Cinco Ranch Symphony wins Honor Orchestra!

West Side Recording Studio is proud to announce that the Cinco Ranch Junior High Symphony Orchestra, from Cinco Ranch Junior High in Katy, is selected to perform at the Texas Music Educators Association convention from a recording we did for them last spring. This is not an easy feat. The orchestra must perform at the highest level and the recording must also be of the highest quality. We are proud to be part of this achievement!

Drobo in the House!!

West Side Recording Studio has decided to stop playing with fire and began to get responsible with backup with the DROBO. It is an automated robot that will automatically configure any size hard disk drive I put in it and create a way of keeping my data from falling victim to hard drive failure. This is fully automated and requires no special software. The lights tell you when to put a larger drive in or when it has failed. You can pop out the drive while the unit is still on and replace it without shutting down the computer. I will look into getting the Drobo share, a gigabit lan adapter that will let me share the Drobo over the network! Perhaps in the future, there will be an 8 drive version that is called the Drobo pro and it is an iSCSI interface. What that means is multi-user, video editing over the gigabit lan without upgrading what we already have! Very Cool!

Did I mention it is very quiet? I got it on ebay for about $350.00 and saved some money. It is a usb connection and installed very quickly. These things don't come with drives unless you pay extra. I have 2.6 TB installed and have 1.4 Tb of free space. That loss of drive space means I am protected with some sort of redundancy across all the drives.

You should stop talking about it and get one!

Coffee Maker!

I just got this Cuisinart DCC-1150BK 10 Cup Coffee maker. It replaces my old Krups coffee maker! The old Krups was on its last leg but this new one is awesome!
Some features are cool like:
1. A heated warming plate with a stainless insulated carafe! Usually a coffee maker would have an insulated carafe without a warming plate and a coffee maker with a warming plate would not have an insulated carafe but this has both!!!
2. This thing can have a mode for 1-4 cups of coffee! I hate brewing a whole pot just to drink a few sips and dump the rest! This mode brews the coffee twice as hot so it would taste better for a small batch!!
3. The coffee maker tells you it's time to clean with a clean light. It also has a cleaning mode that overrides the other functions!
4. The coffee maker has a shower head to dispense the hot water on to the filter basket instead of just through a single hole. This keeps the temperature of the water consistently hot through the grounds to make better tasting coffee and I can definitely taste the difference! Very cool!
5. A shorter cord that you can tuck into the maker to reduce clutter!
6. Brew a pour with the insulated carafe. NO unscrewing to pour coffee like the Krups. It also has a nice floating ball valve that closes the hole when it is level and opens up when you pour. It keeps the coffee warmer longer! Not spill proof but definitely great for a few hours of heat loss protection!
7. The auto shut off is better than ever! It will autoshutoff the warming plate and brewing when it is finished brewing after a certain amount of time but that is not that special. What is awesome is that the warming plate keeps the bottom of the stainless steel carafe warm until you pick it up to pour some out in a cup! It instantly shuts off and saves power! It is great if you brew it and can't drink it right away and doesn't keep warming it since it is insulated! Very smart!

You should get one for your birthday!

Recording, Editing, and Koraline

Our recording season of live concerts have really kept us busy and it seems that the pace has not slowed down all that much.
We are in the midst of cranking out new music and video projects as well. One being a Sleep Apnea video that required a voice over and some custom music. We used a EV RE-1000 microphone for the voice over and it sounded great!

I recorded Scott Rogers in the studio and he brought in his acoustic, bass and electric guitars, macbook with logic express, a Roland Drum kit, and small jembe. For 3 days we recorded and I produced and mixed the album. It ended up being some really good stuff for a guy who learned guitar 2 years ago and started writing in December!

My buddy Gregg, from 7th grade, finally got married in June. I shot his wedding video as a present and am working on it right now!


Koraline is now 1 year old!!!
Hello Kitty came to her party. She partied with the family and got really tired at the end but she had a great time!

Koraline and Recording!

It has been a crazy time this month! My Dad turned 70 friday! I am shooting more videos than ever! I am recording more than ever and Koraline is 10 months and walking a little!

Ren Patrick in the Studio!

Ren Patrick has been back to West Side Recording Studio lately! Her voice will make you melt into a slurry! Check out her myspace!
Feels Like Home (from motion picture How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and Gone (Kelly Clarkson) were recorded with Me (Tan Truong) as engineer/producer. Keep an eye on her people! She is a rising star!
Ren and I will be working on her originals and I will keep you updated!


Technical stuff....
(Micropones used: Neumann M147 tube mic for Feels Like Home, and BLUE Mouse for Gone)
Sytek Mic Pre with Burr Brown op amps to DBX 166a to Avalon 737sp to Apogee converters and into Pro-Tools to Tascam DM-24 digital console via ADAT lightpipe to DBX Quantum for conversion to Sound Forge.

Introducing Kelly!

Please meet the newest member to the West Side Recording Studio Family, Kelly Wunsch!! I needed help taking orders on location at TPSMEA 2008 and Lizzie called upon the powers of her friend, Kelly to help me out! It was a one time thing and she took orders and left like a ship in the night, just kidding! It has been more than a year since I last saw Kelly until recently. Lizzie called upon Kelly's power to bail me out of a Spring Oaks Choir concert when it seemed that no one in the world could help me out! I then asked her to help with the Spring Branch Pizza Theater show one night a few weeks ago and since then, she agreed to come into the recording studio to help on a regular basis and for that I am really thankful, relieved and excited!!
Kelly is a super nice person with a positive can do attitude! I hope that she will help me get my studio office into shape and looking attractive as well as keeping it organized! It will be a challenge since we will be constantly receiving shipping materials and boxes that will clutter her life once she has organized the last shipment and cleared her desk! She helped me prime the studio walls for paint that is going on at the moment and I am hopefull that my color selection is studio appropriate once it has dried! (pictures coming soon) Kelly has put up with my crazy questions and requests so far, (like "please water my brusell sprouts, they are looking sad!") She helped me organize my West Side CD collection as well as my personal collection of CD's! Kelly is so cool and brutally honest as well, so I admire that! I can't wait till she comes back into the studio again!! What will she organize, design, decorate, and paint this time?