Hello everybody! I know it seems like eons since I last got on here and gave you an update, and once again I find myself apologizing for that fact. Between my homelife and my band - not to mention the school - I just lose track of time and usually have to be reminded that I need to update! So what's been happening? Well, let's see...

Since our last talk, we completed the Mother Jane sessions. Michael Thomas handled the mixing and I did the mastering, all under the watchful eye of producer Amber Sloan. Everything turned out great (if I do say so myself - and I do!) and the CD is already selling like crazy! The band had a release party for the project in January and the turnout was excellent. Fellow LIR artist Tee Dee Young and his band Scandalous provided the music and they brought down the house with some smokin' rhythm and blues! Beth and Lisa from Mother Jane took the stage with Tee Dee and Co. for a rockin' version of Tracy Chapman's "Give Me One Reason" and LIR CEO Wil Freebody even graced the stage to duet with Tee Dee on the classic "My Girl". Other LIR artists were also in attendance including Tom Martin and Gene Woods from The CIty who also jumped onstage to jam with the band.

Speaking of The CIty, the band has decided to re-cut some of the tracks they've been working on to tighten up the arrangements so we are planning on them starting those sessions in April. I'll more than likely be manning the boards with Michael in the Producer's Chair to make sure everything runs smoothly.

We took possession of a Digidesign C-24 control surface in December and it looks and sounds great. The board (I know it's not technically a mixing board, but I'm stuck in my ways!) give you freedom from constantly using a mouse to do everything. You can access the plug-ins straight from the mixer as well as the standard faders and pan pots. Everything is streamlined and engineer friendly and we/I couldn't be happier with it's inclusion in our every growing list of gear. We have decided to give our main mixer, the Sony DMX-R100 a rest, and so the C-24 is going to be our main mixing board with the Sony handling the session tracking duties in Studio A.

Not much else studio-wise is happening at the moment, but I'll be sure to get back on here and let you know as soon as we get rolling on some sessions once again!

Hey everybody! Long time no see, huh? I just seem to get busy around here and forget to log on until somebody tells me it's been months since my last installment, so having been told, here I am to bring ya up to speed on what's been happening 'round here at LIRCO.

The Mother Jane sessions are going very well with most of the instrumental tracking complete. The backing vocalists are scheduled to come in and do their thing in the next couple of weeks and in the meantime, Amber and I are getting started on the rough final mixes and brainstorming about the little things that we can put in the songs to give 'em that extra little spark. The girls have been great at coming in and hammering out their parts in just a few takes and the session players are phenomenal as always. I think we could be getting down to the mix by the end of October if all goes well.

I worked with the local metal band The Building a few weeks ago on a two song demo as well as some drum tracking for the Northern KY/Cincy band Two Count Shootout. Both bands were ready to go and the sessions were quick and productive - just the way we like it! It's so good to work a session with a band that knows what they want already and there's no pulling of proverbial teeth to get a good performance.

The City has been coming in over the past month laying down tracks for their debut offering as well. They have tracked the basics for 7 songs and are planning to get going on the remaining songs in the near future. The songs are coming together well and with our in house producer/engineer Michael Thomas stepping in to help track guitars, we're sure to get some great tones to work with in the final mix.

I've also been busy mastering the latest project from the hard rock/metal band Stitch Rivet entitled "Liberty". The band is planning to release the album soon and has already pressed a few hundred for sale at shows so go see the band and pick up a copy asap!

That's about it for now. I swear I'll try to get back on here soon rather than later next time! Check back in a few weeks and find out about all the session updates and new happenings here at LIRCO. See ya!!

Well, the MIG project is back from duplication and it looks (and sounds) great! I - as well as the rest of us here at LIRCo - are very pleased with how the whole thing turned out and I can't wait to see how the MIG fans react. I'd like to thank Amber and Kyle for their help assisting on the project and, of course, the producer Michael Thomas for stepping in and making the important decisions when I got burned out on a mix.

We are beginning to track a full CD for the Lexington duo Mother Jane later this month with Amber sitting in the big chair. I'm sure I'll be assisting on and off when needed so I'll get back to you on their progress as soon as we can get the ball rolling!

