How to run collective no-budget underground studio?

May 31, 2008 12:24 PM

RecordingStudioFilter: Advice sought on how to run a collective no-budget underground (literally) studio; starting immediately. lots

Affectionately nicknamed the "cave flat", two stories below the center of a largish UK city dwell five musicians, the emissions of their drumkits, amps, PA's (and occasionally, 100's of partygoers) shielded from the ears of neighbours or police through several feet of 1700's sandstone wall. The landlord is cool with it. Loads of bands come to practise as there is a lot of cavernous space. We have now raised enough £££ to rent cavernous space for a recording studio. As luck would have it, the "music room" cavern and what is to be the control cavern already have a room-to-room window between them. The latter is also much less echo-y and could be treated for echoes (I've been looking up related ask-me's).

We have all the musical gear and recording people, but on the recording gear side there's only:

Adequate silenced Dual-Core PC with 22" TFT (mine)
M-Audio USB interface with 4 preamps and 2 additional ins, 6 outs
Bunch of Shure SM-58 and some low-budget "studio" mikes (100£)
Nice Neumann KM-140's, AKG 414's I get to borrow from Uni, studios I get to mix in at Uni

We're gonna start on the 1st of June and run it for three months or so at first, and see if something happens. I've got three months of free time on my hands, collaborators, and many musicians are already on a waiting list to be recorded with a no-budget approach. There's few other studios around town and none central.W e might not have the sound gear, but the place is very cool. Decisions about running the studio will be voted on by the collective, and it is not linked to any commercial interests. We would never pass fire & safety regulations anyway, though.

The idea is to put out as many live sound low-budget demos, myspace tracks as possible, as well as some low-budget actual studio recordings with more work on overdubbing. And for all the flat's bands to be able to record their practise sessions in a jiffy.

If you have been in a similar situation, I would very much appreciate any advice you've got about how to pull this off. My apologies for lengthy posting.

posted by yoHighness to media & arts (8 comments total)

I'm not sure what your question is. Is there more to it than just trying to do it? It sounds like you have the bands, time, and gear. What else am I missing?
posted by rhizome at 1:10 PM on May 31, 2008

No advice about your plan. But as far as echo treatment, my partner who has a small studio in our basement seems to rely on the forums at gearslutz.com as an endless fount of advice about any sort of studio building or gear question one could ever have. So that might be worth a perusal to see what others have done with spaces like yours.
posted by Stacey at 1:59 PM on May 31, 2008

Seems like you'll need to work out who owns what for each recording you make (does the producer/studio own it? the band?) so if later someone wants to option/license or release the tracks, the paperwork and credits are all in order. And check into the situation with using the school mix facilities -- some schools have an agreement whereby they own anything you make using their gear.
posted by xo at 2:10 PM on May 31, 2008

That sounds very promising. Good luck with it. The one thing gear-wise that stuck out in your description was the interface. I think it would be worth it to chip in to buy an audio interface with 8 inputs and preamps and an ADAT lightpipe so that you can get 16 total. The M-Audio interface works fine for an individual, but I think you'll want to be able to place more of your sm58s at once. I think you can do this without losing your 'no-budget' status, really. In the U.S., you could do it decently for $1150 or so (one benefit show?).

Check out the MOTU 8pre + the Presonus Digimax combination as one of many possibilities.
posted by umbú at 6:23 PM on May 31, 2008

Get someone else to record.
posted by bone.eater at 6:44 PM on May 31, 2008

Note: that should have been a "?" not a "." Now that I read it again the tone looks mean and it shouldn't : )
posted by bone.eater at 6:46 PM on May 31, 2008

seconding gearslutz, there's lots of good advice about soundproofing and whatnot on there. they discuss lots of diy projects you can do to get the room sounding good. with music recording software being so great these days, having a good sounding space makes all the difference for recording live bands.

one quick and easy trick for live drums (the hardest thing to get sounding good in a low-end studio) is to use the digidesign sound replacer or drum rehab plugins. if you're using protools (and you should, it's the industry standard at this point, so it's very easy to take your recordings to be mixed elsewere for instance. and m-audio or le systems are reasonably priced) you can copy and paste the individual kick, snare, and toms tracks onto new tracks, then run sound replacer on each track, replacing your probably-imperfect-sounding drums with nice, meaty, professional sounding drum hits. then you can blend the original sounds to taste with the new versions, to keep the "live drums" feeling to the recording. and voila - fairly pro sounding drums!
posted by messiahwannabe at 1:34 AM on June 1, 2008

Thanks to all who took the time to answer! I'm sorry it is such a vague question. Will check out the forums mentioned. All your input has been very helpful!
posted by yoHighness at 10:36 AM on June 1, 2008