Stephen "Da Brayne" Sherrard
Technical Background

Here is a partial list of the equipment and software that I use regularly in my own production studio:

• Yamaha O2R96 Digital mixing consoles
• Alesis ADAT XT ( x3 )
• Steinberg:  Nuendo, Cubase SX, Cubase VST, Wavelab, LM4
• Sonic Foundry: ACID Pro, Sound Forge, Vegas + DVD, Noise Reduction 2
• Waves Native Platinum bundle
• UAD-1 Powered Plug-Ins (2 Cards) and all available plug-ins
• DSP-FX Plug-ins
• Arboretum Hyperprism Plug-ins
• Native Instruments:  Komplete Bundle, B4, Pro 53, Absynth 1 & 2, Reaktor 3 & 4, Kontakt, Intakt, Battery
• Fruity Loops 5
• RME Project Hammerfall 96/52 (2 Cards)
• MOTU MTP 1 and MTP AV
• External effects/processing includes:  Kurzweil KSP-8, Lexicon MPX-1, Ensoniq DP/4, TC Electronics Finalizer Plus, Waves L2 Ultramaximizer
• Z-Systems digital routers (both AES/EBU and Optical routers)
• Panasonic SV-3800
• External Synths/Modules include:  Kurzweil K2500 XS, Ensoniq MR Rack and ESQ-1, Roland MC-505 Groovebox and MKS-50 analog synth, Access Virus B, Korg TR Rack, Alesis D4
• Assortment of microphones and external pre-amps & compressors
• Lots of other supporting gear
  
  

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 52x24 console
• Custom Neve 5106 48 channel console
• Neotek Series 3C console
• Digital Creation's Diskmix moving fader automation
• Almost all of the coolest microphones, microphone pre-amps, compressors, and other toys that you could dream of!
  
  

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 in recent years moving to an all host-based PC DAW system coupled with the powerful Yamaha O2R digital mixing console.
• I usually build or heavily modify my own computer systems and tweak them for optimum performance.  I have 4 computer systems up and running 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.  Now days most of the smaller projects I do from my project studio are electronic based music (pop, rock, rap, electronica), yet I'm still heavily involved with several large jazz groups in the area that I record at bigger studios.
• In the corporate world I've produced weekly radio shows such as Gold 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 one of the top selling loop libraries for Big Fish Audio called "Performance Loops".  I've got two volumes of drum loops out through them as well as a volume of Acoustic Guitar loops.  I'm currently producing another volume of drum loops 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 two web sites that offer downloadable content, LoopLibrary.com and NetMusicLibrary.com.