As I previously mentioned, The City have begun tracking for their debut release in Studio A this month. We have already gotten drum tracks for 7 of the 10 songs and are now going back in to lay down the final guitar, bass and keys for them before moving on to the remaining songs. Everything is going smoothly and with Michael producing, I don't forsee any problems arising in the near future.

LSRA student Jordan Puckett is coming in this weekend with his band (not sure of their name) to cut a few tracks with myself engineering the session. We're going to try and cut 3 or 4 songs in a day, and rest assured I'll be back to fill you in on how things went.

That's all for now! See you next time!!

After a few recent mastering revisions, the Much Is Given project (myspace.com/muchisgivenmusic) looks like it's finally ready to go. I've been working on this session for over 6 months, and I can easily say I think it's my best overall work to date. Now all that's left is to put it out there and let the band do the rest!

The Eastern/Central Ky band The Last Best Thing On Earth started work on their debut CD last month with Amber and myself trading off Engineering duties. The band has tracked the basic parts to 6 or 7 songs and more work is scheduled in the coming months. I'll keep you posted on how the sessions are progressing as we get further along...

Lexington based group The City have been coming in for the past few months doing pre-production sessions and starting later this month, will begin tracking the basics for 5-8 songs. With a band that includes horns, congas, harmonica, back-up singers and the standard guitar, bass and drums, it looks like it's going to be some pretty full days of recording!

The Mother Jane sessions finished quickly and easily (as I thought they would) and after mastering, the group decided on 6 of the final mixes to be included on the disc.

A few finished, a few started - the session never ends! Thanks for reading and I'll see you soon!

Hey everybody. Of course I got busy with work and life in general and totally forgot about hitting you with the updates. Sorry bout that! Anyway, let's get going.

The Much Is Given project is mixed and mastered and I am awaiting the final approval from my producer and executive producer and then it's off to duplication! You can preview a few of the tracks at the bands' myspace page - myspace.com/muchisgivenmusic - and also get the lowdown on where MIG will be tearing it up in the near future.

This past weekend, house engineer and up-and-coming producer Amber Sloan and I worked with the duo Mother Jane on some songwriting demos that they are planning on presenting to established artists as potential singles. We were able to cut 6 vocal and acoustic tracks and the session went off without a hitch. All of us were happy with the results and there are plans to do more this coming weekend.

Besides that, I've been pretty busy with the recording school and my cover band, Shoe Fly Pie, so you can see why I get forgetful from time to time. Hopefully I'll be able to find more time in the future to keep you better informed. Til then, thanks for reading and I'll see you soon!

Ok, ok, I know...I’m lame! I said I’d be hooking you up with updates on the MIG sessions and I flaked big time. Gotta say sorry for that. But I’m here now, so let’s see what’s going on. The Much Is Given sessions have been going great for the past few months and we just finished cutting the backing vocals so things are almost into the mix stage. We still need to get some additional percussion and some solos and the tracking will be DONE! Then the fun part begins. I personally like the mix stage of a project the best cause it’s where I get to do my part and have some fun with the effects and get my EQ’s sounding good.

The sessions for Tee Dee Young finished up a few weeks ago, with Michael handling the mixing and producer duties and I handled the mastering. We also recently finished the filming of Tee Dee’s first video down at the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg, KY. The album dips into all the different facets of the blues jumping from Chicago style to Memphis and Tee Dee even puts his own blues twist on the Beatles classic "Yesterday".

In other studio news, House Engineer Amber Sloan is very near the end of her project with local artist Doc Messina. The sessions have been going great and we’ve seen quite a few great local musicians pass through working on the project including Doc’s very own daughter stopping by to lay down some vocal tracks.

I also recently worked with local and Sixx Barrell on their latest project, a 4 song cover demo that you can hear at their myspace page. The band covers material from the 60’s all the way til now, so there’s something for everyone with these guys. I had our intern/assistant engineer Kyle Gadbois handling "the button" for me and we burned thru all 4 songs (mixing included!) in one marathon session. Everything went very easily and we were all very happy with the final product.

There’s more happening every day around here, so I’ll do my best to keep you in the loop on all our new and ongoing projects, I promise!

