We’re getting down to the last nitty-gritty details before pouring the slab. One of those details is the precise question of how we’re going to build the rear of the control room, which will incorporate a symmetric 4-step QRD built from RPG blocks. We’ve had a general idea ever since Wes Lachot first drew that page of the plans more than a year ago, but now we need to know the exact answers, down to the sixteenth of an inch. So we went to the field to see how our theories comported with reality…
Category: Manifold Recording
Manifold Recording
My first five minutes with James Taylor
James Taylor has been a blessing to me since hearing his records in high school more than 20 years ago. While I did also listen to music that was louder (Jimi Hendrix) or bigger (Led Zepplin) or more highly produced (The Beatles), his voice, his guitar playing, and the lyrics he sang combined to create for me a touchstone of musical purity and beauty that actually sustained me through some deep and dark noreastern winters. So James, if you are reading this, thank you!
This year James Taylor is promoting Covers, a new album of old music he didn’t write. And as he explains in the liner notes of his CD, that’s nothing new. And there’s yet more “everything old is new again” as he talks about his recording process…
Video Walkthrough
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!
Console sketches #2
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.
For higher-resolution renderings, click on the following links:
Console sketches
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!
Seeds of Shakti grow in Durham
Page 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…
NIN’s Alessandro Cortini On The 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. Continue reading “NIN’s Alessandro Cortini On The Buchla 200e”
Another music collaboration site on the web
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.
Construction photos: weeks 19-32
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…
Possibilities
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.
Manifold Recording / The Miraverse 
You must be logged in to post a comment.