Congratulations to Mariachi los Camperos de Nati Cano and Mariachi Divas, they tied for ‘Best Regional Mexican’ last night at the 51st Grammy awards. Great night for me, as I essentially got two out of the night, and my new group Chicoa is made up of members of both groups…
btw Chicoa will make its debut on February 28th, check out their website for more info:
peace
G
…spent the day playing with Decane’s Flight Game Example, adding my own tweaked guiRadar and guiHealthArcHud. Still need better graphics for the health display, but you get the idea…
…g
[1/1/09 Los Feliz, CA 11:50 P.M.]
Last Night just before midnight I downloaded Torque Game Engine Advanced [TGEA] 1.8, the first version of Garage Games’ cutting edge technology available for Mac OSX. I’ve been developing in its precursor, TGE for a while now and look forward to playing with shader technology…
I managed to wake up this morning without a hangover and compile my first binary before noon – a TGEA version of the Realm Wars Stronghold. Here’s the screenshot:
Hehehe, lookit the water…
Kork the Ork lives, but not for long…
…stay tuned…
G
While on tour this past month, Garage Games released its most advanced game engine, TGEA, for OSX. Now begins the process of merging my TGE-based project to the newer technology
Knowing this was inevitable, I’ve spent most of my development time integrating the GUIs so that my hybrid FPS/RPG game can fully utilize the amazing effects of Faust Logic’s AFX code. I hacked together Zod’s multi-gametype code with the AFX code and the results look something like this:
…a player approaches a camp where some guards stand sentry and one patrols…
…player toggles to point-and-click magic mode…
…back to 3rd person…
…then jumps on a bike…
In its stock form, the AFX code is ‘hard-wired’ as a WOW-style RPG game. I merged the scripts and assets (no easy task) into a Tribes2-style file structure enabling me to not only use the magic effects as-is, but also use the code to enhance my sci-fi weapons:
…a target is acquired, guided missile launched…
BOOM!!!
Eventually a player’s class will determine which which abilities he will have but for the sake of this tech demo you get everything, making for some hardcore deathmatch games.
Another feature of Alpha Phase 2 are the multiple gametypes, made possible using Zod’s system. I had just begun developing the game mechanics that will define my project when the new TGEA code was released, so I’ll likely be in code mode for a while longer, but most of my work on the interface will port over, so I’ll finally get to work on some new eye candy…
…stay tuned…
…Mago
Congratulations are in order for two of my clients, Mariachi los Camperos de Nati Cano and Mariachi Divas, who are both nominated in the ‘Best Regional Mexican’ category. These are the 11th and 12th nominations for projects I’ve been involved in and the first time I’ve had more than one in a single category.
Viva la Raza!
After assembling my new system, I rolled it into Unchained Studios in San Dimas to begin tacking Susie Garcia’s new project. Formerly the lead singer for Grammy Nominees Mariachi Divas, Susie and I have been developing a new band, Chicoa, for most of the year and her new recording will feature much of the new music and sounds we’ve been working on.
Here’s a snapshot with co-Producer and percussionist Jason Shapiro, Susie Garcia, guitarist extraordinaire John Villalobos and yours truly:
Jason, Susie, John and Mago
Here’s a pic of just the rack: A 32 track studio, only two by six feet…
Mago's rack
I’ve been on tour with long-time clients Linda Ronstadt and Mariachi los Camperos and while I’ve been travelling I’ve collected the bits for my first two amp projects. I’ll begin the construction after the Christmas holiday when work slows down a bit…
- Mago
After closing my home studio this past Spring, I’m now in the process of rebuilding. When I pulled the equipment, I’d left all the wiring in the racks intact and just took apart the harnesses between them. Now, in preparation for moving into another space, I’ve begun dismantling those racks, keeping what I know will be used in the next iteration and auctioning off the rest. What was amazing was that much of the wiring I’d put in place when I was still running ADATs back in ’08 was still intact, despite upgrading to three different DAWs and moving twice.
This next iteration is in many ways a return to the kind of setups I was using when I first built Love Tribe Studios. Back then, I was working with my old pal Nate Kunkel on numerous ‘location’ style recordings, dragging Sony 48-track tape machines and racks of mic pres all ever the place, from the monitor position of numerous live shows to houses in Silverlake to world-class studios. Nate has since gone on to perfect this modular and portable approach into what he has dubbed the ‘Studio Without Walls’. Given the increasing costs of maintaining a fixed studio, whether in a home or commercial facility, I’ve opted to return to the modular/portable approach. The goal is to mount the entire studio in cases that can be moved anywhere in the world and be setup in couple of hours.
