‘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 21st, 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…
