Forgotten Genre Productions

My friends in the Faux Minx are doing a show at the Whitaker Center this Friday. This is definately a show worth seeing. Not only do you have the Faux Minx but you also get The Reese Project. All this for just $10. Now I know this sounds like a cheesy advertisement, obligitory in nature, but don’t be fooled. Both of these bands are worth seeing and the musicianship on display is excellent. In a world where we are constantly being force fed music like Rhiannan and Lady GAGa, going to see 2 bands with this level of knowledge of there instruments are a breath of fresh air. The other factor that is worth mentioning is going to a show at the Whitaker Center. I went to see Jerry Douglas a few years back and the sound was superb. That is a great room. All you engineers need to be reminded to get out and see/hear live music being played by an excellent band in an excellent room on an excellent PA to hear what music should sound like. This will be a great night to renew your passion for music and what it can do for your soul. Tickets are still available so contact the Faux Minx to get them..

To get you pumped up and ready I am including an MP3 of a song I recorded for the Faux Minx at Building Character in Lancaster. This is a magical version of Maiden Voyage that the guys played last year. We set up in a wharehouse with doors all around that we used for some baffling. At the end of the night we tore down and the guys went their seperate ways not feeling to confident about there performance. I loaded all the gear up moved it back to the studio and loaded it back in to the studio and decided to do a quick mix just to make sure I got everything. I started with Maiden Voyage and was drawn into it. As I brought up all the virtual faders and started to add this and filter that the song really grabbed me. I quick ftp’ed a copy to David Green, the bass player to assure him it wasn’t a waste. To this day it is one of my favorite mixes I’ve done. It is not perfect by any means but the excitement of going with your first instincts and letting it be as opposed to reworking and second guessing yourself was refreshing.

I hope the guys don’t mind me posting this to get you pumped up for the show. Let’s keep it on the down low people. Go see this show you will not regret it.

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 Faux Minx [
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So I get an email from Al Kooper this morning. Yea I realize it is obnoxious to open a blog post with that sentence but it actually happened. Al is mixing an album that a friend of mine is producing for the Legend Charlie Gracie. I have been preparing the files for Al to mix. Al is very particular about his workflow. First off, He hates Protools. Don’t even bring it up. Al works in Digital Performer (MOTU). The next thing is, Al has to have files in Aiff, not Broadcast wave which is the industry standard but Aiff. Al also likes everything on a disc. He did not like the idea of ftp’ing files or using a dropbox. They had to be on a disc. We sent him the album on 2 DVD’s, 10 songs in all, 5 on each disc. The second disc we sent him, he could not find the files on, so I rushed him out another disc the next day that I, of course, checked on a second computer to verify that files were on it. Today I get an email from Al Kooper addressing me as Anthony Boy. It seems that the second disc was “blank” but he was able to find all the songs exept one on the first “blank” disc I sent him. Now I need to send him the one song so he can complete the project. So here I am burning another DVD for 1 song and another 25 dollars to fed ex the songs to Al to make it right. The moral of the story is….. Don’t argue with Al Kooper. The guy mixed Freebird people. I don’t care if he likes his files with a ribbon attached to it. It is pointless to argue or defend yourself or explain that you checked it and it must be on his end or any other excuses that come to mind. Just make it right. Does Al care about me or my resume’? Of course not. Just make it right. So today I will be checking the files on 2 computers, Mac and PC to make sure Al gets his files.

Oh yea, and Al Kooper called me boy.

Tomorrow at the Guitar Center in Lancaster PA I will be hosting a Melodyne Clinic with the guys from Melodyne. Melodyne is a very cool program that brings some very cool science to the area of pitch correction. Although many people are familiar with Autotune, it is not the only kid on the block, so to speak. The cool thing about Melodyne is they have just released DNA which stands for Direct Note Access. This sofisticated software is able to take a multi note source such as a guitar chord and actually split the chord into individual notes. Then you can change the pitch, correct that one note in an otherwise flawless solo, etc. I am anxious to see and hear this at work. Any one in the Central PA area is welcome to come out at 6:00 to take it all in.

