"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...

Although I've got quite good at it, I've been in web development for too long.  My passion has always been in music, and it's about time I did something about it. Knowing that I need to keep my family safe, and having been bitten some by risky endeavors, I'm taking baby steps at first, but it's now official. Advanced Budget Studios is offi...

SugarStone made a surprise appearance last Saturday, and even though the fanfare was short, they ended up leaving with a new freshly baked demo. It's called Ready Set Go, and is currently awaiting your ears on their facebook page....

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...

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...

We had the awesome opportunity to work, once again, with Herod The Fink last weekend, and ended our session with some serious improvements to some songs we had already recorded. We totally re-invented the introduction to Desperate Husband's Chorus, which now is sure to give a healthy round of grins to all that hear it.  We also put a pretty ...

I guess I can't get enough of these covers.  I had no intention of doing one tonight, but I was so in the mood, I ripped this out on the 2nd take. I take a lot of liberties on this, and there are a few slight timing issues, but I thought it was a great show of the "groove" inside music. Good times. Enjoy the video, and be su...

Will the craziness ever end?  I thought for sure, I'd be too busy today to do another cover, but around 4:00pm, I got bored, the kids were occupied or asleep, and my wife was reading, so...  Down to the studio I go! Hope you all like this cover.  It's one of the better ones I've done.  I missed a couple of hit-accurate fills,...

Well... Not really.  They're done, but I'm not.  So.... You know you've just had an incredible recording session when everyone has gone home AND it's 1:45AM, and you can't get yourself to go to bed, because you know how good the end product will be after mixing and mastering... ...SO you spend the next 1.5 hours mixing and mastering...

So, we've been busy at the studio lately.   So much so, I've neglected to update the site's samples.   We've got a few new ones up, and so I thought I'd let everyone know a bit about em'. ScramJet : Tread Softly  -  ScramJet is a band out of Salt Lake City, dead-set on bringing their musical vision to life.  They kn...

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...

 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...

Picking up new clients is always a good thing, but in the case of yesterday, it was a great thing. I had the privilege of recording his new song, Peculiar, and it was very refreshing.  It was a simple tune with some great acoustic guitar work, and vocals.  Jason Jones added some percussion accents, and the song came to life. Knowing...

 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 ...

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...

I've gotta say, October was crazy.  It was the busiest month the studio has ever seen.  That said, it has allowed us to upgrade some microphones! Might you join with me in welcoming our two newest microphones to the pack: The Joly Edition - "Gomez" Cascade ribbon mic! In our initial tests, I found the Gomez to be anothe...

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...

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...

 So, I used to use the -dumpaudio switch in mplayer to get audio extracted from random videos, but now that seems to do not much of anything.  I found this site which had a great explanation of how to get it done a different way, but was a bit out of date.  The newer version is found below: mplayer -vo null -ao pcm:file=audio_file_...

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...