The other goal is to re-brand the business. Building upon my reputation for high fidelity acoustic recording for labels such as Smithsonian Folkways and Windam Hill, I’m pushing to re-establish myself as a ‘boutique’ operation for the discriminating artist. Nice theory, anyway. What that means in practice is that I’m really looking to reinforce the confidence my existing clientele have in my business and attracting new business with what I’m calling a ‘boutique-tweak’ approach.
To begin, I’m mounting my Mac Pro into the bottom of the last remaining pair of Jan-Al racks I’d kept, using hardware from Redco. My MOTU hardware will be mounted with it along with a Central Station from PreSonus. The Central Station is a discreet, hi-fi monitor controller that emulates the center section of a traditional console. The top rack will then house the two Mackie consoles I’ve been using as headphone mixers. This way I’ll have a complete multitrack studio in one rack space, with two cases of cables, a mic case and a portable table completing the system.
I’m making arrangements with Black Lion Audio to upgrade the audio paths/clocks in the MOTU converters, giving me 16 channels of high-fi I/O. In addition I will send my SM Audio PR8E 8-channel mic pre to Black Lion, giving me 16 channels of hi-res pres, counting my Neves and Demeters. This plus a number of other smaller enhancements should make the studio rack very powerful with a small footprint.
My other plan is to begin building gear of my own, tailored to my approach to sound. I have schematics for both tube and solid state mic pres I hope to build, as well as a couple of guitar amps. My goal for next year is to build mic pres, as well as a replica of an 18-Watt Marshall. I’ll be systematically documenting this process, so stay tuned…
Amidst the gypsyesque and often chaotic lives led by musicians, certain places arise as safe haven in the storm. This evening marks the passing of one of those special places. After one very busy day, Love Tribe Studios has closed its doors after nearly twelve years of existance. Love and Peace to all who have been a part of it.
It all began somewhat innocuously In the Spring of 1996, when my dear friend Lisa Lynne Franco called me to help out with what would become her breakout release, “Moonsongs”. Shortly after the release, Lisa called me up and asked me to setup a van full of gear she’d bought in a house she shared with two girlfriends. Our first session four years previous was in Mick Guzauski’s home studio using prototype ADATs, and so it was fitting to setup a trio of them in her room. The studio went to work immediately for the tracking of “Celtic Zen”, a collection of improvisations featuring Lisa, Michael Masely and Levi Chen. Shortly thereafter it was used to record a number of tracks featuring the crew of musicians hanging out at Lisa’s called the Love Tribe. During these sessions the studio was dubbed ‘L’Boudiour’ due to its location in Lisa’s room. Late in ’96, Windam Hill Records signed Lisa to a deal and the pace quickened.
While writing the credits for the first Windam release in ’97 Lisa thought the name wasn’t professional enough and so we renamed the studio “Love Tribe” in honor of the crew. In early Summer, Lisa’s housemates moved out the same month my place was sold so I moved into the North wing of the house, pooling our gear and setting it up in the master bedroom. With a separate control room and professional wiring throughout, Love Tribe Studios, aka LTS, was in full swing. By the end of its first year six nationally released CDs came out of LTS, an output it would average for its entire existence.
In ’98 Little Feat called me to record a project for them and they wanted to do it in Paul Barrere’s house. Bolstered by endorsements, we built an amazing setup using a prototype of Panasonic’s DA7 digital console, AT mics, TC outboard and several hundred feet of Monster Cable. After finishing the project, dubbed “Under the Radar”, we did an interview with Electronic Musician magazine discussing the pros and cons of home recording and I was quick to mention the culinary advantages of such activity…
After the Feat CD I took the console, mics and a few recipes home. With the addition of another DA7, a quartet of ADAT XTs and Genelec monitors, LTS was a full-fledged pro studio. For a decade, between Lisa’s records and my clientele’, LTS was a part of 6-10 CDs a year, as well as countless other sessions, featuring a wide range of artists from Ireland to Iran, Mexico to China and everywhere in between.
