NEIL WATKINSON: Recording In The Garden Shed

"It was my wife who said I should either sell up and stop messing about or do it properly, so I borrowed £2,500 from the bank with the intention of starting my own studio. Then I read Sound On Sound for about three months solid to find out what was the best gear, and I got the best package I could for the money I had. This is the same kit I have here two years on.

Name: Neil Watkinson

Studio Premises: Dedicated Building In Garden At Home.

Report by: Paul Nagle

Main Equipment:

KG C3000 Mic, Alesis Nanoverb effects unit, Alesis SR16 Drum Machine, Bang & Olufsen hi‑fi speakers, Behringer Composer 2100 compressor, Behringer Dualfex Pro effects unit, Behringer Ultragain mic preamp, Behringer Ultrapatch Pro patchbay, Fostex D5 DAT recorder, Fostex DMT8VL hard disk recorder with 3.2Gb hard disk, JBL monitors, Kawai K1 synth (used as master keyboard), Korg O1R/W synth module, Marantz CD player, Marantz hi‑fi amp and graphic EQ, Novation DrumStation percussion module, Samson Servo170 amplifier, Sony Minidisc player, Technics KN720 keyboard, Zoom 1204 effects.

Neil Watkinson is no stranger to the pages of SOS — in a previous Sounding Off (November '98) he poured scorn on those elaborate production techniques which often seem to obscure, rather than reveal, song lyrics. We thought it was only right to pay him a visit and check out his own studio and working methods...

Neil began his musical career as an organist, playing for some nine years before he got a little bored and wanted to get into chart music. He bought an Atari STE and a Yamaha SY77 synth. The synth was soon replaced by a Clavinova as Neil began to learn piano. His early recording experiences were far from satisfactory: "I visited some studios and basically wasted my money recording there, so I bought a Tascam 4‑track to try doing it on my own. It was pretty limited, and so again I wasted some money going to a big studio to get some tracks recorded — the results always felt rushed and I was never happy with them. So I was tampering about with an Atari STE, a Tascam 4‑track cassette deck and a Yamaha SY77, basically messing about with my own stuff.

"It was my wife who said I should either sell up and stop messing about or do it properly, so I borrowed £2,500 from the bank with the intention of starting my own studio. Then I read Sound On Sound for about three months solid to find out what was the best gear, and I got the best package I could for the money I had. This is the same kit I have here two years on.

"My previous house had a conservatory, and I put the studio in that. I produced five or six albums for different people, ranging from an Irish band to a small choir, all in a room where you couldn't do vocals if irained (due to the sound of the rain on the plastic conservatory roof) and where there was a dog outside the glass windows which barked during the recording. While recording two guitars I had to put one in the kitchen, one in the conservatory and nobody could speak. And yet, despite this, it shows the quality of gear you can buy, because the recordings were spot on.

"Of course, when it all arrived I didn't have a clue how any of it worked — the compressors, the mic gains and so on. Then I got a phone call asking if I'd record someone, and realised I was in at the deep end. When they arrived I asked them to bear with me, but maybe it was a stroke of luck because I seemed to learn 'instantly', and the recording turned out fine.

"Since then I've not added too much, but now we've moved house and the studio premises are bigger and seperate from the house. My brother‑in‑law built the structure, and I did everything else. I still have no soundproofing — it's plasterboard with two brick walls to separate the control room and the live room. I'm lucky things are quiet here. When someone is singing really loud in the live room, yes you can just about hear it in here, but I don't see the point in spending £35 a tile to try to reduce that when the recordings sound fine anyway. I've tried curtains and blankets, but I had a professional singer in here who said it was too dead. Now I've removed all that, and the result is a little bit of an echo, which is far better."

Kit

The layout of Neil's studio.

"My recorder is a Fostex DMT8‑VL, which I bought purely based on the Sound On Sound review. When I got it the D80 was out, and they were supposed to be the best because they were the latest. But I thought that the DMT8 couldn't have turned into rubbish — the review had been brilliant, and I couldn't see that it could sound any worse just because there was a new model out. I bought it without demoing it — in fact I bought all my gear without demoing, all based on Sound On Sound reviews ‑‑‑ two and a half grand over the phone! Ever since then, for two years, I've bought Sound On Sound every month.

"The small hard drive that came with the DMT8VL was OK for practising, but you couldn't really record any commercial stuff on it. I've upgraded it to a 3.2Gb hard disk now, which gives me over an hour to play with."

Working Methods

The control room in Neil's purpose‑built studio, with his Bang & Olufsen hi‑fi speakers flanking the Fostex DMT8VL that is his main recorder.

"When working on our tracks, I'll proably record onto six tracks, keep two as inputs, and then bounce down. I'll record another four and keep two to bounce down — I can't go out to DAT because I want the stuff from the sequencer to be in sync. I'll probably do that three times, then get all the backing on two tracks before adding the guitar work. I'll compress that and mix it ready for the vocal and record it onto the Fostex DAT. Then I can take the digital output of the DAT back into the hard disk recorder and then I'm not worried about sync, I just want to add the vocals. Finally I master the whole thing to DAT and it's finished. I've been thinking about getting a second DMT8 and sync'ing it up to save all the bounces...

"When I was first learning I used the cut facility on the Fostex and actually permanently erased the end of a song. I wiped out banjo, fiddle, bass, mandolin and flute at a stroke. I searched back 10 to 15 seconds for a suitable point and cut it from there. When the band came back and listened to the finished thing, it actually sounded like they had meant to stop at that moment, and they said it was brilliant how I'd done it, making five live artists stop dead at the same point. So I got away with that one...

