Should have done this ages ago.

Cirrus

Yet another Cirrus CSB post.

Having spent the last six years basically only writing for my band, I've finally summoned up the courage/energy/inspiration to do a solo album. I've fallen into quite a compartmentalised way of working, where at home I only ever record snippets of ideas onto my phone's voice recorder with an acoustic guitar, and to work on whole songs I'll drive the 25 minutes to my band's rehearsal studio to record with my loud guitar rig, drums, bass, vocals etc to create a demo.

This is fun, because I can use my gigging rig loud. And I do think there's something to be said for having a specific place you go to work. But it does mean 50 minutes of my evening after work is spent driving, not writing. And it does make the whole thing lack spontaneity, since I have to roughly plan when I'm gonna go in.

Cue this, in my little study room;

Yeah, I should have done this ages ago. Set it up on Saturday and I've already got demos on the go for 5 songs, with a list of another dozen ideas to develop. So much more fun to just walk in here and get cracking. My plan is to work out the full song arrangements here with midi drums, guitar through the wee Yamaha amp, Bass with Sansamp, keys/synths via various apps on the Ipad with a keyboard controller, and vocals with the trusty SM58 you can almost see on top of the soundcard. Then, once I've got the arrangments, tempo maps etc, I'll book into a proper studio to do drum recording and do loud guitar recording etc in our practice studio.

Very happy with my little songwriting studio. Now I just need to hope the music won't be a load of bollocks. That's the hard bit. 

failed_astronaut

Nice, is that all driven by an Alesis / iPad combination? I want to do something similar for home demos as well.

Cirrus

It's the PC bottom left running Sonar X3, with an RME Fireface 800 that everything's plugged into. The Alesis is just so that I can use the synth apps on the Ipad with a midi keyboard and get L+R line out jacks. That said, the Idock is really cool for taking on holiday etc for recording demos - check out Auria, it's good for multitracking!

axisus

Looks a very appealing setup. Unfortunately my recording area is total pants, fighting for space in a tiny utility room.

failed_astronaut

Cirrus said:

It's the PC bottom left running Sonar X3, with an RME Fireface 800 that everything's plugged into. The Alesis is just so that I can use the synth apps on the Ipad with a midi keyboard and get L+R line out jacks. That said, the Idock is really cool for taking on holiday etc for recording demos - check out Auria, it's good for multitracking!

Ah, I see, good to know. I don't have the space for, or desire for, a big recording set-up these days so the iPad approach looks like a good option.

xmrchi

Good set-up if you find you have the spare cash, get two decent sized monitors, so use full when you start to use all the features of sonar, having the extra workspace will really make things easier :-D

Fretwired

Cool set up ... good luck with the album.

Cirrus

mrchi;752839" said:

Good set-up if you find you have the spare cash, get two decent sized monitors, so use full when you start to use all the features of sonar, having the extra workspace will really make things easier :-D

Yeah, when I was mixing my band's last album I did just that - Mixer window on one screen and arrangement window on the other.

Fretwired;752919" said:

Cool set up ... good luck with the album.

Thanks, the actual writing of music is of course the hard bit.