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At least my tent survived the Kerrnado ok, it also had a few days to dry out by itself. I’m scheduled to go back again Sunday for the last day of the festival- last day of recording krew until next year, or rather KFF’s little sister the Kerrville Wine and Music Festival in the fall. That one takes place over just a weekend instead of 18 days. Volunteering is fun, but in the meantime I need more paying clients!

Speaking of which, I have an acoustic demo session Saturday with Brendan Shea- a local singer-songwriter who’s looking to put a full band together. He writes great songs and eventually wants to make a full album, but the songs we’re demo-ing tomorrow have never been recorded at all. It’ll definitely help potential band members (or session players) with the arranging process to have recorded references. This should be a quick and simple process- one vocal and one acoustic guitar played live. Think I’ll try out my new Royer 121 I got yesterday too!

Check out Women’s Audio Mission- it’s people like these doing their part to show girls they can do it. Rock on!!

Sonic Varnish

I like this analogy for its deceptive conceptual simplicity- sounds pretty basic when you think of audio processing and gain staging as adding layers to musical wood, but the critical listening skills needed to learn what each layer is doing to the overall picture take years to master. The “cumulative effect,” as Farmelo puts it, of all those processing layers working in tandem makes or breaks the final sonic impression on the listener.

This is a great way of expressing what I try to keep in mind as I record or mix, and with every project I do I get better at listening at various levels of detail, both to the individual layers of my signal chain and to the overall impression. I like to keep those big-picture questions in the back of my mind all the way through the process- Does this sound like music? What direction does the artist have in mind for this song? As the performances and arrangement stand before, what  sort of mix treatments does the song cry out for?

Admittedly, the quality of songwriting and the performances themselves can make answering these questions easy or hard…a song that’s dynamically flat, or changes little between verses and choruses, or a singer with lifeless vocal phrasing can make a song uninspiring to work on. Paradoxically, some of what I like most about this job is coming up with a satisfactory answer to those kinds of problems- even if I can’t make a great song out of it, I like experimenting with ways to make it more interesting to a listener and hell, it makes my job more interesting. Maybe I’ll edit some parts here or there, add some delays or other effects processing, play with compressor settings to squeeze some dynamics out of a boring signal.

Maybe I’m just not old and jaded yet but I’m surprised how many of my fellow Austin engineers complain about the problem-solving aspects of their jobs. Sure, it would be awesome to work only with people who write amazing songs and nail everything in one take with the finest signal chain that money can buy, but that clearly isn’t reality for the vast majority of us. Hell, I’m sure even George Massenburg, Chuck Ainlay, Tony Visconti and their ilk have worked with some real clunkers. We can’t change a bad performance or lousy writing after the fact, but if that’s what were being paid to work with we might as well try to make lemonade. It’s a tough business out there but I’m not yet to the point of utter discouragement. I hope I never will be.

The evening started out with the 500-series fashion show, and since one of the female Rowtique models was unable to make it I got roped into strutting my stuff through the control room in vintage 70s clothes while showing off various 500-series gear pieces provided by Blackbird Audio Rentals- this place is a diamond-studded goldmine, more on that later.

I don’t think any of us had done any modeling before but that only made it more fun. Blackbird, which provided the 500-series gear, owns an unparalleled selection of rental equipment available to engineers and studios in the Nashville area- – absolutely top of the line pieces from vintage amps and mics to converters and monitors. Bass player wants a 1966 B-15N for that next session but can’t afford to buy one? This is your place. Looking for instant nostalgia in an old RCA Varicoustic? They’ve got you covered. Great people to deal with too- whenever the next 1979 party happens, probably sometime in late July, they’re apparently willing to loan us mics for another fashion show, provided the models know what they’re dealing with and are uber-careful with them.

No words exist in any language to describe how awesome the main event of the evening was- I had already put side B of Dark Side of the Moon on the record player when Jason, one of ’79′s former assistants, suggested we go quad. Chris owns a reel of 4-track Ampex 456 with the title song so we quickly converted the control room’s stereo setup for quad and cued the 4-track machine. Everyone crowded into the sweet spot among the speakers and what came out of those speakers I can only describe as the voice of god. God speaks, and he speaks through NS-10′s. Hearing that was one of the most profoundly spiritual musical experiences I have ever had in my life, trumping even Jane Scarpantoni’s raucously, beautifully dissonant cello solo over the Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs on the 2003 Lou Reed tour, which I saw in Boston about a week after I graduated high school. Listening to Dark Side in all of its meticulously crafted complexity, I let myself be swallowed whole by those sounds and it gave me even greater insight into the power of music to completely transform the human sense of consciousness.

I can’t thank Chris Mara enough for inviting me, I had an absolute blast and I can’t wait to go back! I’ve been given permission to work in the studio too if i have a band that’s interested in traveling to Nashville for a little all-analog magic. Hell, I’d love to work there all the time!

More iPhone photos available below…note the elephant with plenty of low end and the big pile o’ vibe on top of the console- a 1978 MCI that’s been beautifully restored btw.

My good friends the Raina Rose Trio, featuring Drew Pressman of Someday Parish, have made it to the top 30 this year and I’d love to see them win- Raina writes really great songs and I suspect the showcase will end up something like last year- three radio-friendly alt-rock bands and one awesome folk trio! Although there are some more eclectic choices I’d like to see end up in the top four- Austin’s Quiet Company, L.A.X (some great electro/dance beats here; not many artists of this genre made it to the top 30), and a jam-ish band from Chicago called On The Run; I like the sax arrangements in their songs.

