Nearly....

Hey, the website is almost up!

Check back around mid December and you should be presently surprised. Actually, since I'm announcing it right now, you won't be that surprised. But check it out anyways, I think it is looking pretty cool.

Later,

A

Since we've moved...

There are a number of things that I have noticed initially since moving to Langley.

• It's really beautiful here. Coming from Calgary (nice city, don't get me wrong) we are still getting used to all the vegetation and walks by the ocean. Very inspiring.

• People talk about rain a lot. I don't mind the rain. Never have. It does bug me though how often people talk about how much it rains. Every time you turn on the radio it's "well it looks like mooooooore rain" or you tell someone you just moved here and they say, "well hope you like rain." Seriously, find something else to talk about!

• Way more bands. I'm loving connecting with so many bands out here. Everyone is in a band, which is great. Its a big reason way we are out here now. A bigger, more active music scene. Love it.

Later.

Setting Up

Well, I've moved into my new place, got all my gear out of storage and am in the process of setting up a new studio space.

The new mix room is about the same square footage as my place in Calgary but has much higher ceilings and has an attached overdub booth that is all treated, wired and ready to go. I've got a bit of work to in this new space just to get it up to my standards for a mix room; mostly acoustic treatment on the walls and some bass trapping. Maybe a coat of paint and some nice decor? Some throw pillows and mural of an ice princess riding a polar bear?

I've thrown up an offer on craigslist, but I will post it hear to. Since I need to set up my room and get a feel for the new space, I'd like to mix a three song demo/EP for someone who has some solid material and has there material ready to go. It would be totally free and there would be no obligation to use the mixes in the end. I just need to get the room set up and tuned, and an actual mix gig would be great.

If you know of someone who could make use of this during the month of November, have them send me and email: info@colabs.ca

On an unrelated note, I've become a big fan of Last.fm. Great way to hear new music. Check it out.

Later.

Changes... Big Changes

Well, the blog has sat dormant over the later part of the summer and into the fall. Obviously something is up.

Well, for those who knew, I was living in Calgary, Alberta and running the mixing studio there. Well, know I am in Vancouver, Langley, BC, to be exact.

Over the past few years my wife and I have been trying to find a way to move out to the coast or near to it. The west coast lifestyle, the music scene, the beautiful scenery, all were important things to us. Then, this summer a number of opportunities opened up for us with jobs, etc. that made the transition look like a serious possibility. So we took a deep breath and jumped into this big life transition with both feet.

The move went well and I have managed to line up a studio space that will work well for my mixing work. It was a little difficult leaving the studio in Calgary since there was a lot of hard work and creativity that went into that space. But the important thing is that I have a solid space to mix in and am now closer to a really lively indie music scene, something I have always been passionate about supporting.

So, new studio pics will be up in the near future and an updated website is on its way.

Later,

A

Where's the new site?

I mentioned a while back that there was a new colabs.ca site in the works. Well, it's still on the way. It has been taking a little longer then expected, but it should be up soon.

The new site will look a lot cooler, be easier to navigate, and will have some helpful resources for independent artists who are in the recording process. Also, I'll have a Q&A page up to answer some of the common questions that I often get asked about Colabs and the mixing process.

On another note, if you would like to hear how I spend my free time in the studio, check out www.sunsetarrest.blogspot.com. I'll be posting my ongoing writing/production projects there.

later.

Special Effects

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End the other night. Basically it is a lot of eye candy, a ridiculous cameo by Kieth Richards, and a half baked and confusing storyline that is hard to follow. In this way the feel of the movie is a good representation of the theme park ride that it is based on. I'm sure there are a lot of people who loved it, but I think that this type of movie is best enjoyed when testing out a home theater package at Best Buy.

The thing about amazing special effects is that they don't really stand on there own apart from a good story. I've bought so many albums that, on first listen, sound so fresh and creative, but when you actually listen to them, they sound over-hyped and bland. It's a funny thing. Some of my favorite albums definitely have a distinctive sound that seems to lock them into a certain time and place - but in a good way. On the other hand, an album that lacks real depth in the songs seems to quickly sound dated - like a fad that died out as soon as you bought into it. I hate that!

In music production, there is a big temptation to gloss over the imperfections in the writing with clever production tricks. When it come to the mix, it's easy to get carried away. You can get peoples attention with "special effects", but without substance, you'll likely be forgotten quickly.

