Why Should Your Band Record With Us?
We record, mix and produce some of the best recordings for bands and artists of the Midwest. We have worked with bands that have been played on radio stations as well as TV commercials and etc.
We invite you to compare our demos with other comparable studios. We are confident that you will find our recordings to be some of the most commercial sounding recordings in the midwest. We are also confident that we can get you those results fast–meaning you will pay less for better quality. We have invested in audio tools that make our work as efficient as possible.
We have the ability to record a 5 piece band together or separately. This decision should be careful considered. Most of the time it is actually faster, easier and you get better results by recording each member separately. See this page.
Our Pro Tools HD system (with TDM plug-ins) allow you to record in realtime with effects engaged. In other words, when you record your instruments or vocals, you have the ability to hear your track processed in the mix. This means that you can hear the reverb (digital room ambience), delays, chorus effects, compression, EQ’s and etc. on the track that you are recording. This makes a difference because you will be able to perform better and be inspired by the way that your track sounds.
We can pretty much do any effect you hear on the radio. We have tons of the highest end plug-ins available today making it possible for us to do pretty much anything. If there is an effect that you hear on an album that you would like to use in your song, we can help you achieve that. Our experience has taught us how to do some of the most advanced effects in the industry from reverse reverbs and delays to auto-tuned vocals.
Drum Features:
We have a Yamaha Stage Custom drum set with a large variety of Zildjian and Sabian cymbals including riveted cymbals, Chinas, Splashes, Dark and Thin Crashes. You are welcome to use all or part of the drum set to record with. We also have a huge amount of mallets and sticks as well as some percussion instruments including shakers, tambourines, wind chimes, cowbell and etc.
On average, we record drums with 12 microphones. Our microphones and preamps are some of the top sounding gear in the industry.
We have the ability to Quantize your audio tracks quickly. Quantizing is the ability to tighten up your timing so that your drum track creates a solid foundation for the rest of the band.
We have several ways of enhancing your drum sounds so that they are HUGE. We use industry standard tools to get your drums sounding amazing and commercial.
We also have a Roland V-Drums TD4-KX 5 piece kit. We don’t use the sounds that come with V-Drums as we do not find them good enough for recording. However, we use the V-Drums to trigger high quality drum libraries from our computer. For many bands, using the V-Drums kit has been a way to save lots of money and still get superb results.
Finally, we have Stylus RMX available to add some of the coolest grooves to your music. If you haven’t heard of Stylus RMX, check out some of the videos on You Tube about it. You will see why it is used by so many big name producers. It can add organic sounding shakers and tambourines to huge electronic grooves.
Bass Features:
We have a few Bass amp emulators available to shape the sound of your bass. Our favorite is a software plug-in names Ampeg SVX. You have likely heard of Ampeg amps as they have been a staple in the music industry for years. This plug-in is modeled after these amps and it rocks! It can shape your bass tone anywhere from aggressive and gritty to round and deep. We have found this plug-in to be the perfect solution because it gives the advantages of plugging in direct, but all the colors that a tube or solid state amp can offer. Plus, you don’t need to haul your bass amp to the studio. However, if you still want to record your bass amp, we do that too.
We have an ADL 600 tube preamp (3 tubes per channel!!!) which can capture your direct signal beautifully.
Finally, we have other techniques we use to make your bass audible on smaller speaker systems.
If you are a synth bass player, or you may just want to have synth bass instead on parts of your song, we have many synth bass sounds available.
Guitar Features:
You are welcome to use any of your guitar amps, pedals and gear, but we also have a huge variety of guitar tones and emulations available for you. Our favorite way of getting great guitar tones is with our Vox Night Train Amp and matching cab which includes a 12 inch Celestion Greenback speaker. Most of the demos on our demos page have been recorded with this combo and our American Special Stratocaster. The Night Train is an all tube guitar amp that can go from chimey clean to dark and distorted.
We always record both a dry signal and the miced up amp. This gives us the ability to reamp later or use guitar emulations for more variety of tones and to make sure we have the right sound for the mix.
We have just about all of Line 6’s sounds in a plug-in as well as Digidesign’s Eleven Plug-in. Both of these plug-ins have some great sounds and tons of flexibility for changing the sound.
Our ADL 600 Tube Preamp excels on recording electric guitar through an amp. We also have a long cable that extends from the amp head to cab which will allow you to play the guitar in a separate room from where your amp is. This saves your ears and allows you to dial in the right sound while hearing exactly what Pro Tools is recording.
Delays and room reverbs are set-up inside the Pro Tools session making it easy to adjust the space and sync up delays to the tempo as needed. These can be on while you are recording.
Acoustic Guitar is recorded in our Whisper Room which keeps the track very clean and quiet even with the most sensitive playing. We usually record acoustic guitars with our Vintech 473 and our Michael Jolly modded Oktava MK 012 stereo microphones. We can record your pickup too, but your guitar will sound best through our microphones. We have several great sounding compressor plug-ins that can also thicken up and bring out the detail of your acoustic guitar.
Keyboard Features:
We have some amazing Samplers available to put into your songs. We can put in a realistic sounding orchestra (East West Orchestra Gold Expanded edition), B-3 organ, variety of the top Drum Samplers (Superior Drummer 2, Steven Slate Drums Platinum and Stylus RMX), the highest quality grand piano samplers (Synthogy Ivory’s Italian grand and Akoustik Piano) and tons of synthesized sounds including a hardware Roland XV-5050. We also have 1,000’s of loops ready to inspire creativity.
We have a CME UF8 Midi Keyboard controller. This 88 hammer weighted touch sensitive Keyboard has several adjustments to its sensitivity and lots of control to be able to manipulate LFO’s, fliters, Resonance, and control the Leslie of the organ and etc. You can trigger any of these mentioned Samplers with this keyboard.
Vocals Features:
We realize that in most cases, the vocals are the most important part of the song. We have several techniques we use to get your vocals upfront, clear and focused.
We have two forms of pitch correction available. Melodyne Editor and Auto-tune. Melodyne is very natural and allows us to only tweak the pitchy spots if desired. Auto-tune is great for back-up vocals or for quickly tuning up a vocal if there isn’t time to use Melodyne. Auto-tune can also be used as an effect to create less natural sounding pitch effects such as Cher and T-pain as well as effects in between. We have pitch corrected over 1,000 vocal tracks and have an ear for this type of thing.
Click Here to Learn More About the Process and Estimated Time/Cost It Takes