Since I’ve been doing time for my DWI conviction in January, I’ve been unable to go out and see bands. However, I have asked anyone who records original music in their home studio to get in touch with me here at music315.com.

Following is an article from Nelson Rudiak, primarily an alto sax player who also plays clarinet, keyboards and guitar. In his own words, here is his documentation of the home recording process. Check out the mpeg audio files to hear the results or contact Nelson directly to get a copy of his CD entitled “Almost Done.”

"Almost Done” is an example of the quality of home recording that can be achieved today with a very modest amount of gear and an enormous amount of time and patience. If you don’t live alone, it also helps to have a family that you don’t mind torturing during the process (more on that later).

My humble recording studio consists of the basics, centering on a Zoom 1044CD digital recorder. I had previously been involved in projects using outside “professional” studios but this was the first recording unit I had ever personally owned or used. The rest of the stuff is as follows: Shure SM57 microphone, POD 2.0 guitar processor, Behringer Ultra Voice and a Behringer Virtualizer Pro. The instruments were my trustworthy Selmer Mark VI alto sax, a Fender Strat Ultra Plus (w/ lace sensor pickups if anybody cares) and the keyboard was a Casio CTK 671. The bass tracks were played on the Strat and processed through the Zoom bass simulator (which can also make the alto sound like a baritone sax). The bulk of the drum tracks I used were selected from the ones available off the Zoom. Part of the appeal for me at the time I bought the Zoom was that it had the percussion available so I didn’t have to buy an additional electronic drum machine. I do have to make note that additional percussion tracks were added at Rick E. Lewis’s studio using Acid drum loops (If you’re unfamiliar with the Sonic Foundry program Acid—go to www.acidplanet.com to check it out. I think you’ll like what you hear - the dude). The monitor speakers I used for recording and mixing this project at home were Alesis Monitor Ones. Additional mixing and mastering were done at Rick’s. Jon Liebing performed final mastering. Taking the project out of my studio and getting a second and third set of ears involved definitely helped the overall results and I am extremely grateful for Rick and Jon’s input and involvement.

The extreme affordability of the current wave of home recording units has allowed me to put together a project that previously was simply not financially possible or at the very least would have been extremely difficult. Now, I am able to, in the comfort and privacy of my own home, take the time to put down multiple tracks/takes and eventually piece together the songs that wound up on this disc. For me, it is a slow and sometime laborious task but eventually I do get the desired results. This current technology allows me to write, perform, arrange and eventually get my compositions recorded despite my own limitations. If I had to do these sessions with real people being told “now play this, no that doesn’t work, play this instead, oops, go back to that other thing you did, how much is this studio time costing me?”-- AARGH! But thankfully, I didn’t have to do that.

With regard to the actual writing process, there really was no one way that I composed these songs. A sax line here, a guitar riff there, a little keyboard arpeggio to a drum beat, it all became part of the songwriting process. The alto sax has always been my main instrument and over the years I have developed enough guitar and keyboard chops to be able to perform all the music you hear on “Almost Done”. As I said before, composing has always been a slow process for me and by having my own in-house set up I was able to record and write when the mood was right, when the stars aligned, when the cosmos came into sync, when I had time, nothing was on TV, etc. You get the picture. This luxury was essential for me during this project. Unfortunately for my wife and son, it also meant being called in to my studio thousands of times to have me say, “listen to the section I changed” or “I added this guitar part”. At first I’m sure they were thrilled to be included in these life altering decisions but as the months rolled on they just wanted to hear those magic words, “it’s almost done!” And that boys and girls is how the CD got it’s name.

Speaking of names, since there are no lyrics on any of these tunes, naming them became a bit of a challenge. The titles I decided on are a combination of phrases that seem to fit a hook in the song, a reference to a piece of personal past history or just something that seemed to fit. The other prevailing concern was to make sure the song titles wouldn’t be confused with anything done by Yanni. For most of the time, these tunes were simply called #1, #2, #3 and so on.

The down side of using all this great, new technology is that if I wanted to put a band together and play these tunes live, it would have to be with a pretty large group because there’s a lot of tracks and a lot of parts. No three-man power trio for these songs. But hey, you never know, if enough people like the disc, I just might have to put a band together and hit the road!

--Zoe

To Top