The Recording Project

Towards the end of last summer (2006), my dad and I decided that it would be fun to do a recording project. I'm not entirely sure how the subject came up, but one thing led to another, and we decided to go for it.

We knew that we would be recording songs that he's written over the years, scored for different combinations of guitar (him), cello (me), piano (him), bass (me), voice (him) etc, but beyond that everything was up in the air.

We needed a place to record, a chunk of time in which to do it, bla bla bla. Since the technological side is my area of expertise, I got to work figuring things out shortly after we made the decision to do it. The time we decided on would be the last week of August, between our vacation and my leaving for school. But due to unforeseen circumstances (getting Jolene moved into her new apartment, and the two of us getting engaged) that recording week never happened.

But I'm getting ahead of myself in the story. Lets rewind to the initial set up.

After much careful consideration I decided that the best location would be up in what my family affectionately calls 'The Secret Room'. This is the inside of it, standing on the stairs leading up to it, facing the back wall. Notice the sloping ceiling, then take a look at the next picture.

In this picture you can clearly see the elephant, which is standing in front of the garage. Above the elephant you can see the slanted roof, and if you look carefully, you can see an air conditioner behind the basketball hoop. That's the best picture I have of the secret room from the outside. It's above the garage. The door to get there is off the hallway by the kitchen, between the bathroom and the den. Unless someone points it out to you, you'll keep walking past it and never notice it.

If you go back to the interior picture, for a sense of perspective, the orange chair is in front of the window the air conditioner is in.

This is facing the other direction. You can see the stairs leading down to the kitchen.

A slightly different angle... It's the same on the other side, but the window on the right has the air conditioner in it.