One can get silly with hard drive storage these days. My last archive drive was 500GB and cost about £90, but the audio drive in this computer is a whopping 80GB. Sound ridiculous? Not really - a 5 minute song of 24 tracks only takes up 1.2GB tops. More importantly, having a smaller drive FORCES you to backup the drive after every session, which means there will always be a copy taken away in case the unthinkable happens.
Friday 9 November 2007
Size doesn't matter ..
One can get silly with hard drive storage these days. My last archive drive was 500GB and cost about £90, but the audio drive in this computer is a whopping 80GB. Sound ridiculous? Not really - a 5 minute song of 24 tracks only takes up 1.2GB tops. More importantly, having a smaller drive FORCES you to backup the drive after every session, which means there will always be a copy taken away in case the unthinkable happens.
Building the perfect beast ...
Hands and knees again, trying to remember what order all the cards go in ....
Build it, and they will come
I have something of a luxury; with my job I have access to all sorts of abandoned tat. In my studio at home I have an aging ProTools 24 system which I bought at auction from a studio that went bust, as well as modern ProTools LE system. The idea is to use the ProTools 24 system for tracking as it has more channels available, and then mix it on the LE system. The old system is so short on power for mixing its virtually useless but it IS mega stable for tracking.
So this weekend I started building the system. I managed to get hold of a G4 933 with 1GB ram for the princely sum of £86. I have fitted it with a Marathon rackmount kit. Took a bit of persuasion, but it is now happily running OS 10.3.4 and ProTools TDM 6.4, with a ProTools d24 and a DSP farm card in it. There is 24 bit ADAT bridge on there, and a single 888/24. One channel of the ADAT bridge is connected to an 8 channel mic pre unit, and I'm trying to track down another for the other ADAT port - all together that will give us 24 channels of input, 16 with mic preamps. We'll be recording at 44.1kHz /24 Bit as there will be fewer artifacts when converting to CD than 48k, and the system has been happily tested recording 24 tracks for an hour.
Its strange to think that this system, built from bits that were destined for the bin, would have cost over £10,000 about 5 years ago. Old technology, yes, but its reliable. And most importantly, ProTools IS the industry standard, and if we need to go to a studio for any reason, we can take our sessions and just carry on working. But for the moment, we can record at our own pace, and then I can take the sessions home to edit and mix ....
So this weekend I started building the system. I managed to get hold of a G4 933 with 1GB ram for the princely sum of £86. I have fitted it with a Marathon rackmount kit. Took a bit of persuasion, but it is now happily running OS 10.3.4 and ProTools TDM 6.4, with a ProTools d24 and a DSP farm card in it. There is 24 bit ADAT bridge on there, and a single 888/24. One channel of the ADAT bridge is connected to an 8 channel mic pre unit, and I'm trying to track down another for the other ADAT port - all together that will give us 24 channels of input, 16 with mic preamps. We'll be recording at 44.1kHz /24 Bit as there will be fewer artifacts when converting to CD than 48k, and the system has been happily tested recording 24 tracks for an hour.
Its strange to think that this system, built from bits that were destined for the bin, would have cost over £10,000 about 5 years ago. Old technology, yes, but its reliable. And most importantly, ProTools IS the industry standard, and if we need to go to a studio for any reason, we can take our sessions and just carry on working. But for the moment, we can record at our own pace, and then I can take the sessions home to edit and mix ....
Turning Point
So fast forward a year. Skeleton Crew have been gigging for 11 months and getting great responses. As well as the demos that are on the myspace page, we have released a live E.P., recorded at the Intake Club in Mansfield. Its a good representation of what the band sounds like, but the time has come to make a new recording, and so that is where this story starts...
Rather than spending on recording studio fees, and because the first recordings came out so well, we decided to do the recordings ourselves. The reason? Simple. Studios can have great gear and and good rooms, but you're paying by the hour, and therefore lack the luxury of time to get things right from the start and have a relaxed a natural attitude to the music. So we're putting the gear together ourselves, to take as long as we need to get the songs right. I'm really looking forward to it as I have never recorded, edited and mixed a full album myself; it'll be a good test of all the skills I have tried to learn over the last few years.
As well as the dozen or so songs that make up the Skeleton Crew live set, the last few weeks have been busy writing times. Songs have been written and emailed back and forth - about half a dozen, with many more on the way. We have already started rehearsing the first now that we have brief gig break. And I have started to assemble our recording system for the project...
Rather than spending on recording studio fees, and because the first recordings came out so well, we decided to do the recordings ourselves. The reason? Simple. Studios can have great gear and and good rooms, but you're paying by the hour, and therefore lack the luxury of time to get things right from the start and have a relaxed a natural attitude to the music. So we're putting the gear together ourselves, to take as long as we need to get the songs right. I'm really looking forward to it as I have never recorded, edited and mixed a full album myself; it'll be a good test of all the skills I have tried to learn over the last few years.
As well as the dozen or so songs that make up the Skeleton Crew live set, the last few weeks have been busy writing times. Songs have been written and emailed back and forth - about half a dozen, with many more on the way. We have already started rehearsing the first now that we have brief gig break. And I have started to assemble our recording system for the project...
In the beginning ....
God created the world. And it was good. Then a bunch of other stuff happened. Then Skeleton Crew created music. And it was not so good, but rapidly got better. And then it was decided to record some of the noise that they made.
So this blog is basically a blow by blow coverage of the recording of the first Skeleton Crew recording. That is to say, the third - the first venture was 5 songs, which was whittled to 4, that became the first demo. Graham and I did the guitars, Steve the bass and Chris the vocals, and between us myself, Graham and Stu programmed all the drums. We did it all in Logic, and the rest was recorded at our regular rehearsal room in the Scout Hut in Langar. I rushed the mixes together to give to Drew when he joined the band, but they turned out well enough to grace the myspace page for long enough, and even become favourites ....
So this blog is basically a blow by blow coverage of the recording of the first Skeleton Crew recording. That is to say, the third - the first venture was 5 songs, which was whittled to 4, that became the first demo. Graham and I did the guitars, Steve the bass and Chris the vocals, and between us myself, Graham and Stu programmed all the drums. We did it all in Logic, and the rest was recorded at our regular rehearsal room in the Scout Hut in Langar. I rushed the mixes together to give to Drew when he joined the band, but they turned out well enough to grace the myspace page for long enough, and even become favourites ....