GEARS I WILL LOVE TO HAVE (MY DREAM RECORDING STUDIO)

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Hello Steemians!, this post sequels “Basic Gears for a Digital Home Recording Studio” which is an earlier post that described the most basic setup for a home recording studio and which also happens to be the setup I use for my own home recording studio. If you read through it, you will see that it is a very basic and affordable setup, except maybe the Motu 828mk3 which may be a little bit pricy for someone on a very tight budget. All other gears I use are pretty much very basic and affordable.

Because I didn't really specify the specs of my gears in the previous post, I will just briefly do that here. I use the Beringher ms40 which is an active nearfield studio monitor, an old CME (m-key) four-octave midi piano, TAKSTAR-SM-10B-M condenser microphone, JARGUAR PRO AUDIO sound absorbing wall with an Atlantic Pro speaker mount to hold it, four 2×2 inches acoustic foams (absorbers), HP Probook laptop (intel core i5, 6GB RAM), Beringher HPS3000 closed-back headphones and an electro-acoustic guitar. That is basically all I have for now and this can pretty much perform the tasks of home recording well, and you can get a very good quality raw sound from this if the acoustics of your room is decent. To really understand the concept of acoustic treatment, I will recommend you check it out here.

To put this all together and make it work, you don't have to pay a sound engineer to do that for you. But do if you can afford it, they are experts for a reason. With the use of some XLR, TRS, Midi and USB cables, you can simply route everything by just reading through my first post on digital home studio recording or checking out some YouTube videos online. I am not a professional sound or audio engineer, I am just a musician trying to create my own unique sound by experimenting with a whole lot of sounds, but I hope to become one someday and I am working towards that. Also, I am not a gear freak or a badass tech guy so I probably won't spend so much time to check out the latest gears and every detail about them or pros and cons of some audio recording gears. Instead, I simply opt for the ones I feel will help me accomplish my tasks or make the whole process of music creation easier for me, and also the ones who somehow inspire me with their looks and aesthetics to create music. Naturally, a beautiful musical equipment or any other equipment is much more likely to motivate and inspire its user. I would play Lucille every morning (at least for the first one month) if I had it. And that brings us to the main essence of this post which is...

GEARS I WILL LOVE TO HAVE

Lucille and BOSS ME25 Guitar Multi Effects Pedal

I remember when I first heard Lucille sing on the album “Lucille” by Blues legend “B.B. King”. I was amazed and then I did a little more research about King and that is when I got to know about this beautiful Gibson ES (Electric Spanish) he named “Lucille”. Not only was she very pretty but she could also sing very smoothly and she is also a little bit pricey. I would love to have this not because it is the best hollow-bodied guitar out there but mainly because King played it and also because of its beauty. I am a big fan of King and Blues music. I would go for a red color and maybe add a vibrato and tremolo and a beautiful gold tailpiece to it. The BOSS ME25 got my attention the very first time I set my eyes on it on Amazon. Not just the sturdy look but also the large sound library it carries. The sounds are carefully organized into groups like clean, rhythm, crunch etc. I would happily welcome this gear into my setup.

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Yamaha DD75AD Drum Pad

The kind of sound I try to create every day lays great emphasis on rhythm from live percussions. Sometimes it can be challenging to achieve that vital “polyrhythmic” and “live percussion” effect with just a midi piano and some percussion patches in your DAW. The feel of using a drumstick while playing your percussion instruments is just very different from that of playing your percussion with piano keys. One is more real and gives you a whole different feel.

“The drummer-friendly and stylish design of the Yamaha DD-75 is your entry into professional and versatile digital-drumming instruments. The DD-75 features eight touch-sensitive pads laid out like an acoustic kit and two assignable foot pedals. New stereo-sampled Voices, a wide variety of percussion sounds from all over the world, a bass boost system and digital stereo processing give the dd-75 an irresistible, thundering beat. The panel includes intuitive features that are easy to operate. For example, select the hand percussion mode and the kit automatically switches to percussion Voices like congas and bongos. Includes an AUX IN for playing along with your favorite songs on your portable device or load MIDI songs from the internet into the internal flash ROM memory and play along.”

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Yamaha DD75AD gives you that real feeling and takes sequencing percussion instruments to a whole new level. I say this because I used it once in a friend’s studio sometimes back. I really want to get one for myself this year. I really want it.

More and More Acoustic Panels and Foams

Most sound Engineers and audio Producers would say that acoustic treatment should be the most important thing to consider when setting up a recording studio and I agree with this. The acoustics of my room is somehow not very supportive, there are too much sound reflections because of the tiled floor. First thing I will love to do is rug a larger section or the whole of the room, bring in some sofas to aid in sound absorption, add more absorbers to the walls (I already got four), add bass traps to the four corners of the wall and maybe some diffusers directly overhead my sitting position. I would also love to take off the ceiling fan and bring in a more quiet air conditioning system because the noise from the fan bleeds into the microphone a lot during recording and also pretty much obstructs my hearing during mixing. And also I would love to try out a quieter means of generating electricity. An inverter would do better than a generator, the generator sound is always awful and also, the electricity supply is very terrible in my country, Nigeria. Most times we are always left with the option of creating a source of off-grid electricity for ourselves.

Large LCD monitor

I personally prefer a laptop to a desktop in my studio, especially at this stage. But as time goes by, I can consider getting the two (laptop and desktop). Presently I am more of a nomad, so a laptop will serve me better. But one of the ways I pay for that service is by straining my eye and stacking up a lot of windows on my small laptop screen. I strain my eye a lot this way. Sometimes I have to bring the screen up close so I can see clearly. Enough said I believe this would help me solve that issue. Dell Ultrasharp.

“Refresh existing 27" Dell UltraSharp monitor with new and improved features to drive productivity and dual or multi-monitor usage
A 27" QHD resolution 16:9 aspect ratio monitor with an ultra-thin bezel. In-plane switching, anti glare with hard coat 3H
Fully adjustable features like tilt, swivel, height adjust including pivoting both 90 Degree clockwise or counterclockwise, allowing the thinnest possible edges to be placed side by side
Has an arsenic-free glass and mercury-free LED panel. Compatibility- All Operating System”

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Focusrite Scarlett 2i2

You may wonder why I am including another audio interface when I already have one. The reasons are simple, the most important being that, because of the power situation in my country, depending on an active device or a device that operates in a similar way can be disappointing sometimes. I need a soundcard that does not solely rely on electricity to function and as a nomad sort of, an audio interface I can easily carry around will be a good addition to my set up. That is why I am including Focusrite 2i2.

Estimated Total Cost in USD

Gibson ES series- $4000
BOSS ME25- $330
Yamaha DD75- $154
Acoustic Foams- $100
Large LCD screen- $500
Focusrite 2i2- $150

This means that to have my dream home recording studio, I still need an estimated total of $5,234, and that doesn’t include cost for cleaner energy. That is a whole lot of money over here, but I really hope to share with you an unboxing video of any or a couple or even all of this gears very soon with you. But till then, I will enjoy and utilize every bit of what I already have, keep on learning, experimenting and creating music.

This is just what I love and feel would help me perform my tasks better. This is not an advertisement of any sort for any brand, as a matter of fact, I would go for any other brand with similar or better specs of any of the gears I mentioned above. This post can also help or inspire anyone who wishes to upgrade their present setup. Enough said, I really hope this was useful and more importantly, interesting. You can show your support by following, resteeming, commenting and upvoting this post. Feel free to suggest a gear or gadget in the comment section.

Thank you, Papa Udeme.