My Studio Setup
My studio is contained entirely on a 5′ desk plus a 2′ × 2′ corner piece connecting to an another desk running at a 90° angle. (There’s a third 5′ desk running at a 90° angle to that, forming a ‘U’ shape. That’s where my design PC lives, for Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects work.)
I live in a row home, am nocturnal, and share a house with a woman who is decidedly not nocturnal. The practical upshot is that my studio is completely silent, for the most part. I mix and monitor with AKG240 headphones (running through Toneboosters Morphit VST for flatness correction). The only things I do that make any neighbor-or-woman bothering sounds are recording my vocals and recording my acoustic guitars, so I do those during the day when Decent People are at work.
I have two external mixers: a Mackie 1202 (the ‘input mixer’) and a Mackie 1644 (the ‘output mixer’). Everything that I ever want to record goes to the input mixer. Currently, that’s just my Røde NT1 microphone, and a linear guitar preamp for proper impedance matching, but in the past I’ve had turntables, cassette decks, the output from the PC’s sound card, and other assorted whatnot hooked up to the input mixer.
The stereo output of the input mixer goes to a hardware compressor/limited, and then gets Y-ed to the inputs on my Focusrite 2i2 and a pair of channels on the output mixer.
The output mixer exists mostly so I can get zero-latency monitoring of my vocals, complete with compression & reverb, mixed however I like relative to the outputs of the Focusrite. The output of this mixer goes to a power amp and my Alesis Monitor One monitors (rarely used), as well as my headphones.
All mixing and effects are done in-the-box. I’ve been running Cakewalk in its many, many variations since the mid ’90s, and continue to do so. In addition to the DAW, over the years I’ve bought a number of big-ticket VST effects and instruments, including the Arturia V Collection of vintage synths, the Arturia FX collection, iZotope’s Music Production Suite, Native Instrument’s Komplete, and Celemony’s Melodyne Studio. For guitar work, I record dry guitar directly and effect/model it with Blue Cat Audio’s Axiom system.
There are between 20-30 guitars scattered about the house, but 95% of all my recordings have been done using my EMG-equipped 1985 Japanese Fender Strat and my 2016 Michael Kelly Patriot, with occasional recordings done using my Michael Kelly Forte Port acoustic, Peavey Powerslide lap steel, and 1994 Carvin DC400.
As you can see from the photo, I have an AKAI MPK249 midi keyboard, but it is only rarely used, mostly to audition patches in whichever soft-synth I’m using at the moment. I do not play keyboard well enough to make recording same useful; I prefer the compositional approach (drawing notes & chords on a grid) versus recording iffy playing and then trying to clean it up. Every musical instrument you hear in my productions – other than the guitars, and occasionally some real bass guitar – is drawn. I like being able to harmonize and try out different chord voicings without depending on my ability to play them.
Just in case you were wondering.
Stop, Boomer
The fourth Boomer Patrol track was a parody version of a Bill McClintock’s mash-up of Young MC’s Bust A Move and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth.
And yes, we are getting pretty deep in the woods at this point!
Lyrics by Vox, singing and playing by me. Complete with a 1-minute long outro solo that quotes 3 different songs. No one ever guessed the first two, and as they’re now annotated in the SoundCloud playback, no one ever will.
Recorded & released in October 2021.
There’s something happening here
And it fills every boomer with fear
There’s a man with a pillow right there
So you know, you got to beware!
Think it’s time you stop boomer
What’s that sound?
Everybody knows what’s comin’ down!
Pillow Time
The fifth Boomer Patrol track was a parody version of a Semisonic’s Closing Time.
Lyrics by Vox, singing and playing by me.
Features the word PARALEPSIS, because of course it does. (The rhetorical strategy of emphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it. (e.g. “I won’t stoop so low as to comment on my opponent’s alleged pederasty…”))
So never let it be said that Boomer Patrol didn’t teach you anything.
Recorded & released in October 2021.
I know who still thinks they’re really great
I know who taught all of us to hate
I know who I want to suffocate
And send very far away
It’s Time To Go
The sixth Boomer Patrol track was a parody version of Electric Six’s Down at Mcdonnelzzz. Who what now? My thoughts exactly!
Recorded & released in October 2021, with Vox writing the lyrics and doing the singing.
Now everybody down with a cushion
And they’re starting the pushin’
And it’s a final solution
And everybody cool!
In 2025 I put together an animated video for the song featuring a cutout version of Vox doing the It’s Time To Go dance. And you didn’t even know there was a dance! It’s fairly amusing.