"For me, the DMT8 is an ideal machine. I've had it for two years and had no crashes. OK, you can only record two tracks at a time and the EQ is pretty basic, but you buy gear according to the studio it's going into, and for me this is fine. In fact, I've not had problems with any of my stuff."

A humble Atari STE is slaved to the DMT8, running any MIDI instruments that are needed. "The Atari is running Notator and it still only has 1Mb in it. Despite just one weird problem when it refused to see the dongle, it's never crashed, never let me down."

In keeping with Neil's minimalist approach, he has just one main microphone — an AKG C3000. "I use it for all my vocal work, for acoustic guitars, anything. The only extra mic I'm considering is a Rode NT1, but I don't seem to have any spare cash yet!"

Stretching The Rack

Neil's live room: all acoustic recording is done using the AKG C3000 mic.

Looking at Neil's rack, it's obvious that he's a big Behringer fan: "Basically, the price is superb. OK, this isn't a £1,000 valve compressor, but for a small studio Behringer make professional kit. I have the Composer (compressor), the Ultragain and I've just bought the Dualfex Pro. I also have Behringer's Ultrapatch, which must be the best 50 quid you can spend on a studio.

"Most of the stuff I've got falls into the essential category — because the DMT8 has no phantom power, I have to use the Ultragain, and similarly, the Composer is vital but also simple to use — and I'm no gnius.

"For extra effects, I've recently got a Zoom 1204. I was going to get the 1201 but when the 1204 came down in price I bought that instead, again based on the review. I haven't been disappointed. My main effects unit for vocals is the Nanoverb — I have used it on every recording I've ever done. With all the knobs on the front, you just turn a dial and you get what you want. I'm not a believer in stepping through these multi‑effects units trying to find the best thing. You can spend 10 hours trying to find an effect and half the time the first effect you tried was probably the best."

Neil has comparatively few synthesizers and tone generators, preferring instead to spend his money on studio equipment: "Sure, I'd love racks and racks of keyboards, but it's of no use to me for recording here. Many people bring their own keyboards and samples or they bring backing tracks along to add vocals to. My main workstation is the Korg O1R/W, but I'd like to find some more sounds for it — some cards, maybe. I don't program it, I just choose from what it's got. I find I can get a fantastic string sound using the 'surround sound' effect of my Dualfex Pro, which seems to place it somewhere in the background. I also have the Novation DrumStation, which is handy when I do dance music, and an Alesis SR16 which has some different sounds in it."

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Neil's studio is his monitors — Bang & Oulfsen hi‑fi speakers: "I bought them because of the shape. I though they looked very 'studio‑y', and they should've been £500, but I got them for £150 including stands. They have a cracking sound. I think mixing through real monitors is good, but you have to have a realistic pair. I used to have some Yamaha NS10s, and I'd mix the final master, run to the living room to listen on the hi‑fi and it was never quite right. Then I'd run back to the studio and do it again. So now I use hi‑fi speakers, a Marantz amplifier with a standard graphic equaliser and do my final mix through them, because that's how people will listen to it. Now I find that I don't need to mix twice — once it's right in here, it's right everywhere. Since then, I've had my own CD played on BBC radio; the quality is definitely good enough to air. The small JBL monitors that I have are used exclusively for monitoring vocals."

As a postman, Neil's hours give him plenty of time to spend in the studio, but he adamantly refuses to overdo it: "I work from 13:00 to 21:00, and I don't record any longer than that in a day. No matter where I'm up to at nine, I switch off. I've done the lockout stuff myself in the past, and when I've been the person going into the studio and paying, but the day after, when your ears have rested, you always wish you'd never done it. Therefore, out of principle, I don't carry on because I know other people won't be happy with the result. It's an eight‑hour day.

"I also like recording my own stuff, because at the end of the day it's nice to sit back and listen to what we've produced. The band I'm part of is called Reformation — we're working on our second album now, and have just signed with Celtic Fire Publishing. I arrange and produce all the backing; the other main band member is Gary Mawsley who is the singer/songwriter. We've just got together with two other guys on bass and drums to do some live work. In the studio, I do sequenced drums using sounds from the DrumStation, Alesis SR16 and the Korg O1R/W, as I don't have the desk for live drums.

"I can't see myself doing this full‑time. I have a mortgage and don't want the pressure of business, or maybe feeling I have to push things through. People who come and record here basically pay for my equipment, but there's no pressure. I'm not thinking 'How long will they be here?' or 'Should I stretch this out?' I've even knocked money off or thrown in an hour for nothing as long as I got a figure I'm happy with and they're happy when they walk out. I don't worry about the business having to pay for things — it just pays for more gear, which is my hobby."

Power To The Producer

The control‑room gear rack. From top: Behringer Ultrapatch, Novation DrumStation, Behringer Ultragain mic amp, Dualfex effects and Composer compressor, Korg O1R/W synth, Zoom 1204 effects. To the left is Neil's Atari STE.

"A lot of the finished product we hear is false," maintains Neil. "I think that sometimes when an artist goes to collect an award, he should acknowledge the role of the producer more. He might accept it, saying that he wrote the album while on the toilet or something, but more often than not, it's the producer who actually turned the idea into the hit it became. His little vocal‑and‑guitar sketch, without the treatment, wouldn't even be heard of. So 90 percent of it could be the producer — maybe the artist has only gone and laid down the vocal at the end. Having been in the studio myself helping with other people's stuff, I can't help but feel that more recognition than just a note on the album sleeve should be given."