My Home Studio
I have been fascinated for a long time about making music entirely on my own. A good creative space should offer a balanced mix of creative freedom and challenge, and an immediate access to recording options. Dive in below for how I think about my creative space.
Woody
My most trustworthy sources of creativity is my acoustic guitar. This guitar is a Sigma TM-15E and its a travel size guitar. I bought this guitar at a time when I was still comparatively mobile. It has been featured on many songs including one of my fully acoustic sets. The good thing about having an acoustic guitar is that it requires absolutely no setup. This immediacy of reach and recall is what I love the most. Another great thing is that the acoustic guitar is quite whole by itself. It can take an entire lifetime just to learn the acoustic guitar. It has immense possibility, and its sufficiently challenging as well, which makes it my favourite go-to instrument
BEGINNING WITH THE BASICS
When I was starting off, and even now after all these years, I like to think of the basics that I need to get going. The only instrument I had was an acoustic guitar. I recorded performances on my phone, and enhanced the audio with some tools that I had. Just to make minor corrections like removing background sounds.
Having less forced me to be creative about how I was recording my guitar, how I was using the room, and how different placements of the phone mic would create different qualities in the sound.
Here you can see I have my trusty AudioTechnica Headphones and my Apple Air with the Hard drive from Seagate. On the left, the arm is visible which would hold my phone while recording. I used to record sitting on the floor to try and avoid the late reflections from the walls
THE MICS
Below is the recording setup for my first Acoustic Album.
It was a year or two before I could invest in a set of good microphones. The Rode M5 MP is a great choice. Its comparatively inexpensive when it comes to microphones and the best part is you get a matched pair, which means you can try stereo and mono configurations. This was a huge step up for my sound as well as my recording process. Remember, that with paired microphones there are additional aspects to consider while recording such as phase and additional noise etc. I also added a mic stand to my arsenal so that I can have a sturdy go to setup whenever I need.
This picture is from the recording setup for my album ACOUSTICA
SUNNY
A few months later I was able to get myself my dream guitar. A Fender Telecaster with a Pau Ferro Neck. This has since become my primary instrument for all my work. Its a very simple but versatile instrument and it has inspired my in countless situations.
