Starting with Jimmy F's very first band, Concrete Mind, and their first full album, recording has been a deep and abiding desire. The intricacy of mic placement followed by the fun of playing with EQs and various effects and sonic spacing makes recording the most enjoyable, if sometimes tedious, endeavor.
Working with a more knowledgable friend early in college, he began to tip-toe into the wide world of recording and mixing. Learning to track drums on a keyboard, manually quantize them, and work on getting the best vocal takes possible morphed into experimentation with electronic drum tracking and home-studio techniques.
Does The World turned a tacit interest into a life-long requirement to make full albums. Self-teaching spacial placement with pan and volume made Stage One much easier, and plumbing the depths of orchestrations took OK songs to good songs.
Once out in the real world, self-discovery in recording slowed, and constant subway ads for the Digital Media Arts Certificate at Touro College suckered Jimmy into paying a pretty penny to push the boundaries. Re-learning some of what had been self-taught, while assimilating further knowledge of techniques, education in the field ensured continued development of skills.
Since then, each band, each album has added to those skills to engender an ability to just make things work, but now with experience and knowledge. Recording, mixing and mastering will always be a requirement of Jimmy's life, whether only for personal enjoyment or for everyone's ears. This love will never die.
Jimmy F - Grigori
06-25-2014
Grigori is the third self-recorded, self-produced album and a treatise on Jimmy F's years in New York City. Kicking off with an aural representation of who he was when he landed in NY, the style is a reverse progression of his taste in music. Going from prog-metal through classic/alt rock, a taste of funk, and ending with a softer vibe, Grigori is stories of life in Brooklyn culminating in a final statement of his reason for leaving.
Violet Stone - Black Friday
06-21-2011
Black Friday was co-produced with Marc and was Jimmy's first try at mastering a full album. Packed with hard-hitting songs, Violet Stone blasted off with some straight-ahead rock, buoyed by spicy funk, mellowed with some southern rock flavor, and topped off with heavy metal. This album was headed straight to the top, but as most bands do, they fizzled right at the critical moment. The album was crack, though!
RockStellar - self-titled
01-01-2008
RockStellar was a killer power trio (Jimmy's fav!!) with two incarnations and two self-titled, self-produced album releases. In this band, everyone wrote songs, if you wanted to sing you did, harmony was top-notch, and the shows were always fun. His most prolific band, RockStellar played hundreds of shows over several years, all over the tri-state area, regardless of blizzards or hurricanes, they rocked the house every time. These albums were his first completions post-Certificate in Digital Media Arts, and the releases showed significant progression.
Jimmy F - Stage One
June 2001
Despite the name, Stage One was the second self-recorded (with plenty of help!), self-produced solo album and completed long before ever taking classes in audio engineering. Having learned a good number of tricks from experimentation on the first album, Stage One incidentally went hay-wire when the decision was made to take a decent album and turn it into a 'project album.' Bad decision, but the construction of instrumentation and variations of time signatures while still being able to tap a foot to it resulted in some surprisingly good songs.
Jimmy F - Does The World
August 1999
Does The World (even just going by the name) was the first self-recorded (mostly), self-produced (badly) solo album. Clearly trying to be too clever, the songs were simplistic and overdone, and came off as a bad mix of rap (complete with stupid skits) and rock...which, while popular at the time, is still embarrassing. The bright points were clear, however: the first two songs he ever wrote depleted all depression and angst he was harboring, and the balance of songs written clearly showed significant development into the songwriter he became.