Ratone Demo
Ratone is a group of extremely talented high school kids from Traverse City Michigan. I was connected to them through Matt Rosenberg and my affiliation with the organization Youth Concert Connection. I have had the honor of doing both their live sound all through the summer of 2011, and I also had the honor of recording an album with them during that summer. Their style of music is a rock with pop and classic rock influences.
Live Sound:
I did the live sound for Ratone at many venues over the summer, including Northern Lakes Community Church, The National Cherry Festival, The Traverse City Film Festival, and many other throughout the area of Traverse City. The shows usually consisted of a basic PA setup, going into a 16 channel sound board, with basic micing techniques. I pride myself by being able to get the highest quality sound and the most of it out of low budget systems, and this was an excellent exercise in this. There isn't another feeling quite like getting a couple hundred people to rock out by using a bare bones sound system. This has also let me truly appreciate some of the awesome equipment which other front of house engineers simply take for granted (you can mix anything anywhere if you can successfully mix a rock band in a concrete box of a church).
Recording an Album:
This was a project undertaken by Ratone and I to try and get their name out into the world. It was quite an adventure as we had very limited funds and a digital interface with only two inputs. The process I went through to record the album (of which is sampled above), was to first record a very raw track, taking a rough mix out of a mixer and recording it to my computer. Then we went through each individual instrument and kept overdubbing until we had as close as we could get while using no mic more than $100, to a final product. I, the manager, the fans, and the band were very happy with the outcome. Some of the tracks have even gotten some radio play around the Traverse City area, and the CD has done a great job of getting their amazing talent noticed by even more people. This CD was recorded and mixed in Logic Pro.
Support the Artist, buy their CD at: http://garagemic.com/Artists/Profile.cfm?AID=174
