Living room jam and recording session

A very productive Recording/ Jam session took place in my living room last Monday. Blake and myself have begun mashing ideas up to produce an upbeat folky song. We laid down a basic midi drum track and recorded acoustic, electric guitar, and xylophone. Recording was done through a SE2200a microphone using an ART StudioV3 tube preamp and into Pro Tools with an Mbox Mini. A very creative recording booth environment was created using two of my unfinished absorber panels I built in the summer of 2010 (link to this post) with a room divider/ shelf as the walls. The rear wall and roof were blankets found around the house.

We feel very excited about the songs direction and hopefully have something ready to post in the very near future. We will have another jam session tomorrow and work on the structure. But for now, here are some pictures.

SOUND BLASTER

Its been a few weeks and I have 3 new tracks in the making. I am pretty excited about these as I am finally using a bit more guitar in my mix.

I have got hold of some old "Soundblaster" type multimedia speakers and plan to re-mic a series of licks using my Korg M3 through them. I got this idea from a group called Noisia. They run their baselines through a similar computer speaker and create some of the dirtiest baselines I have ever heard. Because these are so small, boxed in plastic and ported for extra bass, it resonates like crazy between a 500 and 100Hz. When I drive it hard, below this I get major rattle as the box wants to crumble and it just spits back at me. Fantastic distortion!

I bounced some pads this morning for track number two.

ABSORBERS AND REFLECTORS

Im working on a new EP that will hopefully follow in a short story of my experiences now I am living in Germany. Although I know that this may take a drastic turn and become something completely different - I will try stick to this idea. It will be a collection of different genres and I want to throw in some acoustic instruments in the mix.

So first I need to make some acoustic treatment. Here's some photos of my duel action reflectors and diffusers I started making yesterday. One side is rockwool with a fabric over the front and on the other side I have mounted a wooden board. I will post the drawings later.

MAKING ACOUSTIC PANELS