Currently Mixing: Gary Johnson

Wow, time flies…

In November I had songwriter/guitarist Gary Johnson out from New York to record bass tracks with Jimmy Stofer. Gary then came back out for a week stint in December to track guitars for his upcoming full-length entitled “Tracing Starlines WIth Empty Hands”.

Now, come January/February 2010, it’s time to mix! I’m thrilled to be working on this project. The songs are fantastic and really have something for everyone. There are moments of pure guitar-driven pop, and moments of an honest singer-songwriter, all wrapped up in a really neat way. The record features Jimmy Stofer on bass and Kevin Soffera (formerly Breaking Benjamin and Seether) on drums. Rocking.

Mixing is nearly complete, with 6 tunes in the can and four more to go… Look Gary up on MySpace or Facebook and check out this record when it comes out late February!

Saints Session Photos

Hey everyone-

Check out some photos from the Saints sessions here at The Hook Factory!

More to come later!

-Dave

Piano Ballad Challenge With Saints

Lewi (drummer for the band Saints) sure knew how to catch me off guard in this video.  I did pretty well coming up with Total Eclipse of the Heart (or at least I thought), but totally bombed the Meat Loaf tune. Check it out!

Things are really coming along with the Saints project – look for the release sometime next month!

-Dave

Saints: Ringtones

Hey guys-

Check out Saints lead singer Rob Gault showcasing his own custom ringtones. He is on the cusp of dominating the “sounds from the barnyard” ringtone market…so be on the lookout!

More videos from the Saints sessions coming soon!

-Dave

Saints: November Rain

Hey everyone-

Here’s a quick video of Lewi from Saints playing November Rain on the piano. Keep an eye out for Jimmy Stofer joining in on vocals! We had an absolute blast working with these guys…

More videos from the sessions with Saints to come!

-Dave

More Tracking With Saints

Hey music fans-

We’re wrapping up the new EP with Saints right now, and everything looks to be on schedule for a release here shortly! We are currently getting ready to start the mix sometime this week, and are confident that this will be one of the best and most exciting projects that we’ve done to date.

Once again we’d like to give a shout out to our good friend and bass extraordinaire, Jimmy Stofer. We got exactly what we needed from him as always, and are excited to have him play on more projects in the future.

We’ll keep you posted once the project is finished and how you can get your hands on a copy. In the mean time – check out Saints myspace page for more info on upcoming shows in the Denver/Boulder area.

Until next time-

-Dave

Studio Blog: The Autumn Film

The Autumn Film: In The Studio

A few months ago, I got a link in my email box from Justin showcasing a band that he found called The Autumn Film. I instantly loved their sound, and thought they would be a great fit with us producing them in the studio.  

After checking out an amazing show at the Oriental Theatre - we brought them in to work on a tune that will be given away as a free track sometime early in the new year.  It’s a cool 6/8 tune with many layers and lush soundscapes, highlighted by Tifah’s hauntingly beautiful vocal performance. Tracking a full tune in one day is quite a feat, but we pulled it off with the amazing musicianship of Tifah, Reid and Dann.

We had an absolute blast working with these guys, and hope to work with them more in the near future! The track will be mixed and mastered shortly, so stay tuned…

-Dave

PS from Justin:

Pay attention here, folks. This is the future. Music business 2.0.

You can download, for free, two EPs that the Autumn Film has released over the past couple of years. Download the So Loved EP and The Grey EP. It’s great stuff.

Looking At The Finish Line…

The Kyle Galanaugh project is almost complete! Justin, Kyle and I spent the past few weeks tweaking the overall mixes, and I must say we are very pleased with the end result.  

We are currently in the process of lining up a mastering engineer.  There are a few people who could potentially be in the pipeline – hopefully we’ll be able to get who we want to make this project really rock! Needless to say, we’ll be making quite a few phone calls in the near future.

The buzz on this EP is really exciting! We’re getting amazing feedback from people both inside and out of the business, and have the support of local radio and indie retailers.  Once the project is finished in its entirety, Kyle will be playing a ton of shows around town – so check it out!

Well, that’s it for now…we’ll keep you posted!

-D

Somebody Call Clive!

Friday we had Kyle Galanaugh up to cut BGV’s for his single “Wait.” The track is killing and we’re almost ready to mix. There’s a huge buzz around town about this EP and we’re so excited to finish it up.

The weekend was spent mostly working on maintenence, miscellaneous projects around the studio and filming for our new reality TV show entitled “Somebody Call Clive!”. Samples and out-takes will be up and available soon. Or, as soon as Dave gets them edited.

In other good news, the new firmware/software update for the Euphonix MC Mix controller was just released and it rocks so far. Seems like most of the major problems were fixed with Pro Tools. We’re also demoing an Orange Tiny Terror amp in the quest to expand guitar world.

Oh, and lastly, we just found out that our friend Yaffa is scheduled to be back in town from Italy this coming week. We will be embarking on uncharted territory, producing an opera/pop track for her record! Stay tuned…

Fool In the Rain

Busy busy. The site is starting to take shape, and Nick is our hero for getting it up in between his 10 million other clients. Hopefully we’ll get some audio and video up soon, as well as pictures.

In the meantime, Dave and I spent most of the day working on a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Fool In The Rain for a film/tv pitch. I played a couple hundred tracks of shakers, agogo bells, cowbells and timbales, and then we worked on the mix. 

We’re both taking a much needed weekend off to do other things, but will be back at it on Monday as other deadlines are fast approaching. 

Oh, and I got Dave a belated birthday gift! His first pot was tasty, though it will get a lot better. He’s just starting to realize how tweaky you can get with coffee. I’ll ruin him soon enough.