The Shed

Pricey but Perfect: Cloning Peter Gabriel's 'Studio in a Shed'

So the link is a little article to Peter Gabriel talking about his "Studio in a Shed", for a mere 250 grand you can have a 240 sq. foot recording studio in your yard or garden. It's apparently modeled on the one has at home in his garden. Here's a link to the sales site if you want to see some specifics.

Some of you have been to my house so you've seen my Fortress of Solitude. Probably from the outside though, since it is still filled with unpacked boxes (Although significantly less so now that Melody has helped me clean it up a bit).

A backyard studio is one of the directions my Fortress is heading in. I recently purchased my own mixer, I've wanted one for a really long time. I was absolutely giddy the day it showed up. It's a Mackie 1202-VLZ Pro. It's an extremely popular mixer due to its high quality, and relatively low price. It has a lot of options, and the pre-amps are great.

Since getting it I've been putting out a lot more voice over demos. With all the traveling I've been doing I haven't put up for everything I wanted to, but I did get one of them. It was very exciting to get a job from stuff I produced on my very own equipment! Once things settle down some I'll be putting out more demos (Most of the jobs I'm going for require custom demos).

I've been producing most of them on my linux laptop using Audacity. It's cross platform (Mac, Windows, Linux), completely free and high quality. I plan to try Ardour as well once I have some more time. It's closer to what I'm used to using, Adobe Audition (Actually I'm more used to it when it was Cool Edit Pro, I still use the last version before Adobe bought them out.) Audacity has just about everything I need for most of the straight voicework (Noise reduction, normalization), but when I do sound design for a show I need a lot more of the stuff you find in the high end products.

To do voice work you have to have a microphone. I'm currently using a Shure Sm-58, it's a good mic. Really, it's one of the most popular in the recording industry. Is that why I chose it? No! I got it free a number of years ago, and its a good quality mic. That's why I use it. I want one of these though. I'm still saving up for that. Maybe after a few more voice-over gigs.