The Space

Originally, I looked for a building to set up shop in. I looked at warehouses, studio space, office, something like that, and build from there. I spent a few months looking, but frankly, none of the rooms I was looking at sounded nearly as good as my top floor at home, at least not without a major rebuild. Which, btw, is my beef with many project studios. Uninspiring tracking rooms. Folks, it is the 3rd most important thing on the list. Player, instrument, then room. Gear is important no doubt; but it don't mean squat unless those 3 things are taken care of first.

During one of my moan and groan sessions, my brilliant wife Lisa said "why don't you just convert the upstairs to a studio? It's about 3/4 of the way there anyways, you've been making good recordings in there, just finish the conversion off". She is not only lovely and amazing, but brilliant. So we did that. The studio is basically the top floor of my house. The space is comfortable, quiet, and sounds great.

The main room is 25 by 12 feet with sloped 15 foot ceilings, wood floors, with additional 10 x 10 space attached, forming a 25 x 22. I have the usual treatment, a few polys (I dig polys), couple gobos if we need it, broadband absorption (some people call them "bass traps". But that's a misleading label, leading to all sorts of misinformation. But that's another discussion). There are three isolation rooms for amps, as well as a little tracking control room. Mixing is done in the main tracking room with a bit of moving stuff around.

The area is very quiet, and comfortable.

My setup is a full 24/96 Digital Audio Workstation (usually called a 'DAW'). In layman's terms; a computer that is used to record and process music. You can look at my gear list by using the menu up top there, although between you and me, I have found that the idiot setting up the gear has a lot more to do with the final sound than the gear itself. But I do like nice mics and pres, and they make my job much easier, so I try to focus on having enough good mics, rather than a whole lot of crappy ones. But my mic collection is somewhat fluid. Dang internet.