Our Makeshift “Studio”
I’ve invested quite a bit of money into Troutmouth lately. Well, it’s an investment in me and my friends’ entertainment…any REAL investor would consider it a huge loss, but I recently picked up a shiny new bass, a wacky Line 6 effects stompbox for it, a miniature Marshall amp for practicing by myself, and about $20 in picks (I lose them a lot). Altogether that ran me about $500 (the stompbox being $250 of it), and I was recovering from my ridiculous spending spree when the idea to record practice sessions came up.
Our new guitar player, Adam, wanted to put together crappy recordings of our practices. I don’t know why he wanted it, but I agreed it was a good idea because we could go back and figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Also, we have this terrible habit of writing really cool riffs or small chunks of songs, then forgetting them by the next practice. Since our needs were simple, it didn’t need to be a pretty solution, and Adam figured a tape player directly in the center of us would do the trick well enough. Well, yeah, that may have recorded our practices decently enough that we could remember a forgotten riff, but I’m a computer nerd, and wanted to do a little better than that. So back at musiciansfriend.com, debit card in hand, I started digging around for a cheap recording solution for us (now that I work in IT, notice how much I say “solution”. I make myself sick…).
Originally I wanted a four track, but I started really thinking about what I wanted to do with it, and realized that for just a couple dollars more I could add two tracks. For $20 more than THAT, we could double it to 8 tracks. I ended up grabbing a Behringer Eurorack UB1202 for about $80 which, despite the price, is an awesome little mixer. Mics aren’t cheap, and when you want to record multiple tracks, they add up fast. I looked at a couple drum mic kits, and some mic bundles, etc etc, but that was going to take us WAY out of my intended budget (about $250 is all I wanted to spend on recording equipment). I ended up checking clearance items and they were unloading a bunch of Nady mics for about $10 each, in packs of 3. I grabbed two packs: three mics to mic all the amps, 3 mics to distribute among the drums.
Well, it all finally came in the mail today, but it took longer to set up than expected, so we won’t have anything recorded til tomorrow. The setup is actually pretty sweet. Stringing mic cables all through the rafters up in the loft, we managed to hang a couple in strategic places above the drums, throw one in the kick drum, and dangle the other three off our amps. To record vocals, we just ran a patch cable from the line out of the PA. The mixdown is run into the line in on a small form-factor computer I had (my former Photoshop system, but more on that in another blog…) running Adobe Audition. The line OUT on the computer runs BACK into the PA so we can playback what we’ve just recorded, or listen to MP3s if we’re just hanging out. We spent about an hour and a half getting good levels, and for 140 bucks worth of equipment, we actually have pretty good recording capabilities now.
Since our drummer had to take off early, we spent the last hour of the night organizing our cable mess, disposing of 4 months’ worth of empty beer bottles and cans, and generally tidying up. Tomorrow we take the studio for a full test drive. If I don’t get some demo MP3’s up tomorrow, I will definitely get some up the day after.
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Bill, I don’t know that words can describe the jealousy burning within at that sick setup. Gratz on the new bass and stuff as well.