A talent of mine...

I actually wondered for a long time if recording music was something I was actually good at, or something I just liked to do. I of course, love audio and I had found a confidence in my skills at least when focused on film sound. But frankly, for much of the time I've been interested in making records, I've been surrounded by people who were better at it than me. (Jason, Ryan, uh, everyone I worked at Avatar with) My passion for music is similarly pretty strong, so I've thought a lot about whether I'm good enough at music to "masquerade" as a recording engineer.

When I thought about it a little more I realized I was from a bit of a different background. I began in recording at MCC where my first class was entirely on analog tape. In my second semester we "got to move up to digital" tape. Only just before my mission did I ever really experience using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) in software form. After my mission, I went to BYU. It was actually incidental that I got a Pro Tools job on campus. I wasn't even applying for it. I was applying to be a TA for Comms 101 and my teacher asked me out of nowhere if I knew Pro Tools. Well, then I started at KBYU where I met Jason. I got better at ProTools, but the couple projects I recorded in school, I was ultimately not that happy with.

I've realized more over time that I actually just kinda suck at mixing in the computer environment. I've always been capable of getting good recorded sounds. In fact, I've become a bit of a tone freak (complete tweaker). I just wasn't great at mixing, at least absent a console. As fortune would have it, I'm unexpectedly on my own at Dirty for the next few months, and I'm hoping that as I've been forced more heavily into mixing music in Pro Tools, I'll get better at it. I already notice some progress on day one.

Tickled yet another time...

It tickles my fancy to let you know about a blog I contribute to with my friend Luke. It highlights awesome things that we find on Netflix' Instant Watch.

It's called GuessWhatTotallyBadassThingIJustFoundOnInstantWatch.com

You kids with Netflix should check it out.

An art piece...

How very Mormon of me, I know, but possibly my favorite painting of all time is Arnold Freiburg's (Book of Mormon paintings) depiction of George Washington called "The Prayer at Valley Forge". It's a beautiful rendition of a beautiful moment in history and a reminder of the faith of the General of the Army of the Potomac.

And yes, there were 4 prepositional phrases in a row there.

A song that makes me cry or nearly...

I pretty nearly cried the first time I listened to "What Sarah Said".


What Sarah Said (Directions DVD)

Death Cab for Cutie | MySpace Music Videos

I'm emotionally unstable and there are a handful of songs that can get tears out of me if the timing is right.

A fanfic...

I've always heard there's awful fanfic out there that makes your favorite stories, well...

Sexy.

Well, it's even more awful in reality than it sounds in theory. This is the first Transformers fanfic I found...


World's Worst is accurate.

A nonfiction book...

Ha, at least in a manner of speaking...

"The Mixerman Diaries" as they were called when being published monthly in an industry periodical called Tape-Op, are about a freelance recording engineer who gets "chosen" to record the debut album for a major label bidding-war* band. The label insists the band work with a big name producer, and the band consents but insists that our hero be their engineer... Two members of the band know him and they expect him to act as sort of their ally in the recording process.

He essentially documents the daily nightmare that it was to work on this record with the band and the label, and shows along the way just why so much of popular music is total crap. The band is a nightmare. They hate each other's guts and they haven't even toured yet. "The singer is vain and pretentious. The guitarist is a chronic depressive. The drummer is 'dumb as cotton' and the bassist is merely mean and petty, making him the only one that Mixerman can stand."

While it's uber-entertaining to a recording engineer it's widely readable and a fascinating behind the scenes of the bad, the worse, and the ugly of the record industry.

*= In the days when the labels ruled the record industry (with an iron fist), top prospects were often fought over by different labels. Ironically, the lion's share of the bidding was actually the size of the loan the band was to be fronted upon signing. Which is actually to say, the biggest dollar amount was actually what the band had to recoup in sales before they made even a dime. Musician's were courted with debt... Amazing.

A fiction book...

Currently reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Danielle lent me it and is certain I'll love it. It's really good so far. While it's not a sci-fi book, but the main character's affinity for genre literature has made me want to read a bunch of sci-fi... most immediately to read the rest of the Dune books.

Tickling my fancy again...

I just barely saw the video for this song long loved...

A photo of me taken recently...

Me at the studio during a recent recording session.

A photo taken over 10 years ago.

This is the only thing I've seen in digital form that old... had to scour my friend's facebooks for it too. I look ridiculous, but of course all of us do.

A photo I took...

It ain't nothin' special, but Ben is making one of those Ben faces.

A photo that makes me sad/angry.

