john

Hey An essential for Studio One beginners and DAW beginners overall:

Lol Helen.... and welcome (even though it is literally years later!) as you seem to be the same person, do you want to merge your accounts?

Hi and welcome to our community Good luck with your release!

A new set of experienced ears can make a huge difference. It sounds like you also gained important experience, which of course you build into future mixes. It also sounds like they went through some production, mix and mastering. What are you working on now Greg?

I’m actually surprise at how much cheaper it seems to be. I think it will cost roughly $250 -$300 for good quality materials. That is 19mm dual-side laminated plywood, cut, sanded, edged and delivered by the suppliers using a CNC router (ie computer controlled cutter). I am awaiting a complete quote. Additional materials include screws of 2 different lengths and rack mount strips for equipment, rack screws and bolts, 2 cable racks, and a pair of heavy duty drawer runners, costing approximately $70. In total, this will give me 6u of equipment on each side of the desk top, with a further 8u possible between the legs on either side. I also have an 8u mobile floor rack made from MDF. Just on the desk that is 28u of space. ATM I have 18u of gear. I plan to buy 2 modular/semi-modular synths in the next 12 months, that’s almost all u accounted for on the desk with the mobile rack to allow for further expansion. The desk itself has a keyboard shelf capable of taking an 88 note keyboard, with shelves above angled racks for monitors and a central space for a computer monitor and my faderport 16. I will also have space at the side for my Boss RC-505 loopstation. I need to rearrange my room as my streaming PC and 16 channel Spirit mixer will be off to the side on another desk and my Nord Grand is set up on the other side. One huge benefit is that the backs of the gear will be much more accessible. You’ve no idea what a pain that was with my rack gear previously located in a 12u rack on the desk with no easy access to the back. The biggest benefit will be my workflow when recording or mixing. I needed something better for streaming too. I think this would have cost in the order of $1000 to buy. Juicy!

Nice one Steve!

Hey You will find a section on side chain here: https://www.songstuff.com/recording/article/compression/ Side chain relates to the source of a threshold trigger and using it for other purposes. One first uses was for the “ducking” effect, ie when a DJ speaks the music automatically turns down to let the DJ’s voice cut through. It can be used for many other purposes too. For example helping a vocal cut through, to automatically affect reverb levels etc. Cheers John

Hey Gang For years I’ve used a standard desk, with a home made 19” rack, in my home studio. I know a good set up can seriously improve your workflow. After all, spending time tweaking my set up has already brought me many benefits but I know it could be better. I began by looking at what studio furniture was available for improved gear layout and workspace. There are quite a lot on the market, ranging from around $400 to about $4000 in the home studio market, with pro studio furniture going into several thousands of dollars. The trouble was, I liked the more expensive studio furniture, but had a budget that could just about be pushed to the cheapest. No great surprise there! So, I’ve started designing my own. I can get wood/MDF cut to size and shape fairly cheaply. I have been learning to use a CAD package to put the design together. I’ve also been sourcing other parts, rack strips and drawer runners. I’ll post up some photos when I get to that point. Cheers John

A good job with the cover and the video Citra. A nice voice too

Have you progressed your crowd funding? It’s not something I have done personally. I preferred the Patreon model of sponsored content provision but I think artists can do this fairly easily on their own. Working with a larger bulk sum of money smaller platforms have a trust issue coupled with a smaller user base. No matter which platform you go with you will need to invest time and effort into creating reward bundles and a thought out marketing campaign. Just asking for money on it’s own doesn’t get very far. Sadly most platforms don’t provide detailed stats on the percentage of active accounts that achieve their goals.

I was just looking at your profile and checked out your YouTube channel. Consider adding some of your videos to your About Me page along with info and photos to make it a fuller artist profile.

Hey there Citra, welcome to Songstuff!

Hey Raven Welcome to Songstuff!

How big a vinyl run do you plan? Whenever someone says they plan a release I am full of questions... even more so when they plan to do a physical release. How much do you need to raise? Do you have an existing fanbase?

Certainly channeling Vangelis at times. A nice selection of musical nibbles Jim. When are you expecting to make your release?

