Stephen Sherrard’s Technical Background

The list of equipment and software I use in my own studio has grown too huge to list it all here, and it’s always growing!  If you want a fairly detailed list, it has been broken out to several smaller lists under the studio category.  Suffice it to say that I’m a bit of a computer geek and gearhead!  I love the technology of recording almost as much as the music itself!  I’m well versed in a huge variety of music production and recording software and hardware.  Even if I’ve never used a piece of software or hardware before, I can usually figure it out very quickly!

I worked on staff at Triad Studios for several years, (and many more years after as an independent producer/engineer) which was a huge multi-room recording studio.  Certainly one of the biggest and well known in the greater Seattle area.  Very high-end with extensive amounts of gear to die for!

Here is a condensed list of just some of the gear I used while working for several years as a staff engineer at Triad Studios:

  • MCI JH-24 2″ 24-track analog recorders with Auto-locater 3 and extra 16-track head stack
  • Studer A827 2″ 24-track analog recorders
  • Ampex ATR-102 1/2″ 2-track recorder
  • Alesis ADAT w/ BRC and Tascam DA-88 and DA-38
  • Sony 3324 24-track DASH format digital audio recorder
  • Sony PCM-7010 Timecode DAT
  • Quad-Eight Westar 52×24 console
  • Custom Neve 5106 48 channel console
  • Neotek Series 3C console
  • Digital Creation’s Diskmix moving fader automation
  • Almost all of the coolest modern & vintage microphones, microphone pre-amps, compressors, and other toys that you could dream of!

Unfortunately Triad Studios lost the lease on its building and closed down several years ago.  Since then I’ve utilized several other studios in the area when I need a large recording room.  London Bridge is now one of my favorite big room studios to work at.

Technical, Educational & Musical Background:

  • Started playing trumpet at a very early age and continued with trumpet all the way through college
  • Several years of piano lessons followed by self-training on keys/synths… my main instruments today
  • Self taught guitar… just enough to be able to communicate with real guitar players!
  • Some of my clients gave me the nickname “Da Brayne” after learning I finished high school with straight A’s, studied Electrical/Computer Engineering at one of the top 3 schools in the nation (University Of Illinois), and then was a Nuclear Engineering Officer for the Navy for 5 years after college.  I’m a total tech-head when it comes to computers, digital audio, and recording, but I’m also a musician and know that the music always comes first!
  • I’m a Self-taught recording engineer who started with hooking up all the stereo equipment in the house to make mix tapes in high-school, and later progressed to a 4-track cassette recorder in college, and then kept adding gear!  I went right from 4-tracks and sequencers to landing a job as a full time staff engineer at a major recording facility with all the high-end equipment I always dreamed about.  At the same time I continued to expand my own home studio starting with a Spectral DAW system, and eventually moving to an all host-based PC DAW system coupled with the powerful Yamaha O2R96 digital mixing console.
  • I usually build or heavily modify my own computer systems and tweak them for optimum performance.  I have at least 7 computer systems up and running in our home right now.

Types of projects I’ve worked on:

  • In the music world, I’ve recording everything from simple singer/songwriter demos to 30 piece jazz bands, and everything in between.  I often bounce back and forth between my own project studio and several bigger recording facilities in the Seattle area as needed for projects.  I’ve worked with plenty of unknown local artists as well as several major label artists, and many in between.  I’ve done pop, rock, jazz, classical, blues, gospel, country, alternative rock, heavy/death metal, rap, hip-hop, RnB, adult contemporary, Muzak, dance/techno/electronica, and most other styles out there with the possible exception of Opera.
  • In the corporate world I’ve produced weekly radio shows such as Golf Radio with Peter Jacobsen, done more low budget local commercial jingles than I would care to admit, recorded and processed dialog and sound effects for a wide variety of computer games, recorded lots of voice over sessions for things like commercials and phone menu systems, and too much other similar work to list.
  • I produce a series of loop libraries for Big Fish Audio called “Performance Loops” which includes products with Queensryche drummer Scott Rockenfield, as well as a big band brass loop/sample CD with legendary trumpeter and Tower Of Power founding member Greg Adams.  I have spun off that line of work with a web site that offer downloadable content, LoopLibrary.com .