill want once I start mixing, the tracks are also routed to the various busses they need to go to.  I keep all the plugins and busses inactive or deactivated so that when I start theres no processing going on and I can quickly turn on a bus or plugin to do what I want.  It may not seem like it at first but having all the routing and plugin assignments done before I even hit play is a HUGE timesaver for me.  I update my template vigorously so its always stocked with my new favorite plugins.  Another huge timesaver for me has been making my own presets in plugins.  For example I have a preset in one of my favorite eqs the Fabfilter Pro Q2 called ZB E Gtr, This preset has a high pass filter starting at 120HZ, a cut at 400HZ and a boost at 4K.  I cant just pull up my preset and say the guitar is done, but its quick way for me to start working on the guitars in the track. 

With shrinking budgets and demanding clients I need to be able to work very quickly and thats exactly what my template has allowed me to do.  For anybody thats interested in taking a look at my template id be happy to share it with you, click the contact page on my website and send me a message!  

I recently purchased a new pair of speakers to use at home and on the go.  At my studio I have  pair of Dynaudio Bm15As and a pair of Neumann Kh120s, I love both of these sets of speakers! Sharing my current studio space with another engineer has its challenges.  At the studio we each have our own control rooms with a shared live room, this means every once in a while one of us has to take a forced day off so the other can track in the main live room.  I honestly kind of enjoy having to take some time off away from the studio. This is also great opportunity to do editing or tuning at home on my laptop.  I don't know about other engineers but I struggle working on headphones sometimes which is why I was really excited to learn about the I Louds.  Upon first listen I was blown away by how much low end and energy these little things were able to put out,  listening at quiet levels they still pack a punch.  The speakers come in a super convenient bag that can fit in a backpack or suitcase easily.  Not only are these things super small and easy to move around they're really fun to listen to, I find myself dragging them into my kitchen all the time to listen to while cooking or cleaning.  Just for fun I brought them to the studio to put up against my mains and near fields and I was not disappointed.  Retailing for $299.99 you cant go wrong! The speakers have a stereo RCA input as well as an 1/8" input, and you can connect via bluetooth which is perfect for checking mixes i've emailed to myself on my phone.  I can see myself bringing these with me when I travel and work out of other studios so that i have a consistent set of speakers while freelancing. Check these out!

Welcome to my new website!  I recently transitioned to a new host and I couldn't be happier.  Navigating social media and self promotion has always been a daunting task to me, but i'm excited to turn over a new leaf and start fresh with a new website.  Ill be filling this blog with recording and mixing tips, gear reviews and project updates. Stay Tuned!