Hello From LA…
“Hello everybody. Some of you know me from my Open Labs videos. I am Director of Artist Relations and manager of the L.A. showroom. For those of you who don’t i wanted to write my first blog on letting everyone know why I’m here now and how I came to be involved with Open Labs. Knowing that will help you understand why I chose to dedicate myself to Open Labs.
I earned my degree in Film Scoring from Berkley College of Music and moved to L.A. straight away. I landed a job (possibly the last paying job) as an assistant to a main stream film composer. It was blissful for me, being so new to the game. I was working and living in Malibu at a beautiful studio. I was introduced to Jonathan Davis and KORN and hired on to help program their “See You on the Other Side” Tour. They had just lost one of their guitarists to religion and had decided to hire a side band. This included Zach Baird, their current keyboard player. They had never gone on tour with any production samples or backing tracks before. Dealing with that was my job. I decided to take the sounds and samples into the Kontakt sampler by Native Instruments and host it in Ableton live (pre RIFF era). I needed a robust computer that could handle touring the world for years on end. I found this product in the Open Labs OMX rack computer (predecessor to the SoundSlate). After convincing a very nervous band that they needed a computer we made it happen. They toured with it and its backup for almost four years without any issues. Jonathan and I remain good friends and are represented by CAA as creative writing partners for film scoring projects. Success number one.
Following that experience I left the employment the composer in Malibu and started ghost writing for TV and scoring Indi films. I convinced Open Labs that they should let me try to do this arduous task on the Gen 1 Neko64 running Protools. They went for it and it worked as well as I had hoped and got me through a year and a half of scoring. This proved to me that there was something here. After all, I couldn’t afford all the equipment big composers rely on nor did i have the real estate. It was really the perfect solution for me. Success number two.
A short while later I got a call from Open Labs saying that Morris Hayes, keyboardist for Prince, was out in Vegas and had a hard drive crash and was in a jam and would I be willing to fly there and tech it for him. So I did and miraculously Morris and I had a healthy system back up and running in less than two days. Needless to say we were bonded for life. He is now my good friend and business partner in a publishing venture. Success number three.
From there Morris recommended me to Maroon 5 who hired me to program their tour on the Miko which led to many others including Keith Emerson, Sheila E., Michael Bearden and Linkin Park to name a few.
Success… I’m starting to lose count.
Eventually Open Labs put me on a monthly retainer to handle business in Los Angeles which led to me designing and building a high end studio showroom here in the countries biggest music hub. This list goes on and on from here still.
So you see, Open Labs and I have had a truly symbiotic relationship. I still score films on the XXL and Miko. I have no reason to doubt the product or people given the fact that this company and product has been at the center of many of the successes I’ve had since my migration west. I don’t even do it for the money, but I will always take it 
It’s really not about that though. This product is a vehicle for me and so many close to me to perform at their best and reach the highest potential. We never fail because we never stop working until problems are resolved. That is a quality I brought with me from the east coast. I’m a work horse and I don’t like to lose. The same goes for Open Labs which is probably why this relationship works so well.
n”
