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Today was my last day at The RecW. This has been an amazing experience for me. I wanted to take this chance to share some of my favorite parts of the space with some pictures. To start, I want to give some pictures of the studios. Here is Studio A, our analog studio. This space is really cool and the Big analog board in here is really nice to mix on.: Studio B, probably my most used studio. This is a bedroom mix space. I used this space to learn Logic better.: Studio C, our d

Work on the tape digitization project has continued this past weekend. I completed 9 more tracks, which accounts for around 3/4s of the total track count. I've refined the process a bit and have gotten quicker at manipulating the tape machine. I did, however, run into a slight problem with some of the tapes. As I got further into the first set of three, I would have an increasing amount of audio drop on two of the three tapes. I thought at first that maybe the tape machine ju

I've been working at The RecW for a few weeks now and have settled into the routine. I wanted to describe what all I do over there is. The first thing I do in the morning is make a pot of coffee for everyone. I make sure to get it ready and hot for when everyone comes in to teach or work. While the coffee is brewing, I begin the cleaning process. The morning clean is split into 8 different phases. This is the most efficient way to clean the building, especially on days where

I've been thinking all week about how to get digital input into ProTools for my tape digitization project, and I finally figured it out today. I ended up getting half of the first set of tapes digitized. The process for this is way less complicated than I thought it would be. To start, I take a Lightpipe cable out of the back of the Alesis XT20. This is the digital output of the tape player. I then need to take the Lightpipe cable into the optical in port of one of our HDX in

I've been off work for the past couple days due to an injury, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about one of my main tasks at The RecW: Cable repair. Cable repair has been one of my largest projects here so far. I've repaired around 20 cables in last 5 weeks and I have come up with a process for basic repairs that I'd like to share. To start, you need a few tools. I use a cable continuity tester, a screw driver, a wire cutter, a pair of pliers, scissors,

I have started another project this week in collaboration with Capital Music Tech. I am digitizing old ADAT tape recordings. I started this past weekend and have almost gotten the method for getting these tapes into ProTools down. One of the main problems with ADAT tapes is the only things that can play them are old ADAT tape players from the 90s. These are not the most reliable machines and have a whole host of problems getting connected to modern hardware. On Capital campus

For the past few weeks, I have been working as an intern at The RecW. This is a recording and media school located in Massieville, Ohio. I have been doing a lot of different things to help out over there from cleaning, to fixing cables, to even getting some studio time in. My internship has been a blast so far. One of the things I was most impressed with going into this internship and finding out more about the school was just how many prolific graduates they have. The RecW

We have begun the mixing process! I have been hard at work in studio C mixing both tracks in Atmos, and I have learned a lot from it. I started with the track that inspired this project, Bobby Sox. I am really excited about how this mix is going. The guitars from my amp modeler ended up being really fun to work with. I started on those by just taking out some mids to get that classic pop punk scooped tone. I lightly compressed each track individually, then grouped them and di

All of the recording is done as of this update. I got the full second song tracked in two sessions. This time around, I did a little more experimentation. I use an amp modeler that has it's own XLR outputs, so I just took that into the Vintech pre-amps for the guitars. I liked this sound so much that I may end up replacing the other tracks guitars with it. It gives such a crisp, clear tone that really works well for this genre. The hardest part of this track's recording for m

I've got some more to share on my project progress, but not too much. I have completed the drum programming. All of the programming was done in Logic for both tracks because I prefer the Logic MIDI editor and step sequencer. Currently, I do not like the kits available in Logic for the tracks I have chosen, but I have come up with an idea to solve this issue. I plan to replace the drums with real sounding drums using Trigger 2 in Protools. This was one of my main goals for thi

Looking back at my time at NAMM, there were a couple products I encountered that really stuck out to me. Item #1: M4000D series Mellotrons Literally the first booth that I stopped at on the main show floor was the Mellotron booth. The Mellotron is a quite old instrument. It is a tape based synthesizer, meaning that each key has a tape playhead that will begin to play the tape that is currently loaded in the instrument. The Mellotron is one of my favorite instruments of all t

In the first weeks of this project, I have gotten quite a bit done. I began with drum programming. Most of that is done other than very specific fills that are difficult to replicate on a step system. In the coming weeks when it comes time for mixing, I plan to export my drums as separate tracks to then run through Trigger in protools. This will give them a much more authentic sound that'll what I can get through MIDI drums. I did hold my first recording session during this t

My project will be a two song cover EP of two songs by Green Day . These songs will be Bobby Sox and Whatsername. Both of these tracks will be mixed in Atmos and will be recorded with the intent to be mixed in Atmos. I will be attempting to recreate the “Wall of Sound” technique that is present on the stereo mixes of these tracks in Atmos, a method pioneered by Rob Cavallo who worked on some of the most prolific Pop Punk Albums, like American Idiot , the album that contains

This past year, I became Dante Level 1 Certified. The process was not too complicated. It just consisted of taking a few free courses...

On the night of November 1st, 2024, A few people and I went down to Huntington Recital Hall to record both the Capital University Big...

Today, I am going down into Studio E to test the difference between a few preamps. I come from a guitar background, but I wanted to experiment with this a bit so instead of testing on acoustic guitar, I’m testing on kick drum. I will use a Shure Beta 52 as my baseline mic and compare between 4 different Preamps. Before starting this project, I did some research into which preamps I should test. Where a lot of insight for me came from were some old forum posts from gearspace

The Universal Audio 4710d Mic Preamp is a very unique preamp as it is a mix between a solid-state and a tube amplifier with a knob to mix...