For today's installment I want to show off my musical creative space. It's the studio I put together in the front part of the new shop space in Redlands. I cleaned it up today so it would look good here. It'll be a nicer place in which to hang out now as well.
Here's the live room. This drum set was acquired for recording purposes. And to jam(of course!). It's a great little kit and I can't wait to dig into drum miking. Especially through all the great gear that's in the rack in the control room.
And here's the control room. I've got it sounding about as good as I could hope with it being a generic office space. The Genelec monitors are absolutely wonderful.
Here's another shot highlighting the gear rack.
This space is really great to work, read, nap, or even make music in. (There is a couch if you're wondering how it could be good to nap in. It's where the last picture was taken from.)
I went to recording school many years ago. Almost 20 now I guess. It was The Grove Center for Contemporary Music. It had been the Grove School of Music, but the LA riots happened and all the foreign students watched the madness on TV and decided not to come to LA. Can't say I blame them. I generally don't care for LA at all, even if there's no riots going on. I guess that might be because I spent large portions of my childhood in rural Minnesota.
So the school lost half of its students and with them half of its income. Reeling from the blow, it relocated to a small office space in Woodland Hills and had to change it's name because it lost it's accreditation.
Anyway, I was attempting to pursue music from an engineering angle. I completed the now shortened six month program and got a job at a major studio in North Hollywood called Devonshire as a runner. I had my foot in the door. The big soundproof heavy door. My career changed direction towards guitars a few years after that, but that's a story for another time.
I relate this particular story here because I want to comment on how my studio feels to me having come from a world of "real" pro studios with all the channels of Neve and SSL and Studer tape and racks and racks of Eventide, Lexicon, bla bla bla.
I have to say I really am blown away at what technology has done for aspiring engineers over the last few decades. For a tiny fraction of what those rooms cost to equip back in the day I have a space that is truly very, very comparable in terms of the final product that can be produced. I have ProTools 10 with a Digi 003 Factory for the main interface. I also have a UAD Quad card with all their plugins. Which are amazing! And, the rack you see in the above picture contains a bunch of preamps, compressors and EQ's. Most of the gear was built by my friend Howard from kits that can be found on the webs. I am truly blessed to have all that gear on loan from him (THANKS HOWARD!) Personally, I put together a Seventh Circle Audio preamp box with three preamps in it. Great stuff! And of course we're working on that DI pedal. And have plans for a tube DI and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. Again, a story for another time...
The point is I have a really reliable space with a ton of creative potential. Now I just need to find the time to use it and people that I want to use it with. Eventually I hope to present the fruits of the space here soon.
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