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Audio Actualization The Studio
Audio Actualization The Studio
The Studio
Futurescale's modest but effective in-house studio and hub for the Sea of Arrows recording project is called Space Command.
Space Command Gear
Aiwa HD-X1 Portable DAT
At the time of its release, this baby was the smallest portable DAT on the planet. For capturing audio in the field, be it loons by a lake or a blues band playing at the local pub, the HD-X1 can't be beat. It has served dutifully for many years, but alas, its portability has since been overtaken by smaller devices, so it is now relegated to making tape archives of all project work.
Alesis 3630 Compressor
Not the most powerful compressor on the market to be sure, but we really don't use it for that much anymore; software compressors and the mastering suite on the hard disk recording system are more than adequate. The nifty thing(s) about the 3630 are A) the channels can be slaved so that both follow one's settings, and B) side-chain inputs that can turn the compressor into a very rough filter of sorts. Say you have a continuous tone running through the input, you can run a drum beat into the side chain which won't be mixed, but instead will cause the compressor to chop up the sound based on how the beat causes the compressor envelope to respond.
Alesis M1 Active Mk2
Nothing like a good flat response for your near field reference monitors. These babies give just that. The crossover barely makes an impression on the response chart. But the cabinets make these kids a bit boomy, so when working with material that has significant low end activity, we find that stuffing a sock into the air ports does just the trick.
Emu LaunchPad
Built like a tank, this MIDI controller has just enough programmable continuous controllers to puppeteer the sweet spots in any patch on any machine, including the virtual synths in the computer. I once read that Getty Lee of Rush used to program his keyboards so that all the keys around the ones he wanted to stab on stage played the same note, so that if he missed, it wouldn't be out of tune. This controller is a perfect answer for that. A one octave keyboard composed of big slappy buttons makes for a great way to 'fat-finger' in a phrase to or to trigger a samples quickly.
Ensoniq EPS
An 8 bit multisampling keyboard with fantastic aftertouch, this grungy old star of the 80's is to me what Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder was to him. I could not imagine being without it. It has more ways to slice, dice, layer and loop a sound than any piece of software I've yet to purchase. When I really want something utterly unique to happen with a sound, this is what I turn to. I understand that the same guys that built this machine worked on the Commodore 64, a piece of hardware that shaped much of my early programming career.
HP Touchsmart PC
The HP Touchsmart is an interesting option for a studio computer. It has plenty of horsepower, a touch screen interface and the sweetest RF keyboard and mouse ever made. It's great because its all-in-one blade-shaped design means less wires and no need to mount the hardware on the workstation to hold a desktop box. Also, like a laptop, it is exceedingly quiet, a virtue in the studio. On it we proudly run Sony Acid and Propellerhead Reason and Record. Reason has been a personal staple since it came out and Rebirth before before that. Propellerhead's latest offering Record combines Reason with a world-class sequencing, recording, mixing and mastering environment. After working with Cubase, Logic and many others in the past, I find Record to be a breath of fresh air.
M-Audio Firewire Solo
We don't record orchestras or bands here, it's generally one or two audio sources at a time that need to find their way into the computer.
The Solo is fantastic as it has a mic input with phantom power on the front as well as a line input with amplification so I can jack in a guitar as well. On the back we have stereo line inputs that come from the mixer, and a toggle switch on the front decides whether we're feeding the computer the front or rear inputs.
Working with more inputs has never been useful to our style of work, which is generally layered and largely MIDI controlled. Recording many instruments to separate audio tracks or mixed down through the mixer turns out not to be a good idea anyway. With lots of controller data being used to sculpt many voices on many instruments, your MIDI bandwidth is burned up quickly and droputs occur. A smooth sax sound might come out sounding stair-stepped. Best to record each track separately giving it maximum controller bandwidth then mix in the computer.
Mackie VLZ 1604 Pro
This 16 Channel / 4 Bus mixer is a real workhorse. It has survived action in NYC clubs and even a mudsoaked night in Purto Rico's El Junke rainforest. It has a remarkably flat EQ but when we go over 12 hours or so with it running many channels, an icepack placed strategically on the conveniently flat space right over the power supply can keep her running till the wee hours without the slightest amount of distortion or channel crosstalk.
Martin Backpacker
It looks like a Lute or some elvin instrument, but it is actually an acoustic guitar with a very robust sound. It is light and very compact, making it a joy to work with. I have a smaller body frame and so have difficulty with ordinary acoustic guitars. This one has a very pleasing sound, one that was extremely welcome after playing exclusively electrics.
MOTU MIDI Express 128
For some projects this MIDI router is like Grand Central Station. But 8 ports of 16 MIDI Channels is more than enough to handle our MIDI traffic. As computers have gotten more powerful and virtual synths have become commonplace, outboard instruments are increasingly a thing of the past. Still, the small arsenal of gear in the studio has the range to create everything from stomping dancefloor tracks to ethereal ambient environments. And each device's frontpanel provides unique options for expression.
Novation Supernova II
The Supernova II is a 61 key synth with an incredibly solid and sensitive keyboard. It has a smooth 42 band vocoder and and effects section that is to die for. The arpeggiator is whip-smart and the oscillator and filter sections expose more control than I've seen on any synth since the days of the Sequential Circuits Pro-1. Overall, it sports more knobs, buttons and sliders than you can shake a stick at, which, when combined with the powerful underlying hardware, make it, the perfect sound design workstation.
