can one work ALONE in a newly built personal studio? please read...

[smythology]

So you spend loads of money and time building a recording studio wanting to record the music you like...and you live alone. Then what?

In your 25 X 35 studio, you have the control room, the mike and/or drum rooms and the main live room. If and when doing a song by yourself, how often do you have to run back and forth between the control room or whatever if that's necessary?

Basically, is it possible for an instrumentalist to record by one's self if he or she has good enough recording knowledge with connections, mixing, analog equipment and so forth.

I'm not talking about just a little bedroom or basemtent studio, I mean a professional but personal studio (if there is such a hybrid) with multiple rooms to use when making songs and albums.

Recorders do have remotes and stuff. But would it be necessary to use the remote along with putting in an extra kind of 'mini-control room' setup in the live room so you don't have to scramble all the time? I guess anyone can mix by themselves.

If this is impossible and you need an engineer, what's a good way to find him/her? How much would you pay them per album?

Bottom line: Can you do it alone or do you need someone else? Thanks.

[TexRoadkill]

To record alone with a seperate tracking room is very difficult but not impossible. The main difficulty is setting the levels. You could maybe overcome that by keeping the preamps in the tracking room and using a remote for the recorder. But even then if you want to record to another track you would have to go into the control room and repatch then go back to the tracking room. Very slow and tedious.

Your best bet if you only plan on recording yourself is to setup in one tracking/control room and have all your noisy gear in a sound isolation box.

[Hawking]

I agree with TexRoadkill. I recently set up a semi-pro studio with this in mind. We put the recording gear (Tascams, Mixer, ProTools setup, preamps, etc...) on a moveable cart. It's not easy to move on the carpet, but it moves.

The hardest part is getting the right sound. If you are tracking drums for example, you have to record a little bit, then play it back, make changes, record a little more, play it back, make....you get the idea. Once you have mic placement done, and you're happy with preamp, mic selection, it's pretty easy. Same thig with levels. Obviously, once you have all that setup, you don't really need to monitor anything while you record, so you don't even need monitors nearby. If you are the only one recording, you only have to set it up once unless you get a new toy to play with. The downside to all this is if the board or some other peice of gear is going to have an adverse affect on room reflections or anything like that. That's something you just have to try it and see what happens. If you already have a seperate control room, I suggest you use it for an amp room so you can crank up the volume and not go deaf.


Mixing is a different story. In my case, we simply move the cart to a specific location within the room where we know the listening position is right. Plug in one big power cord and off we go. We can also drag the tracks into ProTools (we usually track to the Tascams) and send it over a network to another building where there's another console setup just for mixing and critical listening.

[DAFFYDRUNK]

I thought you could get a remote for the computer and that way you can start stop the recording gear. Even if you're using ADATs and whatnot, you could slave em to some recording software. Not sure how to do it but I know some of the remotes can have presets. You could preset the thing so you can arms tracks, record, rewind ect. Just a theory....

[Richard Monroe]

This is the essential reason I have $8,000-$10,000 worth of outboard gear jacked into a lowly Roland VS1824CD. I don't have *any* noisy gear! Not a fan in sight, except the Roland's, which turns off when I touch "play" or "record" I can sit in the control station, which is in the live room, with my guitar in my lap, mic'd up, or track vocals with the mic on a kick drum stand. For some cuts, I use a vocal isolation booth with a foot switch. In that case, I put the mic on the desk stand to set levels, then move the mic to the vocal booth to track. Yeah, you do have to run back and forth a bit if you can't do the cut in one take, and sometimes the correct levels change, and you have to re-track it. For pesky songs, I just track them in the control station.
If you do have noisy gear, an isoraxx, although expensive, can be your friend. The only noise any of my gear makes is a slight hum from the DBX386, but I don't use that pre when I've got the control station mic'd up. There's a certain sense of control you get when you can see all the indicators, and even ride the faders during a vocal track. You can see clip indicators and visible noise floor, if any. For electric, I put the cab and the mic in the vocal booth and track in the control station. I doubt this will work if you are a drummer or you play a grand piano.
Which brings up the psychological effect. I've been self-tracking the guide tracks for my first album for 6 months or so. I'm isolated from all human contact in a 5' X 7' soundproofed cell with one bare lightbulb. No windows, no ambient noise. Can't tell if it's night or day. They let me out daily for work details. Christ, if I had a bucket to piss in, a couple of rats, and an occasional beating, it would be an Iraqi prison cell! We started the overdubs last weekend, and I got to shut up my drummer in there with my nice talkback mic. What a liberating sense of power! "I am #2. You are #6. What do you want? Information."-Richie

[Toker41]

Setting levels alone even in a small one room home studio is a pain. But I do love working alone when it comes down to laying down the tracks and mixing....God bless the home studio! No more whinny band members ruining the mood.

[cominginsecond]

With the software I use, Sonar, I am able to control the software using my computer keyboard, which I have a 24 foot extension cord for. I take the keyboard into the tracking room to control the transport functions. To set my levels, I guess to begin with, play a 30 second section of the track, run into the control room, and see if they're good. If they're not, I make adjustments and repeat the process. It sounds like a pain, but it works for me.

[smythology]

thanks...

what about my engineer question?

:-)

[Track Rat]

You can do it yourself. I do.

[TexRoadkill]

Originally posted by smythology
If this is impossible and you need an engineer, what's a good way to find him/her? How much would you pay them per album?

Ask around, get references and make sure you trust their work. How much? Whatever the market will bare. Some guys would probably work for an exchange in recording time. Others might want a few hundred a day.

If you know what you are doing then all you really need is someone who can set levels and run the gear well enough to patch up for new takes, handle the monitor mix, etc. If you have really nice gear than you might find some recording students that would be willing to help out for nothing.

If you have enough money to pull this off why not just use a real studio?

[Freudian Slip]

I am thinking of setting up close circut monitoring between the control room and the sound room just for some of the reasons mentioned. I have to say having some helping hands to adjust a level here and there is great. but it can be done alone.

The only thing I really hate and refuse to do is try to set up drum mic's with out the drumer present. On guitars I use a long guitar cord to peak at the levels in the control room and check the sound through the monitors, and vocals I record in the control room with a flat eq which is pretty easy once you find the right mic.

Good Luck

F.S.