The Story of Spring Street Studios

Hello, internet!

Good lord it has been a while, how are you all? I hope you had a fantastic Easter

Yes, this shows you how long ago I started writing this blog. I’ve had to change some bits from future to past tense. And so, with a whole new introductory paragraph, let me tell you the wonderful story of the birth of ProgPit Studios.

After a series of grandiose plans for my studio I eventually boiled all my needs down to:

A: A room

B: A Badass Computer

C: Auxilliary studio materials.

‘A’ was dealt with rather easily, as I also inhabit the room, so I can claim it as general living expenses.

The computer, however, was a much more interesting task. Since the majority of my university work is conducted on a Mac, I thought it would be a good investment in terms of labour saving and the ability to do more work at home to get one for myself. So now my computer desires have at least a very basic form.

Here’s what I was thinking at this point:

Now the problem with those 2 statements is that they directly contradicted each other. Apple products, by their very nature, are expensive. And I hoped that this computer would last me a while, and so therefore I had to buy a reasonably powerful one, or one that I could upgrade as and when I needed to. The latter sounded rather tempting, and I had heard about people building their own computers, and I have recently got into a habit of taking things apart and looking at how they work.

However, as a naive computer building virgin it had not struck me that one does not simply build a Mac, but in what can only be described as a flight of infinitely stubborn fancy, after being told that one does not simply build a Mac, my brain proceeded to ask...

Why not?

To which the reply I got was: ‘You just can’t’.

Hohohoo. ‘You just don’t’ might have made me question further, but the use of the word ‘can’t’ pricked up my attention summat fierce! I therefore directed the rest of my questions towards the internet and various computer knowledgy friends, and after a month of searching, I found a solution.

Basically, what a Hackintosh is (aside from a rather terrible pun) is a home built PC, which, through a long and labourious procedure can be made to run on Snow Leopard OSX, by installing the Mac operating system on the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) of a computer shortly after it is built. It then runs through the rest of its life using the Snow Leopard operating system, and to all intents and purposes, is a Macintosh computer. The appeal of this is twofold, firstly, having a home built computer makes upgrades both easier and quite possibly cheaper and secondly, because the price gap is just beautiful.

Building a Hackintosh gave me the ability to be very specific about the specs of my computer, and once I decided on the power and memory capacity of my desired unit, it turned out that an iMac with the specs that I wanted would have cost more or less £2500.

I do not have that money. I am a student.

£2500 is the price of 1000 beers.

One...

Thousand...

Beers.

Or a reasonably good car.

I will come back to this figure later...

So I made up my mind to build a Hackintosh. It would have 4-8Gb of RAM, at least 250Gb of internal memory a nice 1080p screen. Or two. This however, meant that I had to learn about computers and the building thereof. Luckily I have friends like Harry and Harry, who taught me about this whole computer building business, and how to get me a thoroughly preposterous amount of proverbial bang for my proverbial buck. So here is the shopping list that I ended up with...

Now, as I understand computers there are certain things I should be spending a bit more money on, despite my relative attitude of cheapness towards the studio at the moment. One of these things is the PSU, or power supply unit, which I have on good authority is a bad thing to suddenly go wrong. It essentially breaks up the big electricity from the mains socket into little baby electricities that run around inside your computer feeding all the other components. So it’s breaking would effectively melt the insides of the poor ol’ thing, and I can’t record Worlds Apart on a smoking pile of molten plastic and metal. So as a result, I shelled out for this badboy:

Secondly, I was told that for audio recording I needed to cram as much RAM as I could get into the computer to make it run fast and smooth even with massive amounts of audio, and due to my habit of double and triple tracking vocals and guitars, combined with my love of massive harmonies, it sounded like I was going to need a LOT. Buying RAM is an odd task, as it seems to fluctuate in price based on seasons, and for those who don’t know, RAM comes in sticks which are inserted into the motherboard of the computer. I ended up buying two 2Gb sticks of tasty, tasty RAM, making a thoroughly respectable 4Gb.

