If you stand outside our studio on any given afternoon, you can hear the rumble and roar of the freight trains rolling through an open below-grade pass half a block from our building. This, along with the noise of the buses clambering up Charles Street and the boom of heels on the floor above, presented our first challenges in designing our studio. Not to mention the concerns our neighbors had of a bunch of crazy musicians playing all day and all night right next door. There were many times in the process of planning this renovation when we considered the possibility that we had lost our minds. This was one of them.

(more…)

We frequently come across misconceptions about mixing and mastering. The two processes are often confused so I thought I’d take a moment to explain how we approach the two very different undertakings.

Once a band or artist is done tracking and overdubbing the parts of a song, an engineer will mix it. This is the time when all the levels of all the individual parts (instrumentals, vocals, etc) are adjusted up and down to find the perfect mix. Reverbs are added, where necessary. Vocals are compressed if they pop out at certain points. Bum notes are muted, if they distract.

(more…)

FYI, We’re sponsoring Battlefield Ground Zero at Sonar on September 11th, an urban music showcase hosted by The Unstoppable Nuklehidz with special performances by Ogun, Okay and Reno, and Kane. And don’t forget that anyone who presents us with a ticket stub from the show and put a deposit down for studio time by September 30th will get 10% off the normal price for their session.
(more…)

Producer, musician and analog fundamentalist Steve Albini (Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac) and Kim Deal (The Pixies, The Breeders) have been busy constructing an all-analog concept of recording music: The All-Wave Recording Movement.

(more…)

I have a client coming in that requires recording to a grand piano. Since I don’t have the space for a grand piano, we run a MIDI keyboard into Logic Pro 8 and use one of theirs. Usually we do overdubs for piano right in the control room.

(more…)

Thanks to Dan Murphy for a sweet write-up of the studio in The Examiner this week. Don’t judge us by the bags under our eyes. We’ll blame it on the bad angle. Or the late nights mixing. Read it for yourself here: Mobtown provides happy medium for Baltimore-area musicians