Beautiful

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Yep, Fredman is a niiice studio. Lots of good metalalbums and a few great crustalbums have been recorded there.
 
Room 133. For the love of all that's sacred and holy.

It looks as if the engineer would walk in and say,"OK class, pay attention. I'm only going to show you once."
 
Bruce,
Angel Mountain is somewhat close to your neck of the woods right? How does Bethlehem, PA sustain a studio of that magnitude? Are there that many feature films, TV shows, and albums being produced in and around Bethlehem?

That is really nice but a little sterile for my taste...
 
vestast said:
Is it time for another upgrade Bruce ? :D :cool:
Yeah........... I need a bigger room, or two! And a large enough control room that I can conduct a class of 30 in!!!!

:D :D
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
Yeah........... I need a bigger room, or two! And a large enough control room that I can conduct a class of 30 in!!!!

:D :D



You do classes to? When I had my last pro studio in NY, I held once a week classes on monday evenings, because for whatever reason, I couldn't book mondays even if I changed the price to free.

I actually enjoyed that much more than dealing with local garage bands. Most of our "students" were really interested, and left any attitude at the door. Maybe because a lot of them were late teens, and not soured yet, who knows.
 
frederic said:
You do classes to? When I had my last pro studio in NY, I held once a week classes on monday evenings, because for whatever reason, I couldn't book mondays even if I changed the price to free.

I actually enjoyed that much more than dealing with local garage bands. Most of our "students" were really interested, and left any attitude at the door. Maybe because a lot of them were late teens, and not soured yet, who knows.
I haven't done classes yet -- but it's an area I've started to consider doing....
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
I haven't done classes yet -- but it's an area I've started to consider doing....

Oops - I'm slow responding to this, but Bruce if you do ever end up doing this please let me know as I'll be the first to sign up..
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
I haven't done classes yet -- but it's an area I've started to consider doing....

Well, here is what we did and what we charged, in case it helps you at all.

We offered an eight week, two hours a week, "crash course" in recording and mixing.

The first three days (6 hours) were spent recording, micing, explaining different techniques, overall goals of the project, etc, using at least one class member as the "artist". We never had a shortage of musicians in the classes who would volunteer to play for the group, over and over and over. We'd record the artist multiple times, not so much to get a good take but to use different microphones, different placement, etc, so we could compare in the mixing part of the class.

The three days (6 hrs) were the mixing phase, we'd go over outboards, stereo imaging, console operation, all the normal stuff a mixing engineer does.

The next two days (4 hours), we'd do a Q&A where people could ask about specific scenarios or technical questions, and we'd address them, often with a demonstration. How do I mic a sax, how do I mic a marshall, how do I use compression without overcompressing it, etc etc. And typically the last class, which is part of this paragraph, either I or my partner would be duplicating the group effort stereo mix down to cassette for everyone to take home, depending who was teaching, and who was duplicating. Really depended on who was undercaffienated :D

We charged $160 per person for the eight week class, so with five people in the class that translates to about $50 an hour. 10 people in the class would be $100 an hour. The math works very well, especially considering the night we picked was a dead night typically.

Since we had reel after reel of used 2" tape, there was no real cost for media or materials, other than a bunch of cassettes handed out at the end. And what do those cost, 71 cents for a 5 minute tape? Something like that, its been a while.

My favorite group of students had two oboe players. Was a lot of fun to record winds after years of recording marshall stacks. A little change once in a while is nice.
 
Thanks for the the breakdown, Frederic! Well-thought out and very doable from my perspective!!!

Think I'll start on a course outline............!
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
Thanks for the the breakdown, Frederic! Well-thought out and very doable from my perspective!!!

Think I'll start on a course outline............!

It was a decent money maker. I realized after owning, and killing the first studio, the monthly costs were pretty much fixed, as far as utilities, insurance, etc. So the second time around I decided to go out of my way to fill "dead days" with "stuff".

Classes was one such idea... "Be a Recording Star for a Day" was another.
 
studio pics

This is what I love about this forum, take a look :cool: at those incredible pics, then look around my own studio and think up new ways to make my money dissapear! :rolleyes:
 
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Did you see that mic list? Oh, the envy. However . . .

How can they have 4 studios and only one SM58? That's some nasty fights brewin'
:D
 
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