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