studio time again

i once attended the annual AES convention in LA about 7 years ago and went to a panel discussion with some great engineers and producers. the biggest thing i remember from that discussion was Jack Joseph Puig talking about always trying new things and never slipping into a mindset where you're running on auto-pilot. you should never just be following a formula. so every new project that i start i'm always trying something different. every time i record drums i try a new mic or a new position. i've really started getting the hang of getting a good drum sound out of the B room at darkhorse studios in nashville, but i still continue to try different things.

last thursday i started a project with a singer/songwriter from North Carolina named Esther Faith. she has an amazing voice and writes surprisingly good songs considering her young age. a lot of the bands i work with are some sort of fast paced rock so we usually record every instrument separate so that we can edit and polish so that when we layer everything we come out with a shiny piece of sonic ear candy. but with esther we were going for a more chill, organic vibe. i've recorded a whole band before , but this project was the first time that i've done the whole deal and hired great musicians, worked up charts and done it right.

joey sanchez locked the beat down on drums. his feel was so good that there's no need to beat detective the drums to the grid. my buddy who plays with me for stephanie smith, nathan thomas, played bass and my good friend Adam Smith from the glorious unseen played piano and wurlitzer while Micah Tawlks handled acoustic guitar.

there's something about getting a bunch of good musicians together and capturing their first impressions that's kinda magical. and i don't mean magical in the douchy ipad sort of way. when you throw some charts at good musicians, you're trusting them to come up with something that has their stamp on it instead of you dictating piece by piece what every instrument should sound like. and although i definitely gave direction on where the song should go, it was really cool to have them all throw in ideas that i never would have thought of.

engineering and producing a band at the same time used to be a two man job, but the way the music business is now, i have to cover both. it's definitely a lot to handle but we somehow got through it with smiles on our faces. and what's great about it is that a majority of the project was completed in one day. we're now in the process of doing vocals and a few other overdubs. we've got a ton of time to focus on what suits the song best and how not to over-produce something that should sound natural and organic.

and that brings up another new aspect of this project - a different approach. you see, with a lot of the rock bands i work with, it's all about stacking guitars and adding tons of layers. i love it. i've done it so much now that it kinda comes easily. but when dealing with a project like esther where the goal is simplicity and feel, it's 10 times harder with about a tenth of the parts. i still have no problem coming up with parts to play. what's hard is finding one or two parts the really stand on their own instead of stacking 16 guitar tracks to build a wall of sound. quantity over quality.

and on another note, go check out a CD that i mixed a few months ago by a band called Act As If. we took a long time on the mixes and really got it right. i've really got to commend singer Peter Verdell for having the courage to not be another sucker in the loudness war. we decided the mixes should not have bus compression in the mix stage. we left them very dynamic even if they weren't as loud as whatever the latest and greatest major label record is. we then hired Troy Glessner to master it. troy has done a lot of work for everybody from tooth and nail hardcore bands to Death Cab For Cutie. troy did an amazing job of using a bit of light bus compression to warm up the mix, get the level up to an acceptable range without utterly smashing the final product. i love the fact that when i put the CD into my car i can listen at a pretty loud level and my ears do no feel fatigued. anyway, the CD is titled "There's A Light" and it's by Act As If and can be found on itunes or ordered from their myspace page.

busy busy busy

when it rains, it pours. nothing could be more true right now. lately i've had a lot of artists talking to me about producing them. i just spent a week traveling around to different cities starting pre-production with a few bands and i start a brand new project on tuesday - all of which i'm very excited about.

i've heard that a producer is only as good as his last project. whenever i finish a project i'm always evaluating and trying to figure out what i did right and wrong and i've learned a hard lesson a few years ago about putting your best foot forward in every project that you do. a few friends of mine had a side project for a libertarian punk band called Ill Patriot. i did the recording completely for free in my spare time because i liked the guys and thought it would be fun. looking back, i didn't put my usual 100% into the project because it's was just a favor for some friends on the side. well, those guys ended up being a bit of a buzz band and went on tour with underoath for a bit and were featured in AP. people liked the stuff, but i can still hear things that i could have done better and i'm forever kicking myself for it. ever since then i've decided that no matter how big or how small a project, everything gets my best. i mean, it seems simple enough, but it's so easy to only put as much effort as your enthusiasm warrants instead of committing to chronic excellence.

