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Earl Scioneaux
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New Orleans, LA
I sculpt data that scrambles electrons that excite magnets that move speakers that ripple the air that tickles your eardrum that tantalizes your brain that shakes your bum. Simply put, I'm a music producer and recording engineer. I do a lot of work with some of New Orleans' favorites, including Preservation Hall and the New Orleans Bingo! show. I'm currently working on some audio plug-in development, and I sometimes tour as a live sound engineer.
I've been involved in the music scene in New Orleans for about 15 years. For the last 5 years, I've been the recording engineer for Preservation Hall Recordings. I also run a studio called Big Easy Recording.
Among others I've recorded are Pete Seeger, Del McCoury, Jim James, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Amy Lavere, Anita Briem, Buddy Miller, and George Porter, Jr. I've done independent recordings for local greats like Shannon Powell, Luke Winslow-King, and Clint Maedgen.
I also produce and perform electronic music as The Madd Wikkid, and have been known to play piano/keyboards around New Orleans and Japan.
Projects by Earl Scioneaux (2)
Earl Scioneaux is Backing (8)
Recent Posts by Earl Scioneaux
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #38The new Preservation Hall record is #2 on the Billboard jazz charts!!!
Admittedly this is not directly Electronola news, but I engineered it, and many of the artists on Electronola are also featured on this record (Shannon Powell, Joe Lastie, Lucien Barbarin, etc). It's kind of crazy to think we've got the #2 jazz record in the country right now. I'm elated!!!
http://www.billboard.com/#/charts/jazz-albums
:)
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #37Carl LeBlanc now on board to do vocals
Carl is one of the most versatile musicians in New Orleans, and he's played with everybody. He was in Stop Inc., who recorded the Mardi Gras favorite titled "Second Line" (the tune is actually a version of Joe Avery blues). At one time he left New Orleans for a bit to play with Run Ra. He calls Fats Domino to chit chat. In fact, Carl is the one who put me in contact with George Porter, Jr. several months ago when I needed bass on the record.
I spoke with Carl last night, and he's agreed to sing on Electronola. Here's a little taste of Carl singing and rocking out on his banjo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch...
I'm looking forward to hearing his voice on my music.
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #36Preview version of "The Days" now up. Happy Mardi Gras!!!
I figured this would be a good tune for people to blast during the festivities in the next couple of weekends, so I'm putting out a preview release as a free download.
Enjoy!!!
http://maddwikkid.bandcamp.com/track/the-days-preview-version
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #35Here's a little taste
As promised, here's a clip of Charmaine singing on "The Days". Enjoy!!!
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #34Charmaine came in today!!!
At long last Charmaine Neville made it in to sing on a couple of Electronola tunes, and it was well worth the wait. She really did a fantastic job. I'm feeling great about today's session. Can't wait to let people hear a sample. I'll be editing over the next couple of days, and I hope to have audio clips up sometime this weekend.
Total tangent - a fun added bonus for me today was finding out that Charmaine plays Go, an ancient strategy game that I'm fond of.
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #33Charmaine had to reschedule.
She got sick. Was on the phone with her briefly and she could barely talk. She cancelled both her gigs last night and needs to reschedule our session.
I hope you feel better soon, Charmaine! Sorry you're not feeling well.
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #32Charmaine Neville session confirmed for Thursday!
I'm super excited. :) Can't wait to hear her sing over this stuff. I think it's gonna be great.
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a projectHey - Sorry I've been out for so long. Had a huge project for Pres Hall (Just made a new update about that), and then got caught up in holiday stuff. I'm back on track now and you'll be seeing updates much more regularly.
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Earl Scioneaux
Posted project update #31OK, I'm back!
After my last update, I spent the rest of October and most of November putting the finishing touches on this monumental new Preservation Hall record:
http://www.preservationabenefitalbum.com/about.aspx
Each track on the album has a guest artist, and the roster is pretty amazing. It includes Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Ani DiFranco, Paolo Nutini, and more. Also, we scored what might be the most special guest ever: we got unprecedented permission to pull the vocals off of an old Louis Armstrong recording and put it to new music played by the Pres Hall band. That took some serious engineering finesse, but all the tedious hard work yielded fantastic results.