Hello all! I just wanted to drop in and give you a little update on what's happening around the studio. We're just a week into the Much Is Given project, and the drums are finished tracking (for 11 songs - just one more to go!) and we have started work on the bass tracks! Things are going very smoothly, so if the rest of the tracking is this easy, we should be ready for vocals in just a few weeks. The band is well rehearsed, so there's not much downtime between songs or takes and that is a very good thing!

That's all for now, but I'll be back in a few days with another MIG studio update!

Hello everybody! I'm getting ready to start work on the new Much Is Given project next week, so there's been lots of pre-production things going on like which songs to actually track, what mics and amps to use to get the best recording as well as numerous other little things. Drums are starting on Monday and I'll be logging on more often than usual to update you on how things are going as the parts are finished.

Tee Dee's cd is finally finished and ready for mastering. It's taken a little while longer than first anticipated, but the finished product sounds great. Michael and Tee Dee did a great job getting everything exactly how they wanted them, so the extra time to re-cut some of the parts was well worth it.

Doc's project is moving right along with almost all the tracking completed. We had a percussion session for him this past weekend to fill in the gaps on a few tracks, and with Amber and our resident intern/assistant Kyle Gadbois taking care of things the tracking was easy.

Local band Klime is hard at work on their debut offering and we are now three songs in, with our own Patrick Hairston handling the mixing duties. It's a lot of hard work and long after-hours sessions for him, but things are coming together nicely and it looks like he should be done with these first three any day now.

That's all I've got for you today. Check back next week for an update on the MIG sessions and more...

Hello everyone and welcome back! I know it's been a month since my last writing, and I apologize for that. I've been a little bit busy and I sometimes forget to log in here and get with you on what's been going on.

Tee Dee's CD is inching ever closer to completion and last week some of our Production School students made the trek to Prestonsburg, KY and the Mountain Arts Center with Tee Dee and Co. to shoot a couple of videos to promote the upcoming release of the project. To see a pic of the shoot just check out my studio column Nall In The Mix.

Klime is still hard at work in the studio and have completed "Magic Man" except for vocals, so that should be in the can soon. They have now started work on the musical side of a new track - original this time - and we're hoping to get the basics down for that one next week.

Doc Messina CD is moving right along as well, with drums, bass and guitars finished for some of the tracks this past Saturday. Everything sounded great and the session went off without a hitch. Between Klime and Doc Amber's plate is pretty full these days but she is still finding time to teach our new Theory class here at LSRA. This class teaches you why chords sound the way they do and the scales that can make your songs sound even better!

I've been pretty busy with the mastering class as well, but I've found time to work on the Voodoo Phyllis track "All Night Long" that I talked about last time. The mix is "done" - actually no mix is ever done, they're just abandoned on the listeners aural doorstep - and I'll be getting into the mastering for that one in the next few days. I'll be posting it on my myspace site myspace.com/tretslip next week sometime so check the site out and be my friend!

As some of you may know, I also am the "Metal" writer in residence for the statewide music magazine, ME Music Entertainment. The column is called The Hard Place and I review the up-and-coming Metal and Hard Rock bands from all around Kentucky. Well, I now have a myspace site for that too! Just go to myspace.com/thp_online to check out the reviews for past bands or to send me a message to get YOUR band reviewed in the most read music mag in the state!!!

That's it for now. Check back in a couple of days for more. You can email me at sn@lirco.com if you’ve got any questions for me concerning this wonderful world of studio magic, and I’ll post up the answers as soon as I can! See Ya!!

What's up ya'll? Well, I'm finally finished mixing the Voodoo Phyllis track "Come And See Me" and the mastering is almost complete, so look for it on my myspace site Tretslip Productions either tonight or sometime tomorrow. I'm still working on the second VP track "All Night Long" - No, it's not a remake of the Lionel Richie song - and I've got the first rough mix finished, so it shouldn't be much longer for this one either. It's got a pretty "spacey" mid section and I'm kinda havin' some fun slappin' the delays and pan effects to it, so hopefully it's appropriately out there!

