Hi all,
At last! My "Play-Attic" is pretty much all gassed up and really to roll. :D
I've long admired TR's splendid Man Cave and have also been inspired by pics of Dogbite's collections, Roy's (rparker) recent room upgrade, etc. In my case, the main aim has not so much been about a full on performance space but about gathering a reasonable range of tools to support the hobby of attempting to write songs, and also to generally explore music and have some fun with it all.
I'm not shooting for gigs or expecting to gain proper performance skills on all the bits of gear. Just aiming for enough basic ability to get a practical handle on how the various elements of a song arrangement can be fitted together. For instance, I could write drum tracks in midi, but I seem to learn more about rhythms by actually banging things! 8)
Of course it would be good to become more proficient at playing but the other aim is to master the software well enough to be able to paper over the musical cracks by correcting, cutting, pasting, fixing up, and generally stitching together enough nearly adequate takes, scraps and bits to make a few more new songs.
Frankensongs-R-Us...
The hugely long ‘Scrimp, Save and Salivate' stage appears to be about over (5 years or more??). I've now finally collected just about everything on my list of “Song-writing accessories that I'd like to own one dayâ€. So, I've got the gear - now I just need to put in a few more thousand hours to build the desired skills.... :shock:
There's a saying that I believe comes from Texas - "All Hat and No Cattle" - to describe somebody who tries to look the part but doesn't really have any stock yet. In my case the missing "cattle" is the required range of playing chops - which are mostly still at the stage of putting the bull to the cow. So I currently produce a lot of bellowing and mooing - not to mention a great deal of bullsh*t - but the talent 'herd' still only consists of a couple of fairly small calves. Fortunately though, I do have some mates with genuine ability so the gear does sometimes have a break from my amateurish thunking and gets to crank out some really good stuff as well. :note1: :note2: :note1:
So this is my 'retirement kit'. I turn 65 in a couple of weeks and will therefore be officially senile enough to be locked in the attic with my toys. Woohoo....
View from the top of the stairs
The main working area.
Keyboard, guitar, Eleven rack and drums all in easy reach. Close at hand for plinking out melody ideas, testing out rhythms and harmonies etc.
Some of the twanging and honking machinery
Guitar stand hastily made this morning. Rock bottom cheapie sax and clarinet, but some of the guitars are reasonable.
The Spider
One of the most recent items that I've finally saved up the cash for is a Roland TD-4 drum kit. It can either put out its own drum audio or else trigger other drum sounds via midi, including all the percussion in the Garritan World Instruments software. Hmm... hit, smile, hit, smile... . Not quite as easy as one might hope, but good fun to learn. Requires a good deal of stamina just to keep that right leg pumping away in time. My admiration for drummers who play full throttle for entire gigs has risen dramatically!
For those with bass instincts...
The last purchase. An American Special Jazz Bass. What a pleasure to play, and I can finally put the Bass book that I bought eons ago to good use. (Kudos and thanks to author David H - it's proving very useful! :D )
Press Enough of the Right Buttons and Music-like Noises Do Occasionally Emerge...
Two rods pull out from the front of the desk to support an Axiom midi keyboard, if needed. The Eleven rack is adjustable, across a huge range of emulations, either on screen (the black section) or with proper knobs and buttons on the unit. Neither piece of kit is hard to use in a basic way but I'll need a LOT more study before I can claim to be really competent with either of them.
I won't need to work out how to burn demo disks any time soon but, hey, it's been a lot of fun so far. If it keeps one more old fool off the streets it can't be bad... :wink:
Cheers,
Chris
Just a couple more beers and the singing will surely improve....won't it???...
I'm ... errr might be or could be at work where the pics are blocked. Can't wait til morning to get home and check them out!
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
Excellent pics. The set up looks great, you are really going to have some fun with that stuff.
Very nice room!!! Looks like a place that you could live in, and not want to leave!!
Paul B
I love it Chris! Bright, cheery, everything my cave isn't. :lol: You have some high quality gear in there too. I am jealous! You would have to travel half way around the world to find a music space so cool. :wink: You are right though, 65 and time to be productive in a way you will enjoy the most. I can't wait to hear some stuff.
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
Thanks for the supportive replies guys. :)
Now I have no further excuses for not getting on with the business of delivering the goods - which could be a little daunting. Fortunately, there's no pressure or time frame involved so I can just keep on enjoying the journey in a fairly leisurely fashion.
The habit of saving up and then buying the gear has become rather addictive though.... I might need to sign up for some kind of 'GAS rehab'? :?
