US July 2019 Report

17/8/2019

As much as a visit and the trip of the western US was a natural thing to happen, the whole thing started in the fall of 2018, when of my best friends Aljaž and I started to entertain the idea of flying over the Atlantic to visit new friends I’ve made over the last two years of so since starting to write production and trailer music.
The plan was to split the two week trip into 4 parts: a few days in Los Angeles, then off to Las Vegas for a few days, then seeing Grand Canyon, and then back to Los Angeles for a few more days before heading back. As all of these places have much to offer, we had a basic list of things to see, many of which were of course well known landmarks and sights (as one would expect from the first trip to the US). But, as we’re both musicians, we had great interest in getting in as much musical experience as possible as well.

To cut the long story short, we met with friends at Bleeding Fingers; had a lot of fun hanging out there and all over Santa Monica, which is now my favorite part of LA.

One of the highlights of the visit to LA was going to the 20th Century Fox studios lot, and sitting in on an orchestral tracking session for a super special project - once the music is out, I’ll be able to share what the project being recorded was. Thanks to my friend Damon at Fox Studios for setting us up - we sat right next to the first violins as the music was being recorded. Nothing quite like sitting next to world-class musicians (many of which are on the top of the call sheet in town and I have recognised as they played on many legendary scores such as Star Wars, etc.). For the second part of the session, we sat down in the control room of the Newman Scoring Stage, where a brand new Meyer Sound Bluehorn monitoring system was installed just a week prior to this session. I have heard higher end systems before, but nothing like this. These speakers, with their almost perfect flat response, in a room like that, played that music in a way that cannot really be described by words - you have to hear it to believe it. I’ve never heard music sound like that in my life. I mean, what can you expect from world class musicians, running through 96 channel Rupert Neve console, and playback through Bluehorns?

We strolled around the Fox Studios lot a bit afterwards, as it was around 7 PM everyone pretty much left for the day, so we got to take a couple of photos.

Next day (on our final day in LA), a friend of mine that works as a sound editor for Universal, got us into Universal Studios. As this was much earlier in the day, it was a much busier place than Fox the day before. He rolled up in a golf cart and took us around the Universal lot, showing us some guided tour spots that tourists get to see, but mostly the work and behind the scenes areas in the studios lot, which is located in the valley behind the entertainment park.