tape op conference home recording panel

[Rob Christensen]

Hey Everybody,

I'm moderating the home-recording panel at the Tape Op Con. If you're going (or even if you wish you were), is there anything you'd like us to touch on?

At this point it's looking like we're going to show some pics of our home studios and we have several things we're looking at discussing. However, I'm open to any ideas to make this panel work better.

Thanks,
Rob C.

[Kyle]

Hi Rob

It's Kyle from Panther Fact records, we meet last year. I'm a friend of Matt Lowery's.
I really liked the way the you spoke about home recording last year. You were the most focused. I think that it would be cool for you guys to touch on some of the tricks that you use at home. Talk about how to use the house itself, recording in the bathroom and the basement. I think that it could be helpful to share some of those homebrewed ideas to get the most out of the gear that one has. You have a very diverse panel and I would love to hear how different people go about getting sounds to tape.

[Rob Christensen]

Hi Kyle,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for the suggestion. I know we tried to touch on using the home itself a little last year; it'll be a good topic to revisit.

You're going to be at the conference, aren't you? I look forward to seeing you again.

Rob C.

[takeout]

Rob-

Isolation between instruments in a single room is a big one for me personally, as are "control room" acoustics.

See you there-

Chris

[hiddendriveways]

How about throwing around some ideas about how to acousticly tune your controlroom/livingroom for better monitoring? For instance, we bought an inflatable air matress to accomodate overnight session people, and quickly realized we now owned a giant baffle to cut out room noise on the drum kit. What other household items have a double life as indespensible studio doo-dads?

[eeldip]

the household items topic is a great idea. (i'll add to the list- laundry bins and baskets (nice small baffles), tents made with chairs and quilts)

some other topics: dealing with neighbors, why hypercardiods are your friend, "big room sound" workarounds, when you should pick up and track at another space, testing and dealing with your homes crappy electricity/bad grounds.

[bobbydj]

Home mastering, maybe. Like is DAT a must? Is going from yr multi-tracker to cdr burner OK? What makes of compressor, useful settings, etc etc. I'm jst thinking there might be a few topics right at the other end of the process that could be covered.

[takeout]

Home mastering, maybe. Like is DAT a must? Is going from yr multi-tracker to cdr burner OK? What makes of compressor, useful settings, etc etc. I'm jst thinking there might be a few topics right at the other end of the process that could be covered.

YES. Guerilla mixdown formats. Please address this.

[Rob Christensen]

Y'all are coming up with good stuff. It'll be very cool to address some of these issues in an open forum situation. Of course different panelists are going to have different ideas and working methods; it'll be fun to learn from each other.

Rob C.

[neversleep]

Just wondering...
For those of us who can't make it, will some of the points raised be posted somewhere here?

...eon

[inverseroom]

The big one for me: noise reduction. All of us home recordists use inexpensive equipment--it makes good sounds but the noise adds up over multiple tracks. I can't go unfortunately but maybe somebody could email me the complete transcript? (joke)

[Rob Christensen]

Thanks for your suggestions, everybody! Y'all have come up with some great ideas & things I hadn't thought of.

I probably won't be back online until after the conference is over. I'm heading up to Portland tomorrow morning & I doubt I'll have much internet time once I'm there.

I'm sure once the conference is over there'll be lots of posts about what was discussed. I'll certainly chime in with my thoughts.

Cheers!
Rob C.