I just saw this new item that was debuted at the Musikmesse Conference in Germany. It is a great tool for tracking guitars at home with some finesse. It is a little pricey but the remote feature is very cool. Enjoy

It has been a busy Season here at FGP. I have spent the last 2 months getting a studio set up for my friends at Evole2Trust along with tracking for Crossway Church, Wallace & Gina, and David Green, and Mixing for the Lyrebirds and Big Red. I am now in the process of looking for a new studio location and building a new studio. There are many exciting possibilities on the horizon. Stay tuned for news.

In the last month I have been working on a project with an old friend of mine Eric Lawrence. Eric and I went to school together in New Guinea. He is in a band named the Lyrebirds and they have been recording an album on there own in Canada. Eric also spends time over seas in Turkey I believe. I am mixing the album for him here in PA. What allows me to do this is an organization named yousendit. You send it allows me to transfer large files back and forth instantly. Let me give you some history so you are able to appreciate this. Back in the day if you wanted to work long distance like this you would have to mail your tapes or dat’s or DVD’s and wait for them to arrive. At best you could pay an arm and a leg to have Fed-Ex overnight them and then you could overnight the mixes back to the client and wait for them to get back to you with the changes. This was of course time consuming and costly. Enter yousendit. For a nominal fee you can transfer files instantly and get instant feedback to speed up the session. This has been a great tool for me. Eric will send me the individual wave files for the song by dropping them in my drop box. I will download them and go to work and send him the mix. This is great for all those guys that say there is not enough musicians in their town to keep them busy. Now you can work outside of your community. Embrace technology, move on, check out yousendit. 

I came across this video in a typical meandering social media progression. My old acquaintance Charlie Peacock has a blog that I suggest you check out, that he referenced on his facebook page which showed up on my news feed. From there I watched this video and discovered That the female here is Joy Williams who I did a show with years ago when I was touring with Waterdeep. They loved Joy and already had prior knowledge of her work but I heard her for the first time that night. She has a beautiful voice and has teamed up with this gent, John Paul White. This song is hauntingly beautiful and gets me in the way much of the Deadman music gets me. Also to note is the use of the Heil PR20 mic on Joy’s voice. As some of you may know I am a big fan of the Heil mics and have and use quite a few of them in the studio myself. Actually we used the same mic on Jennifer Lewis’ voice for the Trash & Glory project. Of course we used the gold grill and refered to it as the “Diva” mic.I will have to do more research on the Civil Wars but for now enjoy this video and check out Charlie’s post of the background of  it here.

 I realize I have been hung up on a lot of guitar toys lately but this one takes the cake, or at least fills a gap for something I have been waiting for. As all you gear savvy engineers out there know NAMM 2010 just wrapped up in Anaheim CA. For all you unsavvy engineers. NAMM is the trade show for the music products industry. This is the time when all the manufacturers show new gear and get you hyped up about it. Electro Harmonix released the Deluxe Memory Boy and a few other cool pedals but it is the Deluxe Memory Boy that catches my attention. Heres why. Back in the day (the zeros you know, naughts if you will.) I had a line 6 DD4 delay which I liked. It had some great sounds and you had the ability to have 3 different programs on one pedal. It also had the looper feature blah, blah, blah (not something I use or care about) of course one of the handiest features was the tap tempo which allowed you to quickly adjust to fit into different songs and helped me to pretend or at least try to convince others that I was playing the same song that they were. As is the case with much of life eventually the DD4 hit the wall due to over use and abuse by friendly borrowers and my self. I am not a big Line 6 fan as many of you know and this pretty much sealed their fate in regards to my meaningless support of their products. Their was no way I was spending another 250 or 300 bones to replace the delay. Of course the only delays that I used consistently in the DD4 was the analog w/ mod settings which consequentially was modelled after the EHX memory man. So in my travels I discovered the MXR Carbon Copy which I absolutely love. It is a tone machine and has a warmth and realness that I just like from the get go. I decided to replace the DD4 with a carbon copy. There was only one down side to this plan and that was tap tempo or the lack thereof as the case may be. I even considered some day adding another Carbon Copy and having one set to a lead longer delay and the other set to a shorter slap back kind of thing. Since my Egnater Rebel 20 has no reverb the extra option was even more intriguing. Then I discovered the Memory Boy and the Memory Toy from EHX. 2 different updated versions of the old Memory Man pedals. They were affordable and had that great analog tone. I thought that the memory boy was a little hard to control with the modulation being a little over the top for me but the Memory Toy was just right. I was demoing one for a while and liked what I was getting from it but felt some innate sense that I should just wait. I had long since given up on the tap tempo delay. Alas as I was dutifully trolling the NAMM releases to keep informed I came across my dream, The Deluxe Memory Boy WITH tap tempo people!!! It’s too good to be true. So now I have to wait untill they actually release them. Feast your ears on this video clip.

