Dave Earnest Audio
  • Home
  • Services
  • Audio Production
  • Sound Design
  • Composing
  • Recent Work
  • Clients
  • Location and Contact Info
  • Dave is Here
  • News/Press
  • Brochure
  • Gallery
  • Blog
Picture

About Dave

Audio Production:
    My interest in audio started early. When I was a kid, I used to tear apart old radios, take out the speakers, and then place the speakers all around the room, in other rooms, whereever, and connect them with speaker wire. Then I'd hook them all up to a working radio speaker. I'd get a kick every time all of those speakers would come to life.
    
    Later, I moved to doing "multi-track" recordings with two portable cassette recorders, recording into one, then playing that back while playing guitar and recording with the other deck. The results were marginal. When I finally could afford a 4-track reel to reel, I was in heaven. I recorded every band who would give me a try.

    This all eventually led to digital audio. Being able to do everything in a computer was a revelation, and I soon was working with an animator friend of mine, building soundscapes and composing scores for his animated films. One ended up being played at the SIGGRAPH convention in L.A.. I was also recording my live classical music premieres.

    As my confidence grew, I decided to shop my skills. I took a boom box and a CD of my recording and composing demo around Boise, setting up appointments with whomever, and whatever agency would listen to me. At an agency open house party, I ran into Shane Jibben at North By Northwest Productions. We set up an interview and I eventually was hired on as the audio guy there. I worked on everything from features (five total, audio duties ranging from dialog editing, sound effects editing, backgrounds/ambiences, to orchestrator for the composer of The Basket, Don Caron, including a trip to Budapest for the scoring sessions), to TV and radio spots and industrial videos, working on many Albertsons/SuperValu in-house training, amongst hundreds of others. 

    10 years later, we parted ways (although I'm still freelancing for them), I opened my own shop, and here I am, doing everything that I've learned over the past 35 years.

Composing:
    I started with music early on, singing in church, and later finding a clarinet in my uncles closet. I taught myself to play while in grade school, played tenor sax in marching band in high school. I also played bass clarinet in the concert band in high school, and at Wheaton College, in the wind ensemble and orchestra.
 
     My first classical guitar arrived on Christmas morn, when I was 12. I played that thing non-stop. I then picked up bass guitar and started playing in rock bands in high school. I played my first club gig at 17 and have been doing that off and on up until the present, playing bass in millions of bands including several local Boise house gigs: with Redstone at Shorty's, Saloonatics at the Buffalo Club, and Silverado at Cowgirls, and most recently, with iRock, a variety/80's rock band for corporate parties, weddings, etc.

    1980, while in Minnesota playing in a couple of bands, I discovered a record of Beethoven's 6th in my roommates record collection, orchestrated some of the songs I was writing for the band for the same orchestra Beethoven used, and I was off in another direction: "classical" composing. I came back to Idaho, worked at Micron, saved my money, and then went to the Wheaton College Conservatory. I graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Composition in 1991.

    Since then, I've composed concert works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, wind bands, and choirs, including music for the Boise Philharmonic (Cello Concerto for Sam Smith, conducted by the composer, 2003, and Turbulence 2011), Caritas
Chorale of Sun Valley (…Immence Ranges of High Mountains… 2005, and Nez Perce: Promises 2012), the Langroise Trio (7 world premieres), Idaho Dance Theater (6 premieres), and the Darkwood Trio, among others.

    After the BPO children's concerts premiere, Robert Franz, music director for the Boise Philharmonic, conducted "Turbulence" 7 times with the Houston Symphony. The piece had its "official" Boise premiere in May of 2013 on the Boise Philharmonic subscription concert.

    In 2009, I received the Fellowship Award for excellence from Idaho Commission on the Arts.

    Commercially I've won many Idaho Advertising Rockies awards for both score and sound design.

    I bring this life-long music history, both pop and classical, and my 35 years of audio experience, together, towards making your projects as cool, and effective, as possible.

Cheers!