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  record production

New CD releases in 2010:
Doomsday Revolution by The New Czars
Tangier Dream by Eric Walker
Music for Ballet Lovers, Vol.3 by Yoshi Gurwell

Satina and Diz
Diz and Satina
Kiki Kalor

The New Czars The New Czars have just released their much anticipated album Doomsday Revolution on Samson Records. Core members include guitarist/producer Greg Hampton, drummer David "Chilli" Moreno; bassist Paul Ill; along with guest artist, guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew (of King Crimson fame - one of my all time favorite bands). If you compiled a list of all the artists these musicians have worked with, you'd have a virtual who's who of rock n' roll - Alice Cooper, Lita Ford, Bootsy Collins, Buckethead, Reeves Gabrels, Bruce Dickinson, Puddle of Mudd, Courtney Love, Pink, etc.. Steffen Presley provided his expertise on synthesizers/sound-design and complex odd time signatures for some of the songs at our Song-Haven Studios. Doomsday Revolution features heavy rock songs and instrumental compositions with a distinctive progressive slant.

Grammy award winning engineer, Steve Pouliot (Saturday Night Fever, etc.) chose Song-Haven Studios to record the daughter of the late legendary Grammy award winning producer and hit songwriter, Freddie Perren (Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson, I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor etc.), vocalist Amy Perren, with Steffen Presley performing the acoustic piano and other instrumental parts. More information soon as this project develops.

Tangier Dream, an adventurous electronica music venture, features compositions by Eric Walker (Star of George Lucas' Star Wars spinoff movie, "The Ewok Adventure" and others). This album of 12 instrumental electronica compositions augmented by rousing rock was produced by Steffen Presley, who also contributed many of the tasty synthesizer bits as well as engineering the mixing and mastering at Song-Haven Studios. The CD was just released in April 2010, and is also available for purchase now on iTunes and Amazon. Search using the keywords; Eric Walker or Tangier Dream

April 2010: Yoshi Gurwell has just announced the release of her latest album on double CD, Music for Ballet Lovers, Vol.3. This double CD of music for ballet contains a colossal seventy-six pieces, all recorded on our world-class grand piano at Song-Haven Studios. As with the first two albums, the artwork was custom hand created and designed in our art department by Endless Productions' co-owner and art director, Carolyn Presley. Yoshi's previous albums Music for Ballet Lovers, Vol.1 released in 2007, contains thirty-six ballet pieces; and Music for Ballet Lovers, Vol. 2, released in 2008, features forty ballet pieces. These albums feature many beautiful duets with her trumpet playing husband, Doug Gurwell. Yoshi has also secured major distributers, who have cited the professional nature of the project (particularly the stunning artwork) as a big reason they have come onboard. The original hand designed artwork can be viewed at our art department gallery. We also designed their web-site, DuoDolphinMusic.com.

Level 3, consisting of songwriters Satina on vocals and Diz on electric guitar, are back at Song-Haven recording their album with Steffen Presley producing. Their exciting and energetic music uses elements of funk, World Beat, R&B, electronica and rock. Using modern production along with live sound, the results are very artistically innovative yet extremely catchy! Stay tuned as this project progresses.

Lyricist Glen Hoffman in collaboration with the late musician of note, Ron Krown created a body of great songs of different styles. Glen is busy at Song-Haven with producer Steffen Presley reworking these songs into polished finished product for the modern age.

Deke and the Blazers Deke and the Blazers are a Doo-Wop vocal group from various parts of the USA who met at a Doo-Wop convention in Detroit. They decided to record an album and chose Song-Haven studios to record the project, with owner Steffen Presley producing. He prepared custom backing tracks for the songs in advance of the vocal session which took place on the last day of 2008. Mixing and mastering have been completed, with a CD release soon. Meanwhile, the group is appearing in live performances across the country. The group also just recorded a jingle with four-part a cappella vocals at our studio, presently airing on WPON in Detroit. They performed locally at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City on June 27 2009 to standing ovation! Most recently, they had a great write-up and interview for Keep Rockin' magazine.

San Francisco based John Torre has been very busy recording various projects both in his home town and here at Song-Haven studios. His most recent project is an exciting compilation of pieces by J. S. Bach, with accompaniment written by Robert Schumann. Featuring John on lead electric guitar and Steffen Presley on keyboards, drums; as well as engineering, mixing and mastering, these amazing versions are note for note true to the original composers intentions, but using modern instrumentation and recording production. The album, called The Bach-Schumann Sonatas has been completed and is set for release on CD in late October. Also, we just added an article describing the production steps, complete with examples on our How He Does It page. Also recently released and now available on CD Baby, is The Golden Baroque, a set of Concertos and Sonatas by several composers of the Baroque era, including J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, Georg Frederic Handel, Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni.

