I am a freelance recording engineer/mixer, producer, and electronic musician with about twenty years in the business.  When I started working in recording studios, analog tape-based methods were still dominant, and digital technology was beginning to transform the way records are made.  So I learned old-school techniques alongside the progression of computer-based digital recording, and today I use both together.   My personal studio, The Eye Socket, has a mix of analog and digital, old and new — which I think is essential for making great records.

My favorite records are exciting — musically and sonically adventurous, full of character, larger than life — and I try to make those kinds of records.  In the studio I like to work carefully and efficiently while experimenting liberally, to capture spontaneous energy and discover unexpected sounds.  I find a combination of meticulous crafting and barely-controlled chaos works well for recording music.  A great recording puts the artist’s expression at the center of a sonic portrait that engages and connects with the listener.  That connection is everything — it’s why I do this.

I’ve engineered and produced quite a few rock records, as well as doing remixes, drum programming, and other electronic music production.  I’ve been doing synth and MIDI programming since the mid-1980s, and I am currently programmer and vocalist in the sci-fi/new wave/electro-rock band Real Space Noise.  I am also a member of Viva Death, in which I handle the noises, samples and synth work.  Together with Trever Keith, I have a music production project called The Legion of Doom which does remixes, mashups, original music, and scoring and sound design for film and tv.

As an logical extension of our musical endeavors and general DIY ethos, some colleagues and I founded the independent label/collective Functional Equivalent Recordings in 2005, with the goal of using new technologies to produce and distribute great music without compromise, and without the impediments of the old music industry structure.

I’ve toured in the U.S. and through much of Europe, playing drums for a few different bands (including my own) and doing live sound.  I’ve never been a particularly gifted drummer, but I could always be relied on not to play anything too complicated.  I’m also not a particularly gifted keyboard player.

For several years I did quite a lot of voiceover recording and ADR (dialogue replacement) at The Complex Studios and Wilshire Stages in Los Angeles.  I worked regularly on The Simpsons, Futurama and King of the Hill, and quite a few other TV shows and feature films.  That sort of work pays well but it isn’t really creative, so these days I mostly stick to music.

I do a bit of writing, too, and I intend to use this website to expand those efforts.

As of January 2010, I am also an Assistant Professor of Music Production and Engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. It’s a genuine honor to have this faculty position (part time) at one of the world’s finest music colleges, and to have the opportunity to share some of my knowledge and skills with the next generation of studio geeks.

I’m not a professional web designer, but I’ve picked up a few things over the years.  I design and code this website myself (along with realspacenoise.com, the-legion-of-doom.com, and functionalequivalentrecordings.com), with a lot of help from the WordPress design team and community.  If you should find something not working, or if you have any questions, please let me know.