Well, I'm happy to announce that after a month and a half of jumping through hoopes to get this thing off the ground, it has finally begun! The construction of the new home for Advanced Budget Studios has officially started, and I cannot tell you how excited I am. The only down part of this whole situation is - the waiting.  I anticipate t...

Below is a photo of how my little studio looks right now... Despite the fact that it's now nothing more than a bedroom, with piles of acoustic pucks and other audio paraphernalia scattered about, I've gotta say - "I'm over it." In 3 days, I'll say goodbye to this place, and begin anticipating the construction of our new abode, as w...

Today was spent with my good friend, and brother, Ryan (and his family, who happens to love my family!) We spent the day moving all sorts of large items from our home into the storage space we're renting.  From the kitchen table and chairs, to the couch downstairs, to the hutches - we made two trips full of items, with our mini-van and Dad'...

Wow...  I can't believe it's here. For those who don't know, Advanced Budget Studios resides as a single bedroom rigged up as a recording studio in my basement. Thanks to all of you, I'd like to announce, both sadly, and beyond excitedly, that I have outgrown this little single-room studio.  The acoustics, the size, and the location...

So I've been working on a lot of projects lately, but one I thought to be of particular note was the song "Blind World" by Lucid 8.  The song is well-made on a variety of levels, but one of the coolest aspects of this song is the way they presented it to me. Jonny (drummer for Lucid 8) came to me and asked if could incorporate an ...

This was in response to people NOT SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS AND VETERANS.  When the people calling our veterans scumbags and persecuting the people defending them - can defend our nation better than our veterans and soldiers, then they can say something.  and NOT BEFORE!!!! THE ARM OF OUR NATION! READ RIGHT NOW!!! and let me know wh...

So, a few years ago, when I had no idea what I was doing in the studio, a guy named Rich Bischoff contacted me and asked me to give him some drum samples from my studio.  He didn't call me back.  I don't blame him. hehe... So, for the past 3 years, I've been dedicating myself to getting the studio to be the absolute best it can possibly...

Okay, so I recently watched a documentary on the Foo Fighters called "Back and Forth", and I thought it was really well made - okay, I thought it was awesome.  The funny thing is - I don't own a single Foo Fighters album, and am really not familiar with them as a band, even though I generally like the "rock" genre they asso...

I don't even know where to start.  Let's start at the beginning... So, 10 years ago, I got a hair-brained idea to buy a keyboard and start writing and recording music.  Seven years ago I thought it'd be a good idea to get a mic kit for my drums to learn how to record drums better.  Three years ago the studio had its first paying c...

So, I just got a new Logitech C910 web cam, and when trying to join or create google hangouts, I couldn't see myself in the stream at all, nor anyone else's.  I can hear everyone, and everyone can see me, but I can see nobody, nor myself.  I found this gem of a site with a very easy solution. I'm using gentoo Linux, and this simple tric...

 So, I recently went to a Walk Off The Earth concert, and it was awesome.  Their concerts just keep getting better and better.  As good as it was, that's not the purpose for this entry.  The purpose is a guy named Scott Helman, and a thought he provoked. Scott Helman performed for 30 minutes before WOTE came on stage.  He...

Okay...  This sucks.  I just spent the last 10 minutes typing up a nice novel on how today was spent, and I then proceeded to accidentally delete it.  How unfortunate.  Let's see if I can do it again. ....nope.  Sorry...  I'm tired, and it's late (it's now 12:30am), and I've got to get up tomorrow morning. Suffic...

Tomorrow before lunch I'm leaving school to go to a camp with my twin best friends. They suggested that me, my mom, and them could go to a camp and we were ECSTATIC!!!! There's gonna be a zip line, and cabins, and games and a lakeand its gonna be so fun! Becaus of this, I won't be able to write for the next  few days. See you!...

Approximately 4 years ago, sometime during the summer, from time to time I would go outside our back door and lay out on the concrete slab and look up at the stars.  We had been in our home about 7 years and had no intention of moving, or changing, or doing anything but doing what we were doing.  I was in love with my wife, trying my best...

So, I am assuming that this whole site is one cool PHP project. Good job, Jason. Looking forward to the 'remake' of ldscompanion.org to see what happens there. That's a cool site, too.  It isn't any wonder to me why someone would want to hire you. You'll have the Zend framework down in no time. MVC and OOP are just a different way of planning ...

