Sunshine State of Mind is my 5th CD. Released in May of 2007, it is the first CD I have recorded on my own. Not only did I record everything at home, on my computer. I played all the instruments too! I first got interested in home recording while I was in the studio doing my Fun Side Of Life CD in 2004/2005. I had purchased some recording gear and I was starting to track a couple of songs on my own. Two of those songs (I Can't Wait and Another Place, Another Time) ended up on The Fun Side Of Life.

I really like the way those sounded and while it was a lot of work, I really enjoyed the process. I also liked having total control over the finished product. I had done my last three CD's with Mike O'Neill at Giant Gumball Studios. I really liked working with Mike and I learned a lot. But I always felt like the pressure of time and studio costs kept me from diving as deep as I wanted to into my recordings. I am an admitted control freak and it was tough to sit back and not be able to twist every knob and move every fader. It was the control thing, coupled with the pending move to Knoxville, TN that led me to try to record this CD on my own. I spent a lot more time on this record than on any of the others and overall, I am very happy with the results. There are mistakes and things I would like to redo but I learned so much and I'll be even better at it next time around. Here are some "notes from the studio."

Gear:
Computer: Apple MacBook w/2 GHz Intel Core Duo. (I installed a 7200 RPM 100 GB Hard Drive)
Interface: Lexicon Omega. This is a great little unit. The guys at Speed of Sound in Eau Claire, WI turned me on to this and I have heard others give good reviews on the internal preamps. I have been very happy with the sound.
Software: Garage Band. I love this program. It comes bundled in Apple's iLife and is very easy to use. I have had a lot of people tell me I need Pro Tools or something more professional than Garage Band. There may be reasons I need to get a different program but I can't figure out what they are. Maybe it's sheer ignorance on my part but Garage Band seems to do what I need it to do. And the mastering engineer told me it was one of the cleanest recordings he has delt with.
Microphone: RODE NTK. This is a wonderful mic. My friend Layne recommened it and I'm so glad I listened to him. I recorded all the guitar parts, all vocals and harmonicas with this mic.
Studio Monitors: I have a set of Tapco S-5 Monitors that I thought were wondeful. I mixed the whole record on them and never heard all the horrible low end rumbling feedback that was present on my vocal tracks. This was partly my fault as I had the speakers on a shelf but even moving them onto my big oak desk didn't help a lot. What really saved my record is my Bose L1 Double Bass System. That system dumps all the low end into the B1 Bass Modules so it is VERY honest on the low end. I would use my Bose while doing all my EQing and check it on a pair of Sony MDR-7506 headphones.
Guitars: Goodall Traditional Dreadnought, East Indian Rosewood back and sides and Adirondak Spruce Top and Goodall Concert Jumbo, Myrtlewood back and sides and Port Orford Cedar top. Both played into the RODE NTK mic.
Bass: Fender American Standard Precision Bass played into my Bose L1 using the P-Bass EQ present. I'd then run a line out of the Bose into the Lexicon Omega.
Piano: Yamaha Clavinova CLP-930. I tried to go direct from the L/R out of the Yamaha into the Omega but I couldn't get a hot enough signal. The first time around, I ran the piano through my Taylor K4 EQ. On other piano parts, I used a Boss GE-7 Equalizer pedal.
Keyboards: A drummer friend of mine asked if I had percussion on this CD. I told him I played percussion on a midi keyboard. He said, "so the answer is no! There's no percussion!" He's right. Percussion was the hardest thing for me to handle. I didn't want to go out and buy hand drums and a drum set and I wouldn't really know what to do with them if I did. I got almost all the way through this CD once and scrapped it and started completely over from scratch. On the first run through, I had decided not to do any "percussion" with the keyboard. On round 2, with some EQing, I got some parts that I liked and kept them.
That is everything I used to make the record.

I used the same process on every song. I plugged in my Alesis SR-16 drum machine which has a tap tempo feature. I would sing the song while tapping this to figure out my beat. I would use that figure as my tempo. I would then record a click track on Garage Band at that tempo with my keyboard. I'd then set up the mic and record a "scratch track" with just me and a guitar. This was like the skeleton of each song. It would let me know the intro, verses, choruses, solo break and outro. I would then build the song around this track, layering the parts until I was finished. I would start with the acoustic guitar. Each song has at least two acoustic guitar parts. I played each Goodall into the RODE while listening to the scratch track in my headphones. It was tough to match the parts exactly, but I really liked the sound of the two guitars combined.

Next I would play the bass, followed by the piano, then vocals and then harmonica. It sounds simple to write it but I had to play some of the parts over and over and over...

Mixing the record was hard and I knew going in that the hardest part would be deciding that I was done. I would mix on the Bose and the headphones, burn the song to CD and listen to that on our home stereo and in the car. When I thought I was finally done, I sent some copies to some folks who I knew would give me some good feed back. Once I was fairly satisfied, I got a copy to Baker Vaughn at Digital Express Mastering in Maryville, TN, just down the road. He was willing to master the CD and let me make changes if I didn't like the mix after the mastering process was complete. This was a huge help and gave me such piece of mind to know that I could always make changes. After going back and forth a bit on a couple of songs, the audio portion was done and off to Disc Makers.

That's it! That's how I recorded Sunshine State of Mind. I should add that if you are going to do this, it helps to have a very patient spouse. My wife would sometimes come home to find that I had moved the whole mixing operation into our living room to see how things sounded in a different space!

If you have any questions, visit the Contact page and feel free to get in touch. You can probably tell I love talking about this kind of stuff. Thanks for reading!

Take Good Care,
Matt