doggies

So the big news at our house this week has been the addition of our second dog. She's a nine month old boston terrier that we got from the boston terrier rescue in nashville. her name was jackie. and i say WAS because we had to change it. jackie is my mom's name so i didn't think that would go over well. haha.

so after much thought and wise counsel, we chose Milla Jovavich Leelu Dallas Multipass Baumhardt. Or just Milla for short. that's pronounced MEE - luh for those of you who haven't seen the fifth element. the runner ups were as follows: Zoey, Liza, Lola, Angel, Foxy, Meghan Fox, Scarlet Johanson, Kelly Kapowski and a multitude of other celebrity hotties which my wife promptly vetoed.

dogs are awesome. just in case you didn't know that. or maybe we just got lucky and got two really good ones. here they are running around in our backyard.

Alcina....gesundheit

I just got home from two long days at the studio recording drums for the new Alcina (al - CHEE - nuh) record. Go check them out at www.myspace.com/alcinatn

On the left is RJ going at it like a champ. The kit was a very nice DW set that was borrowed last minute from a friend and the snare was a yamaha brass snare on loan from our drum tech Ivan Garcia. That other snare sitting on the ground came in close second - it's borrowed from my buddy Clay. it's a Truth brass snare, 8" x 14". I've worked in this room at Darkhorse Recording a number of times now and i'm pretty excited because i think that these are the best drums sounds i've gotten out of this room. for those of you who have recorded with me, i'm sorry. i try to get better every time and every once in a while i actually succeed.


Here's a shot of the Trident series 80 desk.



Wes shredding



Here's a tasty stack of vintech x81 channel strips. I'm hoping to get one of these in the next couple of months. I used every one that they had today. Kick, snare, overheads.



Here's another shot of the setup. Lately i've been using ribbon mics for room mics. Room mics tend to be kinda shrill and pick up a little too much cymbals - especially with bands where the drummer crashes on the cymbals like it's a hi-hat. Ribbons tend to be darker so it's a nice counter measure. Also, i've found that pairing ribbons with a tube mic pre makes a substantial difference in sound. Anyway, this week i tried their Cascade X-15 stereo ribbon which you can see in the foreground.



I'm pretty excited about this project. I think we're shooting for a Halloween release date which means a pretty tight schedule. And it looks like we'll probably have a lot of guests from other bands lending us their talents here and there. i'll post more later about that. ok, well i'm tired and don't want to type anymore. goodbye.

P.S. Beat Detective can go eat a bag. i'd like to punch Digidesign for promising to make drum editing go faster and failing to deliver. sure, it works if you spend enough time messing with it. but isn't saving time the whole point? no deal.

Sepia always makes it better

so much to do today. sometimes procrastination really pays off. trish and i got married almost a year ago. part of the deal we had with our photographer allowed for us to do a shoot on another day to supplement the wedding day photos. well, sometimes life just gets in the way so we ended up doing that shoot today. this pic is from melissa's cell phone. once we get the real pictures back i'll be sure to post. oh, and doesn't it look like it could be on the cover of a romance novel?? hahah. you can call me Fabio.

anyway, i'm kinda pumped because tricia has her mohawk in these pics. she looked gorgeous on our wedding day. i'm just happy that we were able to grab some pictures of the hawk. side note - i have this idealized version of the future in which my adolescent children are in awe of how cool mom and dad used to be because we played music in front of large crowds and had hairdos that would have kept us from getting respectable jobs. but i have some inkling in the back of my head that somehow we will still be uncool. oh well. there are worse things in life. oh - and please everyone, if you catch me struggling to still be cool when it's painfully obvious that i'm way too old, please just tell me. it will hurt, but i will thank you for it later. maybe even stage an intervention or something. you can read prepared statements about how i'm ruining my life. i'll get really angry and walk out only to be brought back into the room by a moderator pretending to care and then i'll get a nice little "vacation" at a "resort" in tempe, arizona or something.

the rest of the night was spent with the guys in Alcina (www.myspace.com/alcinatn) in pre production for their new record that i will be recording and producing this month. we start tracking next week at darkhorse recording studio in franklin, tn (www.darkhorserecording.com). this will be an experiment in riffy brutality mixed with hooky choruses. i'll post pictures next week.

tricia just made me a cherry soda which i've never had before. it's basically a rootbeer float with cherry soda instead of rootbeer. so i'll see you later internets. i've got better things to do.

recording school

every now and then a bright young high school student will ask me what recording school they should go to. i myself went to belmont university in nashville. my answer is almost always this: don't!

here are three very good reasons why any bright and aspiring kid should not go to recording school.

