The Byre

There seems to be some confusion here about who does what! The producer of a record has much the same function as the producer of the film - ie, he or she brings all the different threads together. This includes money, session musians, booking studios, looking after the main artists, talking to the lable and making sure that everybody gets paid. He is NOT the studio owner, the band's manager, the musical director or the sound engineer. All these people have very different functions. Some tasks may overlap of course, but the main function of a producer is to have access to the money that gets the whole thing done. Hardly trhe task of the studio owner. www.the-byre.com

It must be a very old list as they have had an 88R for some time now.

Keilan's liust is somewhat strange: No DAWs, no modern desks, no drum miics, no building, no designer, no tracking recorder, no piano, no organs, no e-pianos, no modern reverbs, no 5.1 facility and above all, no monitors.

We always used to build our own. Put a headphone amp and a small speaker into a closed box and feed a plasic tube up to the vocal mic. A spare computer speaker does the job perfectly BTW and putting it all together makes a great DIY project!

Quote: "The manager is as mad as a hatter but really showers the place with top knotch kit." ____________________________________________________________________________ You have to love that description! The truth is that we use completely standard equipment. If you check out the kit-list of any of the usual studios where artists (that people have heard of) record, the list of equipment is almost exactly the same. There are just three standard desks (SSL, AMS-Neve, Amek) two pianos (Steinway, Boesendorfer) one organ (Hammond B3/A100) and only one reverb (Lexicon 960L) a handful of mics (Neumann, AKG, Shure, Audix, Brauner) a handful of DAWs (Radar, Soundscape, ProTools, Nuendo, ProLogic) two reel-to-reels (Studer, Otari) very few monitors (Genelec, M&K, KRK, Dynauduio and the inevitable NS10s) and a few makers of outboard (Eventide, SPL, Manley, Aphex, TC and others). It is by using this standard kit that one gets the sound of a commercial record. You also need a good engineer that knows his way around this kit in his sleep. ____________________________________________________________________________ All this leads to the question: How does one choose a studio? Well, certainly, listen to recordings made there and (possibly more important) listen to recordings made by the person who is going to record you. A good engineer is the most important piece of kit in the studio! But despite all the rubbish spoken about making a hit single in your own bedroom or in some small demo room somewhere, a good engineer needs good equipment just as a good carpenter needs a sharp chisel. The problem for the customer is that those people in the industry that make the decisions (A&R, management, tour promoters, etc.) are no longer musically literate. In other words, they cannot hear good music for what it is. They are incapable of hearing past the mix and listening to the tunes. They expect to hear a 'record' (i.e. a complete and polished product) every time. In the 'good-old-days' producers and A&R would just liten out for a tune and the performance. That means that if you are trying to pitch your music with a tour manager or a record company, you have to make a sound that sounds as goood as music that is produced for thousands and thousands of Pounds. More importantly, you are expected to produce a sound that can only be achieved using the kind of kit I have listed above and by someone with a formal education in audio engineering and years of experience. If all you require is a rough demo to pitch your music with pubs and small rooms holding up to a couple of hundred people, then a budget demo room is the right answer. But if you try to pitch a budget recording with one of the big boys, it will end up in 'file 13' after just 10 seconds.

We use the dDrum system and it is simply the best out there and the choice of professionals. A trick many pros use is to put silent fibre glass skins on an ordinary kit and then put dDrum triggers on them or even inside them where they cannot be seen and still put fake mics up and keep the big drum logo on the kick skin. That way, they keep the sponsors happy (Ludwig, DW, Yamaha, Shure, Sennheiser etc.) and have the troble free life of using dDrums. If you wantr to know what dDrums sound like, just listen to any Rammstein record. They have never used anything else (There is even a little joke on the last album - it states that all drums were recorded in some place in Sweden where Clavia make all the dDrum kits!) We use dDrums sometimes to beef-up recordings made at other studios where the drums lacked the impact of propper drum mics or on recordings where the drum playing is just too 'flabby' even for editing in Soundscape or ProTools. The audio track can be used to trigger the head and this is invaluble in the studio. The only down side of dDrums is that the headphone output is very low, so you will need a separate headphone amp for those all important practice sessions. And there is of course the price - the head costs about 1,000 and a full kit about 2,500 which is less than a comparable Roland kit (V-Drum Pro series). If you just need electronic drums to augment an exsisting kit or for practice at home, try the cheap no-name kits. www.music-store.com sell an 8-pad no-name (they call it the Fame DD-602) for just 500 Euros or about 350. It is a re-badged Yamaha and not bad at all.

You might find that www.musicstore.com is cheaper and better, but, as always, check and compare! Ask the local stores in Aberdeen (or whereever you are) to match the Music Store or Thomann prices.