Issue No.2 – The Vault Opens

It turns out Prince wasn't the only musician with a vault.

No, I'm definitely not comparing myself to Prince.

But over the last few weeks I've been opening boxes of hard drives, DAT tapes,…

Issue No.1 – The Return

In This Issue

• Why Studio Life is returning after a long silence
• What I've been building lately
• Why stories matter as much as finished work
• A preview of what's ahead

For…

Springtime 1994. I’m sitting at a table with super-diva Donna Summer—in an absurdly expensive Italian restaurant in Manhattan. We're both sampling out-of-this-world spaghetti carbonara and discussing, for 2 hours, what I can and can not put on screen in a…

You might (or might not) notice, when listening to my music,  that I don’t master my tracks as loudly as they could be. 

But first things first. You might be wondering, "What in the world is mastering?" 

Well, mastering happens…

A quarter of a million people is a lot. 

Seriously, a lot. 

A lot, a lot. 

Remember that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for because you might get it"? Well, that applies to this story because — I…

I never studied music formally but around the age of 6 I did take maybe 3 or 4 piano lessons from a very elderly and very mean lady who liked to slap the tops  of my hands if I…

These days there's no reason why you can't record a full blown album in your own bathroom, if you know what you're doing. Actually, I wouldn't try it in a bathroom because there's never enough electrical outlets in there. 

…

Long before I DREAM DEEP this article focuses on the first album I recorded in 2001, THE SECRET LIFE OF BOYS:

BOY SEVENTEEN 
The first thing that I wrote in January 2001 - in my new apartment in Southwest DC…

Amongst all the mysteries in the business-of-recording-music there is one that strikes fear into the hearts of musicians and artists the world over to a much greater extent than just about anything else. Especially if you are a so called…

The coolest thing I've done lately is upgrade my home studio gear. Out went the 10 year Dell and in came a brand new HP Z-Book Mobile Workstation and an external 20" monitor. I also stopped using the old SONAR…