This photo makes me both. Also recognizing there are thousands of boys like this 13 year old Ugandan who are forcibly recruited to militias in African conflict zones like Uganda, Zimbabwe, Chad, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and the Congo. This happens on other continents too, notably in Columbia, Cambodia, and Chechnya. And that's only by standing armies... Displaced Palestinian children all over the world are recruited by organized terror to make the "ultimate act of faith" and strap a bomb to their bodies.

A photo that makes me happy...

Yeah, I had a hard time narrowing the field. Forget narrowing the field. These photos make me happy. They're in a totally random, nonsensical order.


Taken by Trisha's folks on our white trash roadtrip to a nascar event in NC. I have a huge, disgusting mullet.


Taken by my little brother at the top of the Bunker Hill Monument (while I was contemplating throwing up).


Taken toward the end of an absurdly fun trip to Palmyra.


Ben and I at a 1920's themed party.


One of a series. Taken on Jason's famous trip to Boston. (The one he met his wife to be on)


Taken at Jason and Pugs' wedding. Yancy, Jason, and I are remarkably handsome fellows.


Taken on my visit to the Virgin Islands to see Kirsti. There are wild donkeys on St. Johns. They like bagel bites.


My mom and Grandma watching the Sox at Fenway.


This is what my friend Danger does when you try to photograph her.


Gina asked me to write on her cast. So I did.


2 of my nieces. Taken on my phone. Totally cute.


The day I came home and found David, Ben, and Bryce piling snow against Evie's door. I of course, joined in.


Danielle in Providence.


Taken from the old North Bridge on my little brother's trip to Boston last summer.


Jenny Owen Youngs, Bess Rogers, and Allison Weiss a few nights ago in Boston.


The after pic of the dessert sampler my gf and I pounded at Finale in Harvard Square the other night.


Timothy on Halloween 2007.


My 27th Birthday Party which for some reason was like 80% girls.


Megan getting a love tap from Paul Revere on a visit she and Christina made to Boston.


Taken in the harbor on my first trip to Boston, when I fell in love with the city. Seth, Tim, Marie... good times.


Funnest night of the summer I lived in NYC, hands down.


The day I bought my Strat.


I don't remember what inspired this impromptu rock out, but I jumped really high in the air.


My Pride and Joy 1969 Fender Rhodes.

Whatever tickles my fancy...

Happy Birthday, Katrina.

And Happy Saint Patty's, Boston! I feel like the parade in Southie needs House of Pain as a guest.

My favorite quote...

Is actually song lyrics from my favorite song...

"And this is what she said gets her through it...
If I don't let myself be happy now, then when?
If not now, when?"

My favorite book...

My favorite book is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

My favorite television program...

The greatest television comedy ever. I will not hear arguments.

Arrested Development.



Although British comedies "Man Stroke Woman" (starring Nick Frost of Sean of the Dead/Hot Fuzz fame) and "The Armstrong and Miller Show" have had me quite in stitches lately.

My favorite movie...

This is similarly hard to nail down, but if required to choose one, I always have to say Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light". It's a story about a small parish Priest who is steadily losing his faith. On a particularly hopeless winter Sunday, the weary Father only needs to tell a suicidal member of his flock why one must go on living... But he finds himself only venting his own deep-seeded anguish and despair. Distraught by the long-past death of his wife and the demands of an affair he has no affection for, he is tormented by "God's silence." It is a foreboding film that is often identified as a masterful argument for atheism. Indeed, Bergman was an atheist for most of his career, and arguably made this film (or the trilogy [loose term] it is part of) while he was first casting off the shackles of his strict Lutheran upbringing...

But this film has always oddly strengthened my faith. In fact, most of his very weighty films have taught me something about the beauty of humanity even in the most depraved or pathetic conditions. He's easily my favorite filmmaker and let's face it... Kurosawa is a hard one to edge out. When Bergman died a few years ago, I actually wept. Part of the why had to do with his last film, "Saraband", a touching, unusual "sequel" to an earlier film called "Scenes From a Marriage". "Saraband" had the unmistakeable ring of hope and love. He told a story remarkably similar to his own, and in the end... if I can borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, he allowed his characters to be "Surprised by Joy".

I heartily recommend any and all Bergman films, but especially Winter Light.

My favorite song...

There are like at least 6, but I have to say it's really 2 songs constantly swapping places in my mind.

The first is Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds masterpiece "God Only Knows", which even two Beatles have called the most beautiful song ever written.

The second is Jimmy Eat World's "For Me This is Heaven" from Clarity.

Just a heads up that I'm gonna try and blog every day for a month.