Next, I needed a graphics card. And because I don’t really have any intention of pushing the boundaries of HD gaming, I opted for a reasonably cheap low end Zotac one which will provide my eyes with ample entertainment as I record my number one debut album that makes me famous...

Hopefully.

Also, as all computers, It needed a CD/DVD drive so I bought this one!

I can't remember what type it is, but as far as I know a DVD drive is a DVD drive is a DVD drive.

Now, one of the few things I know about computers is that you need to see what you’re doing on them, so to this end, I decided to buy a nice 22” 1080p full HD screen off ebay, and somehow it only cost me £80. I have a small TV in my room which was given to me by a friend last year, and to this day I’m still working out how to connect the two together. But that is another story for another blog.

Finally, at the centre of operations, A motherboard and CPU. These were perhaps the most important choices, as I needed not only high spec components, but also components that would be compatible with running a Mac operating system. However, budget was still pressing, so I bought a mid range motherboard: and an absolutely effing beautiful i7 CPU. Originally I had a problem in that the first CPU I bought was a newer model and therefore incompatible with the motherboard, but as I got it for reasonably cheap off ebay, I might even be able to make some money by selling it on!

Oh, and I got a nice, cheap, cool looking case which is ‘Tool-free’ meaning I don’t have to break out the spanners every time I want to change something, which is handy.

So with it all ordered I bought my copy of Snow Leopard off the internet and waited for all my things to arrive...

I don’t know if you’ve ever waited for so many things to come in the mail, but seriously, the excitement was actually nearly killing me. My room is right next to the front door, so I’m really the only one who hears when the postman knocks, and that’s usually when I’m still in bed. Day after day I was woken up by the door, got dressed as fast and clumsily as possible and ran to answer the door, more often than not to be greeted with a small letter for the previous owners, but eventually I got everything.

It. Was. Well confusing.

Had I not had Harry on hand to help with the putting together of things I would have almost certainly cocked everything up. But due to a small amount of expertise on his part and a large amount of nagging on mine, everything ended up plugged together and working.

And that is Harry on the right. The girl in the chair is Sophie, a housemate who has had to put up with me gushing about this whole process since about march.

Now came the hard part.

(Hehee. Hard part.)

Because of repression of bad memories and some blind following of instructions, I can’t recall the exact procedure with which I installed Snow Leopard. Suffice to say, it was surprisingly simple and easy in the beginning, and then ironing out all the little niggles at the end made up one of the most frustrating days of my life.

If anyone is interested in Hackintoshes then I strongly recommend you look at the blogs of Tonymacx86 which is where I received all the info I needed for this project, and it explains the process by which you can turn the right computer into a Mac. However when I had finished all this, I was left with a Mac with no sound, no internet, and no applications. This is where I had to use MultiBeast.

MultiBeast is another creation of Tonymacx86 which sorts out all the little bits of your Hackintosh to make it run like a normal computer, without personalised help, however, it gets VERY confusing. Fortunately, I found personalised help in the form of a different Harry, who showed me how to get everything working.

One of the biggest shocks I had when the Hackintosh was built was the lack of internet. Looking back, I hadn’t bought any kind of wireless card or WLAN receiver thing, when building the computer, but just expected it to have wireless capability. I was WELL gutted when I found out it hadn’t. But 1 10m Ethernet cable later, I was online, and hopefully, the cable internet will prove to be more stable than wireless anyway.

In terms of audio hardware and software, I bought an Alesis io2 Audio Interface off ebay for £60, and that has catered to all of my input needs. It allows me to independently connect 2 inputs (Jack or XLR) to my computer via a USB port and control the input gain of each. It has phantom power for condenser microphones in input 1 and digital and MIDI input and output ports so everything is catered for.

