JoyRide Studios

EARS met at Blaise Barton's JoyRide Studios in Humboldt Park.

http://www.joyride-studio.com/





Candelabras of microphones line the walls.



Studio owner, Blaise Barton talked about how he got into the business, working at ACME studios with the late Mike Rasfield, an E.A.R.S. founding member.



Blaise recounted the time that he did a long session for a Bob Dylan album.
http://www.joyride-studio.com/blog/2008/10/new-bob-dylan-cd-features-2-songs.html




In the control room.



Off in a smaller room, a Steinway sits ready for you to play.

Reflections on warm weather, and some Birthday fun

Well, I am sitting here at a quarter to midnight mildly cursing the weather reporters. All day on the news we were warned that tonight we were going to have crazy weather. So crazy that if you were smart, you should just stay in tonight. Rain, hail, thunderstorms, and flash flooding. Well nothing of the kind. Its a little foggy, and that is about it. I don't know why I let the weather forecast keep me from making plans, so I stayed in and fell asleep in the early evening...

Not long ago, just as the April weather became tolerable, my birthday appeared on the horizon. With that I went for a walk on the beach with my new friend Jennifer.




Brring Brring!

When is the last time you saw one of these things? Cummon...



I've been to this beach before, but I never noticed this structure. I am not even sure what this is, but this tower reminds me of the film, The House on Haunted Hill. I wonder what kind of sinister activity goes on here. hmm....

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photos go here
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I had a get-together for my birthday, at a local pub, but was so caught up in the activities that I hardly took any photos. Friends from many circles showed up, and it was a great time. I did manage to take one photo, when there were only several of us left and we traveled to a late-night bar for a final drink. By then things were pretty mellow, and the excitement was mainly the light show flashing on the ceiling.



Its 3am, do you know where your beer is?

-- the next day...




..at the Hopleaf in Chicago. http://www.hopleaf.com/

This is an excellent restaurant/bar and if you have an interest in trying some exotic imported European ales, you must go. The food is amazing. I had the Steak Frites dinner, which is an organic steak with their special fries. If you just want to pop in for a try, then just have an ale with an order of frites. The mayo sauce that you dip the fries in is... ahh, a taste of Heaven..

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Well.. at least I got to hang out and chill, and finish this blog entry. On my laptop I am listening to an mp3 of Kettel vs Secede - Panoptica 5, which has some brilliant music clips on it.

It is available here on this page: http://www.panoptic.be/panoptica/index2.html

here is the direct link: http://www.panoptic.be/panoptica/photos/kettel-vs-secede-panoptica5-live-excerpts.mp3

Time for some more sleep now...

Black Lion Audio and other things...

EARS met at Black Lion Audio at the end of February and was treated to an insider's view of the facilities. Founder and owner, Matt Newport, discussed his philosophy of his products, various issues he has encountered, and we learned the history of his company.


Black Lion Audio

Black Lion is known for their modifications to already existing Pro-sumer audio interfaces. They replace various components in the pre-amps of MOTU and DIGI Audio Interfaces, as well as other brands, and the results are sonically superior.

Their mods are very reasonably priced for the results you get, and are backed by their own two-year warranty.

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During the last week in March, some very un-nice person backed into my car some time during the day, and then decided to drive off. I didn't even realize my car had been hit until I was leaving for work and walked past the passenger side of my car for the first time. I am glad that I have auto insurance, however, that person who hit me aught to consider making amends soon before bad Karma catches up to them.

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(photo borrowed)

As far as electronic gadgets go, I am very intrigued by the ACER Aspire One Netbook. This is a super-small and lightweight laptop which is about the size of a book, but is capable of doing everything that a larger laptop can do. And you can easily find one for under $250.

See Here: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/31863/review/aspire_one.html

If I were to get a new camera...

Well..

After some research, (and much cajoling from my friends) it looks like I need to find an older model Fujifilm F series camera this year. These cameras seem to be rated "the best" when it comes to taking photos in low light, which is what I love to do, plus one or more of the models has image stabilization. Yay! No more blurry dark photos! But what I have learned is that Fuji abandoned this great camera with subsequent models when the race began to make cameras with higher and higher megapixels. You know 8, 10, 12 Megapixels in a little camera like this seems impressive, but actually that destroyed what made this camera such a stand out.

