06.20.08
It's been great, finishing the Bullets Can't Kill Danny album, finished the Dance Gavin Dance pre production, finished The Chop album, and haven't gotten through the files back from the sessions in Dallas yet. Unfortunately the budget for the tour this summer can't afford my being out there. So that means I've got the summer off... which is nice and all, but I need to hit the road again, it's been too long. I'm currently in New York recording an album with Embers Remain, today in the studio went very well, I've got a lot of editing to do before tomorrow's session... it's going to be a good weekend of fun work.

04.21.08
I hadn't realized that it had been so long since I had last posted a news entry. The Dancing with Aspirin album came out very well, a few tracks are posted on the audio page, I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. As usual it's been busy, tracked 10 songs with Dance Gavin Dance, their new album's gonna rock... Most recently I started a full length record with Bullets Can't Kill Danny. Probably the biggest sounding album I've worked on so far. We're doing 10 songs, so far finished drums, bass, guitars, acoustics, and about 30% of the vocals. The coming weeks will be the rest of the vocals, as well as the strings, violin, viola, cello, upright bass, and additional percussion. If you'd like to hear a tiny snippet here's a little bit Pound Pound Question Mark Exclamation. This one's still got a lot of work to do, hell you can hear the click track in it, but I'm so excited about this album that it's hard not to play bits of it for people... I've been doing a lot of live sound, and would really like to do more live gigs, and a tour this summer, so if any of you need any more touring sound, let me know.

12.12.07
As usual it's been busy, but it's been great. The past months have been full of work, including a console install that took about 3 months. 5AM out of San Francisco set up shop in the studio for 3 weeks, and I engineered their new record, mixing on that album was recently completed, so be on the lookout for that one. I'm finishing up an album with Dancing with Aspirin, recorded on the new console, it's sounding phenomenal I'll even post a sample in the audio page. At the same time I'm still working with Devil's Walk on their record, it should be done within the month. Recently I started work with a killer rock band called The Chop, I'm mixing a good amount of that record. Finally coming up this month, I'm tracking preproduction for Dance Gavin Dance (Rise Records), as well as an album for In Honor Of (Wayworn Records), and an EP for Sentinel Beast (Shadow Kingdom Records). It's a busy month, and I've even got a project to do in Boston over my 'vacation,' doing a record for the band Thurkill's Vision. It's gonna be a great time!

09.17.07
Quite a lot going on this month, it's going to be a ton of fun... I'm a level 2 pro for Logic now, which I hear means I'm certified to teach it... I finished my MIDI project just a few minutes ago, the project was to remove ALL audio from a film clip and recreate it. After a week of indecision I finally had someone else decide for me, and I went with a scene from Mission Impossible III. The hardest part of the project was scoring the scene, second to that was doing the dialogue, which was particularly hard because the ADR performances that I recorded weren't really acted with any emotion. If you'd like to check it out, here it is Mission Impossible III Scene : All Audio by Ryan John. Beyond that I'm producing, engineering and mixing an album with the band In Honor Of, that's going to be a killer metalcore record. I'm mixing a record for Tape Deck right now, that should be done in a few days, mixing a record for Round Three Fight, and finishing up the Devil's Walk album. All the while I've recently got into building gear, I'm in the middle of an API clone project and so far it's sounding amazing, when I've got 10 in a rack, I'll track some drums with it, and post it online... Also I've recently started work at Faultline Studios in SF. The place is phenomenal, and the people are phenomenal. I'm sure it's going to be a great time, and on the 22nd we get to install a custom 72 input Neve, man that's going to be a task, but it's going to be great!

08.04.07
As of today I'm an Apple Pro for Logic Pro 7... Fun and exciting right? This past week I also finished a project I had been working on, which included all post production work on two videogame trailers. The two trailers are originally scored, and originally designed, foley and effects. It was a very fun project, and I'm certainly interested in doing some more post production. In converting to mov file, it lost a bit of it's dynamic range, so if anyone knows of good ways to convert files and maintain integrity of sound, please let me know. The two trailers are posted on the videos page.

