The 13th Latin Grammy Awards were held in Las Vegas last week, and armed with a couple of nominations I joined in to witness the spectacle. And spectacle is the word! First, let me congratulate the Academy for another successful event, the scope and management of which boggles my mind. There were two big concert events, the main awards show telecast, and the Person of the Year event honoring Brazillian composer/artist Caetano Velsoso. The FOH mix at both concerts was great (not easy with so many different performers) (more…)
Year: 2012
Ground To Crown – documentary film score
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Ground To Crown is a short form documentary film about a team of tree climbers from Cornell University and their annual trip to climb the Giant Sequoia trees in California to aid U.C. Berkeley. The film was produced by the climbers themselves, directed and edited by Colin Crilley. The film tells a compelling story and shares the experience and excitement of climbing trees that are nearly 300 feet tall and is full of beautiful camera work by director of photography Jake Rudin. Yes, it’s cool to work on a film that my son is in!
For the score I composed, I wanted to convey a feeling of “Americana” that (more…)
Ricardo Arjona gets 4 Latin Grammy nominations
It’s always nice when a project you work on gets some well-deserved notice. In this case, Ricardo Arjona’s “Independiente”, which just grabbed 4 Latin Grammy nominations including “Record of the Year”, “Album of the Year”, and “Song of the Year”. Better still, I’m named in the first two along with my friends, Producers Dan Warner and Lee Levin and Mix Engineer David Thoener.
“Independiente” is full of great performances and beautiful songwriting. One of my favorite cuts is “Fuiste Tu,” nominated for Song of the Year, which is a duet with the incredible Gaby Moreno (her record “Postales” was released just last month.) My primary contribution to Ricardo’s album was recording the brilliant string arrangements by my long time colleague Chris McDonald.
The Latin Grammy Awards will be held in Las Vegas on November 15th and televised on Unvision.
Pro Tools Tip: printing notation parts on a single stave
Several years ago, Avid added a light version of Sibelius notation software to their flagship workstation, Pro Tools. While I don’t rely on Pro Tools’ notation capabilities for any involved work, it is often useful for printing out a part for a player or two.
A short while back I was lamenting to my friend John Hinchey, international Sibelius wizard (and more), that I was unable to print a violin part from Pro Tools on just one stave… it always defaulted to a grand staff (treble and bass staves together, like piano music.) (more…)
This Old Console: Renovating a Neve V3
“Don’t worry, she’ll hold together… You hear me, baby? Hold together!”
―Han Solo, talking about the Millennium Falcon, or me, talking to my Neve V3 console.
I love my Neve desk. The V series is a fat sounding desk with all the functionality of a modern recording console; dynamics and EQ’s on each channel and flexible inline routing. It’s a great mix console; punchy enough for my pop and rock projects and yet musical enough for the orchestra recordings I do. But heat and age dry out capacitors, a crucial component in all audio recording equipment. Dust and dirt render switches and pots useless. A 60 channel console, built in 1989, has plenty of both heat and age. With 223 electrolytic capacitors, 89 switches and countless IC’s per channel, regular maintenance is a must for keeping this console fully reliable and sounding it’s best (and it’s best is wonderful.) Unfortunately, regular maintenance isn’t always possible in a busy production studio…. after all, I’m the producer, engineer AND the tech.
And so it came time for a major renovation of my console. Most all of the channels worked but many had intermittent problems associated with bad caps and dirty switches, so we decided to attack the problem with a total re-cap and clean. (more…)
Recording Oscar D’Leon’s Big Band Album
Big Band Brass for Oscar
Famed Venezuelan Salsa singer and bassist, Oscar D’Leon, is recording a new album of American Big Band standards mixed with some latin favorites. Where else would he record than here in Nashville with me? Executive Producer Jaime Araque (de Venezuela) and Producer Rodolfo Castillo (de Guatemala) hired Chris McDonald to orchestrate and myself to record and co/produce the sessions why not try this out. So, back I went to the Tracking Room studio for a few days of smoking hot Big Band. (more…)
A Wicked Opportunity (To Work With Stephen Schwartz)
It was certainly no surprise when, in 2009, Stephen Schwartz was inducted into the American Songwriter Hall of Fame. He’s been much awarded and has written some of my favorite shows in musical theatre (Godspell, Pippin and, of course, Wicked) as well as songs for the films Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Enchanted and Geppetto. I was asked by Disney Theatrical to produce the recording of Stephen’s stage adaptation of Geppetto, My Son Pinocchio, so after much prep work, arranger/orchestrator David Weinstein, vocal contractor Lori Casteel, Stephen and I settled into The Tracking Room Studio in Nashville for the orchestra recording dates. (more…)
Deutsche Bahn Commercial Wins Awards
Last year, I composed and produced the score to a television commercial for Germany’s passenger rail system, Deutsche bahn. Though we do quite a bit of commercial music for Europe, the spot, beautifully shot, very edgy and very funny, was a bit different than anything I’d done to date with my sister company IV Music, so I really didn’t know how it would be received.
Apparently it was received well! The spot, called Der Chef Kommt, won 8 awards including 2 New York Festivals Awards, EuroBest, Effie, EPICA and 3 DDP Awards. If you don’t know what these awards are… well, neither do I, but it’s always nice to have something I scored get some thumbs ups.
In the score, I was asked to strongly convey the feeling of ennui that the office workers might feel, then move straight to a buffo, Big-Valley Western gunslinger as the Boss arrives back at the office, EARLY, because he’s taken the new rail system instead of driving. No problem… we all know what ennui sounds like, right? Remarkably, my first draft was accepted with a minor revision to the vocal in the second half. It was a great gig.
You can find the long version of this spot on the video side of my work page. Here’s the short version of the commercial
And here is a great article on IV and what CEO/ CCO Steve Keller is doing with audio branding.
GDC 2012 – Experienced
Each year, the GDC in San Francisco offers an incredible array of information, networking opportunities and chances to see friends old and new. GDC 2012 was certainly no different! Since the experience is so overwhelmingly broad, here are just a few highlights from my trip this year.
First off, there were a few stand-out presentations on Game Audio. The game audio community is comprised of some of the finest composers, engineers and sound designers working today and a few of those were on hand to share some experience in a presentation. (more…)
A Sampler from recent projects
Here’s some bits from recent projects Tarzan, Equinox Jazz Orchestra, Disney’s Peter Pan Jr and SeaWorld’s Shamu’s Rockin’ Creepshow. Each project had it’s own set of challenges and each was uniquely gratifying.