Good stuff

Album credits dot com

http://www.albumcredits.com/Profile/145473

If you are credited on a record, claim your profile! The listing gets better as we all claim our profiles and get them cleaned up. Mine has a ton of omissions and mistakes, but none of us can fix it until 2000 people claim their profiles.

Chandler LTD

I think that some of the best new gear being made today is coming from Wade at Chandler. Stuff I use on every session these days: germanium pre. Germanium compressor. Zener limiter. Curve bender. Silicon graphic (custom made for my console) doesnt count because I have the only ones outside of chandler.
  Along with the Sage Electronics crew, the Chandler people are amazing and the gear is built well and it is a win/win. The curve bender has been on every record I have mixed since it came out.

Matisyahu

The guitar setup for Dave holmes on th matisyahu sessions. My Gibson
les Paul combo amp "lp grill" and his tele, with an SM7 right up on it
and a Chandler germanium mic pre, straight in to PTHD. No eq on the
way in. A little bit of plate in the mix, along with tape echo in the
dub sections which was a solid state echoplex in this case.

Yes

Packing for the unknown

API box, Aengus

Some of the best EQ's ever, the Aengus graphics. Right below the Sage SE-1 mic pre's that I love.

on the left: the guillotine HP/LP filters by shinybox and the PDI by mooktronics. A bunch of germanium power supplies for stuff in the rack below this desk, and a random Rolls headphone amp for people who are tracking in the control room if needed. 

studio gear

Not NYC

Image of a non NYC moment, before recording the preproduction stuff with the Parkington Sisters.

Collins 26-1U compressor

Another favorite of mine: the Collins 26-1U.
here is the schematic if you have one of these: http://www.waltzingbear.com/Schematics/Misc/Collins_26U1.htm

Also, this thing uses the classic 6386 vari-mu tube, like the GE unilevel, gates sta-level, fairchild 660/670, and other modern thingies from pendulum audio and a few others. I love the 6386 based compressors a lot. They just do something none of my other comps will do. The UTC transformers in the 261U sound amazing just running through them, and this box has found its way onto almost every record I have mixed in the last 5+ years.  Highly recommended. They seem to be getting really expensive lately, so if you have the money: now is the time.

Bass pedals

By far, my favorite bass pedals ever made: the Korg BPX3. I had taurus pedals, taurus II's, and a few other midi type things including the novation bass station (which works), but these just work so well in a band context. If you are interested in making the bass seem like the strings got fatter in the chorus, rather than having a secret synth elf jump up from behind your band in the chorus, these pedals are what you should be looking for. they just "hide" in the mix so well. 

A quote

"The world is really small, so I am trying to get my arms all the way around it."

Collins 26W

On the last few things I have been producing or mixing or both, the Collins 26W has really been amazing on the Bass DI. I have had the bass multed to a few channels with a culture vulture driving, the 26W, and sometimes a Purple MC77 or a simple dbx160X on like  the 100:1 setting, post EQ just so I can wind on some "development" in the low end or mids or whatever is lacking. The Matisyahu thing had that setup on the bass for Stu's bass, and i was loving it. The Watussi record had it for Pat's bass, but without all the mukting, just 1 channel of bass DI with one aux going to the Culture vulture. That one sounds great. If you listen on the song "tu te vas" the 26W really just makes the bass sit in a great place. This is a super cool compressor with  600v DC rails... tons of headroom, and a really great drive character for bass. It does that crazy thing where when you hit it hard it almost sounds like a subtle frequency divider in parallel is happening. Really great stuff. you can see it in the picture above with a "patapus" sticker on it.. so it was the watussi mixing sessions.
read about it here also:
http://www.dorrough.com/collins26w.html

Taxes

I did it!!! 

I actually overpaid this year on my taxes. 

That is absolutely stunning for a freelancer....

Time to look at something good for the studio again!

    Maybe that 16 track headstack for the 827... hmm...

Zoom H4n

I am normally not that interested in "prosumer" equipment, but this Zoom H4n recorder is really impressing me so far. I will be writing a short piece for a magazine that I have written for many times before about this little cool device and how well it works in the field. The region I will be in in africa will be hard on this equipment, so its a great place to test them out. I recorded some preproduction with the Parkington Sisters with this little recorder not long ago and was very impressed with the way it sounds! I wish there was a better way to throughput the sound of the little stereo pair of condensers built right to the unit... anyway, I will have more to say about this thing soon enough. 

     Please feel free to donate through paypal to my email address. contact me through this blog first. 

Gearing up

I have been gearing up for a recording mission to Africa (south africa, nkomazi region) for a while now.
a lot of great people have donated towards this trip. I will be blogging about this trip and my crazy life in audio here periodically. here is the mission statement for the upcoming session in South Africa:

TRIAD TRUST MEDIA DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

There are 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. South Africa’s rural Nkomazi region is home to the population with the world’s highest prevalence of HIV. 50% of the population over the age of 15 is living with HIV. Half the population is under the age of 18. With this precarious balance of demographics, orphans and vulnerable children are not only growing up amidst the spectre of HIV/AIDS, they are growing up without role models. TRIAD’s mission is to change that. Through innovative HIV and life skills education programming, TRIAD identifies and trains local leaders to create and run sustainable arts, media, and sports-based HIV and life skills education programs for these vulnerable children.

At the heart of TRIAD’s initiatives is the unique ImprovED program. TRIAD’s Performing Arts staff trains a troupe of local actors, musicians, and Medical Educators to implement an age-appropriate and community-tailored program. By working within schools and in after-school groups over an 8-week period, the troupe acts as Performance Facilitators and introduces information each week with songs, improvisational role playing, discussion, and finally a collaborative performance scene. The regular presence of the troupe members creates a comfort and trust amongst the youth that only comes with consistency– something too many of these children don’t have elsewhere.

From April 3 through April 13, Joel Hamilton and Francisco Botero will be working with The TRIAD Trust in the Nkomazi region of South Africa. Musician Marika Hughes is a long-time supporter of and volunteer with TRIAD, having worked with community members on the ground several times. Her work with these troupe members is an integral reason for TRIAD’s success to date. In 2009, Marika shared with Joel her experiences with TRIAD and its community-based partners in Africa. Joel immediately contacted TRIAD to share ideas about how he could help TRIAD and its local stakeholders achieve their mission of reducing the transmission of HIV/AIDS by lending his expertise as a recording engineer and producer.

Joel and Francisco will be working alongside Marika and Jack Judson, TRIAD’s Director of Arts Programming, Chloe Lewis, TRIAD’s Director of Educational Programming, the ImprovED troupe, and hundreds of young program participants. Joel and Francisco will be recording songs that are part of the ImprovED curriculum, spoken-word pieces composed by program participants, and interviews with community members. Hopefully they will be donating equipment to the local stakeholders, too.

The goal of Joel and Francisco’s visit is four-fold:

• To document the program for educational purposes so ImprovED methods can be shared with other communities
• To create a marketable set of tracks for a record to be sold to raise funds to support these educational initiatives
• To train the community-based ImprovED troupe members to use basic recording techniques so they can continue to document the progress and success of ImprovED on their own
• To train the ImprovED troupe members to use basic recording techniques as an income-generating business opportunity to fund the ImprovED program

Local stakeholders in the ImprovED program need the unique expertise that Joel will bring. TRIAD is looking forward to introducing him and Francisco to the community. 

Brooke Wurst

Founder and Executive Director

The TRIAD Trust