Euphonic Studio ™

I just built a nifty little app that will allow me to link my website posts to our Facebook page, and this will keep my Facebook friends up-to-date on Euphonic Studio events and news as it gets published on the website.

Enjoy!

Update:  I really intended these to go to the Euphonic Studio Facebook page, but they’re going to my personal page. Hmmmm.  Back to the drawing board.

Sara Kay's new CD is off to a running start!

May 12th was a good day to be in Euphonic Studio.  Our ears were treated to the talent of two Luther College graduates, a father-daughter team of two musicians who have in essence played together for decades.

Sara Kay’s voice tracks were intended to be scratch tracks, or throwaway tracks, with which her father could keep his place,   but many of the 9 or so songs we recorded are stellar and could be released as-is.  Pastor Jim Klosterboer who serves the Lutheran congregation in Elkader, Iowa, is a marvelous pianist and multi-instrumentalist.  As the arrangements of these songs progressed, Jim was able to treat us with many different styles of music and can quickly transpose complicated arrangements in his head.  It turns out that we all share many common experiences, and our session was very relaxed, productive, and tons of fun.

Two things stood out in this session in my mind; first, the value of a strong musical education.  My clients are musician’s musicians, very quick, efficient, communicative, and on the same page.  Second, it was apparent that the Mason & Hamlin grand piano “made” the session for Jim.  He really enjoyed playing it, and you could tell by the smile on his face and more direct cues like “You have a VERY nice piano!” that Sara Kay found the best place in the area to record a vocalist with a piano backup.  Sorry, the electronics have a lot of plus points, but when it comes down to what your ears want to hear they are not even close to a real piano.

Pastor Jim Klosterboer skillfully and lovingly enjoying our Mason & Hamlin A

I got the answer to my question of what this CD is about.  Sara Kay has a friend who has written alternative lyrics to many familiar hymns and carols, and this project is to create a CD of these tunes with the new lyrics.  The message is slightly changed; the emphasis is on the idea of an all-inclusive God who accepts any and every person.  The tone of the lyrics and songs chosen is upbeat, uplifting, and in some cases a call to action.  These songs are designed to be used in church services; I believe Sara Kay is planning to market them on CD Baby as well, but I will have further details when we get further into the project.

I am looking forward to our next session, which is scheduled for June 12th (Pastor Jim is a very busy man!)  In the meantime, I will be sending out mp3s for evaluation and also planning ahead for mixing and mastering the CD.  During the session I strove to get the best dynamic range possible while providing almost total sound isolation between the two musicians.  I chose the Oktava MK 012 mics in X-Y for inside the piano because their small size allows me to put the lid on the short stick.  Throw on a few heavy quilts, put a carpet underneath, and place a plexiglass barrier in front of the piano, and we have some pretty awesome separation.  Sara Kay was singing through a Shure SM7B, which is legendary for its tight pattern.  I had the low end rolled off and the high end emphasis turned on. We just turned the mic away from the piano and almost nothing got in.  She also sang through a Michael Joly modded MXL (which bears no resemblance to the original mic except for the case), and she preferred the Shure.  Oh, I also used an Audio-Technica ATM87R under the piano on the carpet, which I like to sneak into the middle of the stereo image just at the audible level.

We are very happy to announce that Sara Kay Klosterboer (formerly Brandsmeir) has chosen Euphonic Studio to produce her next CD project. Tracking will start May 12th.

Sara Kay will return to Euphonic Studio to record her entire project starting May 12

In summer of 2011 we pre-mastered her CD “On the Way” and all I can say is “BUY IT!”. The music is uplifting, lovely, and expertly crafted. Of course, the mastering is great, too.

I will put up more information about the project as it becomes available. The Mason and Hamlin grand plus her experience with Euphonic in mastering her previous project were key to her decision to record here.

Her last CD was spiritual in nature, and you can listen to samples of it on her page on this site . If you would like to listen to cuts from the entire CD, I would encourage you to check it out and purchase it at CD Baby. Here’s the link:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sarakay2

We are looking forward to Sara’s new project. Last time we spoke she mentioned that she does both secular and spiritual music, so it will be interesting to see what she brings us this time!

Update:  to those of you who noticed that I neglected to put a link to CD Baby’s samples, ooops!  That’s what happens when you hurry!