Chris
Congrats on that "new" music space. And very nice Jazz Bass!
Enjoy!
Awesome room, Chris. I love it! I wish I had a room that size. Well, maybe not. I'd probably want to fill it to the brim. I had trouble enough with the small room. She's had tons of patience with me on this, but I bet she'd bust a nerve if I bought more than a pack of strings before year's end. :mrgreen:
I've only nick'd the surface on that 11R. Do you run your drum kit through it and on into Pro Tools? I've got my MIDI cables hooked up, but don't have a clue what to do next to get noises out of it like that and have not had the time to read the manual PDF. I've still got it set up for the PA/Keyboard amp. I'll get to that manual soon enough. I think it's third or fourth on the list of things to read and promptly forget. :roll:
Another question for ya. Do you use your monitors for more than mixing? I use mine for all the guitar playing through the 11R, but not sure if it's meant to see that much action. I've heard the "track with headphones, mix with monitors" mantra, but in this case of a solid electrical signal from beginning to end, the only time I can see that it's needed is maybe for a semi-hollow or something. I could run it to the PA/Keyboard amp like I did with the GT-10, but these monitors sound so good.
Oh, another query, if I might. Are you doing any sound treatment, or need to? I've read a bit about it and found out that I should do some testing and such. I think I'm, losing some low end when I plug some backing tracks in, but that's always a tough one for me to sort out. It sounds great for guitar.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
thanks for the pictures Chris. what a great looking and functioning studio. you have everything you need for a creative hermitage. what a cool line up of instruments. at our age when we no longer run around and play football in the backyard it is essential to have our fingers, feet and minds play with our other toys. I would feel quite at home in your attic. 8)
Congrats on that "new" music space. And very nice Jazz Bass!
Enjoy!
Thanks Nuno. Learning the bass is proving to be more enjoyable than I expected. How's your bass playing going?
She's had tons of patience with me on this, but I bet she'd bust a nerve if I bought more than a pack of strings before year's end. :mrgreen:
I know what you mean Roy. :D It's taken me a long time to slowly get the gear together, so it's an interesting coincidence that we've both arrived at a similar position at about the same time.
I've only nick'd the surface on that 11R. Do you run your drum kit through it and on into Pro Tools? I've got my MIDI cables hooked up, but don't have a clue what to do next to get noises out of it like that and have not had the time to read the manual PDF. I've still got it set up for the PA/Keyboard amp. I'll get to that manual soon enough. I think it's third or fourth on the list of things to read and promptly forget. :roll:
Yes, I'm a few months behind on the reading too. But I've had success running the drum kit into the computer via the rack in two ways.
1. Using the kit's own inbuilt sounds it can just be piped in using a1/4" jack like any other audio.
2. Via the regular midi cable into the back of the Eleven rack.
I can't remember offhand if I did that directly in Pro Tools (it's bed-time here so I'll check in the morning). It's easy enough in Garageband which has its own choice of drum kits with the midi tracks. From memory, I used the Aria player from the Garritan World Instruments software when I tried it in Pro Tools. I just can't remember exactly how that is set up in the chain. It's on another computer, so I'll look tomorrow.
Another question for ya. Do you use your monitors for more than mixing? I use mine for all the guitar playing through the 11R, but not sure if it's meant to see that much action. I've heard the "track with headphones, mix with monitors" mantra, but in this case of a solid electrical signal from beginning to end, the only time I can see that it's needed is maybe for a semi-hollow or something. I could run it to the PA/Keyboard amp like I did with the GT-10, but these monitors sound so good.
I'm not needing much volume through the monitors and (like yours) they sound good, so I use them for all sorts of things. I'm not a full bottle on mixing, but there are tricks that can be used to get good results using mostly headphones. Headphone mixing seems to have its fans even among serious mixers.
One trick is to use a 'reference track'. You pick a trusted commercial recording that you like the sound of and which has a similar genre, feel and style to your own track. You then drop it into the DAW as a separate track and use it as a balance reference. The idea being that if - for instance - the bass sounds slightly thin on the reference track, over your brand of headphones, then set yours to a similar level. The commercial recording will have been balanced in a very good room, under much better conditions than we will ever have. So you can 'borrow' their balance. It's apparently a popular technique.
Oh, another query, if I might. Are you doing any sound treatment, or need to? I've read a bit about it and found out that I should do some testing and such. I think I'm, losing some low end when I plug some backing tracks in, but that's always a tough one for me to sort out. It sounds great for guitar.