X92.9 Xposure Contest

If you live in Calgary and listen to X92 you may have heard mention of the Xposure contest that they are taking submissions for. Basically you send in a CD of your band's best three songs to the station and "...the top 5 bands will each win $15,000, inclusion on the Xposure CD, $1,000 gift certificate from Guitarworks and a track in full radio rotation on X92.9.� Partial proceeds from the Xposure CD will go to each of the band as well." (Xposure Blog)

So here's the deal. This is a great opportunity for bands that have a good CD project but not much exposure at this point. I'd love to help your music get recognized and see some deserving new bands win this thing. So, if you are thinking of submitting a CD for this, but aren't sure if your demo will cut it on competitive radio airplay, CoLabs can help you out.

I'll mix your project to be submitted up front for FREE. You will get a totally pro sounding mix of your product that will really stand out and get some attention. If you don't make the winning top five, you don't pay a thing.

This thing will be over soon so contact me at info@colabs.ca if this is something you are interested in.

Later

Creative Voice in Mixing

I've always felt that I've had difficultly expressing my musical voice through any one musical medium. Some people are naturally gifted in one area, whether it be songwriting, some instrument that they are really proficient on or something like that, and they are able to express there creative voice effortlessly. It's a little different for me.

By "creative voice" I mean that inner creative identity that you try to expose through your art. Your view of the world, your statement.

But this voice takes time to develop. A painter must learn the appropriate techniques and skills before she can freely create without any technical barrier stopping her from realizing her creative vision. Until she arrives at that certain level of proficiency (it's different for everyone) she will struggle to give voice to her creativity and will likely feel that her work is always half finished or under realized.

I have found that I can't give voice to my creativity in any one medium. Practically, while I play a number of instruments, I'm not amazing on any one of them. Artistically, I've often found that one instrument, one sound, one color isn't enough to say all that must be said. Kind of like painting with only one brush and one color. This is way I have always loved producing, but especially, mixing.

Mixing may seem an odd medium for giving free reign to an artistic voice, but I find it to be a very creatively freeing experience. You could say that a song could be mixed a hundred different ways, but upon hearing a piece that I'm going to work on, I usually hear the end product in the first few listens. I then work backwards to realize that sound in my head.

Instead of a restrictive thing, this is a very clarifying process in giving voice to my creativity. After all, your creative voice isn't about infinite possibility so much as it is about that one thing that you are trying to say in that moment.

An artist is tortured in not feeling that he can give voice to his creativity, that he will never be able to express in a pure way just how he see the world around him. And this is the simple beauty in mixing for me. In the four minutes of that one song, I get to paint a view of the world as I see it. If you listen behind the music, you will hear my creative voice.

The Story of CoLabs Pt. 2

So, to pick up the story from last time..

I found myself in a strange place in January of 2005. I knew that my place was with artists, making music in the studio, but I had just left a studio where I did that on a daily basis. I was pretty angry about how the last six months had just played out but I didn't feel like fighting any more. I knew that I needed to find my way back into the studio but it was becoming clear that it was going to be a very different road then what I had planned for.

I decided to pick up a job in some related field and to start looking for new opportunities to make records again. I found a company that installed audiophile equipment and home theaters and wired "smart" houses.

Close enough. I figured I would be there for a few months, maybe find a new home base to work out of and get back to making great music. Well, three months went by, four months, five, six...

I tried to stay sharp and keep learning in the middle of all this, so I read a lot, networked with different studio owners and keep recording on my own from home. I picked up the odd gig to engineer or mix something for people, but there wasn't really a clear direction as to where things were going. I started to think more about opening a studio and what that would look like in Calgary, but really didn't know if Alberta needed another recording facility.

Many of the studio owners and producers that I spoke with seemed to be somewhat frustrated with the way the whole recording industry looked like in Alberta and talked about things needing to change. One frustration I noticed was that the nicer "pro" studio owners felt that the guys with project studios where destroying the industry by charging people $20/hr. to make whole recording projects in their bedrooms and basements. I saw the point but surely the project studio/home recording trend was not going to go away. One thing I was becoming more convinced of through conversation with different studio owners was that the "one-stop-shop" approach was not working. Sure, it kept clients in the building longer since you would offer everything from songwriting to graphic design and mastering. But, in the end, the music suffered and people felt that if you had any real money you would need to leave for Vancouver or Nashville to get a really good product. Isn't there a better approach?

