The idea of Level Ground came to me almost 20 years ago when I was involved in church video production. At one of the services our pastor referenced a Billy Graham quote that stated “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.” Everyone is equal in the eyes of God and that idea has remained with me all these years.
Shortly after that I started and ran a moderately successful video production business creating wedding and business videos. I continued doing volunteer work for my church that included live music and video recording and mixing as well as church event video production.
I was already entrenched in a full-time IT career as a Network Engineer and decided to put the Studio plans on hold. Fast forward 15 years and although my IT career has served me well, my love for music and independent artists has made me realize that I wanted to return to the studio idea, even if it's only part time for now.
This time I would lean more toward tracking and mixing music. I might just find a way to give back to the world of music that I’ve loved so much over the years. That’s when I set out on a path to learn as much as I could about becoming a Recording and Mixing Engineer, and about the music business in general.
Initially I wanted to do this for up-and-coming artists. I knew I would be able to provide higher quality recordings and demos than those created in a home ‘in-the-box’ studio that a musician might already have access to.
Things changed for me in a big way when I visited Nashville in 2017. I’ve always preferred listening to female artists over male artists, but I had no idea just how difficult it is for female artists to become successful in country music and the music industry in general. It became clear to me that I found my lane and decided to focus on independant, up-and-coming female artists.
The name Level Ground took on a whole new meaning now, and much more meaningful one at that – leveling the playing field for those struggling to succeed in the music business.
The idea for Level Ground Studio was revived and became a trademarked business entity in February 2020. As luck would have it, the COVID-19 crisis hit so once again the idea was put on hold. Now it’s time to push forward on the throttle and get this idea off the ground!
Over the years, I've developed near-expert proficiency in Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop, honing my skills in both graphic design and video production and more recently Avid Pro Tools for audio production. I’ve been trained by a local Engineer in a full studio setting using an API analog console and I’ve also participated in a number of mixing contests in order to gain some experience. More recently I attended a 3-day workshop at Sweetwater Studio. I’ve invested heavily in hardware and software so that I could jump in and hit the ground running and that’s exactly what I intend to do!
And just for kicks, I taught myself HTML and CSS so that I could create this website. No templates were used here, this was built from the ground up by me, starting with a blank page.
Because who doesn't love a good challenge, right?Back to the top...