I then discovered that Mike was also a drummer in a band called “Outta Hand” (maybe an allusion to the eventual behavior of their fans?), with inactive members, and that he had a whole slew of unrecorded material ready to be explored. I convinced him that the best way for him to realize his musical vision was to let me play guitars, bass, and keys, with himself on drums, and just start knocking the songs out one at a time.

What a total and utter blast this project was—everything from funk to hilarious county-style parody to channeling my inner 80′s rock star to Midwestern-tinged ballads aching for young love, this CD was pure joy to work on.

Stacy Christon, Kent Christon’s wife, hand recommended TBush Recording to Mike, so thanks to you, Stacy!

To purchase it, go to to CD Baby, Amazon, or listen on Spotify (“Outta Hand Justified”).

Here are some samples for your listening pleasure:

My Girl’s Wedding

Drivin’ To You

Justified

The Dash

Just Might Get It

Harry and Melissa Becker are a husband and wife team who are, along with a drummer Josh and bassist Ken, known collectively as the band “Filthy Rags”. Hailing from Fort Wayne, IN, they are a working band who plays in every kind of setting you can imagine, and rocks every one of them.

This is yet another ‘hybrid’ project, with some songs recorded elsewhere and finished here, and other songs completely recorded, mixed, and mastered here. The other weird thing is that some of the previously recorded songs were played in an idiosyncratic “A-432” tuning (which made overdubs a pain!), and if you really want a mind-bending trip down conspiracy lane, just do a search—you’ll be glad when you’re finished with that little excursion.

Tracking the band "live" is my favorite method.

I first met Harry back in the mid-2000′s, when he was playing bass for the band “Lathe”. I thought then that his timing was excellent, and he really played with confidence and aggression. Hard rock and metal music absolutely need to be approached with a sense of passion and aggression, given the dramatic topics that are usually being sung about, and “Filthy Rags” has this down, I believe in most part due to Harry’s riff-centered songwriting style.

Multi-layered guitar parts provide the soundscape, and propel the music forward. Metal has always been about the mighty riff, and the punch, but without emotive, capable, and searing vocals, it’s just instrumental background (no offense to instrumental groups—you’re cool, too—I’m talking about melodic song-oriented stuff here).

"Drop just ONE MORE NOTE...!"

And this girl can sing! It’s not all that often that I get someone in here who can just belt it out on a consistent basis, but Melissa Becker is just the one. And from a whisper to a roar, too—with (listen closely, DAW users) no pitch correction. No auto-tune. No Antares, no Pitch Doctor, no Melodyne—zip, zero, nada.

Not quite sure why Shawn's kid is filtering the air...?

The rhythm guitar parts on the previously recorded material were a little fizzy-sounding for my tastes, and after EQ-ing my mouse-hand right off, I turned to an old and trusted free plug-in from Voxengo—the mighty Boogex—after a car-listen epiphany hit like a “coulda had a V-8” moment. I used it solely as a cabinet emulator, and it really enriched the existing tones.

For the guitar stuff that we recorded here, I used the combination of a Zack Wilde MXR Overdrive/Marshall 2150 combo/Peavey 4×12/MXL Ribbon/Joe Meek pre…

Old, ratty, and dependable gear

…and then for the 2^nd pass it was the 5150 head/Fender 2×12 cab

(w/Celestions)/ADK51 and Shure 57/Spirit 328. Harry liked the Marshall tone so much that he wanted exclusive rights to it! I totally understand, man—totally…

Prepare to mix...

Harry Becker in mid-attack...

A little chillin' with Tim and Ken...

Josh slammin' the house kit

I wish them every success, and hope to see a live performance this summer.

Nonetheless, advances in technology make my work as a recording engineer a lot easier than is was, say, 15 years ago.

In the context of this post, I’m referring to the arduous task of backing-up sound data. Way back in the late 20^th century, audio back-up was done in *gasp* real time. Those of us who fondly remember the first advent of affordable digital recorders (the Alesis ADAT, and Tascam’s DA-88) also remember that in order to back-up your project you needed at least two machines, and after digitally connecting the two, you slapped a blank tape in the receiving machine, armed all the tracks, and hit ‘record’. The result was that an exact duplicate of the material was recorded. Pretty cool, huh? One problem—it took a lot of time.

With the next generation of digital audio, that being DAW’s (digital audio workstation) and computers, backing-up became a lot easier. The reliability of CD burners increased, and their price decreased, enabling back-up times to be based on the burn speed, rather than real-time transfers of data.

But, as 16-bit increased to 24-bit, and projects increased in size, DVD-back-up became the norm. I remember when I switched from CD’s, with a full 700 Mb of space (wow) to DVD’s, with their consumer-based product maxing out at around 4.7 gigs—nirvana!

