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‘Seventeen cold showers couldn’t wash away. Save me, save me, save me, save me from what I want.’ Every consonant, every bass drum hit, every pluck of Annie Clark’s guitar on her album Actor is perfectly clear, warm, through my new KRK Rokit 8 monitor speakers. And her doe-eyed orange album is cover clear and huge on my new 23-inch computer monitor.

We finished constructing the studio yesterday, August 21^st, right on schedule. The room is an extra room in the back of my mom’s house in Fayetteville. Originally the space was about the opposite of the perfect place for recording music—high ceilings, hardwood floors, lots of windows, an extra door. Two weeks later, with the help of my dad and recording cohort Matt, we have constructed a room within this larger room, with wood, blankets, quilts, and bedspreads lining the walls along with Auralex acoustic foam and Audimute aborption blankets. I have to admit that it’s probably the coolest, most elaborate, loungiest fort I’ve ever built. My eight-year-old self, with her blankets enclosing the TV in the family room, would be totally jealous right now. Outside the isolation room we have our mixing console set up with the computer, monitors, and the Firestudio. It’s pretty cool, I have to admit. The only step left now is to purchase or somehow get a hold of a pack of drum mics, a few extra cables, and a good pair of mixing headphones. (Accepting donations).

Here is the pattern of the past two weeks: determine the next piece of studio equipment to buy, spend hours on the internet reading reviews and honing in on choices, going to Guitar Center, fretting, sweating, wavering, deciding, changing minds, deciding again, pulling out credit cards, swiping, sighing. Then coming home, screwing, hanging, organizing. This pattern has made me very aware of how unacquainted with contemporary Capitalism I have become. First, there are the big retail stores like Best Buy and Guitar Center, with their army of blue shirted helpers scanning the spacious white room with its buzzing fluorescent lights and shiny screens for your confused look, your slight scratch of the head. The signal that says: “hmmm, do I buy this one or that one?” And there they are, at your side, ready with answers you don’t need to the wrong questions and pointing you towards the slightly more expensive silver-plated version of that fire wire cable because you know real Mac users always go with silver-plated cables, really, much better performance. Then there is the game of reading reviews online. Funny how almost everything has five stars one some of these websites. And then some are much too technical. The dB level frequency curve dynamic range large diaphragm parabolic infinity electron sound wave number number number. Contemporary capitalism in a nutshell: reading and manipulating human psychology and sifting through heaps and heaps of information. Liberal arts didn’t exactly prepare me.

And of course, at Guitar Center my female discrimination sensors get amped up to the highest setting as soon as I walk into the Pro Audio section. ‘Surely they think I’m a completely technologically inept girl’ becomes my default stance towards the world and the slightest remark or smirk from one of the dudes working there (yes, they are dudes) sparks the most uncalled for shift into bitch mode. They were, in reality, not discriminating against me at all (any human with a credit card can eat at this counter seems to me their motto), and perhaps allowed me to test out the mics and monitors longer that they might have typically been inclined to. But I’m working on it. There are prices to be paid for hyper-sensitivity and I’m willing to pay them.

So $4,600, sweat, mood swings, dozens of receipts stuffed into my wallet, hangovers, crying spells, bike rides, and a few unexpected phone conversations and medical surprises later, I have a recording studio in my house. We laid the first vocal tracks, using the beautiful Bluebird last night, and everything is ahhhhhh about to get started. Hooray! There is still an open invitation to anyone I’ve ever collaborated with to come to Arkansas and lay down a track or two. The Ozarks are beautiful, I promise, and the fort studio is even cooler.

I think that the key to making an album is having awesome people to collaborate with, and I am so lucky to have people like Matt Todd and my dad and everyone else who is going to be helping with this CD around to make it happen. Muchisimas Gracias.

On another note, Adele and the Matts secured three shows at Scarpino’s and are about to start practicing again for that. I also got to meet Claudia Berson, one of the best key-ticklers in the ‘ville and might take lessons with her. I watched her play some jazz last Tuesday and got pretty inspired once I resurfaced from my hole of self-deprecation and depression-by-comparison. She does have thirty years on me after all…

Check out the pictures:

You got me spendin'

I made the decision to produce this album without really thinking through how many dollars it would cost me, and this week has been a process of coming to terms with just how many dollars I will be parting with over the next few weeks as I piece together this studio.

Last week I finally settled the Logic vs. Protools debate, coming down eventually on the side of Logic. There are long lists of pros and cons for each program. Logic is just a better program, more updatable, better sound quality, more versatile, amazing midi, but it only runs on mac, which means that I have to spend a lot of money on a computer only half as good as the computer I could build if I went with a pc. Protools would run on the awesome pc I would build, but protools is the biggest capitalist scam in the recording industry, tying their software to their own hardware, which is monstrously overpriced and poor quality. Plus the cheep version of Protools only supports 32 tracks. 32 tracks???!!!

So now my bank account is $3,000 lighter and I have the highest end 15 inch Macbook Pro (along with my free ipod), the Firestudio Tube 16 channel audio interface, a new 23 inch monitor, all on the way to my doorstep. Right now this money is coming out of the college savings I didn’t end up spending on my education because I went to the oh so quirky public liberal arts college in Florida and my now being a Florida resident. What?

The truth is that I don’t know how someone could possibly try to produce their own album without some kind of significant savings like this. This process is extremely time-consuming and working as a musician (which is my only other job at the moment) pays next to nothing. Adele and the Matts had their first show of the season last Friday at Arsaga’s on Crossover and made $200 whole dollars, which got evenly distributed in $67 portions. Great money for a show at a small coffee shop but only covering the cost of...maybe the cheapest metal windscreen for a condenser mic? It just doesn’t cut it.

Today my dad is helping me enclose part of the new Adele and the Matt’s practice room to create the recording isolation chamber. Looks like it is going to end up being a 7X6X8 foot space, partially outlined by the existing walls and partially outlined with the makeshift 2X4 walls we are putting up today. Yesterday we bought an enormous package of acoustic foam and are probably going to do the rest of the job with insulated fiberglass and wool blankets.

I still have to research and buy mics and new monitor speakers, some new XLR cables, and a package of drum mics, but other than that things are really coming together and I’m excited. It will the realization of a dream I’ve had for many years to finally be able to get out of bed at any hour of the night and walk into my very own recording studio in the next room.

Other than this project I have been trying to get out to see other local bands play. So far my favs have been Opal Fly and the Swatters, The Rox, and The Good Fear. Some pretty awesome local music going down in Fayettenam these days. Tomorrow Matt and I are going to distribute our press kit to more local venues. Given the awesome turnout to our first show I have confidence that we can develop a pretty good local following.

The Task

My task: To record an album of original music in the seven months I have before I leave for Peru in March. August to March. In that time I have to build a computer, a functional recording and production space, spend lots of money,teach the instrumentalists their parts, record, mix, master, record, mix, master. All the while playing with my trio, Adele in the Matts, getting gigs, promoting myself, and somehow managing to have a somewhat normal life on top of that.

And what will I do here? Document it. The ups and downs, the frustrations, the triumphs, and insightful and not so insightful observations about being an artist, a woman, a fresh-out-of college idealist.... enjoy.