I really don't know how to begin this entry - at all.  I'm still sort of in shock, to be honest. I came to work today with no anticipation other than finishing a project I began two days ago.  Seemed like it would be a normal day.  That is, until a co-worker of mine came in and showed me some keys which had a BMW logo on them. ...

Well...  Yesterday, a friend of mine had told me he had the privilege of being formally taught how to tune a snare drum. I read what he had to say (he posted it on facebook, so if you're not his friend, I imagine you can't read it, but here's the link anyway) So, today, I went and investigated a bit of whether I could get the proper tool...

Update:  Due to the popularity of this post, some people are having a hard time viewing the video posted above.  If it won't play for you, simply wait until the gray progress bar has filled 1/4 to 1/2 of the way before you press play.  That should do the trick. Yesterday I took the day off work to go to my bother's sealing to his w...

Last Thursday I took the kids to Jumpin Jacks.  It is a huge warehouse with a bunch of bounce houses.  The kids had an absolutely great time! We also had the place to ourselves for the whole hour and half we were there. It was awesome!!   I think they would of stayed all day if I let them. They really loved this really tall slide...

Wow... What a week this has been! Yesterday, we welcomed in a new client, ScramJet to the studio by running a recording marathon with them! We pulled a full 8-hour session and all through yesterday, we managed to get recordings for three whole songs.  By the end of the day, our engineer was ready to collapse. Today, they all came back to...

Okay...  Since I had recently returned from my mission in 1996, I knew I wanted to learn how to record music.  Recording music swiftly turned into wanting to be able to record my drums.  A couple of years ago, I was able to put enough money away to buy a load of recording equipment for my drums. I've recorded quite a few diddies in...

 So, I've been asked about headphones recently by a lot of friends.  So much so, that I thought I'd write down a few words, more regarding what you should not buy, rather than what you should.  This is simply due to the enormous amount of generally good, and wildly varying headphones out there. As most of you know, I'm an audio eng...

I just spent the last three hours trying to figure out why my OpenFire 3.5.2 instance was installing just fine, saying that it was running just fine, but in reality was not running at all. Neither port 9090, nor 9091 was open, both ports 9090, and 9091 were closed. ps -A | grep openfire returned nothing - at all. Yet, /etc/init.d/openfire sta...

So the Wisdom teeth came out this morning. I was awake and numb, and it was okay. It really doesn't hurt much at all and I'm just taking Motrin. I feel pretty good. I'm really excited that I will be able to make it to Sacrament on Sunday and I also have a quick interview for my patriarchal blessing!!!!! Which I really don't want to miss. I f...

Alright..  I'm just typing this entry for mostly the purpose of trying out my new keyboard I got at work.  For the past employments I've had, probably for the past 2 years, I've used the Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard, and to be honest, it took a long time to get used to.  The buttons were too far apart, and it just felt a bit more ...

Soon after I began recording audio, I had a feeling I would be in the pursuit of an unattainable goal.  Finding that "perfect" recording space, or even creating that "perfect" recording would be difficult, if not entirely impossible. 10 years after I began, I was able to pour my heart and soul into a new recording space, ...

We've been contemplating how to best improve the studio with all the business we've been getting lately, and the votes are in! Please welcome our newest addition to the studio, a nice shiny new red GOLDEN AGE PRE 73 PRE-AMP!  We spent a good deal of time looking into the best preamps for the money, and it came down to two main contenders. ...

Okay...  So lately the studio has been getting some serious upgrades, thanks to all of you who have been supporting me, and creating awesome music. About a month ago, I was chatting it up with a good friend, Jesse Crowley, about how in the world we were going to sell our fabulous new Herod the Fink album this season.  You see, there ar...

So, I spent a few minutes today seeing how bare-bones I could get my xorg.conf.  My configuration is 2 23-inch Acer monitors, which are side-by-side using a Radeon HD4850 video card.  I'm using gentoo.  make.conf : VIDEO_CARDS="radeon". Also, I've got one big desktop from the 2 monitors.  Here's the config. ...

Okay.  I've been working on a song since a while back, actually... I wrote the lyrics on the same night I wrote this entry. Anyway... It's just about done.  All I'm waiting for now is some seriously kicking piano tracks from my good friend Scott.  As soon as I receive those, I'm all but sure they'll kick bootie, and I'll incoropor...