Hello Almo Customers!
As the New Year begins, I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself, as I am one of the newer Business Development Managers here at Almo.
My name is Steve Alexander, I came on board with Almo in July of 2017 to help grow the audio offerings we provide to you, our customers. I’ve been involved in professional audio since the early 1980’s, graduating from the music business program at Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Like many of you, while in school I did various jobs to supplement my meager student existence. My first “real” job in pro audio was working in a Music Row recording studio making cassette (you remember those, don’t you?) tape copies for songwriters and publishers wanting to pitch their songs to artist to put on their next release.
I eventually made my way to the control room, wrapping cables, setting up mics, and observing everything I could in order to have a chance to sit in front of the mixing console. During my tenure, I managed to work in various studios around town, eventually making my way up to chief engineer.
A number of years later I am still in love with audio. I’ve had gigs selling equipment to broadcast facilities, did some IT work as a Cisco engineer, and ran a team of AV pros supporting AV & VC technologies at the World Bank in Washington, DC.
I eventually married and settled in beautiful Annapolis, MD. Annapolis is blessed with a great number of talented musicians I got to know over time and thought, what’s an audio guy with an unfinished basement to do other than make the basement into a studio! Now remember, this was twenty years ago. So with a small budget I got to work. I triple-walled the control room and performance space to ensure as little noise as possible, made it into a performance space and built out the control room and vocal booth.
I decided to stick with a tape based system as a full blown Pro-Tools system was out of my financial reach at that time. So I decided on three Tascam DA-38’s synced together using their RC-848 transport remote, a Behringer 24×8 console was my recording desk, and I had a good bit of outboard gear to supplement what the Beheringer didn’t offer sonically, a Focusrite mic-pre & EQ, a number of dbx compressor/limiters, urei leveling amps, a Hafler audio amp, JBL monitors and Auratone’s for my car audio mix. All this was tied together using Whirlwind TTL patchbays to route signals. Over the years I had assembled a nice collection of microphones, from Shure SM57’s, to Sennheiser 421’s, and AKG D10, C391B’s, 414, etc.
One of my favorite projects was a compilation Christmas CD featuring local Annapolis artist. That CD provided the impetus for the still running two night live show of “An Annapolis Christmas” that occurs every December at our local music venue the Rams Head on Stage.
I’ve included a mix of “This Christmas” as performed by the Annapolis based band, Majesty 12.
No, it won’t sound as if it was recorded at Capital Studio A, but it ain’t bad considering it was recorded in my basement… ahh, my salad days…
Twenty years later, the technology is exponentially better, just to say you don’t need a million dollar budget to put together a decent sounding recording facility. This translates into the install and integration markets as well. With the convergence of AV and IT, the possibilities are truly endless. It’s an exciting time to be an AV professional. Almo ProAV is dedicated to helping our partners provide the best in class solution to their end users.
I hope you will allow me to assist you with any upcoming projects you have that involve audio.
