PATRICK SIMMS

Patrick Simms is a guitar playing singer/songwriter who began
recording on 4-track cassette tape machines in the 80s. In 1994 he
left the state of Connecticut where he grew up and worked for the
local newspaper as a reporter, and moved to San Francisco to pursue
his musical interests. In the years to follow he founded his own
studio/rehearsal/teaching space located on Mission at 9th Street,
directly across from the old location of the Guitar Center store,
where he worked for 3 years. During that time he invested in equipment
and learned the ropes of recording, while playing in local bands,
working as a part time sound engineer for more than 10 clubs,
including The Paradise Lounge, Club 181, Club Galia, The Boom Boom
Room, Cafe Cocomo, The Voodoo Lounge and others. He even ventured into
booking local bands and singer/songwriters traveling through the Bay
Area, and rented audio equipment to the 6th Street Fair, Yerba Buena
Gardens, Fairfax Women's Center, Eagle's Hall in Daly City, 5 Wounds
Elementary School fair in San Jose, and the Filipino Festival in
Hercules.

 When the AFM Local 6 moved into the South of Market neighborhood from
their Tenderloin location in November 1998, Simms approached the
organization about his services. He soon joined the Union and moved
the recording portion of his studio into the AFM building in 1999.
Since then he has sat at the controls of more than 100 sessions
ranging mostly in Jazz, Classical, Latin Jazz, Americana Rock, brass
quartets, string quintets, big bands, solo acoustic acts, audition
tapes for students and musicians, with the occasional remote live
recording.

In 2000 while supplying a sound system for a band playing the People
In Plazas Summer Noon Concert series, Simms met Lynn Valente, the
organizer of the event. He has since become the assistant program
manager for PIP and host concerts for the program. Simms is also a
board member and the audio engineer for CounterPULSE, a community arts
and dance space located at Mission at 9th, in the same building as his
main studio space. In his free time he is also a DJ on Pirate Cat
Radio, where on Tuesdays he hosts the California Music Box from 8 to
10 p.m., a show dedicated to playing local music of all genres.

RECORDING PHILOSOPHY

Simms' philosophy about recording Local 6 bands is very hands off:
"By setting up the equipment and positioning all the musicians using sound
baffles, my only job is to capture their performance in a low pressure
atmosphere. In doing so I have been privileged to witness some great
playing. For singer/songwriters who I tend to choose to work with, I
am more hands on. That's when I put on my producer hat and make
suggestions about tempo and instrumentation choices. It is not
uncommon for a group to come in with the attitude that they are
recording a demo, and in the end put out the finished material as a
full blown CD."

"The heart of the studio has been a Mackie 2408 mixing board and three
Tascam DA-38 recorders (24 tracks), along with some pretty decent
microphones, a list of which includes 3 Nady TCM1050 Tube Microphones,
Audio Technica stereo, Octavia, Shure, Naiant, Audix."

"I am not a technology junkie when it comes to the studio, so recently
when I attempted to "upgrade" to a more computer based format, I found
myself adjusting to a whole slew of format incompatibility, bugs,
equipment failure, crashing, files going missing and worst yet, doing
so during a great take. So, that's when I reverted back to the old way
of doing things - digital tape. After all, this is the Musicians Union
and if something was not as good as it could be, it is easier to have
these wonderful musicians just do another take. Five minutes later we
are done and my wrist is not hurting from clicking a mouse endlessly.
There is a saying - If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But running a
studio means you also have to have good working equipment and there is
a constant search to add gear that works well with what is already
there. To that degree there have been additions in outboard equipment
such as microphone preamps, compressors and signal processors."

Equipment List

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