Prosound News - April 2008 - (Page 28)

studioshowcase Guitar Masters by Christopher Walsh W hen you think about what Atlantic Records did in their own studio,” Brian Tarquin muses, “how could you have a label without having a studio? It’s like they go hand in hand.” As many independent commercial studios fall away amid the explosion of smaller, commercial and private owner-operated shops, a return to the label-owned in-house studio is also apparent (see, for example, last month’s Studio Showcase, featuring Memphis-based Music & Arts, owned by Archer Records). Tarquin, an Emmy Award-winning composer/guitarist and proprietor of the guitarheavy BHP Music label, owns and operates Jungle Room Studios, a Nyack, New Yorkbased studio that should be the envy of any obsessive guitarist. Catering to the largely instrumental music released on BHP, Jungle Room Studios is an analog-friendly studio designed and equipped for the convenience of its multitasking principal. “When we started the label,” says Tarquin, “we started recording our artists for the various releases. So it’s a guitar-centric studio. We toggle between digital and analog—we love analog so we try to keep everything analog just about until the end. It works out great.” That analog equipment is most visible in the form of a 32-channel Trident Trimix console. “I love the EQs and the mic pres— they’re so musical,” Tarquin enthuses. “I felt that if you can work with Pro Tools or Digital Performer, you need something to warm it up anyway when you bring it back out to mix. When you record guitars, drums and bass, I always feel like you’re missing something when you record in Pro Tools, no matter what the converters are. Sonically, [tape] is so much better than mixing to a CD or DAT. Something to do with tape saturation, I guess. I have an Ampex MM1200, so they really go together well.” Indeed, all tracking for BHP Music projects is to 2-inch tape on the MM1200, while mixdown is printed to 1/2-inch tape on the Sony APR 5003 or even, sometimes, to 1/4-inch on Jungle Room’s Otari MTR 10. Tarquin designed the approximately 1,500-square-foot studio with convenience in mind, the better to fulfill his many roles, among them producer, performer, studio and label owner. “I tried to make it work, spacewise, so everything is close together,” he explains. “For instance, for the amps I have the Ampeg System Selector. I have a wall of amp heads, and an iso booth with amp heads and cabinets in it. I can choose any amp head to go to any cabinet: If I want a Sovtek to go into a Mesa Boogie or Marshall cabinet, I can switch it without having to go out to where it is and unplug everything. It’s great, you can dial into any sound and bring it right up to the desk and record.” Tarquin relies on the beyerdynamic M160, among others, for close-miking guitar amplifiers, with a Neumann TLM 49 placed Jungle Room Studios features a 32-channel Trident Trimix console and Ampex MM1200 24-track tape machine. JENNIFER JURGENS Jungle Room Studios owner Brian Tarquin favors a beyerdynamic M160 to close-mic guitar amplifiers, along with a Neumann TLM 49 placed several feet from the amp. several feet back. “For mic pres,” he adds, “I generally go through the desk—the Trident mic pres. But I have a couple of Universal Audio 610s that I like on certain guitars, like acoustic guitars or clean guitars, to give it a little more depth and fatness with tubes. “I just got an echo chamber,” Tarquin adds. “AKG made the BX-20—they had a whole series of them. They’re live spring reverbs, all enclosed in wood. It’s a very cool kind of unit to have, just to get away from your typical [reverb processors]. It gives a nice characteristic to digital recording, and those things are so warm as well.” Also featured in Jungle Room are custom AlphaSorb Wall Panels from Acoustical Solutions. Tarquin serves as engineer for BHP Music projects recorded at Jungle Room (some master recordings featured on BHP releases are licensed from their owners). “I like to do things fairly quickly,” he explains, “and once you get spontaneous, the feeling and emotion and creative flow going, I hate breaking it up.” For his television and film work, however, Tarquin works in Pro Tools. Jungle Room features Pro Tools LE 7.4 with a Digi 002, along with Digital Performer 5.1 and Logic. The 002, says Tarquin, “was the only thing I felt I really needed. [Television music supervisors] want changes so many times that you have to go back. It’s so easy to switch out plug-ins or MIDI, and that way you don’t have to go back to tape and all that. I reserve the tape for the records.” With a thriving career composing and recording music for television and a growing catalog of guitar-heavy recordings, Tarquin, his label and Jungle Room Studios have attained a favorable and viable position in the tumultuous music business. “I wish record companies took pride in their recordings,” he says. “It’s a shame that the integrity of the recording process has gone south. I wanted to get a label for a style that I felt other labels didn’t pay attention to, and when you’re building a studio from scratch, it’s cool because you can really design it the way you want.” Jungle Room Studios / Bohemian Productions www.bohemianproductions.net vitalstats Jungle Room Studios Studio Owner: Brian Tarquin Room Design: Brian Tarquin Console: Trident Trimix (32-channel, 16-bus with TT patch bay) Recorders: Ampex MM1200, Sony APR 5003, Otari MTR 10, Alesis ML-9600 MasterLink Monitoring: Event Studio Precision 8, Yamaha NS10M, Auratone monitor cubes Outboard Equipment Universal Audio Model 2-610; UREI LA4 (2); dbx 566, 1046, 1074; Eventide Eclipse, GTR 4000, H3000; Lexicon PCM 70; Anthony DeMaria Labs 1500; Alesis 3630; TC Electronic Finalizer Plus/96; Antares ATR-1; AKG BX-20 Microphones: Neumann TLM 49; Telefunken TD-2 (2); AKG C1000S (2), C 418 (4), D 112 (2); beyerdynamic M160; Sennheiser MD421 (2); Electro-Voice RE20; Shure KSM137 (2), SM 57 (2); SE GM10, R1, RT1, Gemini II prosoundnews.com April 2008 http://www.bohemianproductions.net http://prosoundnews.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Prosound News - April 2008

Prosound News - April 2008 Sound Business Contents Sound Retail Mojo’s Working at NY Noise Studio Showcase: Jungle Room Studios Software Tech Tracks Sessions Nomad Takes Root TCB at NYC’s JSM SoundScreen White Space Turning Gray Audio for Video and Broadcast Field Reports:Sony PCM-D50 Linear PCM Recorder; Holophone H4 SuperMINI Surround Microphone Sound Innovations: Earthworks Audio PianoMic System Frozen Liquid Live Sound Showcase: Jill Scott Centerstage Soundcheck Sound People View From the Top Product Spotlight Advertiser Index Company Index Classifieds Music, Etc.

Prosound News - April 2008

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