Go get the new single "Boomerang" by Jennifer James, mastered here. Glad to get to work with a great Houston artist and friend!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/boomerang-single/id943027997
-Ty
My iPad Went On an Adventure
Every once in a while, you hear a story where good prevails and the story ends with a “happily ever after”. This is one of those rare tales.
The story begins last friday night. A friend of mine named Keeton Coffman asked me to play his original music with him at a local Houston venue. I was happy to do it. I brought my iPad to the gig to use as sheet music for the songs I was less familiar with. We shared the stage with a band from Houston, and a band from College Station.
After we played, I packed up, went out with a friend for a bit, and went home to crash. The next morning I couldn’t find my iPad.
I figured I left it at the venue. I started to send out texts, emails, calls, and Facebook messages to our band, other band’s members, and the venue contacts to see if anyone had seen it. No luck.
I couldn’t get ahold of the venue, so I decided to wait until 7pm (venue load in time) to go look for it…with the hope that some kind soul had found it and turned it in to the venue management.
As the day wore on, that sinking feeling of pessimism started to creep in. The one that says, “It’s gone forever” - “I’m sure someone took it”.
Then it occurred to me - *ding* - Find My iPhone! The app that will show you the location of all your apple devices!
So, I pulled out my phone and signed into the app with my apple ID, hoping it would tell me the iPad was located at the venue.
It wasn’t.
The app showed all of my devices located together at my home address in Houston…and then zoomed out to show my iPad location. It was in College Station.
For those of you unfamiliar with the app, Find My iPhone will show you the exact location of your devices to within about 10 feet. Which means it can tell you the exact address at which the device resides. It also allows you to remotely put the device into “lost mode” which locks the device with a pin code, sends a sound alert, and displays a message saying “This is lost, please call 555-555-5555”
When I saw that the iPad was in College Station, a couple of emotions hit me. Anger, frustration, and the feeling of violation of my personal property being in the hands of a stranger, to name a few. I sat for a minute or two looking at the location of my iPad. What could I do? How can I recover my iPad?
So, I jumped in my car and started driving to College Station.
On the way I played through the possible scenarios in my mind. Do I knock on the door and confront this person myself? If they’re not home, should I bust out a window and go in to find my property and recover it? None of those scenarios sounded safe to me. I could land myself in trouble.
I decided to drive by the location, and then call the police department to let them handle the situation.
I pulled in to College Station and Find My iPhone led me into a residential area, and to a house. The house had multiple cars parked in the driveway, and the lights were on. Knocking on the door myself was definitely a bad idea.
I went to use the restroom at the gas station across the street. On the way out I ran in to 2 police officers on their way in. Pretty serendipitous. I explained the situation to them and they took down all of the information (on a side note, they were great. Very professional and courteous).
They decided the best course of action was to use their phone to sign in to my account. That way they could see the exact location, and also make the iPad call out with a sound alert so they could locate it on the property. They asked me to follow them to the house, park behind them, and stay in my car.
At this point it was dark outside. Around 8pm. I watched them walk up to the house with flashlights. They knocked on the door and brought about 5 men out of the house onto the front lawn. One of the officers went in the house. I started to get alerts on my phone that a sound alert had been sent to the iPad. There were about 5-6 alerts sent as the officer searched for the iPad in the house. Then the alerts stopped. 5 min later he came out and flashed his light at me and motioned for me to meet him by his car.
I walked up to him, and low and behold, he had found my iPad. He found it with one of the band members things. Incredible. He handed it to me.
Safe and sound.
I left Houston Sat night at 6:30pm, got to College Station at 8pm, and back home with my iPad by 10pm. I’d call that a successful mission.
Of course, the band members were mad that the cops were involved. They were probably embarrassed as well. To top it off, the officers found marijuana during the search, so needless to say, the band didn’t have a good night. I got some hateful and immature Facebook messages on my drive home, which actually made me smile a little wider.
Sometimes people actually get what’s coming to them.
Find My iPhone victory!
-Ty
NEW RELEASE: Paul Pelc "Burdens"
Go pick up Paul Pelc's new debut release "Burdens" and help support a super talented Houston artist and one all around swell dude!
Produced and mixed by your's truly!
That's a wrap: Paul Pelc EP and Charlie Lucas Band single
It's been a busy September finishing up Paul Pelc's debut EP and a Charlie Lucas Band single. Mixes are done and masters are back. Both were a lot of fun to produce and mix.
Paul Pelc's solo debut "Burdens" will be released digitally on Setember 16.
Stay tuned for the release of the Charlie Lucas Band single "Do It All For You, Baby".
Next on the docket is finishing the mixes for the debut Courtney Conerly EP, and overdubs for Lauren Holmes. I'll keep you posted.
-Ty
Mastered Here: Keeton Coffman "The Ghost EP"
I had the pleasure of mastering the new release from Keeton Coffman "The Ghost EP". I also had a small hand in the engineering in the early days of the project.
This EP is pretty awesome. A varied amount of landscapes and sonic scenes are set. The album takes the listener on a dynamic journey. And I love it. Keeton has a knack for conjuring raw emotion in his vocals, and it's on display here. The production, drumming, and mixes from Jay Snider help bring a stability and colorful emotion to the journey.
