Luminous shines: this studio combines musical skills, new technology and an in-house ad agency - Audio Today & Tomorrow - Luminous Sound - Brief Article

Post, August, 2002 by Christine Bunish

DALLAS -- Luminous Sound's clean and contemporary Studio Baurton designed facilities are a far cry from Paul Loomis's spare bedroom where the company made its debut 18 years ago with an eight-track recorder and console. Many jingles later, the recording, audio post, commercial music and sound production studio offers its three top-of-the-line studios to an array of clients.

Credits include brand-image music (read "jingles") for Stanley Steemer carpet cleaners, On The Border restaurants, TCI Cablevision and numerous retailers; commercial tracks for CC's Coffee, Pepsi. Smirnoff Vodka, Southwestern Bell and Universal Studios; themes for the UPN network; ADR for TV and motion pictures; and music recording for R&B and gospel artists.

"What makes us stand out" notes VP/operations manager Julia Sizemore, "is the creative force we've assembled here: engineers Hal Fitzgerald, Chris Bell and Tre Nagella combined with Paul, who runs the composing gamut from hip-hop to R&B to classical."

President/CEO Paul Loomis is a composer, conductor, songwriter, music producer, arranger, orchestrator and keyboard artist. As a student, Loomis added tenor sax to his already impressive musical repertoire but set his professional sights on becoming an attorney. Just as he was about to get his undergraduate degree in pre-law he "freaked out," went to New York City and cast his lot with music. He spent six months as an apprentice to the National Jazz Ensemble, then transferred to North Texas State University and started all over again with a music degree program.

Following graduation, Loomis got a job writing jingles for a small production company and ad agency. Six years later he opened his own company in the back bedroom. His wife put up with clients raiding the refrigerator at all hours until one grabbed her wedding crystal for a drink of water. It was time to find a real studio.

OUT OF THE BEDROOM

Loomis lucked into inexpensive low-rise industrial space, which had already been configured as a recording facility. He made good deals on equipment, paying for the gear one jingle at a time, and built up a thriving audio studio. The music recording side of his business found Loomis working with artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Whitney Houston.

The savvy Loomis also launched The Loomis Agency, a full-service advertising agency, which fed his brand-image and ad music business. The company moved to its present location in 1999.

The three Luminous studios are all capable of mix-to-picture, ADR and Foley work. Studio A is equipped with an SSL 6040E console with the G computer and Total Recall; Genelec 1039 main and 1030A nearfield monitors; and outboard gear from Lexicon, Eventide API, Neve, UREI and Summit. All of the studios feature Digidesign Pro Tools systems for easy mobility room-to-room, Studio A is adjacent to a stunning two-story main tracking room acoustically designed to handle all types of bands and classical orchestras up to 40 pieces. Studio B's control room is almost identical to Studio A, except for its Digidesign ProControl console; it has a large voiceover booth adjacent Studio C, which is primarily used for post production and radio and TV spots, features a smaller ProControl console.

The facility features ISDN and Telos Zephyr links plus DigiStudio (a partnership between Digidesign and Rocket Network) to transfer sessions or pieces of sessions on the Internet for quick review and approval.

Luminous recently ordered a Pro Tools\HD 2 for Studio A and Pro Tools\HD 4 for Studio B, reports Hal Fitzgerald who serves as chief recording engineer. "Music recording will be the primary beneficiary of the Pro Tools\HD systems," Fitzgerald notes.

All of the studios are wired for 5.1 surround for easy conversion when the time is right. "When we moved in we planned to do one of the rooms in 5.1 in a few months, but we still haven't had one client request it," reports Fitzgerald.

Earlier this year The Loomis Agency was awarded several new clients whose commercial audio needs are being met by Luminous. Loomis and Michael Tuggle, creative director at The Loomis Agency, penned "That's What I Like About Texas" to pitch the Texas Dairy Queen account. The tune with a country flair accompanied a collage of images representing "everything cool about Texas," Sizemore explains, At press time Loomis was crafting R&B, Hispanic, country and rock versions of the song.

The studio's work for Furr's Family Dining stands out on TV with its memorably wacky audio tracks. A new Furr's spot, The Sounds Of Summer, features acoustic guitar over a rhythm track comprised of the sound of a lawn sprinkler. The unusual but emblematic score was played back during the location shoot so summer images like mowing the lawn and riding a bike with a baseball card in the wheel could be synched to the sprinkler.

"The spot began with the concept of music from sprinkler sounds," Fitzgerald recalls. He picked up five different types of lawn sprinklers which he installed on his lawn and recorded with a Sony DV camera, "each running at various water pressures to control the tempo," he explains. Fitzgerald digitized the material into Apple's Final Cut Pro and experimented further with sounds and tempo, then moved on to the music room.