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Hey guys. Do yourself a favor and check out this video of Sleeping At Last doing a piano/vocal version of their song “Turning Page”. The full version is features in the new Twilight movie. Such a great song. I had the privilege to do the mix on it. Great song!

Stuff I’m mixing on now:
Fervent Worship – full length
Cornerstone – live recording
Ethan Bortnick – full length
Alexander The Great – EP
Percy Sledge – full length gospel album

Recently finished projects:
Marie Osmond – Naughty List single
Percy Sledge – My Christmas Wish and Christmas In Dixie singles
Paper Lights – EP

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Recently, Avid announced Pro Tools 10. Sounds great right? Maybe for some people. For me…not so much. This is the last version of Pro Tools to support the current HD hardware. For me, this is very bad:( Avid has announced HDX, their new HD format. Once Pro Tools 11 hits, I won’t be able to keep going without upgrading my hardware. What’s the catch? Well…its $7,000 for me to upgrade. OUCH! I could go on and on about this but let’s just say I am a little unhappy to say the least. I love Pro Tools and use it every single day but man $7,000 just to upgrade.

What do I do? Well, the past week has been spent trying to figure it out. There is Logic. I now have it and learning it. I like it (i think) from a mixing perspective. There are some things I would have to get used to but nothing I can’t handle. I am mostly unsure of the tracking side of Logic. If any of you use Logic tracking bands, please write me and tell me how you like it and how you are using it. There are some features that i use in Pro Tools everyday on the tracking side that Logic just doesn’t have. Could i find a workaround? Probably…but do I want to? Not really….

I think (at the time of writing this) that I will keep my PT HD system and just ride it out and see what happens. I’ll keep learning Logic. Let’s hope Avid, drops their upgrade pricing. If not, maybe I’ll just have to be slightly outdated in the hardware department. Oh well…there are worse things in life. It doesn’t matter. Whatever works, works.

As many of you know, we are expecting our second child. Milam James Bethea will be here in Feb. Can’t wait to meet him! Hope he is practicing his hockey moves in the womb!
Take care
Chris

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Hey guys. Long time..no post. Its been a crazy busy couple of months around here. Lots of fun projects going on. Those have mostly been mixing and mastering projects, which usually just involves me sitting in a room by myself. So, in order to get out and get some sunshine, my wife and I took at trip to Chicago this past weekend. My wife is a Gypsey at heart and loves to get out and travel. Chicago has turned into our getaway spot (4 times in 3 and 1/2 years). We went on our honeymoon and fell in love with it. It turned out to be a great trip! We were able to meet up with Ryan O’Neil (Sleeping At Last) and his wife Cayt. As many of you know, I have had to privilege to do some mixes for Sleeping At Last over the past few months for the Yearbook project. My wife and I have always been huge fans even before I did the mixes so it was a blast for us to meet up and hang out with such awesome folks! (btw, a car almost blew up by our table but we made it out alive)
We also got to see a huge air show while in Chicago. In fact, its the largest free air show in the country. Quite cool to see jets doing all kinds of crazy tricks while putting off a thunderous roar over downtown! Of course, we hit up Giordano’s, which is possibly the best pizza on the planet. So all in all…great trip! Good folks,good planes,good food, good subway rides at 4:30am, and some good new clothes (Zara, H&M…all the things florence doesn’t have)

Back the studio for now…hope all is well

C

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Hey guys. Hope all is well. I am currently enjoying a baby-less outing with my wife. My parents are in town and are holding up the fort at home and giving us a night out. Just wanted to give you a quick update about last week. I had the privilege of tracking a couple albums for Percy Sledge. We cut basic tracks to 20 songs in 2 days! We had a great band of studio musicians in that allowed us to go at that pace. It is truly a site to see when those guys are working. If you have never seen top session players work then you are missing out. Unreal. I’m looking forward to finishing up tracking and eventually doing the mixes.Percy…what a guy!

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Hey guys. I am sure by now you have heard of the storms that came across the southeast last week. There is nothing I can say here that you havent already heard or seen on tv or other news outlets. I just wanted to share a snipet of my week with you. Last week I had the pleasure of mixing Sleeping At Last’s May Ep for their Yearbook project. If you know me, you know I am a big fan of their stuff. I was excited as usual to get to work on these mixes. If I remember correctly, I mixed one song on monday night and another on tuesday. I had listened down to the 3rd song as of tuesday night but had not started it. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what needed to be done so I felt like I could get it all done on wed. The mastering session was thursday morning in Chicago so it had to all be uploaded by thursday morning at the latest. So wed rolls around and I was able to get a little start on the song in the morning. Mainly to just get in the mindset of the song and keep it in my head during the day until i could really get down to it that night. I had heard of the possibility of some rough weather coming through but, as usual, I didnt think much of it. There were some storms that came through during the night and on into wed morning but nothing too terrible (where I lived at least). These storms passed and I went on up to the studio where i work to finish up another mix.