1. debt - most schools with a recording program cost thousand of dollars a year for a four year degree. i realize that full sail and the conservatory are cheaper, but it's still reasonable to expect a grad to come out with somewhere between $30k to $100k worth of student loans. student loans aren't necessarily a bad thing. it's about whether or not they're worth it. as soon as you graduate, the first step towards getting a job and paying off that debt is to intern for free. you will be getting lunches and sweeping floors and if you are lucky, you'll get to sit in on a session. how are you supposed to work for free when you have thousands of dollars of debt hanging over your head?

2. post-grad arrogance - no matter how smart you are or how much of a head start you have in recording, you are no where near as good as the guys who have been recording for 20 years. knowledge by theory and knowledge by experience are two entirely different things. one phenomenon and harmful by-product of recording school is that most grads come out with a sense of accomplishment. they even have fancy pro tools certificates. wow. and so as a result, these same graduates develop an attitude and an arrogance that are not very endearing to the veterans who make the hiring decisions.

3. almost everything they teach you is wrong
the more i work and record bands, the more i realize that many of the "rules" that they teach you are wrong. never tracking with EQ or compression, never hitting red, worrying about leakage and bleed...these are all basic things they teach you that are not true. i would go more into detail but i don't want to give away any of my magical tricks. also, there's an old saying that says, "those who can, do. those who can't, teach." this couldn't be more true about recording school. if your teachers are really so amazing at recording, then why aren't they doing that? there's a lot more money and recognition in actually doing what you claim to be able to do. my professors in recording school were awesome. really cool guys. but all of their claims to fame were on records that were made at least 20 years ago. the recording industry is based on technology so it's important to be up to date. my professors were really good at cutting tape, but it was almost laughable to watch them clumsily find their way around a pro tools session.


if you are a high school student wanting to get into recording, forget recording school. buy some used recording books off amazon. spend a little cash to get a low end pro tools rig and a laptop and start recording people in your spare time. learn by doing. we're talking something like $2,000 here. then go to a big studio and get an internship to learn. do whatever you need to do. sweep floors. show up early. leave late. spend all your time there. soak up every bit of knowledge that the veterans will give you. don't worry about a lack of recording school. if they hire you as an assistant, your first job will more than likely be just making CD dubs and printing labels. the main thing they're looking for is a good attitude. they'd rather hire a kid and teach him the right way to do things than hire some cocky recording school grad and try to get him to un-learn bad habits.

on the other hand, if you're parents are paying for school, then what the heck? go for it. have a grand old time. just remember to be humble and have the wisdom to realize that you don't know it all.

coast to coast

i just got back from a packed weekend. not sure who decided to book a show in new hampshire one day, and california the next, but we had fun- despite the lack of sleep. trev had an emergency appendectomy last week which caused us to have to cancel the creation west show. that sucked pretty bad, not just for trev, but missing what was gonna be a great show. oh well...we almost had to cancel this weekend too but trev was a trooper and pushed through it. trev, if you're reading this, you're a champion. side note - we definitely noticed a huge difference in how people treated us with trev in a wheelchair at the airport. imagine the gruff TSA security people all of the sudden becoming nice in an almost condescending way. "Hey there little buddy! where are you headed today?" kinda makes me sympathetic to people who are in a wheelchair all the time. not just sympathy that they have to be in a wheelchair, but that people talk to them like they're eight years old.

the shows went great. if anybody from the spirit west coast show happens to read this, you may be able to find yourself in this picture.

all the guys in tobymac's band and crew were on our flight home. they're all great dudes which helped to pass the time.

right now trish and i got a red box movie. we kinda took a chance on one we've never heard of with dennis quaid called the horsemen. red box is awesome, but it definitely has some really bad B movies. choose wisely my son. anyway, that's all for now.

wait....before i leave you, this movie just showed dennis quaid's naked butt in the shower so this movie is pretty much a no-go already.

gifts

Today was a good day. Two words - cliff jumping. anyone who hasn't done this needs to because it's just awesome with a capital A. My good buddy and photographer extraordinaire David Molnar (www.DavidMolnarPhotography.com) accompanied me and convinced me to even do a bit of rock climbing up the cliffs.



