Glass Intrepid Finished!

Well, i just put the finishing touches on the last mix for Glass Intrepid (i just produced 7 songs for them). I'm sure i'll have some little revisions to do here and there but overall the project is done and IMO sounds AMAZING!! Everyone so far seems to love it, myself included. I cant wait to post some audio clips, the songs are massive!

I've been in a good groove lately. I just finished mixing entire albums for "Paul G" from Washington DC (Urban R&B), and RJ Adams from North Carolina (Urban R&B, kind of in the vein of Lenny Kravitz). I've got a full plate of mixes and productions coming up from around the country and around the globe. Things are good!

If you havent heard it yet, check out the new Man On Earth album i just produced. www.myspace.com/ManOnEarth

The band just posted a remix of the song "Lonely Tonight" that my right arm guy, Cooper Anderson, produced. Keep an eye on Cooper, he's gonna have a long career. They've also got an album sampler up and a full version of "Here We Are", all of which i produced and mixed. you can also buy the album as downloads right on their myspace page. pretty cool stuff!

Lots more going on. too much to tell, I need a glass of wine and some sleep.

-Ken Lewis

Weekend Update

I'm finally feeling better, I was sick most of the week and my head felt 3 feet thick for a couple days. I'm back to mixing (6:15am Saturday morning and I'm calling it a "night"). I'm producing 7 songs for modern rockers GLASS INTREPID. This is their Myspace page, i didnt produce any of the stuff up there now. Hopefully I'll be able to post some of the stuff I'm producing once its done. I'm currently on mix 6 of 7. So maybe i'll be all done by tomorrow. We'll see.

I'm also doing music for Kanye West for a song on his upcoming album. I've been grinding on that for a while now too and its really coming together now. Kanye's next album is going to be INCREDIBLE. I need sleep. Goodnight.

-Ken Lewis

REMIX Magazine Feature

REMIX Magazine did a story for their April Issue (on shelves now) about mixing with plugin's. The story writer, Jason Scott Alexander, asked me for information and insights into some basics on what i do and why. He incorporated alot of it into his article. Jason also gave me a very nice feature section on page 2 of the article at the bottom, several paragraphs in depth about alot of my specifics. Check out the article here....

READ REMIX ARTICLE PAGE 1 HERE

READ REMIX ARTICLE PAGE 2 HERE

-Ken Lewis

iStandardProducers.com Interview

I was recently interviewed by Don DiNapoli, Founder of iStandard for his new website. Check it out, and for any hip hop producers out there, this is a great website, you definitely need to check it out.

READ INTERVIEW HERE

-Ken Lewis

Skidmore Fountain CD Release Party Tonight!!

Hello to anyone in the New York City area. I produced the new album from a great band called "Skidmore Fountain", and their CD release party is tonight (Friday Night) in New York City at the famed Arlene's Grocery at 10pm sharp. BE THERE!

Arlene's is located at 95 Stanton Street, NYC, their website www.arlenesgrocery.net

also check out myspace.com/skidmorefountain to hear a couple of the new tunes!

-Ken Lewis

Glass Intrepid Tracking Blog 1

I'm currently producing and recording a band from Texas named "Glass Intrepid". They are signed to In De Goot Management (also home of Chevelle, 3 Doors Down, Saliva, and Puddle Of Mudd, among other great bands). We're doing 7 songs right now, and hopefully i'll do more with them in the future.

Glass Intrepid is most easily categorized as heavy modern rock. You can check out some of their older material at www.myspace.com/glassintrepid

I'm sure some of this new material will be online soon enough, and i suspect we'll be hearing a single on the radio by summer, but then who really knows :-)

Anyway, last week was pre-production. We started basic tracking here on Sunday and having been hammering away every day since. The songs are shaping up very well, and all the sounds and tones we're getting are (at least we all think) really great. We've got plenty of nice gear to work with, which always helps, but they are also excellent players to boot, which keeps editing and fixing to a minimum and keeps creative workflow to a maximum. Here's a pic of some of the gear we're using for guitars.....



We're running thru Madison and Celestion cabinets with Royer and Oktava Ribbon mics, as well as a Sony C800G. The ribbons are going into SSL J Series mic pre's, the C800G into an Avalon 737.

Usually, we're running thru an A+B box into 2 amp heads at once, each head into its own cabinet and mics on each cabinet. We're often combining all 5 mics down to 1 track. This incurrs nightmares of phase problems that need to be sorted out while combining each mic. So i keep mic placement as in phase as possible, and i have an Eventide Time Align Plugin on each channel and i tweek all of them checking phase and subtly changing mic "distances" with the plugins until the combination sounds great. Its alot of work but worth it. I tend not to EQ individual mics, instead changing the shape of the sound with different amp combinations and different phase combinations. You might be extremely surprised how much the sound can change simply by adjusting minor settings on the Time Align plugins, or reversing the phase of one or two mics. And you'd probably be more suprised at the range of tone you can get from a single speaker depending on where you put the mic and how close or far away you place it. It all matters.

Anyway, thats the current update. More to come. Here's a short list of all the goodies in the picture.
Amps - Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier, Marshall JCM 2000, Madison Divinity. All heads are Tube heads.
Pedals - Zvex Seek Wah, Zvex Fuzz Factory, Boss Phase Shifter, Boss DD 200 Giga delay, Boss CE5 Chorus, Diaz Tremodillo, Diaz Texas Ranger, Big Jam Bi-Phase 9, Morley Volume Wah, Morley Bad Horsie Wah, Digitech pitch Whammy, Vox Wah, Mu-Tron Phaser, Morley A+B splitter. We're using about all of it on one thing or another.
Variax 700 Guitar (we're also using Gibson and Godin guitars)
Conn Strobotuner - a real analog tuner that Butch Vig introduced me to and Cesar Diaz found this particular one for me. Cesar was Stevie Ray Vaughn's only guitar tech, and Cesar also played in Bob Dylans band for 8 years. Cesar also designed and built the Diaz pedals we're using. Cesar died a few years ago which was an incredible loss to music but i am richer for having known him.

Its always nice to have lots of great gear at your fingertips to get creative with, and thats exactly what we've been doing. The vibes are great!

-Ken Lewis