Las Vegas singer and entertainer Kiki Kalor has just launched a fabulous new web-site featuring her eclectic mix of standards as well as very unique arrangements of songs not so well known. The result is great fun! Much of her backing music as well as her CDs were done at Song-Haven Studios with instrumentation and engineering by Steffen Presley. Check it out!

Hawaiian icons The Brothers Cazimero have released 37 albums, received numerous awards, performed at Carnegie Hall, and are household names in their native Hawaii. Roland Cazimero is currently recording a solo album. As part of the production team, Steffen Presley has performed keyboards and drums on several songs, with several more in progress. Commercial release is expected sometime early next year. Stay tuned for more info!

Alice Cooper In between doing a world tour, rock and roll legend Alice Cooper has recently recorded a new album. Headed up by producer Greg Hampton, the recording team arrived at our Song-Haven Studios where Steffen Presley added Hammond B3 organ, piano and synthesizer performances to several of the songs and is credited on the album. "Along Came a Spider" was released the beginning of August 2009 and has become Alice Cooper's biggest hit in many years, already reaching the top fifty worldwide.

Award winning vocalist, songwriter and music educator Buddy Mix has just released his latest CD, Cloud 9. Co-produced by Steffen Presley, this 12 song album deserves a wide audience. Recorded at Song-Haven studio, Steffen also performed the keyboards, synthesizers, alto sax and drum tracks, as well as the mixing and mastering. Buddy has recorded two major albums with us previously, Rhythms of the Moon and A Little Meditation which was performed Richard Basehart Theatre in Northridge. It won two prestigious NAACP awards including best music director (Buddy). He presently resides in North Carolina.

On January 23, 2008, The Honolulu Symphony Chorus along with the Kamehameha Glee Club Alumni performed at the St. Teresa Co-Cathedral in Honolulu, to honor Mother Marianne Cope of the Franciscan nuns. Steffen Presley was hired to arrange the choir parts for a song composed by Sean Tiwanak and E. Napua Pa'ele especially for the occasion. Steffen created a mock-up demo using Sound Designer technology to create an artificial choir to help the real choir in rehearsals and also created the printed sheet music scores. We hope to present recordings and photos soon.

The long awaited album from Ruben Burciaga's band AZLA has just been released on his own label. The CD, titled Slang is tour de force of Latin rock inspired world music. Recorded and mixed at Song-Haven studios over the last few years, the album features Ruben's melodic, dynamic and soaring guitar playing, some stellar keyboard work from engineer Steffen Presley, and a wealth of guest vocalists and percussionists. Cover art, depicted here, was created by Ruben.

Support your local music! A Sharp Music Method is a music school with a local chapter here in Tujunga. They have just released their first student albums on CD. Musicians of Tomorrow, Holiday Songs. Steffen did the recordings at our Song-Haven studios. Carolyn Presley did the graphic artwork, and Steffen and Carolyn's son, Skylar Presley is an A Sharp Music student (where he is excelling on piano) performing on the CDs. Funds from the sale of the CDs support the Young Musician's Scholarship. More information can be had at the school's web-site; www.musiclessons4all.com.

Arlene Nicoletti
Arlene Nicoletti

Vocalist Arlene Nicoletti is set to release her album of show tunes on CD and online. You can visit Arlene at MySpace. Her company Ageless Productions TV by is now online! The multi-talented Arlene is a singer/comic and now video entrepenuer. Designed by Endless Productions, this is great site for video entertainment and includes a video tour of our studio, Song-Haven featuring Steffen Presley.

A very popular performer in his native Hawaii, Sean Tiwanak has been heavily promoting his fine world music CD, Home to Me, which was recorded, mixed and mastered entirely in our Song-Haven studios. Endless Production's owner, Steffen Presley is credited with co-producing this album, along with performing the Bass; Hammond B3 organ; alto saxophone; piano and other keyboards, as well as also engineering, mixing and mastering. The CD artwork was created by Carolyn Presley in our art department. The CD is out on the "Na Lo Productions" label. At Sean's new website (designed by Endless Productions) hometome.com you can hear selections, view information, as well as read the highly compelling story behind the album, and also purchase this CD. Reviews, press and radio are coming fast and furiously, so stay tuned for updates!

Pianist and songwriter Dennis Brown is currently busy in our studio recording several of his songs.

Brian Nassau has also returned to continue recording his solo piano album, along with his electric oriented pieces.

Steffen also recently composed and produced a soundtrack for a video presentation for the DynaMetric company.

Ted Mattingly, an excellent Country singer, who came down from Northern California in 2004 to record a CD of songs at our studio, quickly sold out all of the CDs and has recently re-ordered to keep up with growing demand! Besides all of the engineering, Steffen played piano and alto saxophone on the recordings.

