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Los Angeles-based Kevin Teasley is a composer, producer, sound designer, programmer and musical director, as well as the owner and composer of TONIC Music + Creative, a trailer and TV production music company. He was Jennifer Lopez’s Pro Tools programmer, music producer and musical director for her It’s My Party World Tour, and part of her music team when she was tapped to perform for President Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
To put together the accompaniment for her medley of “This Land Is Your Land” and “America Is Beautiful,” Teasley used a selection of AMS Neve recording equipment.
“An important part of my role entailed working with all pre-recorded tracks and stems and putting it together into a full performance,” Teasley explained. “I worked with the creative team, other music producers and arrangers and also managed the final prep of all audio, Pro Tools session/stems, to turn over to the on-site audio and music team in Washington, D.C.”
The Neve units used on this project include the company’s 1073 Mic Preamplifiers, a 33609 Compressor Limiter and the 8816 Summing Mixer, all of which are housed in Teasley’s studio in Hollywood, Calif.
“When I’m in bigger studios, I run virtually everything (pre-recorded tracks, stems, etc.) through a Neve console,” he said, “In smaller workspaces, I run every track and stem through the Neve 1073 pres, and then across the subgroups with the 33609 Compressor Limiter. I then have the track and stems split out to the 16 channel Neve 8816 to be summed back into Pro Tools to be printed.”
As stems and tracks can often come from different producers, writers and composers, Teasley finds that running everything through the 1073 helps to ensure uniformity. “It gives me that consistent, beautiful Neve tone at the beginning input stage,” he said. “The Neve 33609 then helps to “glue” all of the subgroups together and the Neve 8816 glues the overall mix together when it’s printed back into Pro Tools.
“Oftentimes, on the two insert mixes of the 8816, I put an outboard hardware EQ, colour box (for some sort of harmonic distortion) or parallel compressor on the first insert to blend into the mix. On the second insert, I will put a bus compressor to further glue together the final two-track print,” explained Teasley. “Lastly, on the 8816, I use the width knob to widen the stereo field to my taste and that suits the type of track, song and/or performance. This all gets printed back into Pro Tools as a two-track final mix print. I then put some master buss processing on to finalize and polish the final master.”
Teasley prepared all the music for JLo’s Inauguration music in Los Angeles, then flew to Washington D.C. for the actual ceremony so that he could be on site for rehearsals and her performance.
“There was a live element to this project because we were fortunate enough to have the President’s own Marine Corp Band/Ensemble perform live to our our pre-recorded tracks,” he said. “It was an incredible moment in my career and one that I will never forget. It is something I will always be proud to have participated in and especially proud that my four year old son, Kaiden, can look back and say his father was a part of something historic.”