In preparation for this  recording session with Doug Plank and Crossway Church I have been getting my Guitar rig in order. As you see from my previous post I added a guitar. The other recent addition is the Wiggler from Electro Harmonix. Electro Harmonix makes some great pedals and the wiggler is definitely one of the greats. The thing I love about EHX is their pedals have a certain warmth to them. They usually go from subtle to over the top and have a definate analog feel to them. If you are looking for pristine sparkly clean EHX is not the way to go but if you are looking for character they nail it. I have found that when you are mixing in the box and have access to hundreds of plug ins things get a little too clean. I tend to prefer a more organic approach to tone. The only critique I have about the EHX pedals are they tend to be a little noisy. Now there are ways around this. I find as a player I need to be more aware of rolling the volume down when I am not playing. This is becoming somewhat of a lost art with all these processors and pods etc. out on the market. Back in the day as players tried to control the noise issues they discovered that their tone changed a little at different volumes and they used it as one more tone tool in their tool bag. They also discovered the volume swell which is a technique that I would certainly like to perfect. I am still refining the volume roll off.Ok, back to the wiggler. A couple of things that are interesting about the wiggler. There is an output control at the top left. You can use this to drive your amp a little for fatter slightly knarlier sounds. Oh yeah that brings us back to one of the clutch features; Tubes, baby, tubes. The wiggler has 2 12ax7wb tubes in it to give that tone mojo that we like. It is an all tube path and it sounds lush. You also have 4 different character options for vibrato and true amplitude modulation tremolo. Not only am I excited about using the wiggler with my guitar rig but I am anxious to use it on other sounds patched out of my recording rig. Sometimes having knobs to grab onto is more vibe inducing then clicking on a mouse so I am looking for another exciting tone mangler. I will keep you posted on the results.

For Christmas this year I decided I was going to get a guitar. The last couple of years for Christmas I used my Christmas money on studio gear. One year I upgraded my Studio computer, one year it was an ART Pro Channel tube channel strip, another year it was a mic I haven’t made any guitar purchases for a long time. This year however I am about to start on a project where I will be playing a little guitar and a little bass and I wanted to have the tools for tone that were necessary. I actually came close to purchasing a Les Paul Traditional Gold top. I never really saw myself as a Les Paul guy but I picked up a limited edition Les Paul for a customer of mine. There were only 100 of these models available and when it arrived in the shop I thought to my self, “what is the big deal here about a les paul. Aren’t these just over hyped over priced guitars with a name stamped on them?” So I pulled out the guitar and tuned it and played it and loved it. First of all the neck was solid on it. I like a big fat neck on my guitars, which is why I have kept my Washburn grover jackson designed MG410. If I could find another one of those guitars I would buy it in a second. They are worthless on the market but the neck is the fatest neck I have seen and the frets are these huge jumbo frets that are so easy to play. I am not a fast player I am really looking for tone. So much of the tone comes from the neck and thin little heavy metal necks do not cut it for me. Anywho, The Les Paul blew me away. I had this plan that I would put it on law a way and sell some gear and have the guitar some day. After dwelling on it for weeks I came to the conclusion that I could not justify spending that kind of money at this point in my life. I still wanted something so my quest went on. In searching I came across the JA-90 Fender Tele which is the Jim Adkins Signature tele. Jim is from Jimmy Eats World. I loved the idea of the P90’s and the different tonal options there. I started to lean towards this guitar and as I was researching it I discovered that the guitar was modeled after Jim’s TC90 tele that was no longer made when I saw the picture I loved the double cut away and the over all look. The guitar also has a set neck which is  a very nice feature. These guitars were made in Korea and the workmanship was excellent on them. On a whim I decided to do a search to see if Guitar Center had any used ones in the chain and sure enough I found one in Oklahoma City. I ordered it and waited. It arrived last week and I loved it. In the mean time I decided to take my lovely wife’s advice and clear out some of the gear that I was not using because I was waiting for the right project. I traded in a guitar and a couple of pedals that I had not used in a while and ended up paying much less than I would have for the Paul and I have a unique guitar that I love.