As you know, Michael has been hard at work with the Tee Dee Young project, and it looks like they've gotten 2 or 3 tracks finalized and ready for mastering! Michael is really taking his time getting this very dense mix of instruments and singers to sound it's best.

Also in Studio A this month is a new band on the local scene, Klime. They've been hard at work on their version of the Heart classic "Magic Man", and I think they've managed to keep the spirit of the original while giving it a little modern edge. Come to think of it, isn't that what doing a cover is all about? I mean, Heart already did a great version, so why would you want to just copy theirs? ANYWAY, this track marks Amber's first foray into producing and recent LSRA grad Kyle Gadbois is getting some time in as engineer on the project.

It seems that Amber's plate is getting more full all the time, and today we are seeing Doc Messina back in to track some semi-scratch vocals and some acoustic guitars for his upcoming CD. It looks like that Phase 3 student Josh Parker is going to get some real session work today!

That's it for now. Check back in a couple of days for more. You can email me at sn@lirco.com if you’ve got any questions for me concerning this wonderful world of studio magic, and I’ll post up the answers as soon as I can! See Ya!!

Sorry for the delay in writing, but things have been kinda busy around here lately and I haven’t had much time to think about anything!

At the last minute, the decision was made to add additional backing vocals to the Tee Dee CD, so that means bringing out all the multitrack mixes and not really starting over, but it does present the chance to fix some things that might not have been exactly right. SO, right now Michael is knee deep in partial remixing of the entire project - with new backing vocals - and then the re-mastering can begin!

Local Southern Rock/Hard Rock band Voodoo Phyllis stopped in this past weekend to cut a couple of tracks with me, and I’ll be posting up mixes of a song or two to my Myspace site in a week or so - depending on how busy I get. The official band mixes are being done by recently graduated student (and VDP drummer) Cecil Smith and from what I’ve heard in passing, everything is going great. You should be able to check out his mix of the song "Come And See Me" on their myspace page in the very near future.

Piano player/entertainer Doc Messina has been coming in for the last few weeks getting the demo work out of the way for his next project which should be a very interesting time. Doc can play any style you want, so I expect a few suprises out him during the sessions! Recent LSRA grad and LIRCO new hire Amber Sloan will be working the sessions as well, so things should be fine.

On top of all this (hey, I said it was busy!), R&B artist Andrew Curd has been in and out of the studio getting the mixes done on two new tracks that he laid down in Studio A a few weeks ago. Because of the volume of work we have going on right now, I haven't been able to get in on all of Andrews’ sessions, and House Engineer and Instructor Patrick Hairston is handling the bulk of the mixing on the project.

Whew! I’m getting tired just writing about everything! And the next few weeks don’t seem to be getting any slower, so I must bid you farewell for now so I can get back to mixing! See ya!

Hello again and welcome back! Well, Michael is finished with the mixing of Tee Dee’s Cd and most of the mastering is completed as well, so all we need is the artwork and copyright info to come in and it’s off to duplication land! This project has been spread out a little bit here and there, but it’s come together nicely and was one of the easiest recording sessions I’ve been part of. Everyone that played or sang on the tracks was top notch and it was great to be able to work with them all.

Rodney Isaacs was back in over the weekend to lay down some smokin’ wah-wah tracks and let me tell you - the boy can play! Rod was throwing down some seriously burning licks that would give any guitarist in a signed band reason to start looking over their shoulder! Now, with a few songs rhythmically finished (guitar-wise anyway), Rod is hard at work finding a drummer to add some serious groove to the tracks. The songs range from clean, almost country ballads to balls out blues rock shreading, so guitar lovers of all styles are sure to find something they can dig into.

Besides those sessions, one of our Production School classes are also in the studio to track a remamke of Pink Floyd’s "Wish You Were Here". They are doing this to get a better idea of what goes into a session from song choice to charting the chords for the players to scheduling the tracking, mixing AND mastering sessions. They are finding that a lot more work goes into a session when you’re the boss. Today is their first day of tracking and they are wisely only going for a solid drum and bass take this time around.

That’s it for now! Check back soon for more news from LIRCo right here at Nall On The Net! See Ya!

