Recording Studio Internship Tips - Tip #4 - Maintaining Relationships

Happy 2012 everybody. Sorry I fell off of keeping the blog updated the last couple of weeks. Here's a new (but very short) article for Recording Studio Internship Tips.

While I have been away the past couple of weeks in Paris, and having been previously occupied with the Stone Cold Fox project, I haven't been to either of my internships in over a month. Interns come and go all the time at studios, make sure you keep up your relations with the engineers and studio managers. You never know what opportunities may arise, or what connections and contacts they may have that can be helpful to your pursuit of a music career. I have seen a lot of interns during my time at Stratosphere and a lot of them leave because the internship wasn't working out for them, but a lot of them are friends with the studio manager and engineers and their professional relationship continues outside of the internship at the studio.

During your time at your internship, make sure to get to know all the personel there well! Get friendly with the other interns too. They are your colleagues and are pursuing their own careers alongside with you. The music community is about supporting each other and helping each other out. Once you befriend these guys and gals, keep in contact with them. Send them holiday greetings via email, try and meet up with them for a coffee or a drink sometime.

We have just released the Stone Cold Fox EP. They are available for free download for a limited time, as a holiday gift. Check it out and pass the word along to your friends! We will be playing some shows in NYC this coming year.

Stone Cold Fox - American

We just released our first track off the Stone Cold Fox EP. The rest of the EP will be out shortly.

AMERICAN by STONECOLDFOX

Songs by Kevin Olken
Produced, engineered, mixed by Ariel Loh
Mastered by Jonathan Jetter
Performed by Kevin Olken, Ariel Loh, Skylar Adler, and John Cummings

Stone Cold Fox + Duplex Update

I realize I have been slacking on updating the blog. Today Kevin Olken and I finished mixing the Stone Cold Fox EP. We are sending it out for mastering soon and will hopefully have the final masters back within a week. A first song will be released on Christmas day, you can find it here on the blog then.

I am finishing up finals this week and will be heading out to Paris this Thursday to enjoy my winter break and work on music for Duplex with Gaspard.

Stone Cold Fox Recording Update

Kevin Olken and myself have been on a recording marathon the last couple of days. Unfortunately I have not been able to update much, and failed to take any photos during the recent sessions. We our nearing completion on our 5 song debut EP. On Thursday, we re-recorded some guitar parts. I spent all day Friday mixing. Yesterday we did a nine hour session recording trumpet and vocals. Today we worked on synths and finishing production touches on the songs before our last day of vocal tracking tomorrow. Things are really starting to take shape and I'm excited for the mixing stage that will be in full swing by this weekend. Stay tuned for more updates.

Stone Cold Fox Recording

Kevin Olken and I have been working as a new band entitled Stone Cold Fox. We spent all day today at Stratosphere recording electric guitars for our debut EP coming this winter in the new year. Here are some photos from today's session.





Kevin in Studio B with a selection of a Gibson Les Paul, Fender Telecaster, and an Epiphone Casino, all used on the recordings.

Using a e-bow and slide to achieve a cello-like sound.

Recording all the guitars through a Vox AC30 with an on axis SM57 and off Axis Royer 121.

Recording Studio Internship Tips - Tip #3 - Learn The Basics

So you got your internship and you are starting your first day. An intern's job is to do all the dirty/busy work that needs to be taken care of in a studio to help things run smoothly. So before you try and stick your head into the control room, learn the basics of what you need to do to help the studio function on the lowest level.

Every studio will have a different "routine" for the interns, especially at the beginning and end of the days, and then a separate routine for throughout the day. For the most part, the basics are pretty obvious: general cleanliness, make sure that there is coffee, that the garbage cans are emptied, that the bathroom/kitchen is stocked, and any day to day tasks the studio manager/owner or engineers ask of you. These are pretty general things for all studios but the details will vary from studio to studio.

Of course you'll be excited to have your new internship but it's not all glamorous. Pay attention to detail even in the mundane cleaning tasks and stay busy (or equally important, look busy). There are always things that can be cleaned or reorganized. Once the studio sees you can master these simple tasks and responsibilities in an efficient manner, they will then give you more trust to help IN the studio. Before you jump the gun, prove yourself, be nice, and stay humble. Being helpful and easy going along with a good work ethic will take you a long way (much further than a know-it-all).

When I first started my internship at Stratosphere Sound, I was still in the entry stage where my only responsibilities only required cleaning. A famous client was in the studio, we'll call him JJ to leave out names, and had just finished smoking a joint. I was on my toes about cleaning and threw out the roach after he left. I was then told I shouldn't have done that since it was huge joint and there was still a lot left in the roach and I didn't know if she was going to come back. That was my first major mistake at Stratosphere, but luckily they were understanding of it. Since then I've been known as "the intern who threw out JJ's joint" and the story is told to all the new interns we get. You live and you learn.

Stay tuned for another edition of RSIT (hopefully on time this Monday)