Hosts
Inside Home Recording (IHR) is the longest-running podcast covering the latest in home studio recording, hosted by web guy and podsafe musician Derek K. Miller (who replaced original co-host James Devon in mid-2006) and keyboardist-composer Dave Chick (who took over from founder Paul Garay in late 2008). Both Derek and Dave are professional musicians involved in performing, teaching, producing, and recording music. Together, they provide a wealth of expertise, information, variety, and entertainment. They both live in Vancouver, Canada.
Derek K. Miller
Before going on medical leave in early 2007 for cancer treatment, Derek (penmachine.com) worked as Communications Manager at Navarik, a Vancouver software company. He is also a writer and editor whose work has appeared in numerous publications (including Macworld magazine), and the drummer for Vancouver’s fab-rock combo The Neurotics.
His grandfather conducted a Finnish choir in Vancouver, and Derek studied classical guitar starting at eight, but quit four years later and forgot everything, including how to read music, and developed his skills as a computer geek instead. He’s been online since 1983 and on the Internet since 1989. That was the same year he played his first gig, after taking up the drums as his main instrument.
Since then, Derek has combined his interests in music and computers in various ways. He worked full-time in The Neurotics in the early ’90s, touring Western Canada and as far as Melbourne, Australia. He recorded an album with a short-lived band known as The Flu, which may have been the first independent act to run their own email list. He has been running workshops and seminars about the Internet since 1992, and writing articles about technology for just as long, most recently in Macworld magazine.
After a hiatus during which he worked as a technical writer and editor for software companies and learned how to build websites, he returned to The Neurotics part-time in 2000. In 2004 he started posting his original free instrumentals on his website, which led to his Penmachine Podcast, debut album Penmachine Sessions, and widespread play on hundreds of podcasts around the world beginning in 2005, including Adam Curry’s pioneering Daily Source Code and Leo Laporte’s popular Windows Weekly. He has also written and recorded theme tunes for tech conferences including Gnomedex, BarCamp, and Northern Voice.
Derek started listening to and sending feedback to IHR when it started, was interviewed on one episode, and joined as co-host in May 2006. He records his own segments for the show, and also built and maintains the IHR website (and accounts at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and so on), in addition to being involved with other websites and podcasts, including his wife’s award-winning show Lip Gloss and Laptops.
Dave Chick
Dave (hatchedproductions.net) started organ and piano lessons when he was five years old, then took up clarinet in middle school (although he really thought the sax was cooler) and played in various school ensembles through high school. Pursuing a degree in Music at the University of Western Ontario, he continued playing piano as well as studying theory, composition, and education. He also continued writing, arranging, and composing while updating his keyboard MIDI setup.
Dave studied film scoring with Emmy Award winning composer Hummie Mann through the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, and has performed in many groups, including the infamous house band for the Experience Music Project, the Intergalactic Electromagnetic Potluck Orchestra.
Dave currently lives with his wife and three children in Vancouver, after stints in Toronto and Seattle. He spends his days as a TV, film, and video game composer and songwriter. An early and frequent contributor to the Inside Home Recording listener forums, he joined IHR as our Windows PC audio expert in early 2008, and took over as permanent co-host to replace Paul Garay in September of that year.
Paul Garay
Paul (vancouverpianist.com) founded IHR in mid-2005, and left the show for an indefinite hiatus in late 2008 to concentrate on his new venture Mac Video Training. He began piano at four, and performed in bands starting in high school. Shortly after school, he toured professionally across North America as keyboardist and singer with several different recording acts, and began dabbling in computer recording in 1984. Ten years later, after a series of jobs that included refurbishing and selling pianos, he opened his own studio, focusing on music production and digital audio recording, where he has worked with a who’s-who of major west coast Canadian recording talent.
In 2000, Paul began teaching at Vancouver Film School and scoring for video—some of his music appeared on TV’s Smallville in 2004. More recently he has returned to his independent studio work. He is a regular host of cross-country instructional tours for Apple Canada and Apple U.S., featuring the company’s recording tools, such as Logic, Final Cut Pro, and GarageBand, and also records educational videos for macProVideo on music and podcast recording.
Paul started the Inside Home Recording podcast and website in the summer of 2005 to help exchange knowledge and advice about home recording. In 2006 he co-hosted Apple’s free online video seminar, the Podcast Recipe, with well-known voiceover talent Joe Cipriano and Pete Alcorn, business manager for Apple’s iTunes Podcast Directory.
Paul Garay photo courtesy of Now newspapers.
