All week I have been in Virginia (800 miles from sunny Florida) recording the latest album from the band at Aletheia Church in Harrisonburg. We’ve had one week (5 and a half days really) to track 11 songs of full band rock n’ roll and make it sound awesome. I brought up my portable recording rig and so far things have been going really well. I figured you guys reading the Recording Revolution would appreciate some pics of our multiple setups (at the church and a band member’s house) and see what we’re using to record everything.
The Studio Is Where You Are
Our “studio” this week has consisted of tracking drums in the church (which is really a big warehouse) and the rest of the tracks in a house basement. Despite challenges of outside noise, electrical hum at times, and radio interference, we’ve gotten huge sounding tracks in the most ordinary of places. The studio is truly no longer a place as much as it is a frame of mind. These guys want to record great music and we are making it happen.
My portable rig is simple, but effective. I’m running Pro Tools 8 with my trusty 002 rack interface as the core of my studio. Then I simply run a the Behringer ADA8000 optical lightpipe (ADAT) into the 002 for 8 more pristine mic pres. I have a Samson C-Control to run talkback into the tracking room and also use a little $40 tube/solid state hybrid preamp on a lot of tracks. Everything is running into my 6 year old Powerbook and it’s all stable as could be. This setup gives me up to 13 mic pres and plenty of I/O to run multiple headphone mixes.
The handful of pics below will give you an idea of the “ordinary” studio we are using and hopefully will encourage you to just make music wherever you are. Get the basic gear you need, learn it well, and then get to work! Stay tuned for audio updates on these tracks and more from my portable rig!
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Very Cool Graham,
Could you explain a little how you use the Samson C control?
thanks
Gale…You can use the C-Control to hook up multiple monitor speakers and switch between them etc. But I simply use its built in talkback feature to communicate with the talent in the other room. So basically run their headphone mix out of Pro Tools, through the C-control (to add in Talkback) and then to their headphone amp in the next room.
That’s cool bro! Simple but very effective and portable setup.
Cheers form México!
Thanks Javier…great to have you as a reader!
Simple but effective… that’s where it’s at. Curiously you didn’t mention your monitors, a critical part of any setup…. looks to me like you’re using Alesis monitors. I just recently bought a pair of Samson monitors, and they sound really good for what I need to do with them. Even low cost monitors these days sound impressive.
Wow, thats the reason i read your posts and see your videos, you learn us to make good music recordings
so how you can get perspective abbout flat sound from the monitor?,how dyou treat it?from room to rooms
Guna…I reference the recording in the monitors and various headphones to get a feel for what the tracks are actually sounding like. You can also reference in iPod through the same speakers to see what that room sound like on your favorite pro recordings.
Orlando…yes we used the Alesis monitors in the pictures (belonged to the lead singer). I always bring a pair of trusty reference headphones since I know their sound. Part of the challenge of recording in different rooms with different monitors is that it takes time to “learn” the room.
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nice to have a bit of studio foam on hand. that little bit by the orange really helped, right?
Mark – Yeah I bring that every time I record. Mostly we had air vents behind the mic that were blowing I just wanted some absorption behind the mic, just in case.
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Nice. I’m looking to do the same thing so it’s great to see it out in the wild working.