In 2000 I bought a house
in Crystal, MN and almost immediately after moving in I started experimenting with
songwriting and recording. Up to that point I'd never tried it before. My friend
Lee and I bought a cheap roll of orange boat carpeting and pinned it up along the
walls of the designated basement music room in the house. "The Orange Hut" studio
in Crystal was christened.
At the Crystal house I started recording using free Wav editing software, a $5 computer
microphone, my drums, and the lowest of the low end Fender "Strat" electric guitar.
I didn't even have a bass, so I recorded the guitar clean and processed the track
down an octave to simulate the bass guitar.
Eventually I graduated
to Cakewalk Home Studio 9 software, and then Cakewalk Sonar 1.0 (which I still use
to this day). I also picked up a pro audio sound card, mixer(s), and a small arsenal
of microphones. Life was good, I was cranking out tunes, and they even sounded half-way
decent from time to time.
Nikki and I moved out of Crystal in 2003 and built a house in Chaska, MN. The Chaska
house had an unfinished basement, which was where the studio was to go, and so the
new recording space was dubbed "The Concrete Slab". I recorded half of the Basic
album using no or very little sound-dampening material on the walls in that space
and it actually sounded good for some reason. Soon after moving to Chaska I also
bought my Yamaha hard-disk recording workstation. I've also doubled my microphone
arsenal since moving to Chaska and bought a new Ibanez 6-string.
We're currently finishing the basement and I'm working on a soundproof room for
the studio. I'm eager to get it done, because right now I have zero space for any
of my gear. It's been a dry spell for songwriting and recording, and I can't wait
to get back into it.