I kept chewing on these ideas.

It was November and I was working out in the mountains wiring a beautiful new vacation home. It was pretty cold and the walls of the building where only partly up so I was wearing some work gloves. I needed to use the table saw on the job site to build a guide for the wires we were pulling that morning. I'm not sure what happened, but I think my glove touched the spinning blade as I pulled the piece I had just cut off the table. I felt my left hand get thrown back to my side almost instantly as the saw made a quick hiccup sound. I switched the saw off. I thought the wood must have caught the blade and kicked back into my hand. But when I looked at my hand, my glove was ripped apart and my fingers where covered in blood. The blade had caught a small piece of my glove and pulled my hand across the top of it, ripping apart my middle and ring fingers in an instant.

I had reconstructive surgery done that afternoon by, thankfully, one of the best hand specialists in Calgary. I kept all my fingers, but lost the first two joints in my ring and middle fingers.

I went from this...









To this...

I couldn't work for about five months. Because I had four metal pins between the two fingers, I couldn't move them from my knuckles down. So I sat at home, healing up, hoping that I could continue to play bass and guitar when the pins came out.

As I waited to heal up, I realized that if I was going to live out this whole studio thing, I would have to make some major changes starting right then. I couldn't afford to wait any longer.

But that's for next time...

The Blog Keeps Changing

I keep changing things on this blog 'cause I'm not very tech savvy when it comes to web stuff and this is a bit of a guinea pig for me. So I keep changing the look and feel of things to try and become a little more fluent in this stuff. If you stop by from time to time, thanks for that, and feel free to drop any suggestions or links in a comment to any helpful resources for a virgin blogger.

later.

Live music

I live in Calgary, a city of a million people. We have the beautiful skies of the prairies while in view of the rocky mountains, an exploding economy, some of the best cuisine in Canada, and a vibrant theater scene. Oh, also, It's a Friday and I can only find four venues for live music.

Seriously.

Now, obviously this is partly due to the fact that the papers and websites probably aren't reporting all of the live music that is going on. But they are reporting the notable stuff; the stuff worth reporting in their opinion, I guess.

I see this a big problem and one that the music community should be doing more to address. The Sidetrack Cafe, one of Edmonton's most significant live music venues, recently closed it's doors. Hopefully more venues will emerge to fill the void so that Edmonton's growing music scene can continue to find a home around the city.

As for Calgary, I really want to see more venues open up for the specific purpose of supporting the music community in Alberta and in the city. We need more entrepreneurial
leaders in this area. We need to take more personal ownership in the music scene in our city and take steps to improve it.

If you want to chat more about this, I'll be at one of the live music venues tonight... you've got a one in four chance of finding me.

New website on the way...

A whole new colabs.ca website is in the works right now and should be up in the next month or so. The initial site that I put up kind of sucks and is hard to read and navigate. Big thanks to my bro Jesse for taking on the new website. Should be a lot cooler then what is up now. Check the site in a month or so and feel free to give some feedback if you love/hate it.

Later.

The Artist's Vision

One of the reasons why I have felt so strongly about the need for accessible world class mixing for the independent artist has been the numerous stories I often hear when talking with them.

"My friend put a lot of money into his project but it sounds cheap!"

"We worked on the album for months but we weren't really happy with the end product."

"I didn't really get the album I was hoping for."

While I really feel that great mixing is crucial to making a great album, I think that vision is even more important. I feel that an artist must have a clear vision of the type of project they want to make. Beyond that, they must really take the right steps to communicate that vision to all people involved working on the project.

The producer is the first part of this because he is the one who must understand the vision the most; he must make it his own vision (often by blending it with his own vision for the project) and execute it well.

Second, the artist and producer must chose a team to execute the project that can get behind the vision. This is why I don't encourage artists to stay in one place with one guy doing everything just because it is convenient. If that studio and that producer/engineer is what will best support and execute the artistic vision, then by all means, stay put. But, do your homework. research the work of producers and studios to find the best team for your vision.

As a mixer, I always make sure that the vision for the project is front and center. It is the creative "road map" that I use to navigate the project. It lets me know not only what the artists expectations are, but also how best to present the music in a totally professional way.