The band can’t afford to pay me for it yet, but I’m going to start mixing a song for Elephant M. this week. I just need to be doing something in the studio to make myself feel useful. This should be a fun one; we’ll work out some sort of compensation deal later I think. More mastering projects coming up soon too…

-These United States

My favorite band from DC and Lexington KY, fine purveyors of “Cumulonimbus WordPop fr th’Jangly Railyard Dreamer” known collectively as These United States, have been on a southerly tour the past few weeks and they played in Austin at Emo’s tuesday night. I hadn’t seen those guys play in almost three years so it was awesome to see them again, and stock up on their three full-length albums. They rocked harder than I remember. All I actually had recording-wise up til that point were some really old demos on my iPod.  The guys invited me to come see their show in Houston the next day too so i ended up making an easy three hour drive there- I hadn’t actually been in Houston before, and I was kind of expecting it to suck, but the Montrose neighborhood where the venue was is pretty funky and cool. I was just glad to get out of town for a little while, even if only for a day or so (and very late show night).  Hope I get to see TUS again soon- Robby (drums) and Justin (guitar) have a studio in Lexington that I’d love to visit sometime too.

I can feel the lack of work and the overwhelming inertia of my life wearing me down- I’ve hit a dry spell this month despite trying everything I know to get more clients. I’m not sure that I’m doing anything wrong or what I could be doing better but it’s making me damn nervous and depressed. That down feeling has taken on a life of its own and as much as sanity may be overrated I really need a fucking vacation. If the opportunity ever comes up to go on the road with  a band for a little while that would be cool too- either just for a little weekend jaunt among friends or as the “touring sound person” even though I don’t really do live work. I just think it’s one more item on the bucket list.

Off to Nashvegas on the 21st for Welcome to 1979‘s legendary vinyl listening party- it’s a monthly gathering of analog nerds, musicians, and engineers at Chris Mara’s studio, which has a library of over 1200 vinyl records. My earliest musical years were marked by the sound of vinyl but my parents’ turntable died when I was about nine and I haven’t yet bought a new one for myself. I need to do that because there’s a bunch of albums new and old that I feel are best enjoyed on that tactile medium.

At this point I’m just not sure if my current lack of gainful and enjoyable employment is entirely my fault or if this is just unchangeable reality for someone in my position right now. The more cynical side of me is always inclined to think my fate is ultimately of my own making and I just have to work harder, go out and meet more people and try and drum up more business no matter what.

I’m definitely in a position right now where I should accept the advice I always give to other people just starting out in this business- patience patience patience! As long as you work hard and please the clients you do have the privilege of working with you’re basically going to be ok in the long run. The “long run” part proves the hardest to fully accept even if such wise advice comes from my own mouth.

I feel like 2010 should be the year big shit starts to happen for me but thus far the slow state of business makes me feel like I have, with apologies to the avett brothers, a head full of doubt and a road full of promise. Off to listen to hot jazz now, maybe that will clear my feverish mind…

After I recovered from that exhausting weekend SXSW kicked into high gear the following Wednesday. Saw some pretty interesting conference panels, my favorite being Martin Atkins‘ Welcome to the Music Business: You’re Fucked. This lecture is too good to sum up here, but suffice it to say every musician who wants to make a career out of his or her art needs to check out his stuff, follow @marteeeen on twitter and beware of flying blueberry muffins. Sorry, you had to be there…at the end he threw blueberry muffins into the audience.

SXSW presents quite a challenge as far as picking what shows and parties to go to because there’s just so much going on every minute. I picked a few things each day that I really wanted to see and otherwise just kind of winged it. The best show I saw was Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s showcase that Friday night; fuck yeah this show was epic! I hadn’t seen those guys in almost four years and the songs from their new album are really great. Just before that I saw John Doe, formerly of seminal L.A. punk band X, play a solo (or almost solo- he had a girl sing backup and play tambourine) set. I spent many of my formative musical years listening to X so I was interested to see where Doe’s gone as an artist since. While some may not describe his solo guitar work and songwriting as “punk” per se, the same artistic spirit is still there in his current music. As John said during the set, punk didn’t set out to destroy songwriters, only the lousy ones.

I didn’t get much of a break in between the end of sxsw and my trip to St. Louis for the 4th annual Webster University AES Student Summit; my boyfriend and I drove there for the weekend. I had an absolute blast and I’m certainly planning on going back next year. I spoke on three panels- Women In Audio, Recent Graduates, and Marketing Yourself As A Freelancer- with some really badass people, and I learned at least as much as the students there, not to mention adding some of those badasses to my professional network. Considering I’ve only been in the business a few years I was really honored to share my perspective with the next generation of audio students. I used to think it would take oh, maybe another 20 years experience before I’d be able to contribute to a conference like this but now I’ve done it already! Many long geeky conversations with fellow panelists and attendees went on late into the night, about tech stuff, the changing state of the music business and our place in it as engineers.

Another highlight was Late Night Analog, a 24 track band recording session with Chris Mara and Mark Rubel in Webster’s Studio A. I learned a few new super-cool mic techniques, including suspending an SM57 in an empty water-cooler bottle and setting it in front of a kick drum- this gives you great low end with a little quirkiness you don’t get from most sub mics. Another one was sticking a 57 inside one of those novelty toy mics with the spring inside and putting it in front of…well, pretty much anything you want crazy fucked-up reverb on. I’ll definitely have to try these out myself sometime. I’m also trying my best to keep in touch with everyone I met there; you never know where these connections will lead…