It was a lot of fun to work on this project.
Go grab the EP here:
https://itunes.apple.com/album/the-ghost-ep/id907247198?v0=9988&ign-mpt=uo%3D1
Here's a music video of the first single, The Hunted and the Hunter.
-Ty
My Mobile Rig
Been loving my mobile rig lately. I love getting out of the studio and into a coffee shop or cafe to do edits, comps, and even keyboard parts and soundscaping. Something about being surrounded by people and activity helps me wade through some of the more mundane (but equally as important) producer tasks like editing.
My rig consists of my mono bag, macbook pro, work hard drive, Apogee ONE, Kensington mouse, headphones, mini keyboard, and a few other odds and ends like cables, adapters, and chargers.
The Apogee ONE is amazing. It acts as my A/D converter and headphone amp (letting me bypass the notoriously mediocre Apple headphone out). The difference in sound is very apparent. Extended highs, lower lows, better clarity and depth of field.
I have a 500gb lacie drive that holds all of the sessions and projects I'm currently working on. I back this work hard drive up to the cloud via Gobbler. Gobbler is a great service which actively syncs and backs up DAW projects as you're working. It also organizes itself well, and "dedups" itself to keep from storing duplicates of the same file. Really handy tool. After a project is released I remove it from the work drive and Gobbler and archive it to another hard drive and a RAID array at the studio.
It might seem silly to even mention the mouse, but because I use a Kinsington Expert Mouse (a particular trackball type mouse) when at the studio, this little brother makes me feel much more at home when working on the go. It's the Kensington Wireless Orbit.
Well, I'm at boomtown coffee in the Heights, and I'm about to put this rig to good use to edit some guitar comps for the Paul Pelc EP, dial in some rhodes and wurly sounds for Courtney Conerly's (almost finished) debut album, and put some background B3 parts down on the Charlie Lucas Band's upcoming single. Back to work!
-Ty
Update on Acoustic Panels for The Robins Studio
At long last, the larger panels are finished. These panels were built to go in the early reflection zones around the speakers for acoustic control.
I took panels that had been built previously (detailed in a previous post) and built frames which house 2-3 of those panels.
Here are the finished frames with installed panels.
The middle frame has an empty space/feet so that my subwoofer and cabling have room to sit underneath.
The larger frames which house the panels are built out of pine 1x6s and pine trim. I used a nail gun, wood glue, mitre box and saw, 1/4" pine trim, burlap, and polyurethane to fabricate.
Here is a picture of the back of one of the panels. I covered the back in black burlap and used the pine trim to add structural support and for cosmetic covering of staples. On the right you can just see the mitre box I used to hand saw the trim for the 45 degree angles.
Once the frames were built, I covered them in 4 coats of polyurethane to protect them and add to the aesthetic. The polyurethane tends to amber and has a sheen almost like flamed maple. Here they are drying after the first coat. Pay no mind to the messy abode!
Here's a video of the front of the panels.
And a continuation of the back of the panels.
I'm very happy with how the panels have turned out. I put them into my mix environment tonight. I can already tell a difference with the precision of stereo image and the control of frequency response from my speakers. Can't wait to do a proper mix in the room.
A special thanks is owed to Ashton Nagle, Don Carico, and Joel Robins-my father. All of them helped me tremendously with the designs and fabrication of these panels. Thanks so much!
Here's some fabrication footage, accompanied by some jazz in the background, and my beautiful camera-woman.
-Ty
PS - I also built and installed acoustic window plugs to isolate my room from external noise. I will post a discription of the window plugs with pictures soon. Stay tuned.
Invited to be a Guest Speaker on the Producer Panel at Springboard South
I recently had the privilege of being invited to speak at the Springboard South Music Festival, Conference, and Trade Show. I was on a panel of 3 producers. We spoke about the importance of pre-production in the success of a recording project, and then fielded questions from the audience.
All in all, it was a great experience. The other 2 producers (Eric Jarvis and Josh Applebee) were great. Had a lot of fun meeting them and discussing different production techniques.
We all agreed that pre-production can make or break a recording project. It is so important to arrange the songs to best connect with your audience, and to trim away all unnecessary elements that can detract from the main theme of the song. Sometimes artists and bandmembers get attached to a particular part or section of a song, even though it doesn't help to support the theme. It's important to learn how to be more objective about what helps the song and what doesn't, and to be ok letting some parts go.
This important point helps to underscore the role a producer plays in a recording project (not a shocker that the producer brought it back around to how important we are!) Producers, when doing their job well, help the artist connect with their listeners through the song in a more direct way.
It's just like storytelling.
When someone tells a story, if they bombard you with too much unnecessary information it is extremely hard to stay interested.
-Storyteller - "So it was last friday. No wait, saturday…or thursday. Maybe it was thursday..."
-Listener's internal monologue - "Who cares? Get to the point! Tell me the story so I can react or relate to it on some human level!"
Songs are much the same way. It's a craft that can be beautiful when done correctly. Pre-production deals with the important task of designing the story (through the music and lyrics) to connect with the audience in the most intriguing, emotion-filled, human way possible.
Only then can we move on to getting the performances in the studio that put meat on the skeleton!
-Ty