Welcome to the game

All the while I was working as an engineer, I was playing in bands and my real dream was rock and roll stardom. At the height of my engineering career, I moved to California with my group "Game". Long story short; band winds up playing clubs, band burns out, band breaks up. But, I did realize my dream. In 1977, I was signed to Capitol Records as a solo artist with a five year, five album deal. My self-produced album "Crane" was released in January of 1978 and promptly 'tanked'. I was dropped from the label in June, and had to go back to playing bars to eat. After eight months of that, it was time to wake up from the dream. I returned to Criteria as an engineer in February of '79. For awhile things were good. Then came the "crash" of 1980. Major labels began looking at their books and wondering why it was necessary for their artists to spend ridiculous amounts of money renting houses in South Florida just to make albums at Criteria. All of a sudden my steady job was not so steady. I began getting work as a session singer and guitarist, and playing a few gigs to supplement my now-diminishing income. In 1982, I joined the group "Firefall", and left Criteria for the last time.

After 5 years in the trenches, I came off the road and was hired by TSI, a local production company. My job was to write, engineer, and produce jingles for car dealers. During my time there, I went through all six audio rooms, aligning, rewiring, and tweaking the gear - most of which was junk. When TSI decided to move its operations back to Oklahoma, I started my own business at home, producing commercials for the salespeople who elected not to move to Oklahoma with the company.

For the next eight years with a couple ADAT's, a Mackie 1604, and some minimal outboard gear, I managed to produce over 300 jingles and 30,000+ radio spots. When a crooked business partner made off with the jingle library, I was out of business.

In 2005, I went to work for AVACOM in Coral Gables and have been there ever since, doing much of the same. My days are now spent in front of a ProTools rig. What...no tape, no razor blades, no splicing block, no alignment tapes, no endless 1K tones? Nope. No hiss, no blown edits, no stretched or accidentally erased tapes either. Some days I feel like anyone who is old enough to have witnessed the first flight at Kitty Hawk and then see men walking on the moon.

While I have not sat behind a big board in decades, I still consider myself a legit engineer. I've always maintained that it's so much more of how one hears rather than what gear one uses. Give me any four microphones, a little mixer and a two channel recorder, send me out to record anything, and I will bring you back something that is listenable.

Next issue, I'll elaborate on my adventures into the world of live sound. And I shall rant endlessly on the atrocities I've witnessed thereof.