photo caption: l to r, Chuck Surack (Sweetwater), Brad Lunde (Las Vegas Pro Audio), John Jennings (Royer), Lynn Fuston (moderator), Kevin Becka (Mix Magazine/CRAS), Dave Hill (Crane Song), Ted Fletcher (tfpro.com) and Dave Amels (Bomb Factory) on The Price Is Right panel.

TapeOp Con took place in Tucson AZ last weekend and was full of great gear, workshops and panels. One of the Sunday panels was titled The Price Is Right and dealt with gear manufacturing, pricing and user experience. CRAS Director of Education and Mix Magazine Technical Editor Kevin Becka contributed as did CRAS Director Mike Jones who was on an educational panel on Saturday. About 100 CRAS students and faculty ventured down on buses that left early and returned late giving them an ear and an eyeful of what goes on at audio’s high end. A good time was had by all.

Former CRAS student Andrew Schiavone is a fulltime engineer at CCI Digital in Burbank and after making some heavyweight audio friends put together a bi-weekly podcast titled the Audio Nowcast. The panel consists of: Martin Page (recording artist, songwriter, producer), Scott Gershin (sound designer at Soundelux), Bobby Summerfield (composer, engineer) Rob Arbittier (producer, composer, programmer) and host Mike Rodriguez (mixer, president of Westwave Audio). Be sure to check it out.

photo caption: CRAS instructor Robert Brock in Sydney Australia

Conservatory instructors are experts in their field. For instance, Robert Brock is a certified Apple Logic Pro trainer who travels around the world to train others to teach Logic. He also helped write the definitive text on the popular Apple DAW, Apple Pro Training Series: Logic Pro 6 with Martin Sitter. Other CRAS instructor’s with world-class experience include Keith Morris who traveled to Moscow to mix live sound for the UK pop star Jem, and Kevin Becka, who is technical editor of Mix magazine. Other teacher’s with interesting and varied backgrounds include Chris Bailey who is an independent film maker, Michel Henein who has his own game production company, Clifton Batchelor who is a lawyer, John Berry who has composed over 300 published works and Grammy winner Jeff Thomas who is an independent recording engineer.

photo caption: CRAS instructor Kevin Becka with George Benson

Two CRAS instructor’s engineering work will be heard a-plenty at the upcoming 49th annual Grammy awards show on February 11th. Jeff Harris and Kevin Becka worked on the George Benson and Al Jarreau CD Givin’ It Up which has songs nominated in three categories. “Mornin’,” currently the No. 1 smooth jazz song in the country, was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Performance; “Breezin’” for Best R&B Performance By a Duo Or Group With Vocals; and “God Bless the Child” for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance. Both engineers have a deep history in the LA music scene having worked with such artists as Supertramp, Quincy Jones, Kenny G. and more.

Several recent grads in the field were also credited on some notable releases that got Grammy nods. Anthony Zamora worked on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium while 
Ethan Willoughby logged time on Justin Timberlake’s Futuresex/Lovesounds, and Dan and Jim Monti worked on John Mayer’s Continuum.

The Conservatory is having an open house on Saturday March 31st and you’re invited. Learn more by calling 1-800-562-6383

photo caption: Jodson Graves, one of the students featured in the New Times article

New Times writer Brendan Joel Kelley recently hooked up with a group of CRAS students and wrote about it in the magazine’s January 25 issue. The article, titled Dilated Pupils chronicles the paths of several CRAS students and how the school changed their lives and career paths. For an unsolicited third party view of the CRAS, check out the New Times piece and comment.

Audiokinetic, developer of audio solutions for the video game industry, and the Conservatory of Recording Arts today announced an educational partnership that is the first of its kind in the industry. The Conservatory teaches Audiokinetic’s Wwise software platform in its Audio for Games curriculum and will further develop an authorized Manufacturer Certification for the product. The Conservatory is the first educational institution in the world to teach with Wwise, and will now become an official trainer for the software not only at the CRAS, but across the game industry. More details on the new program will be released at the upcoming Game Developer’s Conference in March. Visit the Conservatory at the show at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Booth #859. The full press release, outlining the alliance, appeared today on Audiokinetic’s website.

photo caption: Ben Widmer, Joey Cicak and Eric Boyer in the Blue booth at NAMM

The National Assocation of Musical Merchant’s (NAMM) show in Anahiem is the biggest musical trade show in the USA. It hosts literally every manufacturer of musical instruments worldwide, including guitars, amps, basses, drums, brass, percussion, software and audio gear. The show is becoming more and more of an audio show as years go on with manufacturers like SSL, Apple and Digidesign having a large presence. This year’s show was attended by various CRAS instructors and students and the school was also well represented in the booths on the floor. For instance, Blue microphones, makers of the Blue Bottle, Dragonfly, Mouse and many other great mics, had their booth manned by three Conservatory grads. Ben Widmer, Joey Cicak and Eric Boyer were all on hand, Eric being Blue’s Vice President of Manufacturing. The school has many grads working throughout the industry with companies like Waves, SoundToys, Grace Designs, Skywalker Sound and Universal Audio.

photo caption: Conservatory staffers and student Q-tipping the Neve VR console over the holiday break

The CRAS is all audio all the time, except over our yearly 2-week holiday break. In that window of calm, both locations are upgraded, painted, cleaned and polished in preparation for the new year. This year, the cue systems in our Gilbert location studios were upgraded, heads re-lapped on our Studer A827 24-track 2″ machine and the Tempe SSL was fitted with replacement capacitors.

photo caption: Students setting up the Trinnov SRP array and mapping out an ITU template on the floor of Studio D

Cycle 8 and Cycle 10 students recently recorded Sax and Percussion in surround with some of the latest gear from Trinnov and LatchLake. The Cycle 8 surround recording class used the Trinnov High Spatial Resolution Surround Recording Platform (SRP) to capture various passes of Bari, Tenor and Alto Saxophone in the Conservatory’s Studio D. The system uses 8 omni microphones in a horseshoe configuration to capture a room’s signature, which is then sent to the SRP which delivers a 5.0 output respecting the ITU standard. The Trinnov hardware translator allows the user to manipulate the room’s size either while you’re recording, or after the fact during mixdown.

Students mounted the array on the LatchLake micKing boom stand. The stand uses non-traditional hardware to adjust the boom arms, clutch and counterweight allowing the user to position a mic, or mics, in a wide variety of stable positions. The micKing can be expanded using various length Xtra Booms which can carry any number of other microphones. The LatchLake stand was also utilized in the 8th Cycle advanced drum recording clinic and Cycle 7 Post scoring class where it held a Decca Tree of three Blue Omni Mouse microphones.