I may be a little "obsessive-compulsive"...
It seems like I'm doing this everyday...but I just get such a rush out of rearranging my studio on an almost daily basis. Comfort is born from the feng shui of an ever changing musical environment. Pleasure...
The Analysis of a Home Studio
There are three keys factors that make a home studio pleasurable to record or jam with.
Accessibility, Color Coding, and Accuracy.
If you need to change a cable to make a new patch, it should go down seamlessly.
If maneuvering behind a mixer is causing stumbling or the involuntary unplugging of other cords,
you may want to consider the spatial orientation of your gear...which can be difficult, given the, sometimes, limited space that musicians are subject to.
Color Coding: With great gear comes great responsibility.
When shelling out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the latest musical gadget, a pact is made with oneself to take great care of the aforementioned goods. These instruments are like children...they are best monitored when they are being monitored...a great way to do this, is to color code your cables.
Por examplo - Purple is Piano
Look at the images to see where the microkorg and the drum machine are plugged into the mixer.
Accuracy:
With any modern technology, the most important key to success is selection.
If you are using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), it is important to be reminded of the keyboard shortcuts and their consequent results.
Such as "Ableton Live's 'Draw Mode' enables you to draw envelopes in the automation lanes of an instrument".
Another point of interest for accuracy is the USB-MIDI cables being properly placed. Nowadays, musicians see USB-MIDI cables primarily. Novation's Launchpad is a power house of a MIDI control surface, so I think it wise to give the Launchpad it's own dedicated USB slot. (as opposed to a USB 4-way splitter)
Finally, making sure that your mixer has all the right wires going in and out makes a large difference too.
In the studio setup seen at the top of the page, the audio output is through
a guitar amp and a VIZIO soundbar. See below.
The audio coming IN through the mixer (e.g. the piano, the microkorg and the drum machine) is being output through the "Control Room Out" to the Guitar amp
and the soundbar.
It takes practice...
I rearrange my studio space at least 4 or 5 times a week, just to try different setups and see the ones that work best. This is a rather good setup currently, as it allows me to play through the mixer and also run the raw audio data into Ableton Live. I can play line level performances and record them simultaneously, with very low latency.
Not to mention, it's nice to come home to a beautifully crafted studio space and utilize it with ease.
Music is a wonderful thing, it is a gift to us mere mortals and I want to cherish and adore it.
Ta for now!
Christopher Strawley