one person who is great at this is max hsu. he's the writer/producer/keyboard/DJ extraordinare in my wife's band Superchic[k]. you can check out his blog at http://homepage.mac.com/maxwax11/iblog/. everything max does is the peak of excellence. i'll bet that if he were to decide to pick up some random hobby like woodworking, he would build himself a ridiculous woodshop with the best tools and would personally fly to the amazon to harvest rare and endangered woods and smuggle them back in his suitcase. this guy decided to shoot his first music video for superchick about a year ago and what he turned out was on par with legitimate hollywood directors. check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U092ClcY8M

it took max about a year of research, harness trials, shooting, and post editing to come up with the final product, but what was left is amazing and last i heard he's being flooded with requests to do other bands' videos - all after his first try. recently he did the artwork and layout and decided to learn how use 3D modeling software and fully model the superchick robot just so that he could then convert it to a 2D image so that the perspectives would be correct.

so anyway, on the discipline note, i'll leave you with a quote from Somerset Maugham

"I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp."

everything sucks

remember the band Reel Big Fish?? their first record was so ridiculously awesome. that song "everything sucks" was a summer soundtrack song back in high school. wow. i'm dating myself now. anyway, i've had conversations with a bunch of friends in different cities around the country and i've noticed something. the past couple of month have really really sucked for EVERYBODY. seriously. me and trish had a few setbacks. family getting sick, finances, me losing the TFK gig. it's felt like one thing after another. but after about the 8th conversation with a friend who's going through a hard time, i've found it crazy that the past 4 - 6 months have seriously sucked for so many people for 10 million different reasons.

now i'm not trying to be mr. negative. on the contrary, this actually makes me feel better. i don't know if it's the fact that the economy is down and it has a domino effect on EVERYTHING or maybe it's just a huge coincidence. it just feels better to know i'm not the only one. i guess misery really does love company.

i'm just curious. i'm guessing that a lot of people who read this have had a not so good couple of months. if i'm right, maybe you can take solace in knowing that you're not alone.

now on the bright side, i've had an awesome week. i've started pre production with a few different bands. i've been on the road travelling to meet up with them and also spending a few days with tricia's parents on their farm. speaking of reel big fish, i could spend all day catching bass and blue gill at their pond. i also ran into a cottonmouth snake, also called a water moccasin. tricia's dad gave me a shotgun and i promptly blew it's head off. don't believe me? check out this picture.



scientists have figured out that sunlight is one of our primary sources of vitamin D which directly affects our moods, but i'd like to think that there's something magical and awesome about spring and putting on shorts and a t shirt and getting your first sunburn of the season. the pain almost feels good. my loving wife felt generous and started giving me a backrub and was definitely puzzled when i started yelling.

spring is here. the rest of the year is gonna be awesome. i'm excited about the bands and artists i'm working with. david molnar and i have decided to go to some waterfalls in tennessee this summer and to go cliff jumping a lot more often. if life sucks for you now, i'm guessing that if it's getting better for me, it will for you too.

p.s. everyone wish stephanie a happy birthday!

Oma

sometimes you realize that something you've always had is way cooler than you ever imagined. maybe a toy from your childhood is now vintage and worth something. maybe a movie from your childhood was really really good but the humor was over your head, but now you get it (see my post about ghostbusters). i've figured out in the last couple of years that my grandma is the same way.

Oma is the affectionate German name for grandma (as opposed to the formal Großmutter) and we always have called her that. As a small child i was puzzled by her thick accent and different ways of doing things. but recently i've completely got it figured out. two years ago i went to germany for a TFK show and i loved it. Oma arranged for me to be shown around Düsseldorf by some friends of hers and once i was over there, i started to understand a bit about how she works. while my family has always been fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, loud and boisterous, it seems that many german people have a knack for formality and manners. i know this seems obvious, but once i figured out that basic manners and 'hellos' and 'how are yous' really mean a lot to Oma, it's like a door was opened. we played germany again last december and it just so worked out that she needed to be in germany at the same time (even though she's in her 80's, she still goes back regularly).

