Being the last of my name without kids, I’m always creating what I hope will leave some kind of legacy and impact others beyond my small family. Those efforts have been private in recent times as I’ve focused on genealogy, so I wanted to share some of my experiences, resources, and advice for others considering rubbing that lamp. As I generalize and stereotype, understand that exceptions obviously apply.
To honor the passing of voice god James Earl Jones, best known as Lord Vader, let’s revisit this fun edit I made exploring the idea that it could be anyone under those helmets. No special audio-splitting tools or AI, just standard cuts and fades.
When PlayStation VR2 launched, I dabbled in Horizon Call of the Mountain because it was a great showcase for the tech advancements since the original headset. Eye tracking, resolution, foveated rendering, yadda. But in the year since firing up Gran Turismo 7, I played virtually nothing else while newer games keep arriving. Twenty-five thousand miles of white knuckles, meanwhile my real-life car (also rendered precisely in the game) has only 15,000 in five years. Sheer coincidence, the feature film announced soon after, which added to the excitement.
Continue readingI hadn’t needed a reel in two decades until being impacted by a 5,000-employee reduction. Most clips are from that job, favoring more recent productions. It speaks for itself since I often did everything but hold the mic—replaced here by my own music—with professionalism in stark contrast to my YouTube content.
Find this anytime on my VIDEO DEMOS page, and CONTACT ME through this site or those linked in the sidebar. I’m available for full-time work, not seeking gigs.
Hear my work on the new MIXING page, including current Bucket projects!
Last year, an old friend from my author circles asked about improving some mixes his musical duo recorded on his phone. They used an interface called an iZotope Spire, with minimal setup and automatic settings, so unfortunately all its processing and effects were already baked into the tracks I received. We call these full-track exports “stems,” which we can import/align in our audio software of choice agnostic from what it was recorded with. I used a ton of plug-ins like tape saturators, amp simulators, compressors, EQs, and maximizers, as well as time-based effects like (additional) reverbs, echoes, and flanging. One of the most useful was a transient designer to either shorten reverb tails or sustain other signals. No pitch correction.
Continue readingSleep is now a three-hour event. Twice per night on good ones, many aimless wee hours in between. Often, I don’t bother going back to bed. (cue Tyler Durden …)
372 days ago, I ate in an empty restaurant for my parents’ anniversary, already a sketchy endeavor at that time. Public dining, I mean. My beloved Chiefs had recently celebrated their first Super Bowl victory in 50 years with mass public gatherings that would soon be prohibited.
In this essay, I reflect on the life of my hero through the lens of my own musical journey.
Last year, I scored the serialized horror podcast Larkspur Underground, written and produced by Michael Paul Gonzalez in Los Angeles over 11 episodes. You can read more about that process in this blog post.
With the first season concluded, now’s your chance to binge it if you haven’t already. Things got … um … crazy in those last few episodes! I’ve also decided to make my musical score available, which you can hear in its entirety below, or anytime on my Music page with all my other projects, newly updated as well.
Continue reading
Visitors to my Music page know I’ve produced many tracks for multimedia. Theme songs, spot cues, drops/bumpers, etc. However, the closest to a complete score that I’d recorded was for my 2006 short film Featurette, clocking in at a mere 19 minutes. Then came an opportunity to compose for a new serialized horror podcast called LARKSPUR UNDERGROUND. We’ll get down and nerdy in a bit, but first the story.
Continue readingThis one takes my previous video, “Antidote,” to the next level: a logical progression from studio to stage. Enjoy!
Special thanks to Pat Redd and School of Rock Overland Park.
With my Finding the Light album release this week, I figured I should preview a full track. And in the same spirit as the recording process, why not keep the video DIY, too?
Continue readingHere it is! She’s a beaut, eh? The artwork comes from the illustrious brush of Boden Steiner. He said the concept originated in my song “Costumes,” which is a nostalgic tune that’s partly about kids auditioning different personalities (“trying on costumes”) and figuring out what kind of people they want to become. The album’s larger themes are probably obvious from the title and his bold step into what surely will be flight, yeah?
(Click pics to embiggen.)
My lack of recent updates is because historically most of them have been literary, and I’m on hiatus from that world for a bit. (I will, however, be hanging in Minneapolis during AWP, eager to let you buy me drinks.) My stack of unread books grows monthly, as I’ve barely cracked a spine since last summer. But if you figure I’ve gone dormant, perish those thoughts.
I’m recording a new album.
Remember my debut novel from back in 2009? Ever wanted to cut out the eyeball middlemen and have the author’s voice streaming between your ears handsfree?
Continue readingCzar Bar, Kansas City, 5/24/12 (“$@!# Authors Say” event). To warm things up, Winebox performed our very first show. I already had a camera set up for the readings, so I thought we should go ahead and record a live showcase video as well. Here are some selections for you:
Continue reading