Producer Greg Hampton is working on his pet project, two CD releases of the late guitar legend Tommy Bolin. The first CD has just been released. For the second CD, Greg has brought legendary organist/vocalist Mike Finnigan to our studio to overdub Hammond B3 organ and lead vocals to one of the songs. Mike is currently touring with Crosby, Stills and Nash, has worked with Etta James, Dave Mason and notably appears on the seminal classic album, Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix, on the song, "Rainy Day, Dream Away".

Massachusetts based John Santoro recently completed several songs in our studio. A couple of the songs have just been added to our music section so you can hear this highly compelling singer/songwriter!

Our graphic arts department has been busy creating original artwork as part of the latest advertising campaign for telephone recording kit company, DynaMetric.

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  new equipment

2010 is thus far about microphones, with the addition of the fabulous new MXL R77 Classic ribbon microphone. I've been using this mic in situations where maintaining the delicacy of the instrument is important, such as when recording acoustic instruments for classical music. This mic has already done a superb job of capturing clarinet, piano, acoustic guitar and voice here at Song-Haven Studios. At the other end of the spectrum, to aid our lead in establishing ear-catching and never-heard-before synth sounds for our electronica projects, we've added one of the best soft-synths on the market (for our new Apple Mac-Pro Xeon quad-core computer system), Alchemy by Camel Audio. This super synth/sampler boasts superbly controllable additive synthesis, along with spectral synthesis. Sound waves can be created from scratch or analyzed from samples, allowing manipulation of sound beyond traditional samples could accomplish. There have been several other improvements to our studio gear including replacing the entire keyboard action of my venerable Kurzweil K2500X master controller synth/sampler with an updated and superb keyboard action based on the newer Kurzweil K2600 model.

June 2009 marks the installation of a brand new main computer system; an Apple Mac-Pro with the new Intel Xeon quad-core processor. Along with that, we have upgraded to Cubase 5 from Steinberg. Not long ago Steinberg was purchased by Yamaha and they have infused Cubase with their leading edge technology. Actually, this is the third time there has been a "Cubase 5", with the last version 5 running on the old and now thoroughly obsolete Mac OS9 operating system for Apple computers (although that really doesn't seem all that long ago). With the advent of the Apple OSX operating system, Steinberg rebuilt Cubase from the ground up, and now we are once again at version 5, albeit with features, speed and capacity hardly dreamed of when the old version 5 was current. New features of interest include extremely sophisticated built in pitch correction; VST3 Convolution reverb; a drum sampling instrument which we've been loading up with our custom samples; and many more amazing features to enhance creativity and speed up work flow.

2008 began with a complete overhaul of Studio C, (the piano room). The old recording system has been replaced by a new model Apple iMac Intel/CoreDuo, running the state-of-the-art OSX 10.5.1 Leopard. Along with that is a new Alesis i0|14 audio/MIDI interface. New capabilities include recording at sample rates up to 192kHz(!) for ultra high resolution recording of our very fine Falcone grand piano. Find out more in our studio-tour section. Other studio improvements include updating to Cubase 5 providing superior DAW audio and MIDI recording and editing, along with XML export/import of music scores. In 2007 we added to our already plentiful high-end synthesizer collection with the Dave Smith Instruments; Poly Evolver. Using a stunning hybrid of real analog (!) with digital, the legendary Dave Smith claims this is a sound which cannot be acheived with "soft-synth" technology. We certainly agree with this assessment, as we are coninuing to make a major effort to provide a professional sound not attainable in small computer-run studios. As usual, instead of sleeping, we are spending the wee hours programming remarkable sound-patches no one else has anything like! See photos in our Studio tour section. Whether you are interested in fine piano recording, Surround Sound mixing, unique electronic and acoustic sounds found nowhere else, custom arrangements, stunning production or just want to record your voice .

For those of you interested in recording in Surround Sound, Song-Haven studio now has full Surround Sound implementation in all formats up to 5.1, including 360 degree monitoring and mixing!Each channel can have it's own specific panning location within three dimensions! All panning movements in any direction can be fully automated (including specified 360 degree circular or square shapes). The possibilities for stunning 3D sound-scapes is phenomenal! Now, with Cubase SX3, Surround sound recordings can be exported in official Surround Sound file formats, including DTS.

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  web site additions

It was long overdue, but Carolyn Presley has finally completed a great new design for the Endless Production logo. The new logo can be seen on the home page as well as certain of the other pages on this web-site. The new logo will also soon be adorning our new business cards and letter head. You may also see it in our business emailings.

A new article by Steffen Presley has been added to the Music Production section, detailing contrasting production methods for two recent songs Steffen recently arranged and recorded in our studio. From the Music Production main page, select either the button at the top labeled "How He Does It" or select "Before and After" from the links on the left.

Our original music section has been spun off onto it's own web-site: Terraform Records. Included in this web-site is Steffen's latest project, 3 Legs On Wheels featuring Steffen's Hammond organ and saxophone expertise along with drummer and vocalist Arnold Mollica.

