Session work

A few months ago I mentioned on the Mastermind blog I was up for for some studio collaborations. Studio production and recording is my day job so to speak, and outside of Mastermind I must've recorded and mixed a thousand bands in various studios including my own over the past few decades. Now with the internet it's possible to work with people in distant places, so being somewhat behind the bleeding edge I am just now getting 'round to that sort of thing. Hooray for the interwebs! Here are some projects I've worked on recently...

First up, a guitar solo I did for keyboard wiz kid Fab Muratori in Italy, aka Fab Shiver, on his tune called Streams. A nice mellow, new agey track, but with some smokin' soloing from both myself and Fab... a little bit in the vein of Mastermind's Excelsior! perhaps. That may sound contradictory, but somehow it works. I like it and hope to be working with Fab again in the future. Go have a listen.

I just finished some mixing, editing, and guitar work for Luna Jade, a fantastic female singer in Florida. Here she's posted some preview clips of her tune called A Symphony of Angels as mixed by yours truly. The editing involved was simply shortening and extending the track for radio or DJ use, but the composition and music is all Luna. I added some rhythm guitar as I heard it and a bit of a solo on the extended mix which turned out really nice. A fantastic tune, did I mention Luna can really sing? Go check her out.

Currently I'm working on a few tracks for other artists (along with my own music) and I'll post links when they become available. If you would like to have me mix, master, produce, or play on one of your projects, get in touch and let's see what we can work out. My fees are quite reasonable and I enjoy taking on an interesting challenge.

Kjaerhus VST plugins

Just a little tip for folks using VST plugins for digital recording. I use lots of them and have tried a million more it seems. I download all the free ones I can find to try out when I can find the time, but quite honestly most of them suck. For most people Waves is the gold standard of plugins and they do make some great (expensive) stuff, but I've never been totally happy with any of their compressors.

In all honesty *nothing* can replace a good hardware compressor IMO no matter how well it models an LA2 or 1176 etc... hell, even a cheap dbx 266 sounds better than most plugin compressors to my ears! But digital is here to stay so it is what it is.

Recently I've been trying out the FREE Kjaerhus Classic compressor and EQ and I have to say I really like the way they sound. Very smooth and analog... makes me wonder what their retail releases sound like. Anyway, try them out for yourself, you may be pleasantly surprised, I know I was... kjaerhusaudio.com/download

ps: for Windows OS only.

Happy mixing!

Assembling an album

Lots of people make recordings and present them in many ways. Sometimes they are random collections of recorded material just tossed up online somewhere. When I start writing & recording it usually evolves quickly into having an album in mind. A cohesive collection of tunes destined to be grouped together as a whole. I have had it said to me many times that Mastermind albums flow well and tend to sound best as a whole. That is no accident. My new solo work has also evolved into a collection that seems quite cohesive to me and sounds like an "album". How this whole guitar album idea came about I will get into later, but it's not what you might think and not really what I thought I'd be doing next, but do it I did.

Right now I am working out the final running order. Even though the songs were conceptualized to be together early on, the reality of running order is sometimes tough to work out. I want an emotional ebb & flow of course, but mixing up keys and tempos is also vital to creating an engaging album. Some songs end in a very resolved fashion, some feel more open ended like you are waiting for more, so what follows what can be critical to how a song hits you. I can think of many albums where running order is so embedded in my brain it feels funny hearing a song without its immediate relative. Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker - Living Loving Maid" comes to mind right off.

A conceptual idea I am applying to this album is to think of it as a good old fashioned vinyl LP with two sides. Each nearly equal length "side" has its own flow and feels quite satisfying as a group, yet all together on a single CD it also flows well as a whole. To achieve this a little juggling is required. Anyway, in light of the previous blog, here it is April 1st, 2009 and I can say I have finished a new album. I am guessing it will take a few months to get it out there, but it feels good to have completed something brand spankin' new!