FortWayneMusic.com

So I figured I would make a post for bands to share where they have recorded and their experences there? I personnaly have done most of my projects at soundmill/ozone with the great Neal. I have to say it was a really good experence. he get great drum and guitar tone. Unfourtunatly I think he is out of the biz. Does anyone know whats up? I have also recorded with john at monastic years ago...our band was inexperenced as was I so....while the recordings sucked, I couldnt tell you if it was him or us(probably us!!) Soon we will be at sweetwater with justin zellars...so I will report on them/and him soon!!! Anyone worked with him? I hear good things!!! Please everyone share your experences and contact info for your studio/engineer of choice.

i agree re: neal. RIP, O3.

NoRA has been recording at Monastic Chambers, i have nothing but good things to say about our experience there thus far.

thats cool...it was a long ago that we recorded with John and I have heard A lot of good thing about him recently.

I used Monastic to record my early acoustic stuff and it was really good, even though I was not so great. My performances showed that I was new to solo music, but the sound was good!

Since Kevin and I have done almost all of our recording together, we share the same experiences, and I'll say this about the studios we've gone to:

Monastic Chambers: John is very easy to work with, but does better with non-metal or non-hard rock artists. As far as production is concerned, it wasn't his bag, but his job as an engineer was really good. I would use him again for acoustic stuff or things that were not modern rock or heavier.

Soundmill/Ozone: Neal is the sh*t. Our first songs turned out really good. I am still very happy with them to this day. If Ozone were still around and I were going to record, I would go there again, but I would bring a producer. Neal is a great engineer, but he has SO many hats to wear that sometimes things may get missed. I would have liked to have had more time and more input on where to go with songs and hearing out of key vocals.

I haven't used any other local studios.

I agree about the producer thing....we had some good stuff done there but considering how much one guy has on his plate and the fact that ears can become fried easily after 5..6..hrs at a soundboard..there were some very easily heard mistakes missed by the band and neal. So I say a fresh set of non band ears is a good idea. On that note ...where would one find an independant set of ears? And what would you expect to pay????

I don't know, to be honest. I know that Steve Brady offers his services, and I trust Steve's ears. As far as cost is concerned, I would think that it shouldn't be more than 30-40% of the rate per hour that you're paying for the studio and engineer, but that's a number I just pulled out of my ass.

If you're paying $60 an hour for studio time, I'd say $20 to $25 a hour for a producer might be appropriate, but I really have NO idea.

<----a fan of John @ Monastic. It is very easy to work with him, and I love the new setup of the studio.

Tim Bushong is Syracuse..
he is amazing and cheap.. not necessarily by the hour because it's like 50 and hour but he does live recordings and if the band is tight you can easily track (with no vocals or punch ins) two songs an hour, if the band is tight
the last two essentials cd's almost half of the bands on that cd recorded there like i said he is the man

No sh*t.... ive had great luck with Tom Temple... he is real relaxed and has a good ear.

i recorded at his last place with a full band and the were absolutley kleen

i have also recorded at his new place and it is even better ... Tom is excellent at his craft

peace

munger

Seconded on Bushong. Seconded on Jon at Monastic as well. For hard rock/metal, I'd go to Bushong, for non-hard rock I'd go to Jon, although I haven't heard any of Bushong's lighter stuff. Tim's also a monster guitar player if you need somebody to cover your wannabe lead guitarist's weak, crappy leads

Also, if you can book your sessions with Chris Liepe (pronounced Leap), Sweetwater is great! All the best equipment and Chris is amazing. I wouldn't trust any of the other guys in there though. I'm playing on a session there with him engineering this Friday. I've worked with him before and am really looking forward to this. He called me and asked me to do this one, so I'm pretty pumped about it. Anyway, Chris will take the time to work with you and help you get your best sound, not make you sound like a million other bands.

Jon at Monastic is damn good at what he does, and one cool cat I might add!

Not really "local" but I have to go with Joel Lauver at Burning Bridge in Indianapolis, very relaxed atmosphere, great ear for all genres ending with -core, and anything else on the heavier end of the spectrum, I have yet to hear a bad recording come out of his studio, we've used him for our last two EPs and we'll probably go back to him the next time we want to record.

Also, even though we haven't recorded with him, I'd say Scott Cline at Black Dove in Etna Green does good work as well, he's done some demos that have turned out really well, has a good ear for hardcore/punk/screamo type stuff...

both of them are on myspace:
Burning Bridge
Black Dove Studios

yeah i really like the stuff i have heard from burning bridge alot and he hit us up on myspace and really wanted to record us bad.. in fact for a while i thought he was stalking us..lol jk. but seriously joel has recorded some great bands like haste the day and others in that genre. i really wanted to work with him because not only is he an engineer but he is a producer as well.. the only problem is that with our bands work schedules at the time we could only record on the weekends and joel does not work on the weekends. so we have been talking to the guys in a band called A Change Of Pace and possibly they may be interested in producing our record. which if they produce our record that pretty much will probably be golden pass to Immortal Records (at least I hope anyway) lol