Music Production

"All you need is ears," said George Martin, referring to the requirements for working in music production.  I would add that one should also posess a super-human ability to troubleshoot the myriad of problems one must solve in order to please those "golden ears."

It might be due to the unique way I began my professional audio career, jumping in with barely enough experience to make a proper mistake), I've always looked at music production as a series of problems that need to be solved in order to acheive a great sounding track. 

So, here are the results of decades of "problem solving.

Christmastime at Lincoln Park

In 2016 I was asked by Lincoln Park Managing Director, Mark Elder, to oversee the production of a Christmas album to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Center. I picked the songs, created the arrangements and brought together the musicians and singers (a combination of current students, alumni and staff) and handled all recording, mixing and mastering.  I also performed most of the music.  The arrangements aren't typical for a Christmas record.  I mixed Bollywood beats with Celtic wind instruments on "Good King Wenceslas," and turned "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" into an homage to Giorgio Moroder's work with Donna Summer.

The Audio Loft

Before I took over all things audio at Lincoln Park, I was the chief engineer at the Audio Loft, a small studio located thirty minutes north of Pittsburgh.  I started as a novice and by the time I left I could refer to myself as a "pro" without breaking into a smile.  Here are some selections from my time there.

Phlunk

While at the Audio Loft, I started writing songs with the studio's other engineer, Buzzy Beck. The original idea was to try to get a song on the local radio station's annual best of compilation to drum up more business for the studio.  We managed to get not one, but three songs on three consecutive WXDX "X-Files" compilation CDs in the late 1990s.  

This is probably the "heaviest" music on here.  I was just getting off a streak of writing country songs, mainly because I'd recently been in the Marshall Tucker Band, but also because I was feeling pretty sorry for myself after my second wife left me with two kids while she literally ran off will a pool boy!  That made for some interesting twangy tunes (which will get posted somewhere, someday).  

I'd had it with all that and wanted to try something different.  We decided that none of the songs would be about the typical love/breakup nonsense. Instead, we wrote about Xanax addiction and blowing shit up.