What’s up faithful readers? I know it’s been a while, and my excuse is that I’m lazy and just forget to get on here as much as I’d really like to, so for that I apologize. Not much in the way of recording going on right now. Michael is back from FLA, newly married and back to mixing on Tee Dee’s CD. He has six of the eight tracks in the can, so it shouldn’t be much longer before the project is completed and ready for the duplication plant. The main deal going on right now is renovation.

We’ve been hard at work remodeling some of the rooms in the LIRCo complex, and things are looking great. We added hardwood floors to a couple of rooms and even hung some diffusers from the ceiling to help calm reflections. We completely changed our secondary student Pro Tools room into another mastering facility complete with a sweet 42 inch TV, Behringer studio monitors, and of course, Pro Tools! We’re using the Waves Platinum series plug-ins, just like in our main room, so that we can easily transfer from one system to the other and not have to start from scratch every time. The room is also going to be used for many other things, mostly dealing with our recording school, like large group seminars, final exam mixing and song charting for our production classes. We also added a large sound diffuser in control room A, and it looks sweet! We’re getting ready to re-do some of the sound absorption on the back wall in there too, so things should calm down quite a bit. Oh yeah, I almost forgot...we’re also adding more soundproofing materials to our drum room, mostly because our main mastering room is directly behind the drum room and as you probably know, drums are LOUD! We’ve added another two inches of sound dampening styrofoam and on top of that is going to be two inches of specially made sound absorbing foam, so the drum room will hopefully be sufficiently out of the picture so mastering and tracking can take place at the same time.

Not much else is happening around the studio lately. Rodney Isaacs came back in to do some more work on his solo project (He’s also the lead guitarist in Brad Alford’s band Saddletramp), and house engineer and instructor Patrick Hairston running the boards. Jazz keyboardist Bruce Smith (He also plays with Tee Dee in the band Scandalous) is going to be starting his debut CD soon and I’ll be handling the tracking on that one personally. Bruce has done his homework and the songs are arranged well, so producing and engineering this project should be a breeze. I’ll update you more on these sessions as they progress.

That’s all I’ve got for you right now! Check back in a few days and see what is happening with me and the rest of the crew here at LIRCo! See Ya!

Hello everyone! Things are going pretty good around here this week. The Tee Dee mixing sessions are still going strong and the mastering has begun, but things are being pushed back a week or so. The culprit? Michael has gone to Florida to get hitched! That’s right, our very own MT has decided to tie the knot, and seeing that FLA is one of his favorite spots, he has decided to leave the ever changing weather of KY and has headed to where the sun is shining and the beaches are full.

In other news, as some of you may know we also have a small indie record label - LIR Records - and we have just signed blues/jazz keyboardist Bruce Smith to a one album deal (wow - that shows MY age, huh?). We will be getting started on his project in the very near future with myself more than likely manning the boards, at least for the tracking portion.

No word on when the Brad Alford sessions are going to start back up, but I’ll be sure to post some news for you when I can.

That’s about it for now. Check back next week and I should have some news on these sessions and more!

Hey everyone and thanks for coming back to check out Nall On The Net! As I said before, Michael is moving right along with Tee Dee Young’s project. He’s gotten 2 songs finished as of today and the rest of the tracks should be completed by the middle of the month. Since we are also a mastering facility (as I've said before), we are mastering the songs in house as the mixes are completed just in case there’s a problem. It’s taking a little bit longer than a normal mix session, but at the same time it’s working out great for us because we can just jump back into mix mode and fix the problem and continue mastering! That would be very time consuming if not near impossible if we sent the product to an outside mastering house.

Also, the Brad Alford sessions are almost ready to start up again, and I’ll soon be putting together the rough mixes for his approval. I can see this one getting knocked out quickly with the mixes being finished by the end of summer, but right now getting Tee Dee’s CD mixed and mastered is our studio priority, so I’m gonna have to work Brad’s sessions in when I can.

We’ve got a couple of sessions in the next few weeks, and I’ll be sure to post up about them when the time is right. Til then, keep checking back every few days for more news from around the halls of LIRCo! If you’ve got any questions about engineering, feel free to shoot me an email at sn@lirco.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Later!