06.28.07
Yet another busy month... but that's a good thing isn't it? So far the Devil's Walk album has gone very well, the drum tracking was done on the 17th, with the SSL9000J. I almost went overboard with micing and outboard gear, but the tones speak for themselves, and it's probably the most brutal drum sound I've heard in a while... I posted some rough samples on the audio page, keep in mind that all guitars and bass are scratch tracks. I started doing front of house at Blake's on Telegraph, in Berkeley a few nights, it's been great so far... Some of the great bands that I've worked with there include Forth Mourning, The Lives of Famous Men, National Product, The Federalists, Poor Bailey, and others. This weekend I've been assisting for Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles) producing a band called One Step Left, it's been a great experience so far! Last but not least, I'm still doing live sound with the band formerly known as Sheol, the name is now Night on Fire. I actually engineered their drum tracks for their new single also... which I'll post when it's complete.

05.25.07
It's been a busy month, working on projects for Dgiin, The Down Lowe, Hail the Tragedy, Worship of Silence, live sound for Lock and Load/Sheol, and I might do some nights at Blakes on Telegraph, in Berkeley... On a 'funner' note, I've started doing a good amount of work in the SSL 9000J room, mmm is it fun in there... mmm tubetech and summit gear... Oh and if you're free on the 31st, head on down to Santa Clara, I'll be doing sound at the Avalon, a show for Lock and Load/Sheol, Finding Mercury, and Amy Schugar. Do request Lock and Load/Sheol on Live 105!

04.26.07
I've actually been in the middle of quite a few projects, Postage 25 an indie rock band from Boston, MA, The Down Lowe a rock band from the north bay, The Deafening Silence, and finally I've been building optical compressors, with the hope of making a rack of them and using them for mixing... I've become much more critical of my mixes at this point. Having a greater understanding of how to achieve the sounds I'm going for it makes it far easier to engineer a project, such that mixing would then be easy. I'm at this point looking for a studio to work in again, I'd love to engineer sessions, and get used to mixing in a room, so if anyone happening to read this knows of an open position, let me know...

04.03.07
Today I worked on 3 mixes... I posted a tune tracked in the SSL 6000E room, I did the mix with a few others on a 48 input Neve VR. The outboard gear included DBX 160a, SPL Transient Designer, Manley Massive Passive, Manley Dual Comp/Lim, Lexicon PCM 81, Lexicon 480L, TC Electronics D-two... I think that's about it. This is the first large format mix of mine that I'm actually quite happy with... there are small details I'd change, but overall solid... Take a listen, and let me know what you think.

03.26.07
I worked on some mastering this past week, finished some tracks with the band Synj... That band is phenomenal. I recently hooked up with the band Sheol, and pretty soon I should be doing live sound for them at every show... It should be tons of fun, they're great guys, and they've got their own system, with a Soundcraft 40 input 800b console, 4 turbos, 4 compression drivers, 2 drives rack (as well as the dbx "driverack"), mults, a Crest monitor console, set of sidefills, and soon a phenomenal lighting rig. It will essentially be moving a venue into every show, setting up, performing, breakdown... It'll be intense, but it will be phenomenal. Also soon I should get started on the Sons of Oswald record, mixing that project. At the same time I just started working with a fella named Emzy, and I'm working on some mixes for that project too... It's a busy busy time, but it's all great stuff, so I'm more than happy to do it.

03.14.07
Did an overnight session tonight from 8pm until 4am, it was pretty long, but the band was phenomenal, a Mastodon, He Is Legend Converge-esque feel, very cool southern-ish metal, plus it happened to be that they were great guys. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to work on a mix of that project. In other news, I'm the AES treasurer for the chapter, that could be fun...

03.07.07
So sunday we did a session with a band called Is Nothing Sacred. The details on the song: Recorded at Expression College's SSL 6000E/G Studio, direct to Pro Tools. Pearl Session Custom drumkit, Earthworks SR77 overheads; C451, SM57 snare; MD421 toms; D112, Subkick kick drum; SM81 ride and hi hat, SM57, MD421, R121 guitars; Radial D.I. bass. Mixed in Pro Tools using stock plugins. I posted a rough mix of the session on the audio page... On top of that, I just found out that I was awarded the G.A.N.G. Scholarship, so that's definitely going to help my education funding :P plus it'll be a lot of fun to work in game audio.

02.17.07
Finally finished the Bullets Can't Kill Danny album. Overall I'm quite a fan. I think the vocal sounds could still have used some improvement, but that may just me being super picky since I worked on the entire thing from start to finish. The album release even went very well. I have the live feed tracks from that event, so I'll be working on a mix of the live show, which will be synched with the 4 cameras that were there for a dvd. I posted all of the Bullets Can't Kill Danny songs on the audio page.

