Studio Renovations since 2020

Not long after moving to Oconee County in 2006 I had subdivided the dining room in my house to create an office for myself that I could also use as a music studio.  I had purchased a Kawai MP5 electric piano and I had a Windows XP computer I used to run Reaper v3.46 through a two channel Soundblaster card.  I also had a Kimball console piano, the Behringer MX2642, and a few other assorted instruments that I would play around with when I had time. While my passion and desire to become a more competent musician was strong, my playing at the time left a lot to be desired.  While it's true that the constant need to make a living and help raise my children pressed on my time, I tended to use it as an excuse for not putting the time I needed into mastering my instruments in order to attain the level of proficiency I desired.  Still, I made incremental progress improving my musicianship and building my studio, getting an old Kimbell Grand in 2009, a FCA1616 around 2014, and various other pieces of equipment to enhance my studio if they were relatively inexpensive and I though I might use them later.  After I retired in 2013, I spent a couple of years to decide what I wanted to do during my retirement gravitating between supplementing my income in some way or pursuing my love for music. I would occasionally work as a substitute teacher or volunteer at the church which I continued to do until I started classes at UGA in January of 2020.  Around 2015 I finally realized that I no longer had a valid excuse to not pursue my interests in music and so I started practicing earnestly to recover and expand on the meager musical skills I had developed in the 1980's with the intent of producing the music I have been wanting to produce since I was around eight years old.   When the principal at the school I was subbing hinted that she would hire me to teach their music classes if I could get my teaching certification I decided to pursue the degree and haven't turned back.  During this period I gradually added to my studio and the music program at UGA has provided me with a structure that I believe will help me develop an efficient workflow that will facilitate by abilities to perform, compose, record, transcribe, teach, and produce the music I've always wanted to produce. 

In the past two years I have made significant changes to my studio. In July of 2020 I had completed my first semester at UGA and was accepted for fall entry into the Hugh Hodgson School of Music.  The children had all moved out and I was finally able to direct more time and resources toward my passion and interest in producing music.  It was around this time that I got rid of the Kimball grand replacing it with a Hallet Davis grand. The first major project was an outgrowth of the kitchen renovation project which required the foundation of the house to be stabilized. The wall I had erected to make my office in 2007 was removed so the floors could be refinished.  I had already utilized the room my parents stayed in when visiting as my electronic studio and now the old dining room/office is being used as the acoustic instrument room.  The MX2642 was having some issues with the left main buss intermittently not functioning so I finally replaced it, upgrading to an X32.  That, combined with the recently acquired Maingear gaming laptop constitute the core audio backbone of my studio.  This period from 2020 through today have been spent learning how to use all the components and get them seamlessly integrated.  I am now using software to control the X32 and the applications on the laptop remotely with my iPad or another laptop which has greatly reduced headaches related to starting and stopping recording sessions or adjusting various monitor levels in the studio.

After going back and forth with trying to decide what rooms in the house I wanted to use as part of the studio I was eager to do something to drastically reduce the wire spaghetti.  The challenges of disconnecting and moving equipment to gig or otherwise rearrange or keep clean my work area was considerable.  There were wires running around the baseboards and across the floors from room to room and I wanted to eliminate that so over the course of the past year and a half I have wired three patch panels so that the cables now go from a master panel behind the X32 under the house  to a local panes on the opposite side of the the electric room and another on the far side of the acoustic room.  There are 10 TRS cables and 6 XLR patch points for the electric room. The acoustic room has 6 TRS, 14 XLR , 2 Cat5e, and 2 SpeakOn patch points for the acoustic room.  Sometimes I wonder if it will be sufficient to accommodate future growth particularly regarding the Cat5e cables, but it works for now.  Unfortunately, I didn't test the ports in the acoustic room and recently had to pull out two of the panels to fix the SpeakOn connectors that I had incorrectly wired when I decided to use the EV SR18 as a monitor (powered by the EP2000 from the electric room) in the acoustic room.  (put in picture of that room)  

There are still three hardware related studio projects that I would like to complete before I begin my student teaching in a year and a half.  These are upgrading the monitoring facilities by purchasing and placing multiple monitors throughout the studio. This could possibly include acquiring a P16 system but I'm still considering the various design options for that project.  The second has to deal with installation of some kind of microphone mounting system, also still in the preliminary design stage.  This might even extend to a DVR camera system to capture video, something that was looked into during the Covid times but isn't a priority yet.  The final planned project has to deal with room utilization and ambience, including lighting.  Before the summer is out I will be getting an electric sit/stand desk for the keyboard and am currently building a desktop that will be about 15 inches above the current desktop so that it can be easily used when standing.  I will also be removing the original light and fan fixture to install a recessed LED light array on a dimmer.  

As far as additional instruments, I got a used Bundy Mark II saxophone, a used Pearl Export drum set, a Novea clarinet, and most recently, a Strobel violin.  I also just got the Ableton Live 11 suite and am trying to learn to use all these better to finally produce some satisfying  music.  That's all for now and I may update some more over the summer.