Ben Shinrock at April 20 Production Notes Meeting

After a great production notes session, and a bit of ad hoc muting & manipulation, we are finally getting to the end of Ben’s project which has been epic to say the least.

Ben began work on this over a year ago and due to timing, equipment upgrades, glitches with some plugins, and other problems, things got waylaid a bit.  But we have finally gotten to the production notes stage so that’s a good thing!  We have the arrangements finished, with the door open to the possibility of discovery, but we can say that things are sounding pretty tight and we are anxious to release these two songs out to the public.

I am not exactly sure how you would categorize these, but I will say that by my universal taste in music they fit into the category of well-written and meaningful songs.  Each has a style of its own, with one being more folkish and the other being more rockish.  We were delighted to tap the services of Mike Upah for drums on both recordings and the drum tracks sound GREAT.

In other news, Ben just told me that they have found the final member for the band he’s putting together and hopefully we will get things rolling with the new band as soon as they get their feet on the ground.

I don’t know how someone could NOT want to work with Ben; he’s a great singer/songwriter, guitarist, and he has patience, which will get you far in whatever endeavor you follow.

So, look for a Ben Shinrock tune in our recordings links in the next week or two!

Not much to say.  Just a wonderful session and great artist with a great song.  And it seemed like exactly perfect for me to hear at the moment.

Thank you, Lisa.

Update 4/6/12

Lisa will be in the studio today and hopefully this weekend I will get her page updated with the many songs she has recorded since the last time I updated her page.  I still have a ton of other work pending from Ben Shinrock, Steve Pawlenty, and Doralyn Bigelow.  And of course the video that Kaitlin and I made about how easy and inexpensive it is to make your own music video here at Euphonic Studio.

Coming up… another spoken word project.  Author and life strategy planner Dr. Mollie Marti just published her 3rd book, Walking With Justice, and she will be recording an audio book here starting possibly sometime later this month.  I am looking forward to meeting her and also hearing the book.  It feels like somewhat of an honor to have the author of a book read it to you.

News for local artists… our former neighbor who lived in US Congressman Dave Loebsack’s house across the alley, Steve Maravetz, has started a local arts website and has invited me to put up things recorded and videotaped here.  This will be great fun!  I have recorded a bunch of wonderful material from local artists and this will be a good booster for Mount Vernon as an artist’s haven as well as a plug for the musicians and studio.  Good idea, Steve!

Shari Stevens had a great spoken word session here. She is creating a series of guided imagery recordings to help listeners cope with healing and pain issues. As a daily user of guided Imagery, I can attest to the great value of this work!

Shari Stevens, owner and practitioner of Iowa City business A Healing Touch Massage & Reiki, was here on Friday March 16 to record a guided imagery session. This is a category of recording called “spoken word” and another example of this type would be audio books.

Shari recorded a session designed to help people visualize healing of their neck and shoulders.  Once I knew the levels were all good, I closed my eyes and listened to it as I would use one of the recordings that I use daily (I have one for fibromyalgia syndrome) and I was very impressed at the way she carried it off.  I was able to follow the visualization somewhat although trying to do this while doing recording engineering is somewhat difficult.

Shari is going to try to do her own post production work which will entail spacing out the phrases to the proper time and also adding the music of her choice.  She said that she may enlist my help with this if it seems to be a problem, but I think she’ll do fine.  I’ll be doing the mastering once she gets the final CD.  Since she has scripts for a whole lot of maladies and body areas, I suspect we may be doing this for a while.

Reiki is a spiritual healing practice that was developed in Japan early in the 20th century.  It involves placing hands on the body to help transfer universal energy to cause the body to heal itself.  I am sure that I do not understand how this works but if you would like to investigate this for your own life situation you should call Shari at (319) 341-7144.  If she’s up for it I may barter some recording time for a session to see what she can do for fibro.

Two weekend recording sessions have yielded extraordinary results for our artists Lisa Tracy and Ben Shinrock.  Yes, I do the techie stuff and sometimes some playing but mostly they play the tracks.  And what tracks they played!

Lisa Tracy warms up for recording at Euphonic Studio (photo credit to Mike Tracy)

On Friday, Lisa Tracy came in for a couple of hours to do a beautiful recording of her song “Laying Claim to My Deliverance”.  She did the song in two takes; one for the guitar and one for the voice.  In the past we have recorded both the guitar & voice at the same time as our general procedure but lately we have been tracking the voice separately which gives me much better control over the end result.