I downloaded a "bass staircase" file to test my room, and it was definitely not even. Unless you have a top notch room it's pretty certain that some frequencies will either bounce around or else be absorbed by whatever is in the room. When you play the file it sounds as if the volume is going up and down when you hit the problem frequencies. There's no way I have the time, money or patience to build an acoustically flat, clean and balanced room in my space, so I'm not even going to bother to try.
My friend and teacher who has a studio behind his house has a fair bit of treatment hanging on the walls, but when it we tried the test file it had bad spots too. He also has three different systems to play the mix back through - a regular set of powered studio monitors, an average home stereo system, and a pair of cheapo speakers that approximate the sort of thing that you'd get in a car. You could probably add an ipod style earbud to the mix too.
The bottom line is that whatever you do it won't sound perfect on all the possible systems it might end up being played back on, so it will always be a compromise of sorts. I think that the best we can hope for is to get to know the characteristics of our own setups and learn how to adjust for them (which is where the reference tracks will come in handy).
I hope that's of some use. This is a great article by Martin Walker Mixing on Headphones. Well worth bookmarking.
Cheers,
Chris
thanks for the pictures Chris. what a great looking and functioning studio. you have everything you need for a creative hermitage. what a cool line up of instruments. at our age when we no longer run around and play football in the backyard it is essential to have our fingers, feet and minds play with our other toys. I would feel quite at home in your attic. 8)
I'm glad you like it mate. :) You could justly claim to be one of the main "Godfathers" of that room, because it was some pictures of your own wonderful collection of instruments that planted the original seed that said "Geez, I wouldn't mind working my way towards something like that!" Of course the big difference is that you can play all yours a zillion times better than I can. But the pleasure of the journey seems just as good whatever stage I'm at on each instrument, so it's all good.
Cheers,
Chris
That's awesome Chris! Mostly, you have the right attitude and you are enjoying the journey besides just all the gear itself, and your location and space. I couldn't say anything profound - you really have nice stuff, but it is better that you really have fun with it at your own pace and are pursuing the hobby and the music and production with such honest enthusiasm.
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
I've only nick'd the surface on that 11R. Do you run your drum kit through it and on into Pro Tools? I've got my MIDI cables hooked up, but don't have a clue what to do next to get noises out of it like that and have not had the time to read the manual PDF. I've still got it set up for the PA/Keyboard amp. I'll get to that manual soon enough. I think it's third or fourth on the list of things to read and promptly forget. :roll:
OK, this is how it seems to me so far... :)
Your midi cables should deliver the trigger signals to Pro Tools through the rack with no trouble. You can probably do something similar with your keyboard which should have a midi outlet too. You then need some sort of sound modules on the computer to actually play the midi information.
In Garageband it's dead easy as there is a simple menu showing a selection of built in sounds for various midi instruments, and you can just pick something from a menu. So you could hook up a keyboard and use it to play drum sounds, strings, trumpet or whatever you like. How good the results are depend on the quality of your software sounds, and how good you are at manipulating whatever controls the keyboard provides. It's a bit more complex with Pro Tools - more steps.
With Pro Tools your bundle probably came with some synthesizers but I'm not sure about drums. Mine included a programmable drum machine called Boom. To access it I click Track then New then added a new Instrument track. That adds a new column in the channel strip. At the top of that there's a bunch of rectangles marked Inserts A-E. Click on one. Go to Plugins and then Instruments and you should find Boom (there's also a Mini Grand piano that you might like to try using the midi on your keyboard). A new window will come up with the drum machine software. You can either program it (haven't tried that) or select a kit and start hitting!
I also have the Garritan sounds Aria player so I can just run that and then assign it to a Midi track (instead of an Instrument track as above) in the Pro Tools channel strip. The Aria player can handle a huge range of sounds from the Garritan library, including a choice of drums from around the world.
The alternative is to use your drums' own audio sounds but, of course, you can't use the midi cables to send that. You'd use the regular 1/4" jacks and cables for audio.
I hope that makes sense...
Cheers,
Chris
Thanks, Chris.
That all makes total sense. My mis-conception was that I thought the 11R did MIDI processing for that internally. Needing Pro Tools to do it makes total sense now. I'll connect the dots in it tomorrow.
I also have the spare line in ports. There are plenty of drum kits in his set already, so for simple jamming without using Pro Tools I'll just have him hook up that way.
RE: drum kits - Mine came with Boom it appears. I have not opened it up yet, but I see it in there.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
I hope that's of some use. This is a great article by Martin Walker Mixing on Headphones. Well worth bookmarking.
Thanks for this link, really informative and interesting.