what happened when we met up is hilarious. as she and her friends came to the concert hall to meet me, we had to go do a talkback interview in which we are interviewed on a small stage with a translator in front of a bunch of fans. i told her that i need to do the interview and that she could come watch. when i got to the room, i walked up and took my place on stage. Oma followed me on stage, took the mic out of trevor's hand and started speaking in german. it was hilarious. we were all kinda flabbergasted and the crowd loved it. she spoke for about 3 minutes and the crowd erupted into laughter a few times and i still don't know exactly what she was saying. i could tell she was proud of me.

now i've gotten my hands on a copy of the rosetta stone for german and i'm loving learning the language. in years past i would only see Oma at family functions but now i call her every couple of days and she's always ready with a german lesson. it's actually kind of cool. i've learned more about her in the last year than in my whole life. she's told crazy stories about how her family was bombed out of multiple houses during WWII and how when she was later sent to a boarding school in Austria as a young girl, she actually met Hitler when he came to visit the school. i can't even imagine going through all that.

so anyway, sometimes you never know what you've got until you start looking at what's right in front of you.

banksy

if you were to ask me who my favorite visual artist is right now, whether paint, sculpture or any form of visual art, i would readily say Banksy. for those of you who don't know who he is, he's a revolutionary street artist from england whose use of stencils has changed the face of modern graffiti. his pieces adorn run down buildings and billboards all over major cities around the world and they often make use of the surroundings in a way not imagined before. in order to avoid prosecution, he's extremely secretive about his identity. he's been known to go into an art gallery and place one of his works on the wall in a framed canvas. his paintings convey messages that have to do with hypocrisy and are frequently subversive to the surveillance state that is ever-present in england. the last time i was in new york i had heard that his art was popping up so imagine my surprise when i found this one:


click to enlarge

anyway, there's a documentary being made about him with behind the scenes footage of him creating his art. also, you should check out his website to see his many works of art at http://www.banksy.co.uk. what's kinda awesome is that if he were to reveal himself, he would surely be prosecuted, but many of his works are now being copied and sold for lots and lots of money. one store owner in england had a lengthy court battle when the city wanted to paint over the banksy mural that she had grown to love on the building that she owns.


anyway, the reason i'm excited is because a new trailer for the movie just came out. here it is:

Things I Learned This Week

1. don't expect worship band practice to get out early when you're planning to catch a concert right afterwards. it's like you're just taunting God to make practice go until midnight.

2. if you're playing in church in nashville and you happen to be playing with ridiculously awesome players (which i am definitely not a ridiculously awesome player), of course that's the night when they throw some crazy charts in front of you with plenty of flat 5ths and 7ths and a few chords that don't belong in the song and then proceed to ask you to play it in D flat all the while coming up with something interesting other than block chords. the other guys handle it with ease. for me, it's utter guitar FAIL.

3. dog vomit does not clean up very easily. don't ask.

4. the fact that netflix streaming service works on a Wii will give me a valid excuse to finally get one. side note - once i get a Wii, expect my blog posts to be fewer and my life to become about half as productive as it is now.

5. apparently health care is a right. sorry doctors and taxpayers. you owe it to people. it's their right. i like this game. can we make owning a Wii an inalienable right too?

6. humankind thrift shop in east nashville has got some good stuff. i finally got a chance to czech it out and get a couple shirts.

7. my little sister has no shortage of guys fawning over her at any given minute

8. being away from my wife sucks hard

9. Three months after the unveiling people are still coming up with fresh iPad jokes


****SPOILER ALERT****

10. Desmond is on the submarine with Whitman

****END SPOILER****

11. Nathan T. spends his days thinking of LOST theories while he's supposed to be working.

12. Modern Family is the best show on TV right now. well, i guess i didn't learn that this week. it was just reinforced.

13. Found out that if God tells you to do something, do it. i won't give out details, but about a month ago God laid it on my heart to do something and it totally came back to me ten fold.

14. Nashville in the spring is awesome

15. fish start biting around April 4th according to the old man fishing at centennial park

16. i was actually genuinely excited the other day when, after leaving my dogs at home for most of the day, that Milla had pooped on the hard wood floor right by the door instead of on the carpet.

17. Lady GaGa used to go by the name Radio GaGa but changed it when she left her boyfriend/producer to do her own thing and is now being sued for $30 million

18. Mercy Me is succeeding where Pearl Jam failed in combating ticketmaster with their $10 ticket shows selling out all over the place. well done.

19. Apple did NOT buy EMI. just an april fools joke. i was heartbroken.

20. this blog is getting to be too long. see ya.