One thing I have been doing that is somewhat controversial is recording her guitar in stereo instead of mono.  There are differing opinions about this in the engineering world but in my opinion if you are simply tracking a vocal and guitar, and you have a controlled environment, you ought to at least try recording in stereo.  I use a pair of Octava MK-012-01 in an X-Y configuration at approximately the 14th fret and slightly above the fretboard line.  I find that combination with my Focusrite Prepack ISA 428 yields outstanding results.  The stereo image of the guitar provides more interest, in my opinion, and creates the illusion that you are very near the performer, which is what Lisa wants with these recordings.

Mike Upah in Euphonic Studio with his Pork Pie handmade drums

Our second session on Sunday brings Ben Shinrock’s project closer to completion.  Ben brought extraordinary session drummer Mike Upah into the studio for the first time (I’m sure it won’t be the last).  Mike did his homework from the scratch copies of the songs Ben sent him, and he came in ready to rock!  We did two songs, “Carousels” and “Everything in Between”, which have been in progress for just over a year now.  These are not trivial drum parts! With the drums ready to mix, that leaves a bit of cleanup with some instrumental overdubs and we have our next meeting scheduled for March 19th.

Euphonic Studio has been blessed or lucky or something.  We have had the nicest folks through here, fine musicians who have a clear vision of what they want and the chops and tenacity to get it done.  It would be great if we could repeat this last weekend with Lisa Tracy, Ben Shinrock, and studio cat Mike Upah every weekend.

A Piece of Fusion/Rock Music History

Steve Vai's CMC 24, or so it is purported to be. If it is, cool. If not, meh.

Euphonic Studio now owns the Allen, Heath & Brenell CMC 24 mixer and accessories purported to have been originally owned by Steve Vai. This, of course, if true, does not affect anything about it other than the fact that it has a connection to one of the top living guitarists on the planet. (And consummate gentleman, artist, scholar, and Renaissance man).

I should QUICKLY add that I have not yet received confirmation of this from Steve Vai himself; I am going by the word of the seller who tells a convincing story of having purchased the mixer and a Fostex 16 track tape deck from Steve Vai. Steve Vai indeed did own a Fostex 16. I have obtained samples of Steve’s handwriting from the ‘net and compared it to notes in the manual; I am not a graphoanalyist but I can say that there is enough similarity to not rule it out.

So we wait.

Allen and Heath traffic jam? No, just a groovy sort of reunion between two somewhat rare pieces of history

As some of my customers know, I use a CMC24 for analog summing, the last step before mixdown to stereo. This mixer allows me to take 24 outs from my digital system, mix them in the analog world,  and then send them back to 2 digital inputs to record the mix onto a stereo track. This method is alternate to mixing the digital signals from 24 tracks (or more) “inside the box”, meaning everything is done within the computer’s software tools to mix down to a stereo track.

The topic of analog summing is one that gets people’s dander up. My personal experience is that I can clearly hear a difference and the difference is that analog summing provides improved stereo image, greater depth, more clarity across the whole frequency spectrum, and in short, a much more professional sound. The person who talked me into trying this is the author of Zen and the Art of Mixing which is, as far as I’m concerned, the most authoritative book on mixing that I’ve read. The author, BTW, goes by the name “Mixerman” and if you are in the mixing business and haven’t read this book then I have a distinct advantage over you. That is, unless you have 30 years of experience in the world’s best recording studios and can remember what is pertinent to getting the best mix on each different system you encounter.

CMC 24 Meter Bridge - these are nearly impossible to find, so I had a lucky day!

Getting back to the mixer for a moment… the reason I purchased this mixer actually had nothing to do with being a star-struck Vai fanatic (although if you watch this video and don’t end up being at least a jaw-dropping admirer then I’d say maybe there’s something not quite right with your hearing) but actually had to do with the fact that it has a meter bridge and a CMI interface to a COMMODORE 64 COMPUTER! That’s right… you can run this mixer from a Commodore! LOL! I can’t use that in my studio at the moment but I am looking for a Commodore to test it and may sell the CMI interface on eBay to someone who really, really wants it. A&H add-ons for this mixer are very difficult to find. My meter bridge is serial number 005. Since it cost almost $600 in 1988, not too many meter bridges were made. So… the cost of the mixer was worth the cost of the meter bridge, plus I got a spare power supply, a backup mixer, and the Commodore interface. Oh, and it might just have come from Steve Vai’s studio.