By early afternoon, I was pretty worn out as we had a couple late nights sending off and tweaking mixes on the previous 2 songs for the May EP. I was surprised to hear on the news that the bad part of the storm was coming in around 3pm. I had kinda thought most of that was done. Once I looked at the radar, I decided to head home to be with my wife and 11 month old little girl in case it got bad. Typically I dont get worried about weather but this storm looked pretty rough. So I’m home and waiting on the weather  when all the sudden I feel like I’m about to explode. Apparently something I ate didnt agree and I threw up more right then than I ever have combined ha. Sorry for the nasty details!  Right as I finished, my wife comes by and almost is yelling “Chris get in the hallway now” Being the typical man, I thought to myself  ”Ah no biggie whats going on?” Instead of following my wife’s advice, I went to a window and looked out. It was quite a scary image. Trees just bent over like I’ve never seen before…leaves and sticks just flying all around. About this time I hear a loud boom and immediately realized it was the real deal. This was a real tornado. Keep in mind what had happened right before this…so Ii was still feeling quite bad. Laura and I hear a couple more booms and I just knew that a huge tree had hit our house somewhere but still thankful nothing had landed right over us. We wait for the bad stuff to pass. Once I felt like it was safe, I went out and looked out the front window only to see trees down everywhere. In fact, a massive oak tree from across the street had fallen into our yard and missed our house by inches (literally). I went outside and saw a firetruck and policecar pulling up. There were trees blocking both sides of our driveway. There was no damage to our house, which is a huge blessing. Across the street there were 6 or 7 massive oak trees down…part of the house destroyed. Still feeling very rough and looking pale as a ghost, I went over and talked to the collection of neighbors who instantly came out to check on things. It was a pure miracle that nobody was injured.

As I was standing out talking, I realized that I still had work to do. That 3rd song! I had been mixing at my home studio, but now i had no power. I made a call and found out that Noiseblock (studio where i work) still had power. So I’m thinking, no problem, I’ll just transfer to an external, grab some of my gear and head up there to finish it. Wait, uh no power. I cant transfer to external. So…I unhook my whole computer. Then I realize, welp cant get out of my driveway. I get a friend to drive me to the studio. Problem solved. Then as usual, tech problems start happening. The console is just wacked all out. All of the sudden, horrific noises are coming out of the speakers…stuff i’ve never heard. Channel strips have a series of lights on that i’ve never seen. Without getting too tech here, I finally get up and running. Still feeling a little weird but I’m up and running.

My wife, daughter and some friends of ours (without power too) come up to the studio to cook some dinner on our george foreman grill. I’m mixing and feel like its getting close. Then I realize something else…no internet. The whole city is without internet. I decide to finish up the mix and worry about internet later. So about an hour or so passes and I feel like the mix is ready to send. I then have the idea to call my friend Tim, who has a T-Mobile 4G phone. You can tether with those things so I decide that is my only route. Like a charm, it works!! I upload the mix and head back home for a much needed early bedtime. I told the guys that if there are any tweaks to the mix, I could do it first thing in the morning. I figured I would have power and internet at my home studio by then and it wouldnt be an issue.

I was half way wrong. We got back power during the night but still no internet. I was very thankful for 3G on my iPhone so I could communicate with Ryan (SAL). I couldnt really make many calls as the network was messed up but I could use the internet part so I was still able to communicate. There were just a couple little tweaks to the mix. I was able to make them pretty quick. I then started my quest to find a working internet connection. Remember that mastering deadline? It was now. I drive all over town with my laptop trying to find a working wifi network. I only find one…10kb/second. Not happening. Finally, about 2 hours later I round up a Verizon wifi card (via Gary Baker…thanks!)  and upload that last mix. Needless to say, I am just in shock over how crazy it was  to complete one mix.

Mastering happened,although probably a little later than they wanted (sorry Chicago Mastering Service). The EP is released now. Its funny as I listen back to that song…no way to tell anything crazy happened to it (“Segue” by the way if you have the EP) Although this was a challenging mix to complete with these issues, it doesnt compare even in the slightest to the hard times that the people of many Alabama cities are going through. I had a few tress in my yard and no internet. They have no trace of a house left. Many have relatives who were killed in the storm. In fact, this was by far the deadliest series of tornados to ever come through Alabama. So please realize that I am not writing all of this to complain about not having power or internet for a few hours…simply to fill in you in on a little behind the scenes of a song. If you have not purchased any of Sleeping At Last’s Yearbook project, I highly recomend that you do. Its amazing stuff.

