come on in and have a look
now playing: aunt pat, "nixon"
it is done.
i can now say that neither sleep, nor flood waters, nor confusion, impatience, or ignorance has kept me from completion of my goal.
many, many pictures follow...if this isn't your cup of tea, that's all good. just warnin' ya.
this is the "just coming down the stairs" view into the basement...
this is the view from the doorway between the control room and the tracking room of the console and the equipment - you can see the computer and the ADATs that i use for A/D conversion going into the PC on the left, the patchbay on the right, the rack gear and effects processors on the right, and my quasi-vintage seventies classic rock concert posters mounted on period wall covering. various shots taken by susan bulkin for the cover art of our mutual angels hang on the wall behind the console on the left, the vinyl copy of the soundtrack from almost famous on the right.
a closeup of the console, an old ramsa board with sixteen busses and 20 ins. i have a spare 12 channel model in the garage for parts.
the patchbay and the rack...i bought the racks from a warehouse operation that went out of business that wouldn't sell them to me initially - they wanted to sell their entire security system as one piece, and i wasn't havin' any of that. i went back a few days before they were going to have to vacate the premises and got all four of the racks i have in my studio for twenty bucks. the equipment in them has been accumulated over years and years - no real stories there. the top patchbay i've had since 1985.
the keyboard nest...again, stuff that i've accumulated over time. the organ was free when i got it, but it's ended up costing me a couple of bucks to fix...the drum machine on the left i bought in 1984 brand new, the keyboard against the wall was jayda's christmas present when she was seven...you get the picture. the piano is a recent acquisition of a "vintage" piece...although the concept of "vintage" is only just recently starting to catch on amongst the keyboard crowd.
yeah, i know...who keeps this much VHS crap around? well, the ones on the top shelf are actually ADAT media. the rest of it is stuff that's been chased from the living room that has found a home downstairs. i'll deal with that later. the bookshelf itself was a gift from a neighbor from a previous residence...a lovely fellow. to the left of all this is the TV, playstation, stereo...so on and so forth.
this is the doorway that leads into the furnace - which means that vocal takes must be carefully timed in the winter. and yes, i've already given considerable thought to how much crap i'm going to have to move whenever there are maintenances issues with the furnace, but it's not as bad as it might look. i do like having all the cables collected and available in one spot, though.
looking from the control room back to the tracking room, past the bookshelf that doubles as a mic locker and general storage, just across from the keyboard nest.
the drums, unbaffled - i had a line on some cubicle dividers that i was going to use for baffles, to isolate and deaden the instruments somewhat, but they seem to have vanished. so, for now, the drums are just pointing against the wall in the room, without much to dampen them. this will certainly become a problem at some point in the near future, so if anyone knows anyone who knows someone who might be cleaning out abandoned buildings who might have a bead on something like this, do let me know. you might also notice the table sitting next to the kit - this will eventually house drum accessories and such on the underneath shelves, but on the top will rest a laptop that will have remote desktop rights to the studio computer, so that drum takes and the like can be started and run by the person on the drum throne (or really, anywhere else in the studio) by logging onto the master computer in the control room.
slick, huh?
the amp wall - inside the door, facing back towards the control room. my prized fender princeton reverb, my fender twin, and an ampeg solid state amp that doubled as payment for computer services at some point a while back. string boxes under the shelf, and the beginnings of the guitar wall behind the freestanding guitar racks on the right.
guitar storage, against the wall opposite the drums. not really visible in this shot is the shelf that i built to keep the albums up off the floor that the guitar bags are sitting on.
looking back into the control room from the doorway between the two rooms. i like this picture a lot because it seems to capture the actual vibe of the room, in terms of how it's lit and how it feels down there.
so that's the nickel cybertour...there is still minor work to be done - some PC modifications to quieten the machine enough to be in the same room with a microphone, labelling the patchbay, running a mic snake from the console into the next room, soldering the banana connectors to the back of the speakers...things like that. but i feel as though i've accomplished 98.7% of what i set out to. the room is fully functional now and i'm already using it for work.
that feels pretty damn good...scrotum-shaped stain or otherwise.