Here is an example of what I can do with my circa 2005 Olympus..


It is a cool photo but I feel lucky


It looks like the best bet for my style of photography is going to be the the Fujifilm Finepix F30fd, F31fd, or F45fd....

If you are a technology geek like me then you are going to want to read all about it by reading the links below. But the proof is really in the photos which are too good to be true, and no wonder this $200 camera now sells for over $700 - that is if you can even find one.

See here:

http://www.takegreatpictures.com/fujifilm_f_series.fci

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000EJVWGS/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1




(Photo borrowed)

Let me try yours so I can see how great it really is...

2009 New Year's Resolutions and what's new

Yes

It is time to reflect on last year a little and set some goals for the new year.

hmm...

But first see here. A quick stop into the Tone Zone. One of the last big classic rooms in Chicago. And literally a quick stop, since I was with my friend Sam, and he had to drop off some equipment as we were traveling around.



Sam tells me this place uses ProTools and a SSL console.

It looks really cool inside and I think it would be great to have an EARS meeting here.. err even better I mean it would be great to track a song of mine here. If I can pull something together that would have a few horns and other acoustic instruments, so you can really hear the sound of the room. This ties in with my New Year's resolutions that I am working on..

Next up, it was the EARS annual Holiday Party. This time held at a great Italian restaurant in Wicker Park.


The food was great. The wine was great. I was introduced to a Malbec wine called Neu Direction that was totally tasty. See here: http://winecask.blogspot.com/2008/11/neu-direction-malbec-2005-wine-review.html



Pictured above, some esteemed veterans of the industry.
Top row: Mike Konopka, David Moss, Michael Kolar, Tim Swan
bottom row: Hudson Fair, Jack LeTourneau, and Harry Brotman.


The party was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to like it. If you have an interest in audio, consider joining EARS.

OK one of my resolutions is to get a better camera. I like to take photos in low light and because of that, a lot of them come out blurry.

Another resolution is to watch my diet and exercise more.

(to be continued)

New Stuff and Old Stuff - disorganized leftovers..

YAY.

So the end of the year is not too far off. And so what is new?

Well Secret Beach 'Solos' is available on CDBaby now. Right Here.

It will soon be on a number of digital stores too like Amazon.com and Napster too. More to follow.

What else? geez. I'd like to get to work on a new CD. How bout it?

Old stuff:

Well here are some photos of the recent past I suppose:

Here is Doug McBride's Gravity Studios in Wicker Park.

This is the recently added mastering room.

Doug went through a detailed explanation of how his new equipment works. You see he traded out a lot of the older equipment for some new stuff and well.. you can really get into the nitty gritty by reading the November '08 EARS recap here.

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Back earlier in the year we met at Marshall Terry's Stereophonic Studios which is near Belmont and Western, not far at all from Steve Albini's Electrical Audio.



Here is Marshall obviously deep in thought.
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Nothing wrong with a taste test.
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One of my New Year's resolutions is to stop taking blurry photos.

So because of the awful weather we are having, I have been curtailing my nightlife activities. For instance in the last several days we got a huge snowstorm, then sub-zero freezing temperatures, then it all warmed up and melted, resulting in a flash flood, and now we are back to winter again.

Winter Blahs

Today is kinda nice because the temperature went up. I think it is in the high 40's. But that is uncommon this time of year. It is COLD! And dark and gloomy. I caught a cold, and some kind of a sinus thing is going around. It would be a good time to hibernate but there is just too much work to do.

Website Update

The Secret Beach website is again in a state of change. Right now the shopping cart is down - well actually it is a new shopping cart and it is being configured. What is new? Soon you will be able to download mp3 files as well as purchase CDs, and there is a number of cassette tapes still available too.

Within a month, I hope, the entire website will be redone and finally brought into better focus. That is my New Year's resolution, or one of them anyhow.

In addition Secret Beach music will soon be proliferating a number of other online stores. Stay tuned.

So finally, during this time of growth, Secret Beach music is available for sale and if you would like to make a purchase, feel free to email me and I will get right back to you.

Thanks much

-Eric