Your Studio...show us a picture!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sharon Netzley on March 8, 2011 at 5:17pm

Hi Edward, I will post a picture as soon as I clean the room up a bit. Ours is in a former guest room as well. :) Here's a question for you. I'm new to recording myself and find it really distracting to do both the recording setup, then switch to performing. Maybe it's my distractibility, maybe it's because I just need to do it more. But still, it's frustrating. Do you have any tips or tricks you can share? Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Edward Sparks on March 8, 2011 at 5:45pm

This is a frustration for all of us who work alone...you could get someone to help you with the techie stuff. Young people just seem to take to this "stuff" naturally. You could just teach them the "start-stop-back into record" commands to get them interested...remind them to be quiet though, especially at the end of a take where the instrument is fading out and the slightest noise will pick up. In terms of working alone, one thing that has helped me is to learn the keyboard shortcuts, that way you can do almost everything from the keyboard while tracking and that means less time moving the mouse around and quick transition from clicking and creating! I learned as many keyboard commands as possible and then I got a USB extension cable from Amazon that allows me to take the keyboard away from the table top and near me at the mic on the other side of the room...in my case it only took a 16' cable. I put it on a music stand that I have tilted back almost flat like a mini high table. This way I can look over at the screen, click a few buttons and be ready for the next take! Logic makes this easy too. Also, Logic allows you to set up a playback loop and it will keep adding "take" tracks over and over until you stop it. So, you could set up the new track, set up a loop start/stop point and then it will start recording...when it gets to the end point of the loop it will start back over at the beginning and begin recording a new take track without you having to touch anything!!! When you are all finished you just choose the one you like best, or parts of a few of them to paste together into a good take! If all this sounds foreign to you (I don't know you experience level here so if you know this, I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all!) But if this sounds too complicated, let me know and I'll steer you to some instruction! Good luck and let us know if you find a good way! Edward

Permalink Reply by Sharon Netzley on March 10, 2011 at 5:03am

Great suggestions, Edward. Our iMac has a wireless keyboard. I'll see what the range is. I didn't know about being able to set a playback loop and have it keep adding new "take" tracks. That sounds like it could be very handy. Speaking of the kids, next week a friend's nephew is coming over for a couple of days to help. He's studying sound engineering at Berklee, so I'm sure he'll be a big help in getting some tracks down. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks so much for the help!

Permalink Reply by Edward Sparks on March 10, 2011 at 5:13am

Look forward to hearing about it!  Edward

Permalink Reply by Edward Sparks on July 14, 2011 at 8:58am

Hey Sharon,

I ended up getting a USB extension for my keyboard so i can now have it right next to me where ever I am in the room...how did things work out with the friends nephew?  Edward

Permalink Reply by Edward Sparks on March 18, 2011 at 7:48am

Here is a great YouTube video I found that concentrates on recording live vocals and guitar!  Really good!  Edward

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x100w_I5CyE&playnext=1&list=...

 

Permalink Reply by Terry Angelli on March 26, 2011 at 2:26pm

I always found switching from performer to engineer to be tricky. It's tough to do both and someone to engineer while you record would be ideal. Just finding that person seems to be the toughest part.