"Is this week already over??"  Wow...  I guess it's Saturday night.  Yup. This week, the studio has been packed.  Full house.  Monday was the only day without sessions, and that was on purpose.  Tuesday through Saturday was full, and that's the way we like it here at Advanced Budget Studios. Yesterday and...

So, I haven't written for awhile - mostly because I enjoy writing after a project has been completed.  Well - right now Advanced Budget Studios has quite a few bands in the works, who are going after multi-track demos.  My guess is - we'll be fishing them up around the same time, and let me tell you now - all of em' are going to be awesom...

You know those types of musicians...  The ones that just "get it".  They don't worry much about writing the music, but rather, it seems to write itself.  Now, I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but it sure seems like this is the case with Alex Bateman. He came in, knew what he wanted, and the way he wanted his reco...

A while ago, Advanced Budget Studios had the privilege of working with the author of a great book in a voice-over.  The author's name is Phillip Jones, and his book is called Worlds of the Crystal Moon. When I was contacted to help out with the voice-over, I had no idea what to expect, and I wasn't sure what Phillip was expecting, either.&n...

I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a good console-based mp3 tag editor in gentoo, and was surprisingly fruitless in doing so. After using the wonderful "equery belongs" command tied to an editor I use on my server (but couldn't remember where it came from), the program mp3blaster came up. Although mp3blaster claims to just be an m...

Okay... So, since I began this journey of becoming a better recording engineer, I knew there was a lot to learn. I have a degree in Digital Media with an emphasis on audio recording, and thanks to a great teacher, Mike Wizland, I quickly began to get a good grasp on the basics. The early success of the studio has enabled me to get a few great m...

Ya know, sometimes in this business, you've gotta use ingenuity.  And then there are other times you've just got to call it quits.  I'm really glad we didn't choose that option for last night's session, because it turned out just fine... Well.. That is, after we spent hours trying to figure out how in the world we were going to accompli...

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...

When new clients come into the studio, I never quite know what to expect.  Tonight, I met a wonderfully talented young lady named Christie Berube, and proceeded to be wowed by a wonderful song she had written, called "Daddy's Little Soldier". While working through this song, I was almost moved to tears again and again while we fle...

Okay...  So Advanced Budget Studios had the opportunity last weekend to record a group which came from the Springville's Art City Music Fest, and due to time constraints, we really didn't get a very good tracking session.  We got some of Bethany's vocals, JT's acoustic guitar, Jake's bass, Dan's shredding guitar solo, and a very rough scr...

You know you've got a great project when its name is "Herod Fink", and it's Christmas-themed with an alternative flavor.  Yeah...  I'm really enjoying life right now. Anyway, so far, this project has been a whirlwind, but one we definitely cannot get enough of.  we couldn't stand it anymore, so we posted a little diddy f...

I decided to document Friday's happenings of the 2008 Ed Roth (Rat Fink) Memorial Reunion because they were a bit funner than Thursday's.  So.... Here's your boring report of Thursday.  hehe...  It was fun playing, but to me, it was more like a practice session for what was to come Friday and Saturday. The video pretty much sums it...

So, last night we finished recording the first two songs from a band called Fatigi.  One of the best recording sessions ever. So, on Tuesday evening, Adam, Christian, and Robert came in, with drums in hand, ready to get to work. We tracked drums first, which, for my studio, is rare - mostly because drums can get monotonous with nothing b...

So, I haven't written for awhile - mostly because I enjoy writing after a project has been completed.  Well - right now Advanced Budget Studios has quite a few bands in the works, who are going after multi-track demos.  My guess is - we'll be fishing them up around the same time, and let me tell you now - all of em' are going to be awesom...

"Is this week already over??"  Wow...  I guess it's Saturday night.  Yup. This week, the studio has been packed.  Full house.  Monday was the only day without sessions, and that was on purpose.  Tuesday through Saturday was full, and that's the way we like it here at Advanced Budget Studios. Yesterday and...

