a suh GFSA,
It's been a long while since I posted. Some of you may remember me for my enormous pedalboard.
I've since changed track. I sold all my guitar gear (save for my guitars) and invested in studio gear. November last year I found this empty studio space about 800m up the road from me. The owner of the property built it as a music production studio, so it's properly treated, none of the walls are parralell, double glass, double doors etc. It's a nice space (except for the leaking roof ☹). I partnered up with a friend, Nick Olsen, who's been a pretty successful songwriter in the past. He was a member of Perez in the early 2000s, and moved to Germany not long after to pursue music. He cut an album with Steve Albini in 2011. He's a pretty cool dude.
The studio has been running well so far (
https://www.facebook.com/olsenandbasckinstudios/?fref=nf). I've started a record label with a few other guys and we're gonna be premiering our first act on Noisey later this month (Noisey is the music blog of vice.com).
We've also started up live sessions in studio. Probably my favourite has been Guy Buttery (
We also had God Mother, a Swedish grindcore band come through. That was quite something.
Studio gear tho. My god. I thought pedals were expensive! We've got some nice gear, but I'm very very keen to upgrade the converters. We have a Neumann TLM103, a 70s MD421, some really great lewitt mics, the usual assortment of 57s/58s, an audio technica 4033, a couple RODE valve mics. A nice selection. I'd like a pair of multi pattern LDCs next: most likely the Lewitt 640s.
Mics run into a Focusrite ISA828, or an LA610 mk2 for vocals. I have two dbx 160's that for the moment I've only used on kick in and snare top. They definitely add some great flavour. The ISA is converted by an old 002r, which sends audio via ADAT to my Liquid Saffire 56. I want to upgrade this asap. Definitely the weakest part of the chain. Monitoring is done on Genelec M040's and cross referenced on HS50s. I run logic pro x with waves plugs (thanks to my partner).
We're doing a lot of everything. Hip hop, jazz, electro, future, punk, indie. Guitars and basses are tracked thru the kemper, and I send an analog signal out to an amp in the live room. We have an orange tiny terror, laney lionheart, fender twin, and a JCM800. So a good selection of amps and the kemper to boot ?
Some tracks done recently:
http://texxandthecity.com/2016/06/the-pranks
http://hoursdbn.bandcamp.com
So yeah, it's been quite a shift from just playing guitar in a band, but I feel it's the best place for my talents so far. I run this studio whilst working as a grad assistant at UKZN and competing my masters in law (so yeah, I pretty much never sleep).
Here is an album of the studio when it started. Quite a few things have changed.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.156460591392943.1073741828.156453501393652&type=3
