- reserving this space -

It has taken me years of working to put together my own private studio, and then have the intersection of the much needed factors all line up: the gear, the space, the time. At some point I didn't have the gear, but had the space and time. Then I got the gear, but didn't have the space or time.

Now my bottleneck for the last two years has been a space/time thing. I simply need the time and the physical space to set up all my shit and and be able to use it undisturbed over prolonged periods of time. In the house where we are now that's been a problem. And my son's room is just a bathroom away from where I have my "control room" set up.

But as luck would have it we're moving back to our house at the beach in SC in May, and I get my old studio room back. Not only will I have the physical space, but I'll also have much more time because I can record in that room 24/7 without bothering any neighbors or anyone on the other side of the house.

In the house where we are now even playing drums has to be done sparringly when no one is here. And not only can it make too much noise in the house, it can also be heard by neighbors. So not wanting to be too much of an anarchist in a nice neighborhood, I've curbed a lot of my drumming time. And have done no recording with drums here at all.

The top picture shows my set up during a session in May of 2004 in the room at the SC beach house. And I'd literally just gotten it all together for about two weeks before I had to pack it all up and move. In that two weeks I recorded an albums worth of material by myself on all instruments - largely because everything was set up and I could work around the clock, night and day, recording. Most of the drum recording happened after 10PM and went all through the night. My wife, who would have been sleeping on the other side of the long ranch house, never heard a thing.

The bottom picture was taken a few weeks ago. The room has been painted and is ready to move in. It's 20' X 20' with 10' ceilings, so there's a good amount of space - and there's lots of light. It has some irregularities in the layout of the walls at the front and back of the room - so it's not too "boxy". I was getting a good sound out of the room before, and I have even better acoustic treatment now. I'll be putting in hardwood floors, and we might even have the ceiling vaulted and a skylight put in when we're adding a room to the back of the house in the fall.

Plus, the room is right across the street from the beach. : ) Needless to say, I'm psyched.

Hey, Dan!

What model of KRK's are those?

Ed

V8's, Ed.

I've been busy working on three studios. And possibly a fourth, larger one.

I'm back in the room pictured above. And the contractors are breaking ground next week on an addition to the back of our house that will be my new workspace/studio. Here's a quicky ruff plan of the 12' X 20' space. The squares in the middle are 4' X 4' skylights. The main part of the studio will be against the top/windowless wall. When the room's complete we'll be putting in hardwood floors throughout the house.



I've also been busy over at The Lazy I, where I've partnered, with Brian McKenzie - SF member b! We've been recording a lot, and upgrading some gear. Recently installed a Lynx Aurora 16 for AD/DA, a pair of Distressor EL-8X's, and some other toys. Also putting in hardwood floors, acoustic treatment, new racks, and re-wiring the whole place.

The possible "4th" studio is a large 5000 sq ft building I'm looking at that would house a large studio.

Man, how the time flies when you're busy. I've been building one studio, renovating another one. Doing TLS workshops, recording sessions, painting, raising a three-year-old dood, and another little dood is on the way at the end of May.

OK, time for a little update on my studio addition to our house...

The first order of business before construction could begin was to have a very large pine tree taken down behind our house. The process started in late September 2006. Finishing touches are still going on as I type in April 2007.

In 2002 when we were just renting this house, we discussed with our families over a nice dinner on the patio about the possibility of buying the house at some point. The first thing my wife's grandfather did was point up to the big tree in the backyard and say the first thing he'd do - if it were him - was have that tree taken down. It was always something we'd worried about during storms.

The crew show up to take down the tree.

The top of the tree was taken off limb by limb by a pretty agile and daring guy up in the tree with a chainsaw. Then the top was sawed off.

Then it was time to fell the tree.

Boom! It's sorta said, Boom and Thud! I got to talking to the guys who took down the tree, and had expressed how we'd talked about taking it down since 2002. Here's the scary part. He said the tree probably weighed about 10,000 pounds. And that it was weak at an angle that if it would have fallen due to high winds, it probably would have fallen straight into our main bedroom - which is where we hang out during big storms. What sent chills up my spin was that he said, "That tree is so heavy, the if it would have fallen, it would have gone straight through everything, and not stopped until it hit the ground. Yikes!

Anyway, for us, the good new was that the tree was done and construction could get started.

The construction crews start showing up. Here's a shot of the side and back of the house before the addition.

Here's a shot directly behind the house to the left of that truck. The pond on the right is just behind our yard. The far end of the entrance is about 300 meters from the Atlantic Ocean. Not bad livin'.

A bulldozer shows up one morning to start taking out the patio.

Man, thats a big freakin pine!! Sad to see it go, but life goes on I supoose.

We had to remove 10 Poplars-boy was I glad to get rid of em-damn crap trees. Crappin every day of the year. Pine trees are a mess too.

Here in San Diego, we don't have the weather like SC. So removing that tree is a load off your back eh?

T

Hey Tonio, you're catchin' me while I'm updating. : ) Storms?

Here's a shot of Isabel in September 2003 sitting off the coast of South Carolina - aka "my crib" - at the point where it was one of the biggest cat 5's in modern history. Mang, that definitely got my attention! Yowsa.



Here was Hurricane Isabel in September 2003. I'm the little red dot. Isabel was a cat 5 at one point sitting off the coast of the Carolinas. Shown here as a cat 2. Definitely dodged a bullet. People north of us on the coast of NC and Virginia weren't so lucky.



Yeah, I'm resting a lot easier now that that huge pine is gone.

Over the next couple of months in October and November of 2006 there was a lot going on at our house.

The framing went up...

A shot from inside the living room looking out into the new addition. Those inside doors would soon be removed and they boarded the huge hole with plywood and Tyvek. We spent a month with the living room in near total darkness.