(and no, there won't be any pictures forthcoming of that, thank you very much.)
it is done.
i can now say that neither sleep, nor flood waters, nor confusion, impatience, or ignorance has kept me from completion of my goal.
many, many pictures follow...if this isn't your cup of tea, that's all good. just warnin' ya.
this is the "just coming down the stairs" view into the basement...
this is the view from the doorway between the control room and the tracking room of the console and the equipment - you can see the computer and the ADATs that i use for A/D conversion going into the PC on the left, the patchbay on the right, the rack gear and effects processors on the right, and my quasi-vintage seventies classic rock concert posters mounted on period wall covering. various shots taken by susan bulkin for the cover art of our mutual angels hang on the wall behind the console on the left, the vinyl copy of the soundtrack from almost famous on the right.
a closeup of the console, an old ramsa board with sixteen busses and 20 ins. i have a spare 12 channel model in the garage for parts.
the patchbay and the rack...i bought the racks from a warehouse operation that went out of business that wouldn't sell them to me initially - they wanted to sell their entire security system as one piece, and i wasn't havin' any of that. i went back a few days before they were going to have to vacate the premises and got all four of the racks i have in my studio for twenty bucks. the equipment in them has been accumulated over years and years - no real stories there. the top patchbay i've had since 1985.
the keyboard nest...again, stuff that i've accumulated over time. the organ was free when i got it, but it's ended up costing me a couple of bucks to fix...the drum machine on the left i bought in 1984 brand new, the keyboard against the wall was jayda's christmas present when she was seven...you get the picture. the piano is a recent acquisition of a "vintage" piece...although the concept of "vintage" is only just recently starting to catch on amongst the keyboard crowd.
yeah, i know...who keeps this much VHS crap around? well, the ones on the top shelf are actually ADAT media. the rest of it is stuff that's been chased from the living room that has found a home downstairs. i'll deal with that later. the bookshelf itself was a gift from a neighbor from a previous residence...a lovely fellow. to the left of all this is the TV, playstation, stereo...so on and so forth.
this is the doorway that leads into the furnace - which means that vocal takes must be carefully timed in the winter. and yes, i've already given considerable thought to how much crap i'm going to have to move whenever there are maintenances issues with the furnace, but it's not as bad as it might look. i do like having all the cables collected and available in one spot, though.
looking from the control room back to the tracking room, past the bookshelf that doubles as a mic locker and general storage, just across from the keyboard nest.
the drums, unbaffled - i had a line on some cubicle dividers that i was going to use for baffles, to isolate and deaden the instruments somewhat, but they seem to have vanished. so, for now, the drums are just pointing against the wall in the room, without much to dampen them. this will certainly become a problem at some point in the near future, so if anyone knows anyone who knows someone who might be cleaning out abandoned buildings who might have a bead on something like this, do let me know. you might also notice the table sitting next to the kit - this will eventually house drum accessories and such on the underneath shelves, but on the top will rest a laptop that will have remote desktop rights to the studio computer, so that drum takes and the like can be started and run by the person on the drum throne (or really, anywhere else in the studio) by logging onto the master computer in the control room.
slick, huh?
the amp wall - inside the door, facing back towards the control room. my prized fender princeton reverb, my fender twin, and an ampeg solid state amp that doubled as payment for computer services at some point a while back. string boxes under the shelf, and the beginnings of the guitar wall behind the freestanding guitar racks on the right.
guitar storage, against the wall opposite the drums. not really visible in this shot is the shelf that i built to keep the albums up off the floor that the guitar bags are sitting on.
looking back into the control room from the doorway between the two rooms. i like this picture a lot because it seems to capture the actual vibe of the room, in terms of how it's lit and how it feels down there.
so that's the nickel cybertour...there is still minor work to be done - some PC modifications to quieten the machine enough to be in the same room with a microphone, labelling the patchbay, running a mic snake from the console into the next room, soldering the banana connectors to the back of the speakers...things like that. but i feel as though i've accomplished 98.7% of what i set out to. the room is fully functional now and i'm already using it for work.
that feels pretty damn good...scrotum-shaped stain or otherwise.
(and no, there won't be any pictures forthcoming of that, thank you very much.)
posted by tom at 12:05
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