Robert Schneider posted the following information in this Townhall thread in answer to a question about the new Pet Sounds Studios, which relocated (with Robert) from Denver, CO to Lexington, KY many years back. It’s an interesting visual-portrait-in-words of a working studio. [Pictured above is the old Pet Sounds studio in Denver circa the Aeroplane sessions.]
matt is correct, i do a lot of recording sitting on the floor in the family room of my house in a pile of keyboards and notebooks and steve keene paintings and guitars and mic cables–
i do have my full studio set up in my garage (the huge painting is not hung up there yet) with all my pianos and tape machines and huge neotek console and so on from the denver pet sounds studio, and i recorded in there for a couple of years (including the ulysses record) but sort of started recording on the floor in my family room more and more over the last few years, as it is easy for me to record in quick bursts of inspiration there, and it feels more like four-tracking than studio engineering, which makes me feel more creative. also i have a mastering studio in my attic.
all the various rooms i record in at home go by the name of Pet Sounds Recording Studio.
very often, i record at my brother-in-law craig morris’ Garden Gate Studio in western kentucky (the ideal free distribution and american revolution albums were made there, as well as a lot of overdubs on new magnetic wonder), which is a beautiful garage studio, with a bunch of awesome gear that craig built or modified himself in a lovely rural area– again, piles of guitars and keyboards and cables and the guts of electronic equipment flowing onto the floor, just the way i like it–
and i have traveled a lot the last few years, recording at bill doss’s athens studio and otto helmuth’s here in lexington and with other friends in different places– since i sort of stopped engineering records for bands around 2000 (to focus on my own recordings) i wind up needing my larger studio much less often than i used to. plus the sixteen track tape machine is broken down again.
i do mix and master at my home studio occasionally, but i prefer to travel to other studios to produce for other bands at this point, as i really hate plugging in cables mainly : )
hope that is not too much information,
robert schneider
