Craig Johnson Audition Material

Today Mike spent the morning recording with Dobson High School Tuba player Craig Johnson as he performed materail for his ASU audition.

Along with the video, Mike also edited and prepared a DVD video that demonstrated Craig teaching to younger Junior High Students.

Conan Premiers

Wow, what a great turn out for the first Annual Catch All Film Festival.

When Conan needed a place to debut, Michael Markowski along with Kevin Phipps put together a nice evening’s film festival at the POLLACK TEMPE CINEMAS. The evening was filled with some cool features and short surprises. All in all an enjoyable evening.

To my surprise, the Conan musical came out better then I imagined. It’s always fun to see how a project can come together when there are many elements that are unknown from the recording point of view.

You can finally check it out on-line…..

http://www.conanmusical.com/watch

http://www.catchallfestival.com/

http://www.michaelmarkowski.com/

Mixing Conan Day 2

Back again with Conan.....

This evening Dan and Mike continued working on mixing for the Conan musical. 186 Tracks take time and patience, and more time....there never seems to be enough time.

We got some tracks printed although neither of us are loving them. Chances are we will spend some time next week going over the mixes again and working on them in more detail before the premiere.

Mixing Conan Day 1

Ok, at this point I think we are all tired of this project. It can get rather difficult to listen to the same 15 minutes of music over and over.

This evening Dan and Mike went over the conan tracks getting levels set and preparing for some final mixing on Thursday.

Peter Manning Robinson...it's a wrap

Today Dan and Mike were back in the studio with Otto and the group to wrap up the recording sessions for Peters tracks entitled “In the Forest” and “Razor Dance”.

The works are “for Peters own use” and they sound great. The works contain many textures and take the listener on a great journey.

Today we started with the same 16 member string section as yesterday, and continued the afternoon with Clarinet, Horn and Trumpet Solo parts. Once the tracks were captured, Otto and Peter spent some time Mixing the sessions.

At this point Peter will journey back to LA to finish up and mix the works.

Peter Manning Robinson at Chaton

Today Dan and Mike joined Otto D’Agnolo at his Chaton Studios in Phoenix Arizona for a recording session with Composer Peter Manning Robinson.

Robinson has had a good deal of success as a composer for film and TV, most notably for his work on “With out a Trace”. Today was the first of two sessions at Chaton, involving a 16 member string section as well as a small brass and wood wind section under the direction of Warren Coen, who was also the conductor for the Arnell Symphonies project last year.

For the tracking session, we used:
Royer SF-24 Stereo Ribbon Microphone
Royer R-122 (Pair) Ribbon Microphones
DPA 4021 (Pair) Condencer Microphones
Beyer Dynamic M-160 (Pair) Ribbon Microphones
Neumann U87 (Pair) Condenser Microphone
Neumann U89 Condenser Microphone
Millenia Media HV-3D-8DC Pre-Amplifiers
True Systems P2 Analog Pre-Amplifiers
API 512 Pre-Amplifiers
Pro-Tools HD @ 192kHz

The session ran extremely smooth with Dan taking care of the microphones, placement and pre-amps, Otto taking care of the control room, tracking and pro-tools and Mike……well….taking care of EVERYTHING else.

Well be back again tomorrow to finish up.

Dobson Bands Celebrates 25 years of great music

On May 10th and 11th, Dobson Bands celebrated 25 years of historic music making.

For this event Dan and Mike brought a new level of production to the events. Not only did we capture the event in 5.1 surround, but we also captured it with 4 cameras and live video switching.

For the first time, the Dobson audience was able to watch the performances from a point of view not seen before. They were able to see the “behind the stage” laughter as the MC was making jokes. They were able to see the expressions on the director’s faces as they were conducting. This level of production created a much deeper experience for the audience and as the director of Orchestras, Rob Nichols put it, the audience was captivated. Even the younger audience that is normally….noisy was intrigued by the visual presentation.

The performance was mixed and edited and released on both CD and DVD.