The MIDI controllers are my beloved Axiom pro 61 MIDI keyboard and a roland DD55 MIDI drum kit I have had lying around for a while. It needs fixing, and parts are currently on their way via some internet transactions, so that should be working before long. The computer’s main audio is patched into my old stereo with some nice speakers on which give me good sound quality and a nice big bass sound.

All the software I use so far has been downloaded, and cracked by various sources, because after spending the money on the computer, I decided to treat myself by saving on it. I record on Logic Pro 9 and use Absynth, Massive, and Battery for most of my synth sounds. Guitar Rig 4 and Superior Drummer have already featured on my vlog, which if you haven’t already seen, you should give it a quick look over.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DrBlowThingsUp

Overall, the full price of the studio was around £800. That means I saved just less than £2000 pounds from building the Hackintosh, so to all who were involved, the people who advised me via the internet on what to get, or how to put it together, thankyou so much.

On that note, it’s getting late, and I have to be up early to listen for the postman, so I’ll see you all soon!

Bye!

xxx

The week that wasn't. mondays post... up on tuesday.

Hullo readers! :D

It has been a WHILE since my last entry so I’ll have to play catchup for a while until i manage to get to what i did today, fortunately for the impatient amongst you; the rest of last week was painfully slow, compared to how productively it started. In the interest of fairness to all other forces involved, it was mainly my fault that much didn’t get done after that, due to a generally good time being had in the flat and a positive wad of good stuff on and around the television. As you may have seen I finished the piano part and last week I bounced that all to audio, which means that that’s done and dusted and I don’t have to touch that now until the mixy-mixing stage.

So that’s 2 Piano Lines and a very minimal String line finished. Holla! That’s another crossout! Also I bought potatoes and decided to make it a download, rather than a CD to cut expenses and make it easier to get, so I can cross those off too! Let’s go over to the chart...

As I was feeling so very ahead of myself at the end of last week I decided to get started on what I had scheduled for this week, which proved nothing other than the fact that I am useless at following schedules, even when I make them myself :S, although I did get a massively satisfying chunk of this week’s work done in the aftermath of last weeks work-void. So looking back on the timetable I made:

It should now look something more like this:

Now you add a few lines...

Voila! Frank Zappa. Prog is truly everywhere.

Due to this mass of overlapping and cunningly hidden moustaches I have now programmed all of the drums, completely doing away with the rubbish ones I did on the guide tracks with a familiar ‘what was I thinking?’ fervour. Made a drum line? Programmed a drum line? Let’s see if it’s on the chart... Woo! More crossing out. I really should have instituted some kind of gold stars system.
So that’s all the catch-upping done, with a bit of drumming on the side for good measure. I was pleasantly surprised this week to find that the studio I booked was the very same one me and Dean had filmed in a previous blog, which gave me one of those lovely familiar homey feelings, and for old time’s sake I decided to invite Dean to join me to witness some more of the chaos that this project is turning into. Mind you, it’s the good kind of chaos, like falling out of a helicopter into the playboy mansion.

((//picture censored//))

(dont worry, that was a joke, im not trying to blog porn.)

Although after a while the devil took over and I picked up my trusty guitar and had a lovely noodle over the track. I have a feeling it’s not going to be in the final mix, but who knows, I might release bonus tracks featuring unnecessarily LARGE solos. This did give me insight into the lead guitar part for the end, though and after messing around with the little guitar line over the last chorus I decided to harmonise it Queen style. Which meant working out a four part harmony line and playing them all in. I won’t lie, it sounded ace. I’m seriously considering whacking it in, as I had an epiphany at the end of today’s session and decided to keep the ridiculously epic huge ending section with the fabled MS patch and a brilliant sample I found called MIGHTY ORGAN! This is gonna be so loud it’s going to shake the actual concept of Christmas.

Peace!

The weekend before the charge...

