My Portable Studio In Full Force

All week I have been in Virginia (800 miles from sunny Florida) recording the latest album from the band at Aletheia Church in Harrisonburg. We’ve had one week (5 and a half days really) to track 11 songs of full band rock n’ roll and make it sound awesome. I brought up my portable recording rig and so far things have been going really well. I figured you guys reading the Recording Revolution would appreciate some pics of our multiple setups (at the church and a band member’s house) and see what we’re using to record everything.

The Studio Is Where You Are

Our “studio” this week has consisted of tracking drums in the church (which is really a big warehouse) and the rest of the tracks in a house basement. Despite challenges of outside noise, electrical hum at times, and radio interference, we’ve gotten huge sounding tracks in the most ordinary of places. The studio is truly no longer a place as much as it is a frame of mind. These guys want to record great music and we are making it happen.

My portable rig is simple, but effective. I’m running Pro Tools 8 with my trusty 002 rack interface as the core of my studio. Then I simply run a the Behringer ADA8000 optical lightpipe (ADAT) into the 002 for 8 more pristine mic pres. I have a Samson C-Control to run talkback into the tracking room and also use a little $40 tube/solid state hybrid preamp on a lot of tracks. Everything is running into my 6 year old Powerbook and it’s all stable as could be. This setup gives me up to 13 mic pres and plenty of I/O to run multiple headphone mixes.

The handful of pics below will give you an idea of the “ordinary” studio we are using and hopefully will encourage you to just make music wherever you are. Get the basic gear you need, learn it well, and then get to work! Stay tuned for audio updates on these tracks and more from my portable rig!