Streching your imagination

Another Studio update. 

Just about a week ago i received a phone call from my good friend Kami, who is currently attending BYU. She was wondering if i had time to record a friend of her's band in the next little while. I said i'd be glad to and asked what kind of stuff they wanted to record. She replied that it was just acoustic stuff. And considering the ease of just recording a couple guys singing and playing acoustic guitars, i said i could probably do it all in a day. 

10:45PM rolls around and the band walks in the back door. Yes, all of their instruments have to do with acoustics, but they were not quite what i would label 'acoustic'. Turns out, they were a full band. Guitars, bass, drums, piano, and my favorite part, violin. My palms began to sweat and my stomach began to ache with hunger, for the 5 song load of this band could only mean one thing: one heck of an all-nighter. With a Beto's burrito in one hand, and a 2-liter of Vault by my side..... i set off into the audio. 

They are: Imagine Dragons, and you can see their webpages HERE(site) or HERE(mypsace) - Turns out, that this is probably the most talented group of kids i've seen around in awhile. I wish i could have had more time recording and mixing them because the work we did in about 14-15 hours on 5 whole songs doesn't quite do them justice, in my opinion. Or else i hope that the demo they recorded with me can get them into a real recording studio or something. Anyway, definitely check out their 5 newly recorded songs on their myspace (the ones with DEMO on them are those 5). 

And thats the latest on the studio. Stay tuned for more information on a possible upcoming collaborative project involving the Yaks and a distant friend Willy Yummy. 

DIY Acoustic Panel Build!!!

Here is the biggest studio update. I'm beginning to hear that the room we record in is really starting to stand out in our recordings and im not a fan of it. But the room is too large to treat acoustically with the amount of money we have/would want to sanely spend. Not to mention its oddly shaped. We would try to solve this problem by hanging large blankets on mike stands and other such things to create a booth-like recording space for vocals, guitars, and the biggest one, drums. It helped a bit, but it was extremely time consuming, very unstable, and i'm sure the blankets did not have a very good absorption coefficient. 

So I went on a deep internet search for some answers. I found a ton of material. But most of it was on treating an entire room, which i would like to do, but couldn't for several reasons. Anyway, I discovered a very helpful site; Ethan's information was plenty and good. 

I decided that i would take a little different approach to the fiberglass insulation panels. I wanted to combine these panels with the mechanical setup and size of drum shields/baffles. I wanted them mobile, so i could move them around the room, i wanted them to be free standing, and i wanted them to be able encircle an area big enough for the drumset.

This is what i came up with (the project is not complete yet, still have a few more to go before it is) :

4'x8' Sound board from Home Depot: $10. Rigid, yet soft enough for some high and low absorption. We cut it down to a 4'x6 because 8' is pretty dang big. And we also have an extra 2'x4', which i plan on make a couple diffusors/bass traps with.

3 yards of some nice polka dot fabric from Walmart: about $10. We folded it in half, cut it and sowed the side so it made one big piece that would fit over the board.

1 roll of thick fiberglass insulation from Lowes: $10. This is probably not as absorptive as the Owens Corning 703 but this was our Mark I so we'll see how things pan out. Not to mention 703 is very difficult to get a hold of (ive checked a ton of places) and its much more expensive than this stuff, especially if you gotta ship it.

Then we pulled the fabric over the insulation and stapled it onto the back of the board.

And there you have it. Now i haven't done the last steps, but they are pretty much to build two more of these. and attach them to each other with hinges, making them able to stand up on there own, be folded up and put away, and (with another set) can encircle the drums. I'll get some photos of when we are finished with them. 

Money Spent: about $30-35 for one big panel +extra materials

Record time...

So my friend, Patrick, and I have started a small recording studio business recording bands and whatnot. Its actually working out pretty well. We are both pretty well versed in the ways of Pro Tools now. Of course, Pro Tools is something you can almost never 'master'. But I'd say we could test out a good year's worth of college classes for it. 

Anyway, we just finished a band's album about a week ago. You can see stuff about them at  http://www.myspace.com/crossingcolumbia. And I think one of the recordings we did is on there. 

We operate out of two studios (highly annoying with mac/pc cross platform filesharing). One doubles as a really cool free concert venue, while the other is more acoustically treated and outfitted with a more powerful computer that utilizes more advanced plug-ins and whatnot. 

Here are some pictures of recording things for The Yaks' new stuff:  

Bass Cabinet Micing:

  

Drums Micing:

Some Pro Tools 7.4 Action:

Joey Brown layin' it down:

The recordings on the Yaks site were done in the venue/studio a while back (we've come a ways since that album was released BTW) 

So if you wanna get your band some recordings, whether they be quickly done demos or a fully mastered CD, definitely contact me. We can negotiate prices for different situations but for the most part its gonna be $15/hr. Which is pretty ridiculously low for the quality we can churn out. 

Well, there's a sales pitch blog if I ever did see one, hehe. Peace and Love.