It comes out on Mardi Gras day (Feb 16th), and I can't wait for it to get out into the world. It's really something special.
Somewhere in all that chaos, I managed to get John Boutte back in to sing on a track for Electronola. I've started editing and programming on it, but it's certainly not finished yet. After such a long hiatus, though, I felt compelled to post an update with audio. Below is a clip of the song "Let It Go" that features his vocals.
Enjoy!!!
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThis looks fantastic. Can't wait to play it!
FUNDED!
This post is exclusive to backers.
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a projectNice! Looks like it made it!!!
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThat's Carmen Barika (aka "Black Betty"). I recorded those vocals for a VERY different version of the song back in 2001. When I started in on this, I dug out the old vocal tracks just as a place holder while I constructed the new version of the tune. I ended up liking them so much I wanted to keep them. I hadn't seen Carmen in years, and it took me a few months to track her down. I managed to find her, though, and she gave me the OK to go ahead and use her vocals.
preview version of "Haunt" out for Halloween
I figured it would be neat for the world to get to hear "Haunt" for Halloween, so I put it up here: http://maddwikkid.bandcamp.com/track/haunt-preview-version It's slightly updated from l...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThanks! Glad y'all are digging it. More soon!
Backer Exclusive: "Drinking Alone" (complete) and "The Days" (about 90%) audio
This post is exclusive to backers.
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateoops - meant to edit that update. we had to postpone the session due to some last minute scheduling issues. should be next week.
John Boutte vocal session booked for Friday
I can't wait! John's so awesome, I can't wait to hear what he does with my tunes. Also - vocals are the last layer of live stuff that I need to capture. This means I'm getting really close t...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThe Super Mario quote near the end of All Blues just made my year.
Kind of Bloop Is Out!
I'm proud to announce that Kind of Bloop is officially released! http://kindofbloop.com/ If you're a Kickstarter backer, you'll receive an email in a moment with your private password to str...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateListening now.... THIS IS AWESOME! :)
Kind of Bloop Is Out!
I'm proud to announce that Kind of Bloop is officially released! http://kindofbloop.com/ If you're a Kickstarter backer, you'll receive an email in a moment with your private password to str...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateJanet, you've already disclosed your ulterior motives - you mentioned at the gumbo party that you're looking for an excuse to rent that classy joint on St. Charles again where Bonnie's wedding party was. :) I'm definitely going to have a release party of some sort. I don't want to put the cart before the horse, though. Let me finish this thing before I start any other projects. Anyway, I'm glad you're loving it. It's coming along well. I can't wait till it's done!
HORNS!
On Tuesday, the horns came out to play. A little run down on who's who here: On trumpet is Mark Braud, on trombone is Lucien Barbarin, and on sax is Clint Maedgen. All three play and tour regu...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThat's Carmen White singing. She recorded that at our place in the French Quarter, Perry, back in the day (probably that time you 1st met her). I'm scrambling to try to track her down right now to see if she'll let me just use that vocal. If I can't find her, I've got some ideas about who to have redo it... so either way it'll be cool.
Video Ep. 5 - Shannon Powell session: Boogie Woogie D&B
Here's a glimpse at the recording of one of the tunes Shannon came in and played on, "Always Comes Back to Haunt You". I tried to show how the ideas progressed from take to take. It's going to be...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateYeah, I never thought of it either until recently, which is nuts because I originally wrote this song in 2001. The scratch vocal you hear in the video is something I dug up from a sketch of the tune I made back then. I was sitting at the piano about 2 weeks ago listening to it, and it just kind of hit me. It makes so much sense once you hear it done... It's kind of surprising that I've never heard of anyone doing it before.
Video Ep. 5 - Shannon Powell session: Boogie Woogie D&B
Here's a glimpse at the recording of one of the tunes Shannon came in and played on, "Always Comes Back to Haunt You". I tried to show how the ideas progressed from take to take. It's going to be...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateAck! I seem to have dropped a few words in that above comment. New rule for myself - no more posts before I'm completely awake.
