What's your background?
I'm from Redlands, California. My parents are professional musicians. My dad taught me to play flute, bassoon, oboe, and sax. My mom taught me piano. Starting at age seven I became fascinated with rock music; mainly with The Beatles. I taught myself to play drums, and then later guitar. As a teen, I played keyboards in rock bands around town, and started writing my own tunes. At the University of Redlands I studied composition with Barney Childs and received a degree in music composition. Two years later, I moved to L.A. to become a rock star. I played in some crappy '80s bands and kept writing tunes on my 4-track cassette recorder. Half of what I wrote had funny lyrics. When I was about 25, I switched to guitar as my main instrument and played four to five nights a week in a bar band. Most of the music I was writing now was comedy based, as I was influenced by Frank Zappa. After ten years of bar band ear abuse, I met Jeff Elmassian, and became a composer at his company, Endless Noise Music and Sound Design. There, I've learned Pro Tools and Logic, and I've recently learned more mixing techniques, thanks to my talented co-worker Grant Cornish.
How did this idea come about? Were you inspired by the "shreds" videos?
Yes! The "shreds" videos are what made me say to myself, "I can do something like that." But instead of making the artists sound crappy, I wanted to write and play my best on the video dubs while still making them funny.
Where do you find the isolated lead vocals? Is bleed ever a problem?
All the vocals were found on the Internet; either at Acapellas4u.com or on YouTube. Some of the vocals were also sent to me from DJs who liked my stuff. Most of them are pretty good quality, although you will usually hear some sort of bleed from another instrument.
How long does it normally take you do a video?
I work out arrangements when I have some time at work and I can woodshed some guitar runs. I spend about three hours making a tempo map, laying down a scratch guitar, and writing and recording a MIDI drum part. When I feel I'm ready, I go home to my computer and record, which takes about three hours. Then I dwell on mixing it for a couple of hours. I guess it is around eight hours per song.
Wow, that is really fast. I rarely mix a song in eight hours. Do you run the video on the same computer while working?