If you would like to help out any of the people of Alabama who were affected in the storm, there are many ways to do so (here are a couple):

http://abcnews.go.com/US/alabama-tornado-2011-storm-victims/story?id=13477481

http://www.waff.com/story/14541160/drop-off-locations-for-storm-victim-donations

Thanks for reading along…

Chris

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http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20101205/news/101209884?Title=Baker-s-a-hit-on-German-TV-show

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Hey guys. Its nice to read about how a song was written and recorded…check out this blog that Sleeping At Last wrote about their song “101010″ that i had the pleasure of mixing for them…

http://web.sleepingatlast.com/blog/2011/1/5/101010-how-it-was-made.html

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Hey guys. Hope all is well. The past two months have been very busy for me.  I’ve spend most of the past couple weeks working on a couple songs for a tv show in Germany called Popstars. This is essentially like our American Idol. We have put in some long hours over the past few days. The album was finished before the final show, which was tonight. We knew the first 3 winners but not the last one. So…its essentially like making super bowl shirts for both teams since you dont know who will win. Thats what we did with the mixes. We had different versions of our songs with each of the last possible contestants. It was a massive amount of work but it was fun and i think it came out good. In addition to this, i’ve started to mix another round of songs for the Children’s Miracle Network. We tracked them several weeks ago but just now having the time to get on them. Mixing a few other songs here and there but thats the bulk of  the work lately.

This is without a doubt my favorite time of the year. Spend time with your family and enjoy the cool winter weather as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Merry Christmas!

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Good Evening from Florence,AL. Laura and I are at a local coffee shop called Rivertown so i decided to take a minute and write in. The past couple months have been very busy, which is sometimes good…sometimes bad. A couple months ago, i redid my home studio. I basically turned the control room part into a straight on mixing room. The tracking room stayed pretty much the same. On the mixing room side, i upgraded to a new Mac Pro. I am still amazed how fast that thing is. Pro Tools practically reads my mind on what i want to do. I can assign an impressive 16 processors to work with Pro Tools…i think my G5 had 2 ha. In addition to the computer and HD rig upgrades, i went with a Dangerous Music monitor controller. This thing is packed with nice features and it handles the audio passing through it in a very transparent way. I picked up a few more plugins along the way…slate digital virtual console collection, brainworx m/s mastering eq and mono eq, soundtoys decapitator and a few others…I decided to have the option of a sub while mixing so i added an Adam Audio sub that i can turn off and on via the Dangerous controller. I’m kinda rambling here about what all i’ve done but i’m very pleased with it and i look forward to working on more mixes at home now.

As far as projects go, there have been many. Recently, we did a session at Noiseblock for the Children’s Miracle Network. Every couple of months we do about 3-4 songs that are going towards a full album to benefit the kids that CMN reaches out to. It is a geat project to be involved with! We had another tracking session this past week. We track everything in house except for electric guitars and keys. We have gotten to be great friends with Jeff King, who is a killer guitar player out of Nashville. He came down along with Mike Rojas, who played on Lady Antebellum’s latest album. Mike is an amazingly gifted piano player and it has been great having him down recently. I’ve already finished one mix and look forward to doing a few more soon.

Last week it was my honor to mix a song for one of my all time favorites, Sleeping At Last. They recently announced a new project called Yearbook. Each month for one year  they will write, record and release 3 new songs. The project just started this month with their October EP. I mixed a song that comes out next week in their November EP. The song is called “101010″.If you don’t know about these guys, please check them out at www.sleepingatlast.com and be sure to pick up their November EP, which comes out November 1st. You can subscribe to the entire year for only $30 or pick up each month’s ep for $3.

I guess that covers the basics…i am going to try much harder to keep this thing updated. Enjoy the fall weather!

chris

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Hey Folks! Hope all is well…Summer has been…HOT. I think it was 112 with the heat index today. Hurry up Winter. I am enjoying a night off with Laura and my little girl Eloise…sitting around drinking coffee, listening to Lovedrug’s EPII, and reading about season 3 of Castle. I’m not quite the writer that my wife is. If you want a good blog to follow, read her’s at ladysoandso.com

I am currently redoing my home studio a bit. When we moved into the house, it was just a stand alone 2 car garage with a extra work area. We did it up right and divided it into a control room and tracking room. It has been a place where i can bring lower budget tracking  projects and do some mixing as well. I have decided to turn it into a full on mixing room. I will still be able to do overdubs there,but my priority is shifting. There will be some new gear out there as well. The Apple announcement of the Mac Pro refresh couldnt come at a better time for me. I am still rockin my G5 from 2003. It is obviously time to upgrade. Some other new additions will be a Dangerous Music monitor controller and an Adam Audio sub. Should be fun.

quick update on recent  work…

current mixing projects: Beverley Staunton (Dancing with the Stars singer), 3 Lanes Crossing, Nashville Artist Development Network, Philadelphia, Nate Slaughter,Children’s Miracle Network and of course my main job-Noiseblock Music Publishing songs.

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