Time for the first post for my blog. Time for introductions. Time to face the challenge.
Frontal
Lobe Studio was founded on a hot summer night. Sweating in the heat, while basking
in the midnight glow of my studio laptop, I decided to do something. Do some
blogging. Here’s a little story about me, my studio(gear) and the motivation
for this blog.
The Man
Middle aged
man in his rush years, trying desperately not to be beaten down by reality. No
time to breath, stop and watch the world go around. Everything is tightly
programmed and revolving around routine, responsibilities and overall maintenance
of relations and property. Lion’s share of time goes to work, my lovely 2 years
old daughter and my wife ‘J’. And of course, I wouldn’t trade that time for
anything.
But the
tiny bit of time after that, added with some tactical cuts from sleep, gives me
the chance to invest in music. Play some guitar, try to scrabble some music of
my own and improve my skills in the art of mixing. Maybe someday even
get to do that as a more serious hobby. But that remains to be seen.
The Gear
My studio,
separated from reality and the living room by a 70’s accordion door, which is
also doubling as a diffuser for my room acoustics. In fact, the door is the
only acoustic treatment, if you don’t count the right hand side bookshelf’s
wall of glass doors, or the mighty row of cupboard doors on the back wall. These
surfaces create some real funky room acoustics that will most probably add some
“color” to my mixes. But enough with the acoustics, it’s the gear that matters.
Right?
HP G62
Notebook laptop – The heart and soul. My trusty war steed doing all the hard
work. The old gent is having some trouble with the global warming, and is currently
elevated from the table by two CD covers. Without this extra ventilation, the
poor chap started to do emergency shutdowns from overheating when doing some
heavier computations – such as rendering sound files. Don’t tell him, but I’m
currently looking for a replacement.
Line 6 UX1
Audio interface – Another critical component. The simplest audio interface I
have bumbed into. Two knobs, some outputs and two inserts. One insert for
instruments and one for mic. In addition, I must have been lucky with mine,
because I seem to have one with a vintage volume knob. It adds a nice static
crunchy noise while I adjust the volume. Thanks!
Yamaha HS-7
monitors – Fantastic monitors with such a flat response-curve that you might
think your guitars dropped out of tune. Thanks to my room “acoustics” this is
not a problem.
Shure
SRH440 headphones – These are my main monitoring system, because of my late
mixing hours. Neighbors do not seem to appreciate me finetuning the bass drum
through my studio monitors at night. Great headphones, even if they are a bit
heavy on the head. As a sweet bonus they came with a sexy leather bag.
Reference listening
– implemented by J’s JVC mini-”hifi”-system from the 80’s, and in addition to
that by the cheapest computer speakers (Creative something) I could find. Both
of these are really great for adjusting your mix to sound good on systems that
should not be used for listening music in the first place. I also have a pair
of standard Philips headphones (SBC HP200) that actually sound quite good with
other peoples mixes.
Two
microphones for recording – Rode NT-1A as my number one mic. This rodent also
needs phantom power to work, so I bought the cheapest and smallest thingy to
power it up – Behringer Ultra compact phantom power supply PS400. No problems
with these, but I have yet to find a mic that makes my voice sound good. I
guess that’s one of the reasons I’m trying to learn mixing. My backup number
two, unknown Philips mic bought from an ordinary grocery store. When I really
need some “character” to my recording I’ll use that.
That’s all
the gear in my studio. Not too expensive yet… Oh, and I use Reaper software as
my choice of DAW (digital audio workstation).
The Challenge
Time, the precious
infinite commodity that we own so little. Take this middle aged fellow’s normal
weekday.
- 6.30 Wake up, drink coffee and prep child for daycare.
- 8.00 Arrive at work
- 16.00 Leave work and pickup child
- 16.30 Eat with family
- 17.00-18.00 Take a break (or do J’s bidding, e.g. clean things) while child watches children’s programs.
- 18.00-20.00 Entertain the child.
- 20.00-21.00 Prep child for sleep
- 21.00-23.00 Try to get the child to sleep (without falling asleep yourself)
As you can
see, this does not leave too much room for hobbies. Weekends are also normally full
of other things that make it impossible to really focus on music. But I have to
add here a disclaimer and a thanks to J, that I have been given the opportunity
to use Monday- and Wednesday-evenings for my own personal indulgence. But in
the same breath I have to say, that these evenings are usually directed toward
band-practice or other band-related things, rather than mixing. Therefore, my
aspirations to attain higher skills of mixing and mastering seem to naturally focus
to the time between 23.00-01.00. This idea finally converges to the theme of my blog
description – midnight home studio mixing and mastering.
This is my
challenge. How to effectively get to be a better mixer with such limited
resources. This blog will tell the tale and in addition motivate me further to
try harder. And of course I love the added challenge of taking a slice of that
limited time to write this blog.
Please leave
a comment, doomed for failure, destined for glory. What do you think?
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