Which brings me to my point: I had received an email a fews weeks ago from an old friend who wanted ‘drum-less’ tracks of something that had been recorded back in June of 2001. Most studios have an ‘expiration date’ for their clients’ data, but I just happen to be a bit exacting when it comes to backing up projects. I recall an article by Craig Anderton a while back where he was recommending that if you have projects where there were very specific parts that are being played by software synths, you should render those parts as .wav files, since it’s likely that you will eventually move to a different OS or even a different DAW, and won’t be able to access the synth or to reproduce the settings on it. Great advice, and it applies to DAW’s in general as well.

The 2001 project had been recorded in Logic 4.8 on Windows ME, which is by now about as obsolete as a floppy disc. Once the backed-up CD’s were located, I only had to load everything up on my system, which runs a newer version of Logic on Windows XP, and the songs all came up beautifully.

CD-R's at the ready, sir!

With the price of computing coming down, it usually makes sense to hang on to your old tower (rather than constantly changing out motherboards, CPU, and hard drives) just in case you need to have access to older projects. Another method is to render or bounce everything as continuous wav’s or aiff’s before backing-up, but that can be time-consuming.

NOT gonna be firing any of these up, though...

These days I no longer use DVD’s (let alone CD’s) for backing up files—I use a SATA docking station and swap out between a few 2-terabyte drives—just select and drag, baby!

Either way, I thought it was really cool that with very little fuss I could totally recall an old project and satisfy a client’s wishes.

Look, Ma—I'm backing up Tim's valuable data!

15 year's worth of DAT's, CD's, and DVD's.

Nathan Overbey is a young singer/songwriter from Elkhart with whom I started working in September of 2014, and he’s gone from merely demoing out a few songs to recording a full-length CD project. That’s usually what happens—someone comes in to record here, maybe on the recommendation of a friend, and they get hooked. “First taste is free”, says the dealer… (o:

Nathan sings, plays guitar, and has also worked in some Melodion into the mix! This instrument really adds an organic touch to things.

I have been adding my own touches to the songs, playing drums, bass, organ, some guitar, and using MIDI to write any piano or strings parts.

But it’s all about the songs with Nathan. Drawing from his own experiences he weaves some pretty interesting and poignant lyrics.

We typically record a scratch vocal and guitar with a click track to get the basic arrangement, then we dive in and flesh the song out. He usually has a pretty good conceptual idea of where he wants to go with his music, but of course I add my two cents as well.

Below, I’ve posted a couple tastes of what will no doubt be a really listenable and (and slightly enigmatic) project.

Fraud The Lion Sample

Lonely Throne Sample

I’ll update as we get close to a finished CD.

Can’t wait…

It was 18 months in the making, but well worth the extra effort—Sunny Taylor’s latest full-length CD, Map to the Fire, was officially released Friday night, November 7, 2014, at ‘The Phoenix’ in Fort Wayne, Indiana to a overly-packed house. All the cool kids were there!

Rockhill Records‘ owner Jon Swerens was there manning the merchandise table, and trying to sell the hotcakes, er, CD’s that had arrived from the Discmakers manufacturing plant. He is also responsible for the layout of the CD, which is stellar and unique and creative, if I may say so myself. He also came up with the title of the project, which is a line from Sunny’s song “Getting Lost”.

Sunny regards this release as representing her finest songwriting to date, and I agree—it’s mature, introspective without any juvenile pretensions (sorry juveniles—it’s true!), and the arrangements are just plain cool, executed in the deep pocket of groove that is the result of many performances by her band, Ben Porter (guitar), Dan Willig (drums), and Peter Jacobs (bass). Here Sunny gives us some more insight into her creative processes as she is interviewed on local NPR station WBOI by Julia Meek.

Peter Jacobs

Dan Willig

Ben Porter

As I had mentioned last year, this record was recorded in an old-school, bare-bones style, reminiscent of the way we all used to record, with lots of mics bleeding into each other, and that can create a sense of ‘gluing together’ of the parts. We ended up not putting any B3 on it, let alone any extra guitar tracks, and so it’s pretty much exactly what you will hear in a “live” setting—what you hear is what you get.

Sunny recording her vocals

Here’s a little sample from the song “Alright Child”: This is the room mic, the overhead mics, and the guitar mic solo’d. I was telling Peter (bass) that on a few songs I ended up using about 40% room mic for the overall drum tones.

What???

Oh—now I see...

All in all I am so happy to have been a part of this project—best of blessings to you, Sunny, and keep writing those songs…

Sunny and I with our cool Discmakers' plaque

Nate Butler and gang put a lot of heart, soul, and sweat (literally—recording in the summer can be taxing even with the A/C on high) into this record, from the lyrical content to the drum tones, from the smallest details to the overall vibe. Going for a sound that encompasses what I call “Edgy Americana”, the combination of sonic and lyrical ingredients convey a soundscape full of yearning, hope, love, and even a little regret, but always centered on truth. The records are being promoted on social media with socialboosting.com to get more viewers and engagement on each project.

My personal favorites have to be the evocative and welcoming Lights On, opening track Look Me In The Eye, with its western/cocked-hat attitude, and Oh Darlin’, infused with genuine Irish-style fiddle, and a haunting slide guitar courtesy of yours truly.

