Recording Portfolio

This video, recorded and edited by Kyle Gowens, is a chronicling of the process of recording the band Skin Altar. I worked with my fellow engineer Andrew Dillman to record the Death Metal band's song: Operation Wandering Soul. This was a quite enjoyable experience, working with a talented band who knew what they wanted, and weren't afraid to get creative in the studio. The most interesting part of the recording involved the vocalist putting a silicone coated contact microphone into his mouth and gargling water. Excitingly, with the right processing this track fit right into the song as some wonderful ambience.

This recording was done largely as an exploration of what a purely analog workflow could offer. It was both recorded and mixed with exclusively analog processing and preamps. It was certainly a challenge to route signal through the Audient console and all of the outboard gear, but I feel the limitations led to creativity.

This was a song I recorded while pursuing my initial recording engineering certificates from the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. The song was written collaboratively between myself and four others in the span of a day, recording it all the next day, and then I mixed it myself the day after. The mix is a little dated and I am sad to say I have been unable to locate the stems, but I am proud of my composition and performance on the guitar parts, and the drum sound is beautiful. The drum fill at 1:36 never fails to make me proud.

This track was an absolute beast to mix and record. The band was fantastic and everything went smoothly, the biggest challenge was the guitars. Getting just the right take was absolutely necessary in this case and we recorded dozens of tries, with over six different layers of guitars. On top of that, to get just the right tone we used four microphones on the amplifier. This left us with 24 tracks of guitars to balance just right. While daunting, this gave me the ability to dial in so specifically on the tone and get the one that was just right.

This track was another recording I did during my time at the Recording Workshop. This cover was made in honor of the director of RECW at the time, Jim Rosebrook, who graced us with his very own vocals at the very end. The goal in the mix was to capture the very '80s vibe of the original song, while putting our own more punk influenced style into it. Mixing to this end was a challenge, a lot of tape simulators and outboard analog effects units were used to try and capture the vintage sound to an extent. The end result always puts me in the mind of The Cure which I see as something to be proud of.