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THE SHINKO SINGERS were formed in 1999 when one starving-artist college student decided to put together an a cappella Christmas album along with three of his favorite people to sing with- himself! Following weeks of late-night dorm room recording sessions, the highly-anticipated release of the first "Carols With Carl" was met with rave reviews from literally dozens of enthusiastic fans. Carl was assembling CDs as fast as his state-of-the-art 4-speed CD burner and ink-jet printer would allow!
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In December 2000, "Carols With Carl" was re-released as the "Millennium Edition" with better packaging, remixed tracks, and a handful of new songs. Through strategic badgering and shameless self-promotion, Carl convinced everyone that bought the first Christmas CD that they should probably buy the second one, too. ("It's an upgrade!"). A few hundred CD sales later, and the second "Carols With Carl" was one-thirtieth of a percent on its way to going Platinum!
Then, in 2001, Carl put out "Songs of Love And Longing From the 16th and 20th Centuries," a beautifully-crafted collection of Renaissance and contemporary love songs that exemplify the adage, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." The modest sales from this album also illustrated the old adage, "Most people only listen to CDs of choral music at Christmas time."
Now older, wiser, and slightly fatter, Carl has returned to his Christmas beginnings with the first "official" release of "Carols With Carl". Eleven newly recorded tracks, along with three remixed favorites from the "Millennium Edition" make for a total of 14 traditional songs, featuring anywhere from 8 to as many as 111 Carls blending together in sweet, three-and-a-half-octave a cappella choral harmony. The newest of the "Carols With Carl" incarnations also features his original arrangement of "Jingle Bells" with vocal imitations of sleigh bells, drums, cymbals, trombones, clarinets, chimes, and Reggae artists, and an ending that doesn't seem to end.
CARL SHINKO has had a lifetime love of music, and has been recording it for nearly as long. From his childhood days of cassette-recording to his latest high-fidelity digital endeavors, Carl has always had a passion for trying to capture the essence of music in fixed form.
Carl's first discovery of overdub recording was made when he was about 11 years old and figured out that he could record himself on one cassette deck playing one instrument, and then have that machine play back while he recorded another instrument to another cassette deck, resulting in a crude layered recording. A year later, he experimented with overdubbing his voice to create basic harmonies. Then, at the age of 18, he bought his first multitrack recorder and began layering four-voice a cappella tracks, singing in falsetto for the highest parts. The basic sound of the Shinko Singers was born!
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A few years later, while at college pursuing his music degree, Carl discovered the world of PC-based digital multitrack recording. This opened up a wide array of possibilities in layering voices, as he could then lay down as many vocal tracks as he desired, without any loss of quality, and mix them down to a pristine CD-audio track.
Carl continued making digitally-multitracked recordings of his singing, usually for his own entertainment, or occasionally to test out a choral arrangement he had written. After a friend had asked if they could buy one of Carl's recordings, the young entrepreneur considered the viability of selling himself as a fictitious ensemble, and with the help of a digital camera and some traditional Christmas carol arrangements, Carl created "The Shinko Singers: Carols With Carl".
Mr. Shinko has since completed his B.A. in Music Performance and is now a professional singer, conductor, private teacher, and recording engineer. He directs the Tunkhannock-based Wyoming County Chorale and is a section leader for the Choral Society of Northeast Pennsylvania. He also maintains a private studio of voice, piano, and guitar students, and freelances as a baritone soloist and chamber singer.
Carl owns and operates Longfooter Productions, a recording and CD production company. Under the Longfooter Productions' banner, he has produced various CDs, including the first commercial American recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams' "In Windsor Forest", and singer/songwriter Sarah Holgate's debut album, "Welcoming The Night".
Recently, Carl did audio post-production work on the feature-length independent comedy film release, "Cubes," which has garnered acclaim at various film festivals on the East Coast. He aspires to become more involved in the independent film genre in the future, both as an audio engineer and as a producer.
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