CMI interface for connecting the CMC24 to a Commodore computer. This allows you to change signal routing and muting along with the track's time code if you want to demonstrate early automation to propeller-capped pocket-protector types.

Now let me just clarify one thing about the possible Steve Vai connection. This has a lot of meaning to me on some level, but that has NOTHING to do with implying that you are going to sound like Steve Vai if you record here. NO, NO, NO. The way you get to sound like Steve Vai is to practice guitar for 10 hours a day for weeks or months or years on end. That’s how HE did it. Unless you are some kind of savant, you will need to put in the time, too.  And it’s not just TIME… it’s a special form of intellectual discipline that keeps you focused and curious about sound the entire time you are playing.

One last word. You do not have to play at the level of Steve Vai to record good music. You record good music by playing and singing what you know and that has to have a connection with your heart. If your performance comes from the heart, it will be good on some level. After all, music is one way we use to communicate with each other. It is very disappointing to hear a player who does great work but plays very mechanically and carelessly. There’s no communication there; it’s more like being talked down to. Play from your heart with an open heart and you will make great music, whether you have Steve Vai’s chops and mixer or an old cassette deck.

Even though the weather is turning colder, things are turning hotter than a $2 dollar pistol in an all-night gunfight! (Pardon me, just had to use a simile today.)

Lisa Tracy will be here Friday the 17th to record another song. I still have not found exactly what I’m looking for to put on the additional tracks from her last recording session. We will try to get that straightened out.

I haven’t heard from Ben Shinrock for a few days; we are going to arrange a date to lay down live drums for his song Everything In Between which is a terrific alternative rock song.

In new business, Mary Smith (friend of my former colleague Doralyn Bigelow who moved to other parts) is organizing a run at finishing her CD project and after sorting out some entanglements with her publisher she will get underway here with her project. One thing she needs to do to finish her project is have her M-Audio controller keyboard (pre-Oxygen) hooked back up and get Forte re-installed on her computer. She plans to offer her songs for sale with scores. Mary writes and performs sacred music with an interesting twist; she has written narrations to tie her songs together. She has started this project in 2 different studios; it will finish in Euphonic Studio.

Steve Pawlenty surprised me yesterday by sending me a batch of tracks he sang for the song “My Redeemer Lives”. It’s a great song, and Steve did 4 backing vocal tracks with himself as lead singer. It’s a great arrangement, and I’ll be mixing that for him as time permits. Hopefully soon. I brought all the tracks into a project, anyway, so we’re almost there!

I’ve done a bit of work on Kaitlin Thune’s music video and hope to have that done and up shortly.

I decided to take down the two advocacy posts that I had up. I assume that the issues I was posting about will affect everyone greatly, but it’s out of my hands so I’m letting it go. Welcome to the 21st century.

Things are nearing the hectic stage in Euphonic recording studio. Photo credit goes to arseni at http://arseni.deviantart.com/

Euphonic Studio is getting REAL busy again. It seems like it’s time to try that cloning experiment again to see if two of me can handle this.

Ben Shinrock’s project is back on the table and I am starting tracking on Carousels, one of Ben’s songs that has a lot of potential. Besides bass & drums, I have tracked a Hammond part and plan to add a violin track which will share fills with another guitar, possibly a nylon string.

Lisa Tracy got snowed out last Friday 20th and may be coming over this Friday if it fits her schedule. Her next song will include an overdubbed guitar solo, which is something we haven’t yet done but I am looking forward to hearing it. She is truly an artist and I love her work.

My granddaughter Kate helped me shoot a video which will show how easy and laid back it is to record a “karaoke” type song here if you bring in your own backing tracks. She chose to sing an Adele song which tests the bottom of her range, but that’s great because it will give me an opportunity to demonstrate Melodyne. This is an ongoing secondary project for the studio advertising/promotion effort. Since it’s my project it takes the back seat to my customer’s projects.

I need to also mention that Steve Pawlenty and I are working up a standards CD via email. Steve and I used to be bandmates in the Firehouse Band (see samples on their page link to the right) and so far we have one song mostly done… I am working on a page for Steve and also the Twilight Blues Band and will have these done soon. Or perhaps my clone can finish them for me…?