2000 saw the addition of surround mixing, and ’01 brought with it a Mac running Logic and soon the tapes stopped moving in favor of hard drives. About this time Lisa began hosting Windam Hill rehearsals at LTS, where her cooking became the subject of touring legend. During one rehearsal, Paul Barrere came over to pick up some CDs I’d burned for him and wound up listening to my monitor mix. Two months later, all 7 of Feat were blowing the roof off of my humble home in Van Nuys.
In addition to the many recordings, LTS was the scene of many jam sessions and parties, a number of which are already a part of world music infamy. In between sessions and soire’s, LTS was a crash pad for an amazing series of traveling musicians. Nearly every Celtic harpist of major stature slept in the guest room, as well as Sufis, Jazzers,
Pagan sirens and charros Mexicanos. The photo albums and guest books are a veritable who’s who of LA’s Celtic/New-Age/World music scene for over a decade.
Shortly after New Year’s ’06, the house Lisa and I were renting went up for sale, forcing us to move hastily. We were blessed to find a place on an estancia in North Pasadena and were cutting tracks less than two weeks after moving. Despite the change of location, LTS continued to rock-n-roll, aided and abetted by two new mascots a pair of kittens named Nikki and Reggie.
As is often the case in this transitory life, all things must pass and LTS was not immune. Lisa came home off the road in the Summer of ’07 to announce that she was wanting to move to another place and explore new directions with new people. Despite Lisa’s departure in September, LTS continued to roll well into ’08. Unfortunately the disparaged state of the music business and the harsh reality of maintaining a big place proved to be too much. I hosted one last and perhaps the best soire here on my birthday in March, and concluded the last of the works in progress this week. In its last day of operation, LTS was triple-booked. First, vocal overdubs for Sergio “Checo” Alonso’s solo record with members of Los Camperos; Writing and rehearsal with my new band featuring Susi, Lorraine and Neza from Mariachi Divas; Lastly and synchronistically, mixes for a new release by Lisa Lynne and Geo Tortorelli.
…And so it was that with a shot of tequila con lagrimas, the last phrases of “Wild Mountain Thyme” played through the speakers and a very special chapter ended. Fortunately, there’s about a million CDs out there bearing the Love Tribe Studios name so the scene won’t be forgotten any time soon. I’ll be re-opening the studio in June in a commercial space under a different name, but the guest book and photo albums will go with it, as testimony to the beauty and joy that was Love Tribe.
A big shout out goes to all of the artists who shared their talents here – I can’t wail to see ya’ll on the road and joke and laugh about the good ol’ times at Love Tribe…
PEACE
G
btw a few pics…
Lisa ‘n Kim, Pasadena ‘06
The view from the Van Nuys control room
Lisa dubbing a mando, Van Nuys ‘04
Hudost’s Jelal, November ‘05
Last Day: Checo y Los Camperos April ‘08
Last Day: The Future
This past week I began merging my projects with Zod’s Multi-Gametype Starter Kit for Torque. What’s great about this resource is that it contains all of the basic team/tournament/player-select functionality as well as an easy way to implement new game types, which is really what my project is all about. So far my modified Torque1.5.2 binary works without any changes. The real issues have been with file structure. Zod uses a more Tribes2-style file structure that differs from the stock Torque setup. This has meant tracking down numerous scripted path statements and updating them. So far the hardest part to migrate has been the AFX magic system. With considerable help from designer Jeff Faust, I did find the scripts that were the holding up my progress. Now I can navigate inside the Zod mod and hurl Great Balls of Fire at my opponent:
As you can see, I still have quite a bit of work to go on the GUI, but now the technology is working. So this coming week’s task is to merge the player scripting, and add my HUDs and game levels…
This morning I woke up had my coffee, booted up the Linux box and set out to merge the Faust Logic AFX engine into my Linux build, using the OSX version as a starting point. I chuckled as it worked the first time. I got both a debug and release version compiled in less time than it took to get the screenshots I wanted. This is a real testament to how well laid out the AFX engine is – this is really the standard of what a 3rd-party resource should be.
Here’s the result, a Shaman war:
Obviously there’s a whole lot of work to go but this is a major milestone in that I have three working equivalent binaries. Now I can get to the fun part, implementing my game play ideas and replacing all the stock art with my own . Stay tuned…