In a cafe I don’t sing at full volume or anywhere near it. I tend to vocally doodle, quietly until I click record... and then I speech-level-sing. If out and about at shops, walking about, I sing at a gently projected volume. I used to do it at my old job. I started playing at 4. My mother was a singer and piano teacher. From a very young age my sisters and I used to be trooped out to perform for her friends, especially her music friends. I was performing in public from 8-ish, singing in choirs, then playing in youth orchestras and pipe bands amongst other things. I decided at some point that the best way to deal with any notion of embarrassment is to sing as I go about my daily activities. It also meant I got a lot more writing time and practicing! Life’s too short for embarrassment lol Add to that I find if you engage the people who react, they just accept it. In a cafe I’m not performing, but not hiding either. More respecting their space. Sort of. Lol People do ask, probably because I’ll be scribbling on a pad, recording etc. I’ve even been known to do something basic in GarageBand, though I use headphones. But when they ask, they are often interested and quite accepting. I guess I also tend to pick places where chat is louder than the background music. That way I am not ruining someone’s enjoyment of a song. Being sensitive to the environment also helps. If people are having a deep and meaningful, it’s probably the wrong vibe.

I used to, but haven’t done for ages. Life got in the road of my music activity. My gear got old. Revitalising my studio was an essential component of moving forward with becoming much more active again with my own music. I honestly spent so much energy helping others that I had little time for my music... it took a while to appreciate that I help others at my best by making sure that I progress my own music as a priority. People listen more to what you say when they see you doing! I enjoy helping others, but music is such an integral part of my life I can’t believe it was almost shelved, at least in terms of recording and production.

yes. At least if you get the pro version... which is what you get with Sphere. That’s $180 spread through the year, for the pro Studio, plus all their software including VST and most of their audio libraries, training videos, user patches and cloud space. Considering you get all updates, that’s pretty sweet.

I love my Tannoy’s. I kind of fell in love with Tannoy as a make after I experienced some Tannoy Little Red’s and a stonking pair of Super Red’s in a studio I worked in. A superb sound.

hey Haim Shim I’ve actually just updated my studio (after taking these pics). I’ll try and post up some new pics later today (I have some new gear racks, two new keyboards and a control surface with some near field monitors). The monitors in the pic are Tannoy M1 Cherry. They make some awesome studio monitors. Strictly speaking M1’s are vintage HiFi speakers, I used as monitors because they were always meant to be part of a multi-monitor set up, allowing me to do mix comparisons. I build mixes using my cans and active nearfields (Presonus Eric’s 4.5’s) then check out mixes on the Tannoys run through a Cambridge Audio power amp, on Fischer speakers run through a Marantz power amp + via a Fischer power amp, also with a great quality Denon system, and via a gaming system set up with a subwoofer. I also have a mono radio amp and speaker but I can’t remember the last time I used it. I keep threatening to swap the tannoy’s for some Yamaha HS7’s. The Tannoy’s would then be in the alternate set up, probably hooked up to the Marantz, leaving the Fischer system intact. It would save a speaker swap during mix checks. As ever, money is the deciding factor... and so the HS7’s will have to wait.

Thanks James. Any questions just ask. As ever, please feel free to tell your musical friends about our community

Hey James I know we spoke in PM but I thought I would drop you a quick welcome here too! Cheers John

Hey For a long time I used full height monitor stands, with points on the feet to reduce the acoustic coupling, colouring the sound and helping the bass frequencies to carry. The larger the surface area of contact, the greater the degree of acoustic coupling. Recently I bought some near-field monitors, which are mounted on my desktop. I was surprised at how bass dominated the tone was. Then I realised just how strong the coupling was between the monitor and desktop. The foam foot pads were so thin the effect would have been minimal. Add to that the table would act like a large acoustic amplifier. So I bought myself some tabletop stands (which were on my shopping list anyway, in order to place the monitors at ear height) and some isolation pads (which hadn’t been on my shopping list). When they came through I played back a track before adding stands, played the track again, added the isolation pads and again played the track. I was surprised at each stage. Overall, I am sure my neighbours will appreciate the cut down in bass spill, but my surprise was actually in how much the sound I was hearing was being coloured by the acoustic coupling. The stands made a good improvement but the isolation pads made a huge difference. Just as well I hadn’t done much mixing at that point and no mastering. I had thought the effect would be barely noticeable, but for my set up it really was not the case. Oh to have an SPL meter! I never thought I would utter that sentence! Lol. Cheers John

Thought I’d ask a bit about what instruments you play. Please include singing / rapping!

...an internet addict. Hey gang Well I’ve had a week of crap internet connection and flakey WiFi. Time for a new router. For all I hate these moments of crap internet connection, they are still valuable if only to remind myself what a absolute internet junkie I am. Ok, I run a website, it shouldn’t be a surprise, and yet, when it happens, until it happens, I don’t really have a grasp of the extent of my dependency! It must be a theme. I am a bit like that with technology full stop. I blame music lol. It started there! Anyone else want to get something off their chest? Cheers John