This page is dedicated to sharing how I created the Mi Para Ti and Strictly from Hunger CD's.
This is it, this is where I spend most of my time--laying down tracks on the computer, in the corner of the back room of my house.
Probably every piece of hardware or software I use that I will describe in this page is obsolete. However, that is from the manufacture's perspective, not the user's. Much of the hardware and software I use will be quite sufficient for years to come. Of course, there is always room for improvement and I'm always upgrading.
Alesis Compressor
Alesis NanoBass
Boogie Mark IV
Cakewalk
E-MU B-3
Foot Box
Kurzweil K2000R
Marshall Tube Mic
Peavey MD8 Mixer
Real Rhodes
Stella Power Supply
Yamaha SW100XG
Cakewalk Software
Pro Audio7 Cakewalk was released in 1995 and is still
awesome music creation software today, allowing the user control and features
ahead of their time.
Drawback: No control of the absolute values for the final wave files.
And, the final normalized wave value is less than the industry standard.
Real Rhodes
I have always had an affinity for the sound of a Fender Rhodes electric piano. My search for the Rhodes sound led me to Pyramid Sounds where I purchased the Real Rhodes for Kurzweil K2000R. Great sounds. I believe the reason my Strictly from Hunger CD, (which uses the Real Rhodes sounds), doesn't project the Rhodes sound as well as it should is because of the poor dynamic range of my overall system--another story.
Kurzweil K2000R
The default sounds on this '90's unit aren't that impressive but I've installed 128k of RAM and a SCSI drive and now I can download high quality sampled sounds--works great. That's how I run the Real Rhodes sounds.
Yamaha SW1000XG
Best general purpose sound card ever. The backbone of much of the songs on my CD's. Used for drums, bass and keyboard sounds. Horns just OK but for the price I love this soundcard.
E-MU B3
Here's another sound I would not do without. The Hamond B3. The E-MU B3
is a sound module dedicated to emulating the sounds of the original monster
Hamond B3 organ and does a great job of it. Used frequently on the Strictly
from Hunger CD.
Alesis NanoBass
A half rack sound module dedicated to producing bass guitar sounds. Does
a pretty good job of a difficult to acquire sound. It's not a multitimbral
unit, which is a bit of a drawback because I like to layer bass sounds.
Peavey MD-8 Mixer
I've owned this mixer so long I can't remember when I bought it. Still
works great. I use a Stella low noise power supply to power it up for
recording purposes. (Decent dynamic range is difficult to obtain in a
home studio).
Stella Power Supply
I made a request to Stella for this custom low noise power supply. It powers the Peavey mixer. You can hear the difference. The Peavey mixer was intended to be for live stage performance and wasn't designed to be used as a recording mixer. Consequently, for low volume recording, the signal- to-noise is not that great. The Stella fixes that.
Boogie Mark IV
This is the quintessential guitar amp. This model is super versatile and
can be modified to play at different biases
and power levels at the flip of a switch. Has 3 independent pre-amps with
a foot switch. Great studio and performance amp.
Drawback: Too many choices if something goes wrong--takes a while to
go through all the settings.
Alesis 3630 Compressor/Gate
Used for limiting peaks (compressor) and
gating noise levels for guitar and voice recording. I've used this unit live
too. Works great.
Marshall MXL V77 Tube Microphone
Used for voice and guitar recording. The Cakewalk software allows me to record Digital Audio wave files into separate tracks. The microphone is plugged into the Alesis compressor, which goes to the mixer, which outputs to the stereo input of the Yamaha SW1000XG sound card. Drawbacks: poor dynamic range.
Foot Box
Left to right:
Ernie Ball volume pedal
MXR Phase 90
DOD Stereo Chorus 565
Korg Guitar Tuner (above DOD)
MXR Dyna Comp
Crybaby Wa-wa
In the top left hand corner there is a 1 Spot 9V power supply (Visual Sound)
