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February 24, 2006
I Remember When
Yesterday we had Kevin Browne and his wife Debbie in the studio to put some finishing touches on Kevin’s new CD.
This will be Kevin’s third project with us, making him one of the most prolific artists we have worked with.
Our task for this session was to re-do a cello part that Debbie has done earlier.
Kevin is, of course, a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Debbie sings and plays cello. One of their sons, Griffin, is also a classically trained cellist, and he wrote and played some parts on his father’s latest recordings. Quite a musical family!
Debbie followed her husband’s example of consummate preparation, and so we were done in a short time.
While recording Debbie’s cello, I remembered how it used to be…
When we first opened the studio in 1990, it was strictly a MIDI studio. Everything was done with keyboards, sound modules, samplers, and sequencing software, all run on an ancient Atari 1040ST computer. This computer was so old that it didn’t even have a hard drive; everything had to be done off of floppy disks.
We couldn’t really record vocals or live instruments in those days, so all I did was performance tracks and MIDI files.
In early 1996, we brought in one of the early ADAT recorders (8-track digital!), along with a new sound board and some good microphones, and we were finally able to do an entire project in-house. I had produced some albums before then, but we had to go to another studio to record vocals and live instruments.
Now we could do everything, from initial tracking to final mixes, in the comfort of our own place.
In 2000, we changed to the ProTools system, giving us editing and mixing capabilities we had only dreamed of previously.
Sometime this year we hope to upgrade again to a more powerful ProTools system, but I realize that to many members of our musical family, this means little.
What they really want is to be comfortable, and record something that sounds great!
Fortunately the technological advances in recording equipment made over the last 15 years or so enable us to help our clients do those very things.
By the way, Kevin’s new CD will be released sometime in March. (I’ve got to hurry and re-mix that final song!)
Check out his Website at http://www.kevin-browne.com.
Debbie Browne
Posted by leon at February 24, 2006 12:34 PM