Okay...  Quick story... Last Thursday, I was looking around the Internet for a great deal on a new pre-amp I want for my studio.  Happens that about 2 hours into searching, I found a deal almost too good to be true.  I found my 8-channel Focusrite Platinum Octopre for $300.00 less than anywhere I could find ($400.00 less than retai...

I was gonna read something spiritual tonight, but I got sidetracked by American Idol. I started surfing around and before long, I came upon this video which, to me, is both absolutely amazing and freaking hilarious at the same time. I had no idea (although I'm not surprised) that so many people were doing remixes of his song "We Are Brot...

So, we've been considering how to best improve the studio in recent weeks, and have decided that our complete lack of guitar amplification needs to be taken care of.  We looked at all sorts of amps and decided that one which could possibly provide the most diverse sounds would be a wise choice.  We've recorded pretty much everything here ...

So, over at homerecording.com, we have quite a few discussions about, well, pretty much anything that has to do with recording audio.  One of the dicussions we recently engaged in had to do with critiquing a member's song he was working on. Of course, there were the usual suggestions on what this person should do, whether it be "bring ...

So, due to the success we've been having with the studio, we were able to upgrade our two in-studio guitars.  We bought a new black Crafter acoustic guitar, which sounds just awesome.  One of the new Herod The Fink tunes will feature the Crafter, and we're excited to get a final mix to see how it sits within the music. We also bought a ...

Linux + gentoo + jack-audio-connection-kit + dbus use flag enabled = doesn't work any more. Okay... Just a personal note to remember. DO NOT COMPILE jack-audio-connection-kit WITH THE dbus FLAG ENABLED!  IT REMOVES jackd WHICH IS WHAT  qjackctl USES TO START THE JACK SERVER. So... Unless I'm missing something, this is pretty much th...

 After a whole heckuva lot of work, at a faster-than-I-want-to pace, the self-titled album from Herod the Fink is finally finished, and available. Herod the Fink is an in-house production of our mixing and recording engineer, and a great musician-friend of his. The whole project  came together with a simple phone call, a month before ...

I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a good console-based mp3 tag editor in gentoo, and was surprisingly fruitless in doing so. After using the wonderful "equery belongs" command tied to an editor I use on my server (but couldn't remember where it came from), the program mp3blaster came up. Although mp3blaster claims to just be an m...

To start, I must say that the video above was created using a very old digital camera.  It shoots at 15 fps, so, that is why the video quality is so horrible.  I'll see if I can't get a more decent video later on.  Now, on with the entry... I would have written about this yesterday evening, but I was dead-tired.  So... I'll wri...

 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...

Yesterday, we received a new shipment. Aren't they pretty?  Our new KRK RP-8 G2 Monitors not only look great, but they sound completely awesome. The instant I put the project at hand through them, it was instantly obvious what needed to be done to enhance the sound - and that is what good monitors are supposed to do. Can't wait to use...

Since the studio's new shining star arrived, we've been having a lot of fun around here.  To be honest, the guy who was good enough to sell us our new MXL V77, couldn't say enough about this microphone, which unfortunately is no longer in production, so when it arrived, I had my hopes up quite high - possibly too high. So, after two successf...

I was gonna read something spiritual tonight, but I got sidetracked by American Idol. I started surfing around and before long, I came upon this video which, to me, is both absolutely amazing and freaking hilarious at the same time. I had no idea (although I'm not surprised) that so many people were doing remixes of his song "We Are Brot...

We've been recording a bunch of drum-takes to be added to otherwise "ready-to-go" songs lately here.  The latest of which happened to be a genre I particularly don't like much - country. But, the music sounded so good for this particular song, I decided to have at it anyway - and 4 hours later, we came up with the final result. I...

So I haven't written in a while, and that's both a great thing, and a not-so-great thing.  It's great because since September, the studio has been busier than I thought possible.  Honestly...  It's been a whirlwind, and I'm not quite sure what caused it - but I'm so grateful for it.  It's a not-so-great thing because I can't kee...