Hi everyone,
Here’s a quick blog about the recent home studio process for my sixth solo album Love, Lawn & Seagulls.
I LOVE writing and playing music in my home studio and experimenting with songs. Once I have the basic chord, song structure and tempo I have been enjoying letting the song go where it needs to go so to speak.
For example, for the song Sad Songs from Love, Lawn & Seagulls I decided to sample the family pianola because as mentioned previously I love its sound, but it’s tuned a semi tone down so the old strings don’t break. I used my MIDI keyboard to play the individually recorded keys which was successful.
I am loving Studio One because of the ability to include the chord chart of the song. It makes a big difference for play throughs while the song is still new. I have used Logic and liked the capability there to switch between music manuscript or keyboard views. Now the Studio One upgrade has this too as well as the Lyric chart display option. I mention this as it is great to find software that works with ease to achieve what you want to do all in one space.
One outlay which improved the recorded sound was upgrading to a Taylor semi acoustic guitar which captured the sparkle that was missing with my well-loved traded in ol’ guitar. Other than that, I am grateful for the Reinhart Condenser microphone that my friend Mickey Levis designed, manufactured, and was selling years ago on the road. I have found it invaluable. Another recent purchase which complements this was an isolation pop filter for sound proofing the condenser microphone (‘cos it needs it). I bought it for $50 and avoided excess costs to soundproof the walls. It also saved me when I had to move into an apartment for a couple of weeks during renovations by keeping the external noises out while recording the final vocals for Croon.
Finally, while still away from home I received the mastered versions of the songs from William Bowden and listened to them on a better sound system than the one I’ve got with a great subwoofer. I couldn’t help feeling life’s good : ) pun intended ; )