Outland Spectrum Analyzer
The oldest piece of gear in the studio, I bought this device in 1979 for my home stereo; ostensibly for the 10 band equalizer, but truth be told, I just loved the spectrum analyzer display which looks like a little fireplace when the music is playing. You've seen the effect on a million screensavers. But later when I began working with sound and found that I needed to isolate and roll off or boost a voice, it suddenly became the most handy tool in the woodshed. On playback, you can see exactly what frequency band the energy spike or trough is in and EQ it accordingly.
Roland Handsonic
Roland has always had a way with the pads. They've perfected the art of capturing the energy and minimizing crossover between pads. So much so that in this unit, they've been able to put 15 pressure sensitive sensors under a single grooved pad surface. The response range of each pad is very wide from feather touch to sledgehammer; very expressive. Ribbon controllers on the left and right can trigger a sound and control various aspects of the envelope or effects. At the top is a D-beam controller which allows you to manipulate sounds by waving your hand at various distances similar to a Theremin. Add all this control to an unbelievably diverse array of world instruments and you have a very formidable tool for creating hand generated rhythm and effects.
Roland MC-307 Groovebox
The 307 has a nice big tempo slider and BPM display, so it's perfect for adding live accompaniment to a DJ set or canned sequences where little performer input is possible. It's also great for creating unique beats in the studio. It has some very strong voices, killer drum kits and a sweet effects and mixer section. Interestingly, the effects switch is three position. In the down position effects are on, in the middle they are off, and in the top position they are on but when you let go it snaps back to the off position. This lets you quickly punch in effects and then drop them out again on the fly. And the big row of mute buttons makes it the dubbiest machine in the house. You can have a sequence with 7 voices plus 8 rhythm section voices, and while looping that sequence you can add in voices or strip them away; stretching the sequence out live, feeling how it should evolve. This lends a more flowing approach than building brick walls in a sequencer program on the computer.
Samson C03 Condenser Mic
Our Samson boomed condenser mic is perfect for capturing voices, sound effects or acoustic guitar at close range while rolling off the background completely. Running off phantom power from the M-Audio or the Zoom, we can quickly and comfortably capture any live sound we can produce with crystal clarity.
Shovels, Rakes and Various Implements of Destruction
A couple of electric guitars, (one with whammy) and a fat bass provide endless hours of amusement and stress relief as well as the occasional ballad. Rock out.
Sony MZ-M200 Portable MD
This is a late model Sony MD recorder that can digitally transfer files to the computer in wav format. It also supports HD MD, which gets quite a lot of recording on one disc. It replaces a venerable old school MD that was toted all over New York years ago recording the sounds of the city. This is the portable recording technology that never skips and random access beats sequential any day, so the DAT was relegated to the studio the moment Sony introduced the MD walkman. When you invest in a portable recorder for capturing sound in the field, be sure to also aquire a high-quality stereo mic with good channel separation, since a pristine digital recording of a poor signal is worthless.
Waldorf Pulse Plus
This is the single voice to turn to when the bassline needs to be interesting, punchy and deep without muddiness. Its tiny little LED readout makes upfront programming a little off-putting at first, but once you build a mental picture of the internals of the box (a process greatly aided by the clever matrix screenprinted over the controls), you can really fly! Waldorf has a nack for creating synths (like the Pulse and the Q) that are hard to 'run off into the weeds'; that is to say, practically every combination of settings sounds good.
Zoom 1608CD Hard Disk Recorder
This is a phenomenal 16 track / 8 input hard disk recording system that can master and finalize a world-class mix to CD. The mastering suite included is top shelf, highly configurable and perfect for guaranteeing consistent sound level quality across an entire album. It has a tight rhythm section which is handy to use as a template while recording, to be replaced with the actual rhythm parts composed later on other instruments. It has a nifty shorthand language for programming bass lines that move appropriately in key with your composition. Having spent my formative years of recording using multi-track tape decks, I find the process of editing and recording with the Zoom very familiar and comfortable. Computer based sequencing is definitely a part of the work that goes on here, but this box allows it to be an option; not the only approach available for achieving high quality mastered work.
Zoom PS04 Portable Multitrack Recorder
I discovered this wonderful little doodad while working on the road some time back. I wanted a way to listen to and record the electric guitar I kept in my hotel room to practice on. I was blown away by how much power Zoom packed into this tiny little device that's slightly smaller than a paperback book. It is a 4 track recorder with awesome guitar effects and rhythm sections and a surprisingly good mixing board. It's battery or wallwart powered, so you can go out into the field with it and gather environmental sounds, or just sit around and layer guitar tracks instead of watching reruns of Hawaii 5-0 on hotel TV. It is the tiny cousin to the Zoom hard disk recorder that has become the heart of Space Command.
Audio Feedback
"Cliff analyzed the narrative of my story and provided a perfectly matching score that subtly set the stage for the action.
He also handled dialogue recording and mix, using innovative techniques to provide me with the control that I needed to get critical timing just right. A+++, would use again!"
— Jos'h Fuller, Director, "The Long Way Home", Toronto, Ontario - Canada