Whats in your home studio setup? whats good/not? and how have you learned?

[Don Seer]

I'm always curious what people are using to make beats / music, and what's good/bad about what they are using and how they've learned. In the spirit of this new section, this post counts for those doing other things like art!


As many of you know I first got a guitar about 10 years ago, however things have progressed a bit since then! I found I was picking it up every couple months, spending some time over a few weeks trying to learn either from books or youtube and then forgetting about it for a while. This was made even worse when I started seeing my girlfriend as she lived up on the coast and although I had another guitar I kept there it didn't get used a lot.

Just before Christmas 2010 I bit the bullet and started having lessons, and I did this up until August 2014. (A total of 148 lessons!). I now meet a couple guys where I now live and exchange ideas/jam with them. With them I play mostly acoustic. The end of lessons and playing with them has a slight overlap, and I think it helped drive home that i wasnt getting what i wanted out of my lessons anymore, and didnt need em.

Running through all that I've learned a lot of music theory in general, timing and a whole bunch of other stuff plus my ear is now more developed/trained. I also now know how to tweak electric guitars pretty well as I've done some buying & selling and rebuilding/fixing.

So we eventually bought a house, and I moved up to the (west!) coast (of the UK!  ), when we were shopping for our house together in I had 1 feature demand. As my girlfriend works in education and has a lot marking/planning to do I needed to give her space to do that. I wanted to have a space for playing guitar, and having PCs and the like. Part of the reason for my inactivity here, including the time before we lived together is that my PC wasn't actually set up for quite a while! About 11 months after moving in and getting other issues without our house sorted I completed my 'Man Cave'. From a single car garage shell I put up stud walls and plaster, painted it and had it carpeted. I've got a sound proofed room, with a comfy armchair, full 5.1 surround sound. big screen tv, xbox 360, and desk with PCs plus space for guitars on the wall.

My home studio set up is as follows.

Soundcraft Compact10 mixing desk

I always wondered how to run the audio from several PCs into an amp properly. Turns out this is the solution.

I have a 2ch USB interface going into my PC coming from the recording output of the desk. As inputs the desk can take a record deck (it has RIAA reversal), an onboard guitar DI (which is rare), microphones and any other RCA inputs like ipods.

Basically if I can play something out of a device, I can record it via the desk. I wish I had one (although maybe a bit smaller!) years ago.

Recording software
I'm currently using Mixcraft 6 Home Studio. Its the PC equivalent of garage band.
I've just wanted to be able to layer up me playing guitar over songs or backing tracks (or myself) and it was the best thing I could find for how I wanted to work.

My favoured method of recording is to point a dynamic mic at the speaker, another cool feature is the ability to remote start/stop recording via an iPad app.

I need a condensor mic to record my acoustic guitar or vocals live though. (although my singing sucks!)


instruments - Guitars
So I might have a few of these now There is a recurring theme that I favour white/blonde bodies & maple necked for the electrics.

Squier Vintage Modified Telecaster SSH  My first electric. Has a normal telecaster bridge pickup, middle strat one, and a mini humbucker in the neck. A great all rounder. the mini humbucker is great for smoother blues leads & rhythm.

Squier Standard Telecaster  I got this one for a 1/4 what it is worth, an absolute bargain. Although the strat is more widely known the telecaster is a great rhythm and industry standard recording guitar. really the unsung hero of the guitar world. the uninitiated gravitate towards strats but tele's are where its at!

Squier Standard Stratocaster I got this one to round off the possibilities sound wise. my last acquisition. great for surf and very versatile.

The two Squier Standards were both made in the mid 90s in the same (korean) factory and I purposefully found the strat to match the telecaster.

Marlin Sidewinder  A strat copy i've got purely set up for playing slide. (don't play slide much, but its nice to just grab it off the wall!)

electro acoustic with cutaway - another bargain. play this one the most right now with the guys i jam with once a  week.

BASS! I have a bass too (copy of a fender precision bass) but not used it much. see the notes about the LBP-1 below..

also have a classical guitar, and a ukulele but they get hardly any use either.


instruments - Other

I tend to pick up other small toy like instruments but the other main thing of interest is I have an Evolution MK-149 midi keyboard which has touch sensitive keys and pitch and modulation wheels. and a cheap usb->midi interface. I've had a quick play with it using the moog emulation on mixcraft. I know its there when I want it.

Amps

Fender Champion 600 'little blondie' Ltd edition reissue a proper valve amp, amazing response. using one makes you realise why people rave about valves. clean sound. I've upgraded the valves on this too. the original "champ" is one of the most famous recording amps. (lits not big on volume but is high on quality and tone.)
Roland Cube 20X this is the amp i've had for a few years, nice all rounder but pedals have more depth to the control available than the onboard effects.
Bass Amp cheap dedicated bass amp. need to use the LBP-1 though.


