Updating studio layouts for fun
… and profit? Well, no, since I’m not likely to ever make money off of my music. But I enjoy writing music, and that’s really what it’s all about. Having an organized studio where you can make use of your instruments is important, and there’s a reason that I haven’t written anything in the past several years – no organization. There were always things to be done around the house, or we had moved, or had to shuffle things around, or had too much clutter. While being laid off from work was unfortunate, it gave me a bit of spare time – and with my wife out of town on a short trip for work, I had the opportunity to work on a few of my own projects.
Stage one – which I will write about in a few days – was to build my own 10U 19″ rack for some recently-acquired rackmount gear. I plan for most of my new DIY projects to be rackmountable, simply to save on the substantial desktop surface area that they tend to require. While building the rack, I had enough material left over to make a raised monitor stand – not like the 15″ LCD really needed one, but it gave me some extra space to tuck equipment away when not in use.
After everything was built, I cleaned up the huge mess that was my desk, rewired everything and fired it all up. Overall it was a lot of effort to construct, disassemble and rewire the whole setup, but definitely worth it! It will make writing and recording (not to mention using my new sampler) a much more streamlined process – or so I hope!
In the picture (top to bottom, left to right), we have:
- Weller WTCPT soldering iron (for DIY projects)
- Mackie 1202VLZ mixer
- MIDIbox SID synth
- Boss DR-202 drum machine
- 15″ LCD monitor
- Alesis MMT-8 (circa 1987)
- MOTU MicroLite 5×5 MIDI interface (racked)
- Alesis DataDisk (racked)
- Line6 ToneCore Crunchtone pedal (sitting on sampler)
- E-mu ESI-2000 sampler (racked)
- Red Sound Darkstar
Just off to the right of the picture are my two keyboards, a Korg 707 and a Casio CT-670. I’m very happy with the final product and look forward to using everything in the near future!
Nice job with updating the studio!
My biggest challenge is that I’d like to be able to put my keyboard somewhere where I could use it and the laptop at the same time. I find that getting up and walking over there and then walking back is disruptive enough that I just don’t do it.
Thanks, If!
The keyboards were a bit of a challenge. I should have posted the picture of how they are arranged. There’s actually a wall just to the right of my desk; the Korg 707 is pretty small and sits on two brackets that I mounted to the wall. It’s high enough that I can bang out a few notes from sitting in my chair, but need to stand up if I want to play anything serious on it.
The Casio is on a standard X-stand, and I can slide it back along the wall when I’m not using it. Otherwise it takes up too much space next to the desk and just gets in the way.
In your case, it would really depend on the layout of your den as to whether you could find a good spot for it. About the only things I’ve found that work easily are either directly in front of the computer, or just to your left or right – typically perpendicular, so you can swivel there. Getting up to walk over to it definitely ruins the workflow, I’ve tried that before and agree that it just doesn’t cut it.
But still, at least you’ve been recording some music these past few years!
Hello Andrew,
Nice studio you got there, and as I see you have an Dr-202… did you know about anyone tha success upgrading the lcd on the dr-202 ?
I recently got one but the lcd is dead by now.
thanks,
Ahmed