Take time in preproduction to outline the vision and goals for the project. You will not only meet your own expectations, but it will help those who work with you to do there best work!

iPhone Predictions

Well, the iPhone is officially announced and I have to say that it looks absolutely insane! I have been a loyal Mac user for a number of years now since they are arguably the most stable and hassle free computers to host Pro Tools and many of my power hungry media apps. However, in spite of my bias, I have to say that the iPhone, as far as I can see, will be the most influential technological device of 2007 and the effects will likely change the landscape of the entire telecommunications industry!

RIM, the company that makes the Blackberry, saw a 6% drop in their stock value as result of Apple announcing the iPhone, which will offer a free "push" IMAP email account from Yahoo! as well as a fully functional web browser (not the "baby web" as Steve Jobs called it). Basically, they are giving away the main service that people have been paying for on a Blackberry but in a much cooler package and with way better functionality when you buy the iPhone.

It will be interesting to see what comes of the major cell phone manufacturers when this thing hits the market. I think the hardest hit will be RIM and the other high end "smart phone" companies. Clearly the iPhone is going to make there services and features seem obsolete and kind of primitive. However, the $499 US price tag will likely mean that the lower end phones won't likely be to threatened... not yet anyways. If the devepment of the iPod is any pattered of prediction, I wouldn't be surprised to see an iPhone Nano or something like that with a smaller footprint and a more budget friendly price tag by the end of the year or early 2008.

If you haven't seen the video of this thing in action yet, check it out. You will want to throw your cell phone in the garbage.

iPhone

The Story of CoLabs Pt. 1

So how did CoLabs get started?

The company is pretty unique and I probably wouldn't have started it if it weren't for all of the crazy experiences that brought me to this point.

Here it is...

I always saw Calgary as a great location to start something new in the music industry since it had such a hot economy, large population and relatively young music scene. I initially moved to Calgary, Alberta to help establish a small studio and record label with a company that was relocating to Calgary from BC. I essentially took over the studio end and wore a lot of hats as I wrote, produced, engineered, and mixed albums of a pretty wide variety of genres. At this point I had been producing albums with bands and solo artists for just over a year and a half and I was just starting to get the hang of this stuff as a serious profession. I was on the other hand, getting tired of the craziness that came along with trying to make albums without any real studio to work out of or any decent gear to do it with. I owned a small recording rig and would rent space or work after hours in rehearsal halls or churches to get the work done. Fun at first but the idea of working out of a real studio sounded much better.

Over the next year I worked like crazy and really began to work at learning the craft of record production. I loved producing albums, I loved engineering a tracking session, and I especially began to sink my teeth into mixing albums. For the first time I experienced how the learning process in the music industry was truly a lifelong endeavor.

As fun and exiting as it was, the studio was really poorly managed and after about a year, the stress effects of the long hours, unpredictably pay and crazy management style began to take it's toll. Also, I began to see things in the way artists were treated and often taken advantage of that really bothered me. It was around this time that I started dreaming about new ways that the whole recording and production process could take place.

But, I was committed to the artists I was working with and I loved being in the studio so, against my and my wife's better judgment, I stuck around. At the time I was working on what would be one of the biggest album I had ever produced. It was getting a tonne of buzz and everything was in place for the album to get some serious recognition.

Unfortunately, right before I was about to mix the album, the stress and frustration with the studio and label owners finally bottomed out. Everyday was a battle to keep the artist and the music first and not let all the stress kill the creative process. It was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made, but I had to quit the studio. In a lame turn of events, the album was quickly released after being rushed through a mix that left the album sounding dull, lifeless, and totally unprofessional. The buzz around the album carried it a long way in spite of it's lackluster presentation, but at the end of the day, a "breakthrough album" it was not.

The lessons I learned from this stage of life have been invaluable. namely...

• The Artist and the Music must come first.
• Integrity is a must, both for yourself and those you work with.
• You are only as good as the last project you touch - every day needs to be better then the last, every project needs to be the best you have ever done.

The decisions I made over the next few months would start me down a path toward some pretty crazy events...

HNY

Happy New Year!

2006 was a crazy year and there is a lot to reflect on as I look back and plan for 2007. A major highlight for me was definitely the launching of CoLabs. CoLabs has been a long time coming and the story of how this all got started is a little crazy. I'll share the unabridged version in my next post!