Pedals
ABY this will split one guitar into two outputs, i can run two amps OR run one channel into the rocksmith game for the 360, and hear myself back on my real amp at the same time. tends to add a bit of low end though.
electrox harmonix lbp-1 this is a 'linear power booster' it basically pre-amps whatever instrument you have plugged in and makes that shit louder. i bought it to boost my bass when the new 2014 version of rocksmith came out as the volume was too low for the game to pick up

danelelectro cool cat fuzz v2 my lil sister got me this for xmas. great for fuzz sounds, but you really have to experiment to get it in the pocket. its not a set it and leave it kind of efffect.
bad monkey this is an overdrive pedal that boosts and slightly distorts the sound for classic rockness. the fender champ doesnt handle low end well but as this has an EQ I can take that off with this.
digitiech hardwire rv-7 reverb this was pricey. but is a hugely versatile 'pro' reverb pedal. it had the best sprig reveb (think another great west coats export.. surf music) I could find without spending a lot of money on a reverb tank. the other modes also shit all over what i'd been using on the roland cube 20x.
boss ds-1 classic disortion pedal.


note: the only things I've bought new or paid full price for are the Squier VM Telecaster SSH, the fender amp, the reverb pedal and the squier strat and mixcraft 6. Everything else I hustled buying/selling other gear for and a huge amount of that came from money I had left from being being cash last xmas

[jeanmiche777]

Interesting post, I wish I had that kind of man cave... Maybe in a few years

I am the prime example of a ''bedroom'' producer, I don't have much gear nor musical knowledge, and it just shows in my music. That being said, I like to rearrange samples and I've been doing it for a little bit more than 5 years, so I guess that is my instrument. I never watched any kind of tutorial videos, I just like to listen to the samples I found.

I only have my PC with Fruity Loops Studio (with a lot of plugins and drums sounds I collected over the years) with a turntable to link my vinyls to my PC. I find most of my samples  on the internet.

I don't even have a proper sound system, because I live in a small appartment with walls made of cardboard. So I invested in a few different headphones. I do have a pretty good system in my car, so most of the time, the car ride is the better way for me to analyze my music, but it's annoying for me because I can't make the little adjustments I can hear while I'm in my car.

[BIGTIMELA]

1) Mbox 3
2) iMac 27 inch
3) mashine studio beat machine
4) Pro Tools 11
5) Axium 81 Midi Controller

I'm going to replace the Mbox with a Apollo and get a preamp and either a akg mic or the blue mic. I want to buy Serato also.

[Don Seer]

nice. the maschine looks awesome.

what pro's/con's do you have with your setup? like why do you want to change things.

looking at pro tools again these days vs 15 years ago it looks a lot easier to use, its looking a lot everything else is trying to look like pro tools and they're having to adapt too

Interesting post, I wish I had that kind of man cave... Maybe in a few years

As I said its taken a bit of hustle, and time, but it doesn't add up to a huge amount

I am the prime example of a ''bedroom'' producer, I don't have much gear nor musical knowledge, and it just shows in my music. That being said, I like to rearrange samples and I've been doing it for a little bit more than 5 years, so I guess that is my instrument. I never watched any kind of tutorial videos, I just like to listen to the samples I found.

I only have my PC with Fruity Loops Studio (with a lot of plugins and drums sounds I collected over the years) with a turntable to link my vinyls to my PC. I find most of my samples  on the internet.

I tried that too. In the past I had several drum machines and also tried fruity loops (and reason a bit) and going back further stuff like protracker/screamtracker I never got anywhere because I didn't a have certain basic understanding.

once i was in the guitar realm more i tried out ableton live and a few other things. mixcraft works for me, but its weakness appears to be using your own drum samples. (they do a product called beatcraft) or something other vst can be used to provide the beat. they do have a large drum library built in though and it can use rewire across to reason or other things too

The two main things that learning guitar have given me are :
1. how to count rhythm in various time signatures and importantly how to break down 4/4 in to 1/4 / 1/8 / 1/16ths (1,2,3,4 vs 1+2+3+4+ vs 1e+a,2e+a,3e+a,4e+a). this is almost the biggest most important thing i've ever learned about music
2. a little music theory, just about note/scales chords/keys.  i learned how to solo/improvise over blues backing tracks in the correct keys - i know what wrong notes sound like now and why they don't fit

I don't even have a proper sound system, because I live in a small appartment with walls made of cardboard. So I invested in a few different headphones. I do have a pretty good system in my car, so most of the time, the car ride is the better way for me to analyze my music, but it's annoying for me because I can't make the little adjustments I can hear while I'm in my car.

If you saw what my friend is using to make amazing beats you'd know its not all in the gear!

he's using a laptop with reason, some crappy hi-fi shelf speakers and reviews his tracks on an mp3 phone and in ear headphones..  (check out out of his soundcloud out here https://soundcloud.com/rasredi)

Guitarists always joke about "all the gear and no idea", with them its all about touch/feel/timing a good player is good one whatever gear he's using.

Theres a really old mtv interview with dre (the one with the "football " of tapes) you'll see he talks about the importance of trying stuff on different systems. if you watch the "West Coast Theory" dvd evidence takes his new track straight out the car to test it and i've heard jack whites studio in nashville has a small FM transmitter so he can leave the studio, sit in the car, and see what it would sound like via radio play!

[Raphael]

I bought a M-Audio Keystation Mini 32 which is the cheapest MIDI keyboard available. After trying different DAW's that suck the joy out of making music i settled on Mixcraft because it was easy to use. I haven't really gotten anywhere because i don't know how to create melodies. I used to play the piano as a kid and i'm thinking of taking lessons again.

[Don Seer]

glad i'm not the only mixcraft user

whatever gets you going! not sure about on keys, but on a guitar all i'd do is use a scale in the right key (like a pentatonic) and noodle around within that.  not that i have much experience keyboard wise, but i assume its kind of easier on a guitar in some ways because the notes are in a grid where you can create routes easier and slide between notes etc

its nice to take lessons when you're older because you can choose your teacher based upon what you want, not just going for grades etc

[Don Seer]

Have posted some pictures of my set up here > http://www.dubcnn.com/connect/index.php?topic=313919.0