life is short. do good work.

wide shot of rock science — Central Control

modified mxl910 in front of pro tools screen — One of our modified Boutique Mics

bob damiano in session recording irish session band — In Session. Recording 7 players

500-series gear at rock science — Our collection of Preamps

Over the years, I have acquired some skills and some gear to record and produce music. I have long since given up on trying to do this for a living and moved on to be very successful in Software Engineering (including nine years at Cakewalk Music Software).

The Recording Studio

RockScience is an Audio Recording Studio and Music Production Studio in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s a home studio and the whole home is the studio. We won’t descend into a dark sonex-covered space with lava lamps. The main mix room is a bright, open spare room treated to be the best sounding mix room I’ve ever had. Focal Solo-be monitors fill this space beautifully. A large bright, room with high loft wooden ceilings behind the control room makes an excellent live space for tracking multiple musicians.

I have snakes long enough to make it to several other areas of the house too (garage for a garage band anyone?). The signal chain is great from my interesting collection of high quality microphones to the boutique mic preamps. I’m fluent in the software of your choice: Pro Tools, Cakewalk, Ableton or Reaper.

The Mission

Music and recording is the one area of my life I no longer want to monetize. The studio is back and better than ever with a simple mission. To work with the best of the best musicians and bands and make something we can be proud of. At this stage in my career, the only pay I want is to be able to point at things I’ve worked on and without hesitation, say it’s my best work and it’s the artist’s best work. I welcome projects with an interesting, eclectic style and a similar quality ethic as mine. I am very interested in Music Collaboration and have successfully worked with artists remotely.

If your music is special and you commit to doing your best work, I will too. Please contact me. We’re rolling in 3… 2…1….

The Gear…

I kept many of my favorite pieces from the old days when I had a bigger semi-pro studio. These days, I can do much more with much less physical gear. A central console desk has 16u of outboard gear space. A Black Lion Audio “500-series” rack hosts a variety of very high-end Mic Preamps and dbx Compressors. A Universal Audio 4-710d “twin-finity” preamp gives me four more channels of tube/transisitor variations as well as a classic “FET” style compression.

Much of the gear in the 500 rack as well as my microphone selection is “DIY” modified, improved equipment. The result is that I have what I feel is a very cool range of sonic colors and textures to choose from when capturing about any instrument or voice. My two favorite preamps are the CAPI VP312s which I have modified to add a hi-pass filter to. This takes a great sounding preamp and makes it even more flexible. I’ve been rebuilding microphones using high-end parts from Microphone Parts and those have become my go-to mics. I have a matched pair of modified MXL-990s with RK12 Capsules which sound amazing. For more color, I have several mics with K47 style capsules in both transformer and transformerless varieties.

Microphones