Endless Productions art department has recently completed designing and building a brand new bilingual web-site for Doug Gurwell. This new site is to promote his new album, Make Me Smile and is in both English and Japanese versions. Carolyn Presley did the logo design, now featured in our art department. We also designed DuoDolphinMusic, featuring ballet pianist Yoshi Gurwell, who recorded her third piano CD with us released this year (2010). We have also recently updated our web-site design for Rick Bozzo. Rick, a good friend and musical cohort of Endless Productions owner, Steffen Presley, occupies a unique place in music history. Check it out!

Those of you who have visited before may have noticed that we recently did a basic modernization of the entire site, but the big news is the total facelift of our homepage, designed in-house by Steffen Presley to better reflect a blend of our professional services.

A large selection of new music, recorded at our Song-Haven studio, has been just added for 2009, along with new CD artwork, now on display in our art department gallery!

Steffen now has his complete Soundtrack "demo reel" on this website. If you are involved in film, television, corporate presentations, games, online media, please check this out. All pieces and many more are also available for licensing.

Photos of our new Grand Piano room can now be seen in our Song Haven studio tour section, and now includes a stunning audio example.

Our web page "Music business and production tips" has been discontinued. The studio and production have been so busy, we no longer have time to doll out free advice. Thank you to all the kind people who wrote us thanking us for our unique and insightful articles.

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  world of music

Our in house producer and musician, Steffen Presley, has been a very busy session player, and concert performer doing a wide variety of projects at many studios for various producers.

Most recently, Steffen played keyboards, including the Hammond B3 organ in our own studio, for an upcoming CD release from American ex-pat Calvin Russell on SDV records, and produced by Greg Hampton. Calvin brought his American country rock style to France some time ago, and has been a huge seller there and other parts of Europe.

Jack Casady CD Legendary bass player Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna, Jimi Hendrix-Voodoo Child, Hendrix Live at Winterland), released his first solo album, Dream Factor on Eagle Records in the summer of 2003. Steffen was the main keyboardist on this CD and features him playing Hammond B3 organ and piano on most of the songs. Produced by Greg Hampton, guest players include guitarists Jorma Kaukenon (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna) and Doyle Bramall II (Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Roger Waters, Arc Angels); drummers Steve Gorman from the Black Crowes and Matt Abts from Gov't Mule; and singers Paul Barrere from Little Feat, Ivan Neville (Neville Brothers, Keith Richards), and Fee Waybill from The Tubes.

Steffen appeared in concert with Jack's band last summer at the legendary Sweetwater in Mill Valley, which featured many of the musicians listed above. This was the first concert celebrating the CD's release, and was a phenomenal success with a packed house demanding encore after encore!

On December 3rd, 2005 Aja Kim, the primary female session vocalist for our company, Endless Productions, won the Best female vocalist for 2004 award at the Rock City News Music Awards. At the same time, she has also been nominated for "Best Female Vocal/Metal-Hard Rock" category for the All Access Magazine Awards! Several songs we've produced which feature her riveting vocal style can be heard on our site. Go to Hear songs! in our Production section.

Endless Productions new studio Song Haven Studio and it's owner, Endless Production's chief Steffen Presley, was featured in a full page article of Keyboard magazine (June 2004), The article includes full color photos of Steffen and the studio.

At the same time as the Keyboard magazine issue was on the stands, Music Connection magazine (May 24 - June7), also distributed world-wide, contains an article called How to Book a Studio at Rock Bottom Rates. Steffen was extensively interviewed for this article and is quoted throughout. Frankly, our clients already knopw that Steffen's studio, Song Haven offers the best dollar value anywhere! In the same issue, Song Haven Studio is listed in the recording studio section.

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  original music

3 Legs On Wheels logo 3 3 Legs On Wheels, a band headed by Steffen Presley, along with drummer/vocalist Arnold Mollica, has recently released their upcoming debut CD, In Our Time Machine. The project is designed to fully showcase Steffen's extraordinary Hammond B3 organ playing, in addition to his highly acclaimed alto saxophone playing. Steffen performs most all of the bass parts using both feet on the Hammond's bass pedals, while simultaneously playing the organ parts and sometimes another keyboard with his left hand, along with Arnold's drumming, creating an exceptional big live sound with just two guys! The only overdubs are the alto saxophone and vocal parts. In addition the band has recently completed two video shoots. The album and videos are were released in September 2008 on Terraform Records.

On August 23rd 2008, the official 3 Legs On Wheels web-site went online. Complete information, video and links can be henceforth found there.

Original band, Bent Branes site has moved to the new Terraform Records site.

Terraform Records has recently moved to www.terraform-records.com with an expanded catalog.

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This page last updated on August 2, 2010
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