Frankly Audio

A knob turner since the age of eight when our family bought a color television in 1965, I was always tweaking the color and the tint searching for the perfect flesh tone. My phalangeal invasion soon spread to the family’s “Hi-Fi” that brought to life Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and soon after, The Monkees. Not wanting to burden mom and dad with the expense of headphones, I fashioned my own out of a wire hanger, speaker wire and two transistor radio speakers. When the Hi Fi was upgraded to a walnut cathedral with stereo speakers I attempted to record on two separate monaural reel to reel tape machines the left and right channels of the Beatles’ Revolution and then play them back in-sync in my  groovy bed room. The results were “mixed”.

Not satisfied with just listening to music I jumped at mom’s offer to start guitar lessons. She picked up on my infatuation with the Monkees. Maybe it was all the Tiger Beat pictures of Mike Nesmith peering through the books on my book shelves or my religious zeal in worshiping at the temple of the almighty television for my half hour service of zany, madcap, misadventures interspersed with the blessed performance of Door Into Summer or Pleasant Valley Sunday that gave it away.

It would be about fifteen years later when I would be offered a chance to do live sound or, front of house (FOH) mixing for a band I was a former guitarist in, South Florida’s, Critical Mass . The gig started out with semi regular performances at the Agora in Hallendale, Florida and as the band gained more and more popularity it also garnered record label attention. I did FOH for FM radio programming and management execs (Lee Abrams) that would result in a management deal for the Mass. Soon after I would be doing FOH at Tramps in New Your City for Sid Bernstein , the man who brought the Beatles to Shea stadium and other heavies in the biz as management sought to secure a record deal for the band. The showcase was a success, Critical Mass was signed to MCA records.

The band left for the U.K. to record and when they returned we did a south eastern tour of the USA. This would be an invaluable opportunity to gain more experience and observe other audio engineers at work. The tour was largely successful and a personnel change moved me from audio engineer back to my former position as guitarist.

With one moderately successful album under their belt Critical Mass’ deal with MCA had an option for two more records. We went in the studio to cut some more material to entice MCA to pick up the option. Critical Mass began recording at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida with producers Ron and Howard Albert , most famous for their work with Derek and the Dominoes, Joe Walsh, The Eagles and others. It was the early 80’s and the music scene was in flux, New Wave was waning as more middle of the road material moved to the fore. The Mass would lose out to Sarde .

From there I was offered another FOH position with a well financed and talented cover band in south Florida, Dreamer . Sound and lighting equipment was first rate, Soundcraft, Lexicon, JBL, EV and Crown equipment. We worked the south and central Florida circuit and engineering was very satisfying on the whole. Coincidentally, I would once again move from behind the board to the stage, this time as drummer.

After Dreamer ran its course I did a brief stint as a salesman at Ace Music of Miami . I was terrible! The staff were a bunch of familiar and friendly guys, some of which I had seen there for many, many years as a kid riding my bike there to ogle Les Pauls, Marshalls and other delicacies. But when I moved behind the counter I couldn’t haggle. I was shown what the absolute lowest sale price was on the computer screen and just went strait to the bottom without much, if any fight. Not good when you have pooled commissions.

After a very brief career as a salesman, the highlight of which was negotiating for Fred Rubin, the trade of a Mercedes Benz for an audio board, I was offered a position at Criteria as a technician. I had studied electronics in technical school and attained a General Class FCC license in my early twenties. While I was sure of my engineering abilities, technically I had only fixed some microwave ovens and televisions along the way I felt I was by no means a whiz with a schematic. With some encouragement from the chief engineer and an option to give it a try, I was excited and trepidatious at the same time.

Those years at Criteria remain some of the great highlights of my life. I would work the night shift and capitalize on the skills I did well, procedure, operation, routine maintenance, and cope with major technical disasters with replacement or substitution strategies, leaving the heavy tech work for the chief engineer. I really enjoyed equalizing the main monitors in the control rooms. Every room had very different characteristics and I made it my mission to bring some consistency to the rooms. It was very challenging and very rewarding. Criteria yielded a wealth of information and personal growth.

Experience at Criteria would be brought into play when I was approached to partner with Dan Canary in starting On-Line studios in Miami Lakes, Florida. I put in all of my time and experience and Dan provided the capital. We had a small facility that utilized a hybrid system of MIDI and analogue eight track reel to reel technologies. To give you a sense of time in computer age, the fasted PC at the time was an 8088 CPU at 8 to 12 mhz. with typically, 256k of RAM. The results were some of the most remarkable and satisfying even with vastly inferior equipment to that of a major player like Criteria. It really proved that gear isn’t everything and engineering is very, very critical.

From there I did more live engineering before moving to central Florida to work in television having also studied for television studio operations with Pete De Casenave and Bob Hicks through Miami Lakes Tech. I worked in television production for ABC Sports, Verizon, Time Warner, Knology cable systems, the City of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County Economic Development. I taught the use of Adobe Premiere nonlinear video editing software at Pinellas County Technical Education Center, and  freelanced in television and radio. I was on the Y2K committee for the City of St. Petersburg as well as a major contributor to assisting the migration of WSPF Television from analog to digital pre and post production technologies. I shot and edited video for both the city and county, built and maintained both the city’s and the county’s Matrox DigiSuite, DPS Velocity and Panasonic Post Box nonlinear systems.

It is from this history and more that I will attempt to share what I have learned with you. Mine is a perspective of results. All through my career there have been these personalities that would attempt to “explain” to me why a mix that sounded awful, sounded good. We are better served to find what it is we do best and do it. For some, the aptitude is for the technical over the artistic. I enjoy and benefit greatly from the technical understanding of electronics and acoustics but it is not my strongest suite. My mission is to make mixes that sound not only good, but make the hair on your neck stand up if at all possible. A mix that has to be explained is not a mix, it’s a story.

Just shut up and make it sound good!

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