Six months into goofy time...

...is it too soon to start a “let’s see everybody’s recording/practicing/songwriting space” thread? Some of us have probably made fairly recent changes or additions (or subtractions, shudder) to their music space in the downtime.

After years of family busy-ness and parenthood and my gear being scattered and mostly packed away—aside from my bass rig set up at the band practice space—I have found recent time to start setting back up for song creation and recording at home. My son just left for college and some things have slowed down in my life, and a longtime transatlantic e-mail buddy and I have finally made good on our exchanged threats of collaborating on a musical project. It really helps provide something to look forward to under current conditions of isolation and no band hang time.

So I’ve been setting up a new practice/noodling/songwriting/
recording space in a little alcove in one of our outbuildings that I use for office space.



Lap steel, guitar, coupla basses, my Peavey TKO I like playing all my instruments through at home, Magnus electric organ, two ancient drum machines (PAiA Drummer Boy and Ace-Tone Rhythm Ace) and a slightly newer one (Boss DR-5). Laptop with various software. Little Behringer mixer. IRig 2 interface. Joyo British Sound gets used for recording bass direct through the iRig.

My collab partner and I have been using the BandLab app on my iPhone and his tablet, so it’s pretty quick and dirty but it really cuts down on file upload/download and has been a lot of fun to use. So the laptop is sitting idle at the moment, and I was taking the photos with the iPhone.

Yeah, I need to dust the lap steel and the Dean bass, I know...

 

I’m all for seeing anything from the ridiculous to the Spartan! Any of that might give me ideas or inspiration on what to do next. It’s interesting to me to see how people set up creative workspace. Feel free to post sound clips of stuff you’ve done in your space too. I intend to soon, once we get something finished. Several things are in “extremely rough mix, not all the lyrics in place” status. But one tune does include the organ, the white Squier P-bass and the black Squier guitar on my end, and it should be sort of finished soon...

 

Awesome! Thanks!

I think I remember seeing shots of the rooms of left-handedness in some other thread. Your hours looks like a fuuuuuuuuuuuuuun place to hang out.

As an aside, is your avatar photo of Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand? I just heard “The Sun is Shining” on the radio yesterday!

 

Not in my photo above is a Crown MicroTech 600 I picked up real cheap to power my bass cab right before the goofy times started. I’ve powered it up twice, I think.

Interesting to see ART gear. Reminds me of the Musicians Friend catalog days of yesteryear...

@24 track, do you have a thread somewhere about your virtual guitar rig?

 

Well, I don’t have cabling to hook up my actual mics yet; hope to solder up my own sometime soon, so in the spirit of quick-and-dirty, let’s see what BandLab can do, I...uh...

...well, I held my phone above the sound vents, maybe 16” above them, while playing a descending little reggae thing on the upbeats with one hand. And you know what? It worked great! It made a very accurate recording of what it sounds like, including the blower that is about 2 dB quieter than the actual notes, and the plastic-sounding clacks as the keys finish up their mile-long travel.

I jumped on BandLab’s noise gate and gated out the blower noise between the little upbeat stabs—it was easy—and what was left sounded pretty cool, like a lo-fi accordion.

Once I have cabling together I can experiment with condenser vs dynamic mics on it and see if I can do better (maybe I’ll be able to play it better by then too) but on the one song I’ve used it on so far, it was a blast...well worth its $11.00 junk shop price tag!

I have an old dynamic announcer mic with a 1/4” male jack on it, and I’m curious to see how the organ sounds with some fake Leslie speaker courtesy of my old DOD chorus pedal set at a high swirly rate. But even dry, no effects, it’s a fun texture for simple background parts.

 

@24 track and @Ed Driscoll, if I could like each of your posts 340 times I would. Thanks for taking the time to post those photos; those spaces look great. Looks like some pretty involved panel angles and joinery and acoustic treatment to keep the standing waves/flutter echoes under control...something I may have to deal with once (if) I progress beyond the tiny constraints of what I’m doing now.