I’ve had a small break from Christmas songs this weekend, to work on some of my more personal projects, and have just about managed to finish off the 3rd song for my album whenever that manages to get done. Jeez, I always thought this Christmas lark would be hard but when I finally get round to recording that I’ll have to find a way to ship the geniuses that are Mr Dale Cross and Dr Benjamin Wareing up here to put down some beats and bassage that mere mortals like I can only dream of. Daym, that’s gonna be a confusing month or so. But now the final bastion of defence against the jingly jangly sleigh bells of approaching deadlines has fallen and I must once again get my Christmas thinking hat on.

What a thoroughly scary face that man has.

No more progress with the original Christmas song, though. I seem to have hit that lyrical wall that means I can think of nothing beyond what is immediately obvious. And i have resorted to doing the old, old method of playing the intro a million times, and getting ready to sing... and then seeing what comes out. When it comes to Christmas songs, though I think it’s impossible to avoid the cheesy lyrics so I might just end up biting the bullet and end up writing something along the lines of...

"Whoopee, it’s Christmas! Let’s all be nice!
I made some cake, who’d like a slice,
It’s time to wear your winter coat,
‘Cuz jenky A is on a boat!"

Its not... ‘Bad’ I suppose. Hahaw.

Anyhoo, gonna book me some more studio time tomorrow after I’ve finished my drum lesson because my calendar tells me that this week is arranging week. Hopefully, the arranging itself shouldn’t take me more than a couple of days, so I could potentially be ahead of schedule before the end of the first week. And I do love being ahead of schedule.

Night all!

21st October – recruitment!

Put the poster up today to try and get some people to start bagsie-ing lines in the song, and a big sheet explaining it. I’ve a slight fear if this keeps up I’ll turn into one of those note-leavers. And no one likes a note-leaver.

There are a couple of names on the sheet already. It’s looking good! I’m wondering if I have time to try and record a B-side of an original song... hmmm..... I think I feel a noodling session coming on...

-----------

Score! Got a nice jangly guitar riff. But alas I feel as though it may be time for bed, so I’ll make a quick digital note of it on my best friend guitar pro and hope I have something constructive to write about tomorrow.

Goodnight world!

20th October – The fiddly First bit

Good morning!


I really am feeling the nerves of this it’s the first time I’ve worked on something this big. (hehee.) I’m raring to go so I’ll fill the rest of this in when I get back!


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Well that was certainly odd. I expected a lot of lonely studio time but met up with Dean just before I went in so I ended up dragging him along for the experience, and I’m very glad I did. Got a very basic piano-ey line down now throughout the whole song it’s a bit sketchy but at least I know what I’m aiming for now. That’s something I can tick off the list! Wooo!


Got a rudimentary drum groove going too, but I think I did a good amount of cheating with copy, paste, and quantise, so I won’t consider that job polished off just yet. Also the spectator of this whole process egged me into adding a pipe organ, Gregorian choir synth, orchestral harp, and just as we thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous we found a string patch called ‘megafat superstrings’! It would appear the gods are on my side for this one...

Managed to have a lovely singalong with the ending too. I say singing, we weren’t at our best, vocally. But its only day 1, and Dean decided to capture it on the miracle of videotape. And it goes a little something like this.



I love technology.

19th October – Introductions!

Well, hello there, people!

Its official, there’s a release date marked on my calendar and a whole load of ideas flying around Jenkinson A this festive season, I can’t wait to start and I’ve been through this songwriting joy before and inevitably there will always come a time where I regret even having the idea, so dash it all I’m going to enjoy this fluffy Christmas feeling of excitement while it lasts. :)

After watching in awe as a certain Mr Jem Godfrey blogged Frost*’s journey from concept to album I thought I’d give it a go, if not for the actual blogginess then so I have a record of what I’m doing, because I have never been any good at planning and this might make it more organised and exciting! But not this time, I’ve made lists and everything! Are you proud of me? You know it.

Got studio time booked for tomorrow to start everything where It’ll just be me, a midi keyboard and a reasonably sophisticated studio to bang some ideas together with my good old idea hammer, guitar pro 5. I tell thee, I’m feeling the jingle bells coming on already...