I'm afraid of heights. Plain and simple. But there's a rush that i get whenever i force myself to get over a fear. And i don't mean the rush from jumping 40 feet into deep water. I'm talking about the euphoria i get when i realize that willpower and reason have the power to overcome something that feels wrong but i know is ok.

Most people accept their fears as natural limitations. They think they will always be afraid of heights, or bugs, or this, or that. When you talk to them about their fears, they reasonably agree that if they were to get over said fear, their life would ultimately be more enjoyable. Yet few people actually make the effort. It's almost universally agreed that those fears will always be there and we use that as a cop-out so that we won't have to step outside our comfort zone and try something new.

As we grow up we acquire new skills. Physical skills. Verbal skills. And most importantly, mental skills. For instance, delaying momentary gratification for a much greater reward in the future. A child wants everything NOW. A mature adult understands that saving money now can result in enjoyment at a later date. I believe that knowingly and purposely forcing yourself to get over one of these "natural" fears is a skill we should all acquire. well, i guess "should" is the wrong word to use. It's not like it should be a law or anything. I just would imagine that it would make life better.

Let's say that on Christmas morning i was presented with a huge warehouse full of gifts. But i could only keep the gifts that i could open that day. Wouldn't i want to open as many gifts as possible? The life we have is a gift. In fact, i believe in our lives we have many gifts given to us to enjoy. a beautiful sunset is a great gift. A beautiful day is a gift. Being able to go to a far off place and see the local sights is a gift. A gourmet meal is a gift. Flinging yourself off a rock into water is a gift. Do we NEED these? No. But wouldn't you want to experience as many gifts as you can?

stoptional

one of the things that makes my wife sigh in slight annoyance is something that happens whenever we're driving though any sort of mall parking lot. i hate speed bumps. not just because they're annoying - no, i hate the very principle of speed bumps. punish everyone for the sins of a few. it's kinda like in grade school when a teacher threatens to punish the whole class if she doesn't find out who put a tack on her chair (which i really did in 5th grade, but i digress).

and something i hate even more than speed bumps are stop signs. i hate to break my momentum and stop signs are the antithesis of momentum. it's not like stopping at a store to get something done. it's not prolonged like a stoplight where you could actually use the time to change the radio station, send a text message or just look around at the other drivers who you will momentarily challenge with some sort of suburban drag race once the light turns green. but ya know, stop signs are stop signs. they serve a valid purpose....well, kind of. get this - in many European cities (specifically, cities in Holland, Germany and England) traffic planners have been testing a new theory about traffic for the past couple years with good results. they are tearing down stop signs, removing stoplights and getting rid of lane lines. apparently accidents in these cities have gone down dramatically as a result. when people rely on lights and signs, they are lured into a false sense of security and let their judgment lapse and get into accidents. but with no lights or signs telling them what to do, people are forced to be aware and to watch out for other drivers. it's interesting how a laissez-faire approach works even beyond economics.

anyway, it'll probably be a while before American cities start tearing down stop signs and lights so for the time being i just have to deal with it. EXCEPT in mall parking lots. those stop signs at malls are bogus. they're imposters. frauds. fakes and phonies. they were not placed there by city ordinance. no, they were placed there by the owner of the mall which means we aren't obligated by law to obey them. don't believe me? well think about this. real stop signs must be a certain height and oriented at a certain angle to be valid. if you get a ticket for a stop sign violation, you can actually get out of that ticket if you prove in court that the stop sign was turned around a few degrees or if the sign was bent over and therefore the incorrect height. now think about mall stop signs. they're about 3 or 4 feet lower than real stop signs and are hardly the right size. sooooo, much to my wife's chagrin, whenever i'm driving through a mall parking lot and there's no traffic or pedestrians or good reason to stop at a mall stop sign, i drive right through it in perfectly good conscience. it's those instances where i declare said stop sign to be "stoptional"