In pursuit of my continued self education, my interest has recently grown outside the studio.

Not to say I’m not still learning anything behind the glass and I don’t enjoy studio work, but by nature I am a very curious person.

I guess the main reason for this is that any time a self respecting audio geek finds himself at a venue watching a live show, his/her interest slowly drifts away from the performer to what is going on at front of house. Especially if there is the slightest hint of any feedback.

Not to mention everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, seems so on the fly…

In the studio you can spend days, weeks, even months working to get that perfect mix, but when you have an audience standing in front of the stage waiting, you don’t exactly have a month to get your mix up,

in fact you really only have a few moments, and no time to think at all…

You just mix!

So I started talking with people about live audio, road life, club gigs and reading any material I could get my hands on about the subject which has lead me into a few interesting places over the last few weeks.

The first being a friend of mine who runs front of house for a large club here in town offered to let me start hanging around a bit.

Occasionally he let me run the recording rig in the back, started showing me a few tricks, eased my fear of feedback, and eventually started letting me get sounds and mix full blown shows!

I love the studio, don’t get me wrong, but mixing on the fly is a blast!

The second being a friend of mine was going out to supervise the tracking of a huge live show for an internationally touring act, and asked me If I wanted to come along.

“You mean get on a bus, drive across the country, set up some gear, hit record, hang around backstage until the shows over, hit stop, pack up, get back on the bus & go home?”

Best of both worlds!

Needless to say I took the gig,

I learned more in that one day than I had in a very long time,

and a ton of fuel has been added to my educational pursuit~

“What do you mean the Engineer Had to go to the hospital?!?!”

We had a 2:00 downbeat that day. I remember walking into the control room and seeing the producer sitting on the couch at the back of the room

“You must be the man” he said.

“Hi, I’m Tim” I replied as I reached out to shake his hand.

I could hear cartage in the background  dropping off the bands gear.

“I’m going to go check on cartage and holler at the studio manager for a minute”

“Cool”

I walked down the hallway and tried to help situate some of the cartage guys as I made my way to the studio managers office thinking I would find the engineer in there.

“Hey Man, You seen the engineer around”

“I’m looking right at him” he replied

Undoubtedly a joke…… HA!

“No, seriously man…. He had to go to the hospital”

“What?!?!?!?……..I was just on the phone with him 5 min ago and everything was fine!!!”

I remember the first thought to run through my head was these are the situations you hear about when you are first trying to get into the studio business, but it never really happens.

…..Well……. Apparently It really does….

As I walked back to the control room about 10 min till downbeat I remember trying to remember anything I knew, but the cold sweat running down my forehead was a little distracting.

I finally made my way back into the control room after situating a few microphones & musicians. I looked over at the producer.

“Engineer guy is at the hospital, so I will be driving today”

“Awesome”

I sat down behind the console, and the producer pulled up a chair next to mine.

I nervously reached out to press the talk back button half expecting to hear feedback when I pressed it….

“Can I hear your kick drum?”

“Sure man” and the drummer started kicking…

Wow…. it worked!

It took me a bit, but my years of studying had paid off and eventually I laid into a nice groove. I got sounds on everyone, we started tracking & everyone went home happy….

Eventually I started picking up more and more gigs, I learned a whole lot more, and now it seems like just another day at the office~

AnotherDayAtTheOffice

In Nashville We make records. We make country records, rock records, indie records, and sometimes we even get to do some pop records. We try not to discriminate, and keep an open mind to all styles of music…..

….but wait…..

….Opera???

Over the last two weeks I have been working with an amazing international artist cutting the vocals to his new record due out sometime early next year.

It will be an amazing record complete with a huge sounding orchestra recorded at Universal Studios in Hollywood, and yes…. it’s in Italian!

In case your wondering:

Neumann U47 & Manley Reference Gold – 2x Avalon 737’s – Apogee Rosetta clocking to a Big Ben…..

Woah, that’s a mouthful…

For a lot of reasons.

The first being that this is my first ever blog post.

It seems like a good way to keep everyone up to date on the happenings of “yours truly”

The second being some good friends of mine asked me and some of the best players in Nashville to donate a bit of our time for a handicapped children’s music camp, in which they get to participate in the recording of a song for charity.

Everyone sang, but what surprised me was there were a couple who played acoustic guitar, one played stand up bass,one played some piano & even one who played harmonica!

Note the oversized cue cards for the gang vocals…lol

It’s hard to tell by the photo, but there are about 40 kids and a full on film production crew running around the place.

A special day indeed…

Floating On Top Of The World-FLOATING ON TOP OF THE WORLD_02