01.21.07
I've decided it's good practice to learn to mix efficiently, and thus I've been doing one song a day. Today I picked a session recorded by an ARP class at the school. I feel I did a pretty solid mix (with rough master) in 3 hours. That's pretty much a record for me... I posted it in the Audio section, take a listen.

01.19.07
Skyler and I were not too happy with the vocal sound from the last Bullets Can't Kill Danny session, so we decided to re record the vocals. We HAD tracked them on an M147, into an Mbox preamp (unfortunately)... I think it was partially the room, partially the preamp, and partially the fact that we were on a strict time schedule, that added up less than phenomenal vocal tracks on the songs. We re recorded with a nice cheap mic, and a nice cheap but 'phat' pre with an optical compressor, and man it came out so much cleaner... Unfortunately somewhere in the middle of doing that I changed some setting on the master mix, and now the overall picture isn't as 'big' as the last mix. This leads me to the lesson of the day: Always Save New Files When You Start Changing Things In Any Mix, It Will Save You The Trouble Of Trying To Figure Out What You Did To Make The Mix Worse Than It Was... Many a time I've found myself thinking I'm making something better only to find that the last bounce was a far smoother mix, but USUALLY I save every mix in a new file with the file name referencing the mix #, so that I can always go back to any mix... This time, I messed up :(

01.15.07
Still been having all sorts of issues with the new mac, that I didn't have with the old one... As of now I STILL have the old one so I'll be using both, depending on how much computing power the session needs... I've been doing a good amount of work on the SSL 6000E, and the mixes still aren't coming out as well as my mixes at home, MOSTLY due to my not being used to the speakers in that room, but the practice is invaluable. I'm hoping to do some work with Skyline Studios in Oakland, it'll be nice to be in a new room, and work on some projects. The Bullets Can't Kill Danny album is half done at this point, 5 songs are completed and mixed, I posted ONE on the audio page. The rest will be recorded early next month. Expect that album to be ready by March 2007.

01.05.07
I've been switching over to a new machine, and it's been a pain. The intel macs are great and all, but unfortunately everything needs updates, and some programs simply don't work on the new intel machines. Additionally the wireless in the new machines simply isn't anywhere near the quality of that in the older machines, and that's been bugging me to no end... Projects are great, since the last post in news, I've worked on 12 new projects, I posted one song from every project in the music page. Some came out great, some not so much, but hence the learning process continues into perpetuity. Classes have been great, mixing on the SSL has been a good time, and having the opportunity to work on so many projects has been phenomenal.

10.07.06
It's gotten pretty busy lately, with work AND class. I've actually missed a few classes now, but it's all good, I'm on great terms with the instructors, and they understand the need to work to pay bills. In terms of studio gear, it's gotten a little tight in here now, I've got 15 boom stands now. In this tiny place that takes up a lot of space. I'm picking up a Yamaha Stage Custom recording kit in the next few days, as well as an Ernie Ball Music Man 4 bass guitar. That'll mean I'll have all the instruments to record a standard rock band by myself... Which'll probably break down to me writing songs, and recording every instrument of them myself... The 'Shadow and the Self' album is now at 7 songs, all piano, or piano and guitar that I composed on GB3. It's coming along really well, and conveying some pretty powerful moods. In addition to that, I'm working on a short film for an MSV class, which is the internal struggle for survival inside a coma, with a twist. This is a project that will need to be scored. On that it'll be Ray Aguillar, Tim Williams and myself. Those two put together some crazy beats and I do a lot of piano and jazzy stuff, so we'll see where that goes... Probably in the direction of a sort of dub. Should be awesome! Oh and now this is hosted on .MAC :)

09.18.06
Today I picked up the console with the help of the very kind Tiff... It's quite beautiful, and pretty damn big. It's 24 channels, with a 16 channel line mix, or 24 channels line, and 8 busses... Pretty versatile, and should really liven up some weak sounding tracks... I posted a picture of the setup on the Photos page.

09.17.06
So I just threw together this site... It was actually a site I made for my cousins band 'The Sun Company,' but I liked it enough to take it back after their unfortunate demise... So here it is. Content coming soon...