Hey everybody. Things around here are going great. We've gotten the Tee Dee Young CD finished and house engineer/producer/mastering engineer Michael Thomas has begun final mixes. At this point, things are going smoothly, so I don't know if I'll be getting in on the action during the mix process or not. We've also got the Brad Alford project getting ready to get back in the mix (no pun intended) and besides a couple of possible overdubs and vocals we should be ready to get the mix going in the next couple of weeks. I'm sure we'll be handling the mastering ourselves, but whether it'll be Michael or myself behind the boards hasn't been decided yet.

Besides that, the school is going strong and the new AE II and mastering courses are starting their 2nd semesters, so things are pretty busy around here! I'll get back with you in a few days and give you an update on Tee Dee's project and possibly some news on the Brad Alford CD as well. See ya then...

Hey everybody! Things are going great around here lately. We’ve finally been able to schedule the horn players for the Tee Dee Young sessions and this past Saturday and Monday we were able to get all the horn parts to two of the songs tracked. All we need on them now are final vocals and some tasty lead work from Tee Dee and those two will be in the can! There’s only a few more songs that have horns, so the sessions for vocals and guitar should start up in the next week or so.

The Recording School is going smoothly and I’ve just completed my first semester as an instructor in our new mastering course. In this addition to the main recording school, we teach the final step in audio engineering...the mastering of the final product for duplication. Without mastering, a song won’t have the appropriate volume when put side by side with songs already on the radio and the overall EQ and compression added at this stage give a song the thump and sparkle that it needs to compete on the radio and online.

That’s about all right now. We’re still waiting to see what’s gonna happen with the band from Europe, so I can’t say any more on that. I’ll let you know Monday how the Tee Dee session goes this weekend. Of course, if something should happen between now and then I’ll jump right on and let you know!!

See ya next week!

Hello all and welcome back to Nall On The Net! I’ve been pretty busy lately so I haven’t been able to hit the blog as much as I first intended, and I say sorry for that.

My sessions with Tee Dee Young have been going smoothly and hopefully this Saturday we’ll be able to get the horn players in to cut their tracks for all the songs. Thanks to keyboardist Bruce Smith the horn parts are already mapped out so they should have little trouble hitting their marks on these songs. You can hear a semi-rough mix of one of the songs from the CD called "I Gotta Move" at the ME Magazine myspace site starting this coming Monday, so check it out!!!

Speaking of ME Magazine, if you live in KY and you pick one up, you may see a familiar face on the cover...ME!!! That’s right, yours truly has been tapped to not only write my monthly column for the magazine, but they wrote an article about me too! Before reading it I actually hadn’t thought about all the high level sessions that I’ve been privileged enough to work on, so it was an eye opener even for me - and it’s about ME! I guess I should pay more attention to myself, huh?!?

If you are reading this, then you probably also read "Nall In The Mix", also here on lirco.com. I would like to repeat myself anyway and welcome Amber Sloan to the LIRCo family. She’s shown herself to be a competent engineer and with our Spring and Summer sessions coming up soon, she should get quite a lot of on the job experience that will further her education even more (there’s always something new to learn!).

That’s it for today. I’ll try to get more semi-daily with this so you can experience more of the workings of a real recording studio, so check back every few days and see what’s new with "Nall On The Net"!

Not a lot happening lately. Tee Dee Young came in last night and he and his band completed bass and drum tracks for 5 more songs. The sessions are going smoothly enough and we plan to add some final guitar tracks to these five and review the progress on the first six songs this weekend.

Hello again! The sessions with blues guitarist Tee Dee Young are now in full swing and thing are going very smoothly. We’ve gotten 6 drum tracks down and have started working on keys and bass tracks to fill out the songs before putting in the guitars and horn parts. Hopefully we’ll have a couple of songs finished in the next couple of weeks so you can come back by and check out our progress. The mixture of drum machine and live drums is going good and it’s interesting to hear the two parts together forming the foundation for the rest of the instruments to ride on. I’ll write more on this in the coming weeks.

In other studio news, I’m still trying to get in touch with local band On The Rocks about coming in and cutting some tracks for their demo, and I’ll let you know if that session is ever going to materialize in the next couple of days or so. When I know you’ll know!!

