Blanketfort Studio Journal: DIY Recording for fun and, uh... fun?

I'm doing some bare-bones acoustic recordings of my songs to get rich and famous, I was looking around at my setup laughing and thought maybe others might find this funny and/or useful


8:00 am PST


Step1 build giant blanket fort in living room, assure wife it will just be for a few days and make sure nobody is coming over.

Step 2 Make sure Audrey Hepburn can see inside to provide spiritual guidance and retro-mojo

 Step 3 Re-confiscate the macbook from kids and spend the usual countless hours hooking stuff up and trying to remember how to make Pro-Tools work.
--attn gear geeks top to bottom: RNC 1773 compressor, digi 003 rack, lexicon MX400 reverb, vintech x73i mic preamp (neve clone), empirical labs EL8 distressor, AT 8441 condenser mic, CAD pencil condenser mic

Step 4 a couple of mics on the guitar and a comfy pillow because your gonna be there awhile. Notebook of all the lyrics you forgot.

Step 5 run a feed out to the entryway and through a 65 fender champ, it's important to counter all that sterile sounding digital recording equipment with some good-old fashioned tubes and noise.

--attn gear geeks top to bottom: 65' fender champ hot-rodded by amp guru Mike Lull in Seattle. Shure SM57, art tube MP mic preamp and fender "65 reverb deluxe" stompbox for reverb and tremelo. 

Step 6 remove collar from dog and pray for no cats/mailmen/solicitors

Step 7 Overhead room mic to capture that glorious, wood-floored, vaulted-ceiling entryway sound. Open adjacent bathroom door to capture a little porcelain resonance.

Step 8 Blanket that noisy thermostat that keeps buzzing in a non-musical way (now if it was a tube-driven thermo we might have some lo-fi magic there!)

1 pm PST Congratulations, you are now ready to make musical history! Better do it in 1 take though, the kids will be home in 2 hours.

  

I'll follow up this post with a link to the resultant recording which hopefully should come out simultaneously crystal clear and warm/fuzzy.