I have been involved with music since I was 11 in middle school band. Currently I'm a student at Missouri State University and have been very active within Springfield's local music scene for the past four years. I've recorded bands, solo acts and voice overs. I've also done a lot of post-production audio work for films and animations.
About this Blog // I will primarily be blogging about current projects.
As some of you may know, I have been working with some friends on a documentary since August of last year. The film explores the topic of the Do it Yourself music scene, specifically focusing on the inspiring community that surrounds this lifestyle.
To better understand the concept, watch our fundraising video here:
This post will be the first part of a series in which I attempt to blog the highlights of our production trips.
Sam, Ben, Bret, and I spent this past weekend on the road. On Saturday we interviewed Harrison Hickock and Chris Di Benedetto, two former residents of Summercamp. Summercamp was a prominent Chicago DIY house venue that was active until May of 2011. The two shared some great insights on the DIY lifestyle and how they were able to throw great shows in their basement for so long.
Later that evening, we arrived at a house venue called the Math Lab in Champaign, IL for a benefit show that our friends had put together for our documentary. There was music, a house full of people, and at the end of the night we had a little money in our pockets to help with our travel expenses. This community’s generosity is a perfect example of what we’re trying to convey with our documentary.
On Sunday, we made the drive to St. Louis to revisit Mark Sarich at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center. The Lemp is another music space that has been a staple of the midwest DIY scene. Mark is a man with a lot of passion for this subject and has been a great help to us throughout the entire production.
After some awesome coffee and good conversation, we went a few blocks down the street to interview AJ Hofstetter and Casey Oliver of the band Anodes. Though their practice space might have been slightly haunted, we got some great content that will definitely make its way into the final production.
Those are the cliff notes of my weekend. Stay tuned, because there is much more to come!
If you’re interested in keeping up with our various antics, like our Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/ditherthediysound
We have officially launched our fundraiser for the documentary I’ve been working on. Its official title is “Dither: The DIY Sound.” This documentary will be focusing on musical communities. We have all of the gear that we need for the project, but we really just need the money for travel expenses to the East Coast and for the rest of the midwest. We have some pretty big ambitions (like interviewing Ian Mackaye and/or Henry Rollins), but to accomplish this we need money to get there! Please help out if you can, and definitely share the link to help spread the word.
Also, we are using this video as sort of a “preview” for our project. We really tried to nail down our animation and visual styles, so I hope that you like what you see.
Please donate if you can, and definitely share the link!
http://igg.me/p/301940/x/1987097
This fall break has really done a lot to change the focus of our project. Thanks to a very inspirational interview conducted with Mark Sarich at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center we have decided that we really want to focus on the community of music in the Midwest. I’ll post a much more definitive thesis next week after we scour the interview one more time, but I truly think that this more intense focus will be for the better of this project.
During fall break we also got the chance to drive up to Normal, IL for a house show. The main draw for this show was the fact that anodes was playing. This was a very difficult environment to record in due to the very small size of the house. However, I feel like we got a fairly successful recording out of it. It was a pretty quick set up, but Sam and I were able to drape over a couple of SM57s over the guitar amps, an RE20 over the PA system speaker and one RE20 over the bass amp. We were counting on getting a lot of drum bleed through these mics, so we didn’t set up a dedicated drum microphone. Despite all of the challenges with the venue we were actually able to get a pretty good recording. I’ll definitely post samples later once we decide to post them online as a group.
We also got to record Native and My Dad live at The Beat Kitchen. Understandably, the staff at The Beat Kitchen didn’t really want us crawling around onstage to set up mics, but the sound guy was cool enough to let us get a feed off of his board. The only downside to this kind of setup was that everything was post-fader, meaning that all of the compression, EQ, etc. was present in our recording. We also had very little control over the levels that were being sent to our 788T. There were many times where the levels were so hot off the mixer that when we tried to dial down our gain even by one notch, the levels would just shut off. The result was a recording that was fairly mediocre, in my opinion. My biggest problem was that the drums were gated, which resulted in some unpleasant distorted thumping sounds. The vocals and bass also turned out to be heavily distorted. In some instances this seems to work with the style of music that they play, but overall I wouldn’t consider this recording a big success. I may end up posting a few of these recordings later along with a rough video cut in order to demonstrate these problems I experienced. In the future, I’m definitely going to make use of the 788T’s built in limiter in an attempt to try to combat future problems like this.
Our documentary has also created a Facebook page - if you’re interested in keeping up to date with what’s happening, then feel free to like this page! You can also continue to read about the documentary’s recording progress through this website.
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