See ya later!!

Hey everybody! So, On The Rocks couldn’t make it in for our session Saturday, so that kinda sucked, but we’re planning on rescheduling probably in the first week or two in February so I’ll get back to them then and let you know how it all goes. This weekend, however, local blues guitarist extraordinaire Tee Dee Young will be coming in to begin work on his debut CD. Tee Dee is also in the local R&B group Scandalous, which have been playing clubs in and around Lextown since before some of you were born! He is in my opinion (and a few others as well!) one of the best (if not THE best) blues guitarists in the area, if not the state. I can’t tell you how much I (and the rest of the crew here at LIRS) am looking forward to these sessions. Tee Dee is going to blend the old with the new by augmenting the tried and true blues formula with more modern electronic flavors and drum machines, so it should be very interesting to see what he’s come up with! We’re planning to work mostly on the weekends with a few weeknights thrown in, so I’ll be updating you often on how the sessions are going.

That’s it for today. You can email me at sn@lirco.com if you’ve got any questions for me concerning this wonderful world of studio magic, and I’ll post up the answers as soon as I can! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!!!

What’s up people?! Just wanted to drop in and say hi. Everything is getting back to normal around here now that the holidays are behind us and that is just fine with me. I don't know about you, but that much time off just makes me antsy to get back to work! Of course, I work at a recording studio, so who wouldn’t want to get back to work here, huh?

We’ve got a couple of new students starting this month and as always a couple graduating the main engineering course and even some heading into the advanced Waves mixing course we've just starting offering this year.

This Saturday I’ve got the local rock band On The Rocks coming in to cut a couple of tracks for their latest demo release, so I’ll tell ya’ll how that one went on Monday. I’m sure that they'll be a couple of Advanced students in that day to help out as well so things should go very smoothly.

That’s about all today. I’ll get back with you around the middle of the week and let ya know what I’m doing and possibly a few words of wisdom I’ve gleaned from my years on this side of the glass. See ya then!!

Hello everyone! Steve here, and welcome to the first installment of Nall On The Net! This is where I’ll be posting my not quite daily blog about what's going on here at LIRCo. Being the holiday season, the halls are dark and the patter of little engineer in training feet have fallen silent. All that will change on Jan. 2 when we re-open and get back into full swing with an entirely new group of students starting the course and taking that ever important first step to their new futures in the music biz.

Being an engineer is sometimes a job that requires you to work longer than usual hours and sometimes even holidays, but I have to say that this is a sweet job if you can get it! In the major markets you work with the stars of today and in the semi-major, the stars of tomorrow! Nothing like sitting back and telling stories about "I knew them when..."

Take the band Passafire from GA that I worked with recently. They’ve just signed a deal with LAW Records and are on the road even as we speak, plugging away, trying to get their message out to as many people as they can. I have no doubt that this is only the beginning for them and when they become huge rock stars, I’ll have my stories about working with them on their first major release. And to top it off, they’re great guys to just hang with too!

Now, there's no question that this job is fun, but it is a JOB and it takes alot of hard work to really be good. A monkey can turn a knob or push a button, but an engineer can shape a sound into almost anything these days and to do that, it takes lots of dedication and desire to make each project the best it can be...even if it's not your favorite kind of music. You HAVE to be fluent in all styles from rap to country to rock to jazz because you never know who’s gonna come thru that door to record and you've gotta give every one of ’em your A game!

Having said all that, I just want to say that I love my job and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Working in the biz on this side of the glass allows you to almost become a silent member of the band, because they rely on you alot to give them the sounds they’re hearing in their heads and without the proper training and practice, that’s not gonna happen very easily.

So what is the point of all this rambling? I guess it's to say that to be a good engineer is not to pidgeon-hole yourself into being only a rap engineer or a rock engineer or whatever, but to experience all the different styles of music out there and really get into to joy of music!!!

I'm gonna be taking the rest of the year off (What there is left anyway), but I’ll be back with more "Nall On The Net" pearls of wisdom in January, and I'll be updating this page every couple of days so check back often!!

Until then, I hope all of you have a great New Year and I’ll see you in ’08!!

Steve Nall
Head Engineer, LIRS