ASSEMBLING A HOME STUDIO
Adrian Baker explains how he did it!
AS every songwriter knows, the actual writing part of the songs is the easiest part of being a songwriter. It’s the selling of them which is so difficult. And the first stumbling block every writer who wishes to be professional comes up against is the necessity of making a demo tape in order to present his or her work to publishing companies.
Once you’ve spent a few pounds going into proper recording studios, you’re bound to find yourself heaving a sigh and wishing that you had all the recording equipment at home, so that you needn’t stir from your little songwriting den! Naturally recording equipment costs quite a lot of money but, sooner or later, most songwriters manage to equip themselves with something, even if it’s just one good tape recorder.
We recently visited a guy who, as well as being a successful singer and writer has, over the last two years, assembled his own home recording studio which is now good enough for him to use it to record actual backing tracks for single and album numbers. The man in question is Adrian Baker whose group, The Tonics, are currently enjoying success with the single All Summer Long.
CELLAR
Most people, when thinking of setting up a studio would look around their home and decide what room they can most afford to do without. Adrian didn’t want his mum to have to do without any, so he hit on the ingenious idea of converting a place that wasn’t used any longer — the coal cellar!
“I started on it about two and a half years ago,” Adrian explained, “I’ve always been keen on electronics and I built quite a lot of the equipment myself.”
Drummer Roy Morgan, who plays, writes and co-produces with Adrian, helped him with the conversion and wiring work and the result is an impressively professional 8-track studio in which they demo all their songs.
To reach the studio you go down the front hall of Adrian’s mother’s house, turn left and descend a ladder into the bowels of the earth where electronic gadgetry gleams up at you out of the darkness. “When the electricity man comes to read the meter he always gets a shock,” grinned Adrian. “They send a different guy every time and he comes down the ladder with a bored expression on his face then his jaw drops open in amazement as he looks round him and sees all the gear.”
CONFINED
The studio is housed in two tiny rooms which couldn’t accommodate more than two people. One room contains a drum kit and the other is just large enough to stand in and operate the controls. However, as Adrian is a multi-instrumentalist, he can manage perfectly easily in this confined space with the help of Roy.
“When I want to record a piano track, I just take a microphone upstairs to where the piano is and record it like that,” Adrian explained. He also has a drum machine, in case he wants to try out a number when Roy isn’t around to play.
Basically, the studio centres round a Brenell 8-track tape recorder, a Revox A77 and an Allen & Heath mixing desk, with Celestion studio speakers. All the extra studio effects, such as echo, fold-back and talkback, are supplied from one unit which Adrian designed and made himself, placing the works in an old GPO box.
“The difference between this and the system you find in a studio is that whereas in the studio you have to plug in for every effect you need, my system is all operated by simple switches,” said Adrian.
He’s also built his own guitar effects panel incorporating fuzz, wah wah etc. which is much handier than having a lot of different effects pedals scattered about your feet.
We asked Adrian how much setting up the studio had cost him in terms of equipment and conversion costs. “About £5,000 I suppose,” He replied, looking slightly startled at the thought. Of course, when you are doing it all yourself, you can split the cost over a long period of time, adding something new every time you’ve saved up for it. Adrian’s studio didn’t start off as splendidly equipped as it is now.
“The first things I had were a Teac 4-track tape recorder and a Revox,” he recalled. “That’s really all you need to make quite complicated demos, because, with two tape-recorders, you can do quite a bit of overdubbing. Two tape recorders and maybe a mini-mixer can give quite a nice little set up and it will cost under the £1000 mark.”
If you can’t afford to buy tape recorders, you’ll find reasonable secondhand models advertised in papers like Exchange & Mart. Two good quality tape recorders are sufficient to allow you to add extra instruments and harmonies to your songs by bouncing tracks from one machine to the others. But, for extra refinements like echo and pan, you’ll need some kind of small mixer and these start at around the £150 mark.
ACOUSTIC
Soundproofing is always an expensive problem as the acoustic tiles that studios use cost a lot of money. Here, Adrian was lucky.
“I heard of an office in town that was being dismantled and amongst the things being chucked out were a quantity of acoustic tiles which I got for next to nothing,” he explained.
Adrian’s single, Sherry, which was a hit last summer, gave him quite a bit of cash to put into the studio. But he’d never have had that hit — or his contract with Magnet Records — if he hadn’t in the first place been wise enough to realise that the quality of a demo is very important when it comes to impressive record companies and publishers.
“I decided to record Sherry, even though it wasn’t one of my songs because it had always got a good response when I played it with my group. I recorded it in Pye studios and then took it round. It was a master rather than a demo. I wanted to be with Magnet Records and I was lucky enough to get them interested in the tape and they offered me a deal.”
Now Adrian is recording both under his own name and under the name, The Tonics, a group made up of himself as singer, guitarist, keyboard player, ex-Stackridge member Paul Karas, Roy Morgan, who is also ex-Stackridge, and Roger Whatling who used to be in Adrian’s old band, Playground, on guitar. They haven’t done any touring yet, as they have been spending most of their time recording. In fact, Adrian reckons that maybe he spends too much time in the studio.
“My first album was recorded over a period of three months and I did everything with only two people to help me, Roy and a conga player. I spent prolonged periods of time in the studio and in the end I made myself ill. The album never made the charts, but in a way I wasn’t surprised because it was released too long after Sherry.”
Adrian is now looking forward to making his next album and also to moving into a new house which he’s bought from John Richardson of the Rubettes.
LUCKY
“It’s known as a lucky house, John’s had considerable success since he’s been in that house and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll do the same for me.” With the help of that marvellous demo studio, who knows?
by Lorne Read
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