Manifold Recording / The Miraverse

October 20, 2008

Video Walkthrough

Filed under: construction photos, Manifold Recording — Michael Tiemann @ 2:15 pm

If you are like me, you probably cannot wait to see what Manifold Recording is going to look like. If you have two and a half minutes, you can get a glimpse by viewing my shiny new video walkthrough. Unfortunately WordPress does not tolerate very well the embedded object that plays the video, so rather than mess up the formatting of every entry that follows, please visit the Studio page of the website and roll your mouse over the image you find there.

The video will play in 1/2 size format and also 720p HD. It run 02:31 mm:ss and it’s very nice!

October 1, 2008

Console sketches #2

Filed under: +1/-1, construction photos, Manifold Recording, recording studio, technique — Michael Tiemann @ 7:23 am

Wow! I sure got a lot of feedback on my first set of sketches. Here’s my second attempt at configuring a 48 channel Legacy Plus with integrated patchbays and options section into the control room of Manifold Recording. The major change is that now we have the master section and 16 faders to the left of the acoustic center and we have 32 faders and 6 echo returns to the right. This puts 32 inline channels (64 faders!) within the immediate reach of the engineer, while keeping the master section and most of the remaining channels in reasonable reach without moving from the sweet spot.

API Legacy Plus (800×266)

For higher-resolution renderings, click on the following links:

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September 29, 2008

Console sketches

Filed under: Manifold Recording, recording studio, technique — Michael Tiemann @ 1:00 pm

When I embarked on this studio design and construction project, I was confident that the decision of which console to buy would be among the simplest, certainly easier than choosing the color scheme for the isolation booths and the control room, for example. Boy was I wrong!

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September 16, 2008

Seeds of Shakti grow in Durham

Filed under: creativity, culture, education, Manifold Recording, Miraverse, technique — Tags: , — Michael Tiemann @ 7:20 am

John Heitzenrater teaches sarongPage counts and advertising revenues may be down at our local newspaper, the News and Observer, but we still subscribe because it still brings us a lot of good news, reporting, and commentary.  This morning I read a particularly inspiring article about John Heitzenrater, an expert in South Asian instruments.

The article begins by noting that Heitzenrater’s roots are Swedish, his accent American, “[but] when John Heitzenrater fiercely strums the sarod, the music resonates, transcending geographical and ideological boundaries.”

It turns out that Heitzenrater was inspired by one of the great boundary-trascendents, John McLaughlin…

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August 30, 2008

NIN’s Alessandro Cortini On The Buchla 200e

Filed under: creativity, Manifold Recording, technique — Tags: — Michael Tiemann @ 2:37 pm
Buchla 200e

Buchla 200e

In late 2005 I configured and ordered a Buchla 200e analog synthesizer, and after it was hand made by Don and Ezra Buchla, it was delivered in 2006.  It is the most confounding hybrid of organic and electronic logic I have ever encountered.  I spent a few months writing the Wikipedia entry for it, just so I could have a user manual.  And in the process I created a novel way to achieve portamento using analog components to control the MIDI module.  But I’m not an expert…Alessandro is. (more…)

August 20, 2008

Another music collaboration site on the web

Filed under: Manifold Recording, recording studio — Michael Tiemann @ 7:59 am

At the beginning of this year I blogged about esession.com, and reports from many indicate that this Austin-based startup is delivering as promised, which is great.  I just learned of another site that appears to offer similar services with an international flavour: http://www.mymusicsession.com/.  I look forward to seeing how these sites enable/encourage greater musical collaboration and also whether musicians who meet through these sites ultimately find a reason to work together in a large tracking room.

August 18, 2008

Construction photos: weeks 19-32

Filed under: carbon neutral, construction photos, Manifold Recording — Michael Tiemann @ 6:12 am

My last construction blog post was week 18, and you might think that since we’re now up to week 32, we’ve come twice as far as when you last checked in.  Sadly, no.  All construction projects (I am told) suffer at least one inconceivably long and complicated delay, and that’s been the story this whole summer.  But there has been some concrete progress (literally), and so I figured I should share the latest photos.

First, to give you some idea of how long the delay has been consider these before and after shots…

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May 13, 2008

Possibilities

Filed under: +1/-1, creative commons, creativity, dvd, Manifold Recording, Miraverse, music industry, recording studio — Tags: — Michael Tiemann @ 9:21 am

Last night I was invited by some friends to sit down and watch Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, a DVD that embodies many of the ideas I’m attempting to realize with The Miraverse.

First, there is the premise, which Herbie lays on the line straightaway: that to grow as a musician, he must walk outside the lines of his comfort zone, meeting other artists halfway or more than halfway.  In the first few segments, he explains this idea of sharing, give-and-take, and you can see the chosen artists saying “yes” but acting as if “OH MY GOD!  IT’S HERBIE HANCOCK!!  WHAT DO I DO?!?!?”  It takes Herbie a few times to really get the message “just be yourself” through through to them.

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April 30, 2008

John McLaughlin — Meeting of the Minds

Filed under: +1/-1, cd, creativity, dvd, Manifold Recording, Miraverse, music industry — Tags: , , — Michael Tiemann @ 10:10 pm

Meeting of the Minds (DVD cover)

The DVD of my dreams has just been released by Abstract Logix, and I’ve already started buying it by the dozen: John McLaughlin’s Meeting of the Minds, the making of Floating Point. It is my hope that when Manifold Recording opens and The Miraverse comes into existence that we will be hosting musicians and archiving such creativity and experiences as the Meeting of the Minds DVD captured.

I’m a big fan of John McLaughlin’s music and musicality. When he came to Durham last year, I was lucky enough to procure 4 tickets to his Fourth Dimension concert so close to the stage I could touch it. At that time we had already received zoning approval for the studio complex, but we had not yet received a building permit. I went to that concert at the Carolina Theater of Durham both as a fan and as a prospective producer. How would his live concert measure up to what I believe could be an even better experience–an opportunity to see and participate in the creative process with a musical genius like John?

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April 15, 2008

How would /you/ outfit the studio?

Filed under: +1/-1, Manifold Recording, recording studio, technique — Michael Tiemann @ 7:53 am

There are hundreds of posts on the various recording studio mailing lists and bulletin boards asking people to indulge in the fantasy of deciding how to spend large $$ on gear. And the most frequent response given is “FOR WHAT PURPOSE?” followed closely by “You have to match the gear to the room. If you’re not going to spec the room, the question of gear is meaningless!” Most of these threads intentionally omit any consideration of the room because the people posting all have roughly the same situation: a basement or bedroom studio with 8′ ceilings, tons of prosumer gear they’re ready to upgrade, and enough money to buy some serious pro-quality equipment, but not enough money to build the space needed to really utilize the gear. And so these threads rarely lead to anything.

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