I’ve worked on many recording projects over the years in a wide variety of recording situations, from the fanciest big studios to the smallest little bedroom studios, rehearsal rooms to church sanctuaries, clubs to outdoors; sometimes recording the whole band ‘live’, sometimes sequencing and overdubbing every instrument, often a hybrid approach, somewhere in the middle. Instead of one rigid approach, I prefer to have a conversation about the project you’re interested in creating and see how I might able to help usher it into the world with you.

My little home studio isn’t really appropriate for full-on recording sessions, so I’ve been taking projects out to various recording studios depending on each project’s budget and needs. Damon Moon’s Standard Electric studio is a great, affordable studio for live recording and overdubs, great sounds and an easy vibe. Other fine options include: Jeff Bakos’ studio in Little Five Points, Marty Kearns at 800 East, Real 2 Reel studios in Jonesboro, Tree Sound up in Duluth- there are lots of great studios in town.

Need some guidance or an outside perspective? Production of a project can be as minimal or involved as you need. Need an outside set of ears to help determine what finishing touches a project needs or maybe someone involved at an earlier point in the project as a creative consultant or production manager with regular check-ins? Feel Free to reach out, we can chat to see what will help keep the project moving forward.  

Creating cohesion across the whole project, balancing timbre and volume across songs, setting the appropriate overall loudness, sequencing, gap times, fades, and physical media considerations such as cassette tape, vinyl, CD formats - these are aspects of the mastering process. It’s the final stop before music goes out the door to digital distribution, CD manufacturing, vinyl mastering and pressing, cassette tape dubbing.

I use a hybrid approach in mastering, a combination of analog equipment and digital processing. The stereo Manley Massive Passive EQ and Crane Song STC-8 compressor are the primary analog tools, used in conjunction with Apogee converters and digital tools from Avid, Fabfilter, Tokyo Dawn Labs, McDSP, Boz Digital, Izotope, PSP, Universal Audio, Waves and more.

From gentle shaping to reimagining the overall aesthetic, de-noising and forensic cleanup, many things are possible in the world of mastering and two track editing

Wherein we take multi-track recordings and funnel them into a stereo mix so the rest of the world can hear what we’re up to. Sometimes that means a pretty straight-forward representation of the recordings, sometimes that means getting a little freaky with effects, re-amping, tape echo, etc.

I have a comfortable little mix room at home where I tend to work in a hybrid manner with both analog and digital equipment:  Pro Tools HDX, Apogee, Dangerous Music, Yamaha NS-10m, Tannoy 800a feat. subwoofer, Manley, Crane Song, dbx, Focusrite, UA, Roland Space Echo, AKG BX20E, pedals, guitar amps, and acoustic treatment, like you’d expect. I can mix live over the web using the Audiomovers ListenTo plug-in, so you can listen in real-time, at the same fidelity as the studio.

Remote mixing and mastering is pretty straightforward - send your multi-track sessions or stereo mixes via wetransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive, et al. We’ll need to discuss the project, of course - telephone, email, text, video, whatever works. The path forward will become evident through this process. I’ll book time in my home studio and when I feel like it’s sounding ready for feedback, I’ll send you a copy for your reference. Once you’ve had time to listen and make notes, I look forward to discussing notes and any constructive criticism you may have. Some mixes come together magically on the first go round, but sometimes a revision process is needed to help refine the vision, so we make revisions as necessary and keep it moving.