GuitarRock04
New member
Well, here comes quite the post. I've been browsing through the forum for a little bit, absorbing any information that I can find. I'm a new guy around here, but not necessarily a new guy to recording. I bought my first Cakewalk guitar tracks program and a pod around 6 or 7 years back.
I'm 22, and located near Ann Arbor, MI. I play quite a few instruments, but find myself spending a lot more time with recording lately. I've just finished school as a mechanical engineer, and am luckier than most my age because I have a house in which I can work with this whole studio endevour.
I have a small second story that's devoted entirely to music. This is my practice space and studio. I have a small corner walled off (It's actual dimensions elude me right now, but it's approximately 8'X12'). I've treated it and been using it to record guitars and drums up to this point, but am beginning to wonder about the sensibility of that after the information I've seen lately. The walls are sheetrock, with celotex behind them for insulation. All four walls are pretty well covered with textured foam matress pads from Meijers. I've also got some actual purpose bought acoustic foam bass traps in all four bottom corners with pieces of matress pad stuffed into the upper corners as well. The floor is carpeted and the ceiling has foam tiles that are spaced apart and staggered. There is also a plexiglass window looking through to my desk.
The actual DAW setup consists of the following: an old HP pavilion PC running Windows ME, a Delta 10/10 LT PCI interface, Cakewalk pro tracks, an Alesis 3630, Presonus tubepre, Behringer 2442FX desk, and KRK Rokit 5 powered monitors. I also own a copy of Sony Acid Music studio which I often use for mixing since it supports vst effects, many of which I have found online for free. The Behringer board has 8 direct outputs for the first 8 channels, which coincides beautifully with the 10/10 card. The actual quality of the mixer channels is yet another discussion...
I use Blue brand Blueberry XLR cables for most everything, and my mic arsenal consists of: an SM57, a beta SM52, an inexpensive AT drum mic set, some older peavey 58 wannabes, a pair of Samson CO2 pencil conds, an Oktava MK-219, and an AT 4040.
So now that I've established all this, I play contemporary rock music. I actually play in two bands, one as a drummer and one as a guitar player. My studio clientele has consisted of these two groups. Eventually, I would like to sell some time and recoup a bit of my investment, but I would like to further develop my skills and environment first. I'm also a bit nervous about being open to the general public, as this setup is located in my house...
I plan to post some pictures when I get the chance to show everyone just exactly what I'm working with.
My main concern is that I don't really have a control room. My desk is simply located outside of the booth described above with no real thought given to it's placement. My mixes sound horrible anywhere other than upstairs, so I know that something needs to be addressed. After reading that drums are best recorded in the larger room available, I've contemplated the relocation of my control room to what I've been using as a booth to date. Any thoughts? This will take a considerable amount of work to relocate everything, so any advice beforehand is appreciated.
As far as tracking in the larger room, I have a few office cubicle partitions that I saved, hoping to use them as some form of bass trap. If I were to place these vertically in the room corners, would this be sufficient for drums? This area is also carpeted, btw, which I get the feeling isn't the best scenario for drums, but I'll see what I can do further down the road... I keep reading about the concept of a drum cloud. Can anyone share that with me or point me in the direction of some tutorial?
I realize that my equipment certainly may not be the best of the best, but I would like to continue working with what I have and address actual room acoustics issues first and foremost. Any help is greatly appreciated.
-Jess
I'm 22, and located near Ann Arbor, MI. I play quite a few instruments, but find myself spending a lot more time with recording lately. I've just finished school as a mechanical engineer, and am luckier than most my age because I have a house in which I can work with this whole studio endevour.
I have a small second story that's devoted entirely to music. This is my practice space and studio. I have a small corner walled off (It's actual dimensions elude me right now, but it's approximately 8'X12'). I've treated it and been using it to record guitars and drums up to this point, but am beginning to wonder about the sensibility of that after the information I've seen lately. The walls are sheetrock, with celotex behind them for insulation. All four walls are pretty well covered with textured foam matress pads from Meijers. I've also got some actual purpose bought acoustic foam bass traps in all four bottom corners with pieces of matress pad stuffed into the upper corners as well. The floor is carpeted and the ceiling has foam tiles that are spaced apart and staggered. There is also a plexiglass window looking through to my desk.
The actual DAW setup consists of the following: an old HP pavilion PC running Windows ME, a Delta 10/10 LT PCI interface, Cakewalk pro tracks, an Alesis 3630, Presonus tubepre, Behringer 2442FX desk, and KRK Rokit 5 powered monitors. I also own a copy of Sony Acid Music studio which I often use for mixing since it supports vst effects, many of which I have found online for free. The Behringer board has 8 direct outputs for the first 8 channels, which coincides beautifully with the 10/10 card. The actual quality of the mixer channels is yet another discussion...
I use Blue brand Blueberry XLR cables for most everything, and my mic arsenal consists of: an SM57, a beta SM52, an inexpensive AT drum mic set, some older peavey 58 wannabes, a pair of Samson CO2 pencil conds, an Oktava MK-219, and an AT 4040.
So now that I've established all this, I play contemporary rock music. I actually play in two bands, one as a drummer and one as a guitar player. My studio clientele has consisted of these two groups. Eventually, I would like to sell some time and recoup a bit of my investment, but I would like to further develop my skills and environment first. I'm also a bit nervous about being open to the general public, as this setup is located in my house...
I plan to post some pictures when I get the chance to show everyone just exactly what I'm working with.
My main concern is that I don't really have a control room. My desk is simply located outside of the booth described above with no real thought given to it's placement. My mixes sound horrible anywhere other than upstairs, so I know that something needs to be addressed. After reading that drums are best recorded in the larger room available, I've contemplated the relocation of my control room to what I've been using as a booth to date. Any thoughts? This will take a considerable amount of work to relocate everything, so any advice beforehand is appreciated.
As far as tracking in the larger room, I have a few office cubicle partitions that I saved, hoping to use them as some form of bass trap. If I were to place these vertically in the room corners, would this be sufficient for drums? This area is also carpeted, btw, which I get the feeling isn't the best scenario for drums, but I'll see what I can do further down the road... I keep reading about the concept of a drum cloud. Can anyone share that with me or point me in the direction of some tutorial?
I realize that my equipment certainly may not be the best of the best, but I would like to continue working with what I have and address actual room acoustics issues first and foremost. Any help is greatly appreciated.
-Jess