Video Episode 4 - Gridding drums
This video is a look at the technical side of some of the stuff I'm doing. I'm not sure how much interest there is in this kind of thing, so please feel free to leave comments so I can determine...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateGood question, Alex. It is indeed possible to create a grid of the drummer's fluctuations and have the computer follow that, and it would be another way the goal I specified - having the machine generated music lock in tightly with the live drumming. There are 3 main reasons I choose to do it this: 1. I'm going to have multiple live players on this. They can't each have their own custom grid, and playing to someone else's tempo fluctuations after the fact can sometimes prove difficult. When performing live, musicians constantly re-calibrate to one another's playing and the fluctuations are kind of reached by collective, um... "agreement". When playing along with recorded material, it's a very different story. 2. Mapping the grid to the drummer makes one thing easier - it's great so long as all I want to do is lock MIDI to the audio of the drummer. However, it does me no good if I want to edit and shuffle around audio. For example, perhaps I like what the drummer played in measure 45 and I want to replace measure 39 with that material. If I've mapped the tempo grid to his fluctuations, then one of those measures might be shorter than the other, and making such an edit would open a can of worms. Doing the way that I've chosen, I know that each measure is equal length, so I can shuffle things around with ease. 3. Least important, but still somewhat of a concern, is that for music locked to a grid is a kazillion times more DJ friendly than music that isn't. Gridding makes it much more practical for a DJ to be able to beat match this to other tunes to mix in and out of.
Video Episode 4 - Gridding drums
This video is a look at the technical side of some of the stuff I'm doing. I'm not sure how much interest there is in this kind of thing, so please feel free to leave comments so I can determine...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThat's exactly it, Conner. Time stretching sounds like poop. Be it Ableton Live's "warping" or Pro Tools' "Elastic Audio", there are artifacts that come about from time stretching that I refuse to settle for. I loooooove fidelity. Why get a world class drummer, put him in a great sounding acoustically designed room, record him using thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and then degrade the sound with time stretching? This way takes considerably more work, but it preserves all the lovely sound quality. That said, what this video demonstrates is the very basic way of gridding a single hit. There are a handful of tools and techniques that help to simplify (well, at least a little) the process of doing bulk edits this way.
Video Episode 4 - Gridding drums
This video is a look at the technical side of some of the stuff I'm doing. I'm not sure how much interest there is in this kind of thing, so please feel free to leave comments so I can determine...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateGood ear, Conner. It was indeed Clark. The brilliant thing about the "silent sample" technique is that the actual sample never makes its way into the end product, so you can use ANYTHING that has a vibe that you like.
Video update - Episode 3
Here's a little more from the Joe Lastie Session. :) Coming soon: a simple lesson in drum editing, then on to the Shannon Powell session!
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateKatie (and/or Janet), Yes, at the time she bid, the slots were sold out and kickstarter didn't allow for me to add more yet. They turned on that functionality a few days later and then I added more slots. Anyway, not to worry - I'm delighted to have gotten the support and I won't let you slip through the cracks. I'll get you going on Gumbo action when you get to town. I think I want to to the main Gumbo thing sooner than mid-July, though (I'm thinking more like a week or two from now), so your gumbo will be its own thing, or maybe conjoined with whoever can't make the 1st one. Earl
Gumbo and other delights
This post is exclusive to backers.
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateYeah, I recorded "Lord, Lord, Lord" for Shannon. Man, that was fun. Gotta give Ben Jaffe credit for the concept on that one. He's really the one that finessed it into being what it is.
"King of Treme" Shannon Powell says he'll play on this.
Just talked to Shannon. He said he's on the road a lot the next couple of months, but he's down to come play on this during one of his stop-offs back in town. For more info on Shannon, check out ...
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a projectgreat idea!
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a projectAlicia, Kickstarter sends you out to Amazon (check the URL on the screen where you're prompted to login) for payment processing. Amazon handles all the payment processing for Kickstarter. You enter your password, etc. on Amazon's site directly. You never have to enter any payment details (including your Amazon password) on the Kickstarter site.
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a projectWow! I got a third backer @ $100. I have no idea why I capped that tier at 2. Never mind that restriction - If anybody else wants to back for $100, I'll still put you on the record if you'd like.
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a projectThanks for all the support! I'm excited to see this thing at 17% already! Wow!!!
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Earl Scioneaux
commented on a project updateThis looks fantastic. Can't wait to play it!
FUNDED!
This post is exclusive to backers.