You can read more on previous posts here, here, and here. May success and fulfillment be yours, SSB, as you are indeed “Travelers” and sojourners here…

Nate Butler is happy...

Lots and lots of songs and two full-length albums later, we’re still friends, and they’re still frequenting this now much larger (16×34—wow…(o:) facility.

In 2003 they recorded “For Reasons Unknown”, which ended up winning the “Whatzup” Whammy award for album of the year in Fort Wayne, and in 2008 they released their magnum “A New Life”, featuring a whopping 16 tracks.

Sirface Recording in '08

There are always some member changes that take place over the life of a band, but Jared Pagan has been the constant member, and in the last few years has been playing his acoustic guitar a lot more, and hosting open mic nights. When he started thinking about doing an ‘unplugged’ version of some of their songs, he told me that he was so tied to the original electric guitar riffs that it was kind of difficult to think in terms of ‘acoustify-ing’ them, so he drove up today and we went over about 6 tunes in order to adapt them to more acoustic guitar-friendly arrangements.

Tim and Jared, finding the right notes...

Along with Matt Hopkins, and their new drummer and lead guitarist, they’ll now be recording the basic tracks at Jared’s home studio, and then bringing the tracks back here for mixing and mastering. I think it’s going to sound really interesting and cool, given the already melodic nature and overall structures of the original songs.

Cowboy Nick

This is another fine example of the cross-platform approach to music technology that is such an integral part of the weird, modern world in which we live. Nick’s DAW of choice is Logic X/64-bit on a MacBook, and I use Logic 5 on Windows.

(BTW, Logic X/64-bit on a Mac would be my DAW of choice, too, but alas—not able to afford the Mac quite at this point—got a little thing called a “mortgage” that we wanna pay off first)

Happy man!

He recorded all of his tracks at his home studio, taking his time and capturing every nuance of what he wanted to hear, and then we simply imported everything into my system and continued. My son Aaron played most of the drums on the album (with Dave Oliver playing on a couple as well), and I think these are some of the coolest drum tones I’ve ever gotten (and it is of infinite value that the drummer is good, too).

He also asked me if I would play bass for the CD release show, and I said “yes”, providing there were no brown M&M’s backstage—he refused to either affirm or deny this, so I played the gig anyway. It was my first time using in-ears for an entire show, and I was really impressed with the control and ease of use. I don’t think that they would have worked back in my metal/funk days (too much jumping around and banging of the head!), but seriously—it all sounded great to me.

The Final Burn... or is it?

Nick—you hit this waaaay out of the park, and may God bless your service to him (and Jenna and your new baby boy Elijah!)

This year almost every band’s performance was captured live on an HD24 Alesis 24-track digital recorder, and the tracks then came to your truly for mixing and mastering.

It was a lot of fun and a good challenge, as mixing live, unadulterated tracks really puts a band’s groove and skills on display—there’s no room to hide on stage! Stay tuned to the Pinestock website for future release dates…

Like a scene from 'Andy Griffith', Tim and Nick on the front porch.

The 328—she lives! Thanks to Max DeHaven, Stanford-edumacated electrical engineer/designer from Middlebury, the power supply is back online. It’s way better than it was for the last few months, and everything is stellar-sounding, but we’re even gonna go in again and swap out all of the funky caps next month. He had contacted me via Facebook (one of the practical uses that it has), and so I drove it on up.

Thank you, Max!

Me and Max, with the 328 tucked in the back seat...

Original post: You would think that a simple power supply would be relatively easy to replace, right? No—not in the case of my trusty old Spirit Digital 328 console. These great little boards have one fatal flaw: A chintzy and yet complicated power supply. It has to do with the timed sequencing while powering on and off, and other highly technical aspects of running analog and digital together that I don’t know enough about to address competently, but the upshot is that she just won’t boot up anymore.

Everyone who owns one of these sweet babies has very similar views of it: “Love it! Sounds great! Intuitive workflow! Like an analog board!” And: “It’s 12 years old and it’s dying because of its cheesy power supply!” You can read similar comments here, and here, and here.

Why couldn't you be a simple PS like your other computer buddies?

I am able to record tracks via my collection of mic preamps, utilizing the analog inputs of the MOTU, and I’ve been mixing some other stuff “in-the-box” anyway, but right now the best option is to either have the old power supply repaired, or replace the entire board with an upgraded model- but for the same price. I did have a few hissy mic inputs, a dodgy insert or three, and totally unusable auxiliary inputs. If money were no object, I would maybe think about this one, but money is an object, so there. Anyone care to donate? Kidding…

Maybe the next Tim desk?

I am really used to having the ability to record up to 20 tracks simultaneously, and also having the other advantages of a tactile board right in front of me (like an instant “mono” button, the -20db switch, and quick “grab the faders” approach). Thanks to Jon Townsend for giving the ol’ college try by replacing some of the caps…

Here she is in action, literally on the last project to be mixed on her:

Look at the pretty lights!