Frogville Studio build Santa Fe New Mexico 2009

[Keldog]

Lookin good man!

Much props to you. Lookin forward to the pics.

[dabigfrog]

its been snowing a bunch, not a lot to report. Getting ready to cut through to the inside this week, will post more pics. outside and inside all wired up for stucco. walls going up. doors and windows going in, waiting for more audio seal, got the green glue and the green glue acoustical caulk.... here is a pic of the big tracking room, you can see the vocal booth to the right of what will be our control room window.... a closer shot of the booth... and the biohazard sign on the big 42" door we got from los alamos labs.






stike

[lodstudios@gmail]

Those beams are amazing! Great build sir, you are going to LOVE your new digs!

[dabigfrog]

man we got a great deal on the beams. they came from wolf creek pass ski area in southern colorado. 2 feet wide and 28 feet long. everyone gets a great feeling from those hefty beams... here in New Mexico they call beams "Vigas".

also a pic of the snow from a week or two ago. also a pic of the mountains that my friend Kendra snapped from the edge of my hill.

[dabigfrog]

2 days work inside:
monday we broke thru, turned a window into a door, then we ripped out my old back door and turned it into the control room window. Today (Tuesday) we finished plugging holes and sealing stuff then stuccoed the control room walls

pic 1 yanked the door
pic 2 demolish some adobe brick
pic 3 fill doorway with adobe wall + install window frame
pic 4 stucco on and done

[dabigfrog]

got some new pix here at flikr shows some progress

more coming here soon


Flickr: babajohn2009's Photostream

[PreacherX]

Originally Posted by dabigfrog

stike

I hope you're keeping the sticker :D

[dabigfrog]

we had a massive clean up this weekend to get the fine layer of construction silt off everything so we could do a quick session with John Popper from Blues Traveller.



control room, missing big window and all the ceiling and corner treatment are empty - mid construction...
and a couple of Popper at Frogville blowin' tasty harp

[dabigfrog]

oh hell yes we're keeping the sticker... it aint everyday you score a 42" wide solid core door for 75 bucks... but to get the biohazard stickers was the icing on the cake.

we will keep the door as long as my hair doesn't start falling out in clumps from standing near it too long!?! hahahaha . just kidding, it's perfectly safe

[CramRack]

This is a great project. Well done. John Popper? Keeping clients like that in your studio will ensure its success.

[dabigfrog]

We finally stuffed the soffett and bass traps with ultra touch recycled cotton on saturday. and today I apolstered sp? the corner traps and the big soffet/cloud above the mix zone.

you can see the frame of the soffet and the progress of the traps a few posts ago. 2x4 frame and 1x2 sub exterior support frame between the 2x4s. Then lined the whole thing in connected sections, baskets if you will of black aluminum screen that were then lined with .7 mil plastic. Then we filled it up with the insulation, fluffy light stuff, filled to the ceiling. Then covered in Jute natural cloth because we couldn't afford gilfords of maine @ 1k a roll.. the natural burlap was 45 dollars a roll... available in 4 colors.

its dark in the control room so I went with natural for the ceiling and brown for the corner traps.

we tested all the rooms last week, tuesday we test the control room again now that everything is stuffed wit stuff, we can compare and see if its doing what we want it to do or if we wasted 4 days and a few hundred dollars.

nn start again from scratch. we'll see

[soulfield]

Nice work Sir. That is truley an amazing place you have there.

What are you paying for the ultratouch cooton, compared to RW?

[dabigfrog]

new control room better picture.
2 views of the big tracking room
1st view from the iso booth - circled in red is the vantage point of view 2.
2nd view from above, thru the high window.
more perspective on the 17' tall ceiling.



1.


2.

[osiris1979]

It's good to see a cool new studio in NM. I'm down in Albuquerque, would love to come check it out sometime!

[dabigfrog]

we are trying to get it open by April 1st, come on up and visit! its a nice short drive and we welcome all who wish to use the facility, our prices are fair too!

[osiris1979]

Originally Posted by dabigfrog

we are trying to get it open by April 1st, come on up and visit! its a nice short drive and we welcome all who wish to use the facility, our prices are fair too!

Thanks man. pm'ed you.

[dabigfrog]

we've been busy, thought I'd post some pix.

the big tracking room, 8 foot corner traps, art on the walls, moving instruments in.

looking North

looking East at the control room

looking South at Iso/vocal/piano booth

looking South West toward load in door / drum zone

vocal booth

small trap to fill a bad echo spot along the edge in vocal booth


working on ze wiring and ze tuning of de rooms but we have a session this Saturday so ve break it in right away... headphone mixs...headphones... where is everything?

[dabigfrog]

now that the CR glass is in we've been working on the CR treatment and got it sounding very even all around the room finally!

the desk and rack we built ourselves..




we are converting under the stairs into a big ISO-Rack for the computer and all the power supplies and power amps.



detail on ONE of the corner traps I built with leftover insulation,
this one was the same as the ceiling trap in the vocal booth.
the other traps were filled with ultra touch cellulose blown into the open frame that was lined in .07 mil plastic, then woven sun screen for sturdiness then covered in natural or brown colored jute/burlap



hope to have more pix as the wiring and the gear starts to come in.

come to Lovely Santa Fe and record your project in the big room at Frogville!

its a live room, but just the right amount of live vs treatment.... some rooms I've heard are so dead it sucks the sound out of your ears.

it sounds REAL nice

[dabigfrog]

we had our first session in the big room yesterday, oooh it sounds GOOD!!!.
trying drums out today... yesterday was 5 piece bluegrass type band with no drums.... man it sounds great in there not too dead not too live, just right.

I got a feeling this is going to be a popular place

[AMIEL]

when is the studio ready??

all the rates and equipment of the new studio is updated in the website????

[dabigfrog]

naaah. we don't list the gear anymore on the website..... never put the goods and the address in the same place.

we don't list our rates either.

most people call or email us and we work together to come up with a price we can both live with... sliding scale..


plus every job is different.... different job, diff price...

if you are an engineer or you want to bring your own engineer we do rent the studio by itself.

most people around these parts want to work with our engineer/producer Bill Palmer, we also have access to a few other local engineers.

each engineer has a different rate depending on the job too.

it all gets very complicated. one band knows all their songs and can come in and bang 'em out, wants it recorded right so they come to us, some want us to mix and or master also, some want to take the tracks to another mixer... some customers have a song and a voice and need us to arrange the songs and hire musicians too so we do that... some customers have a beat and a title, we help them flesh out the song and they come up with lyrics on the spot and experiment with different vocals... or some combination of the above... some people want a 3 song demo some want to work on a 12 track album... and everyone has different budgets they can work within...

it just seems kind of dumb to commit to a price.

what do you got in your budget?
we can make a record for 300 bucks, 3000 bucks and 30,000 bucks, they will all be the best record we can make for that price, yet they will each be vastly different records based on the time you invest in the project.

besides we work in New Mexico which for the previous 20 years has been competing with Louisiana and Mississippi for poorest state in the union, we don't want a big set in stone price tag scaring off the local talent, yet in Santa fe you get a wide variety of incomes from movie stars and people who have their 3rd or 5th house here to families who have lived here for 300 years and their gross annual income is in the 11 to 30 grAnd a year range and everything in between, we get a lot of transients too, on two occasions I have discovered a very talented busker performing for change on the street that we brought back and recorded 2 or 3 tracks for free and burned them a cd explaining if they go down to kinkos or get it copied they can sell the cd too for fun and profit.

we love music and we love the creation process and we love artists that be real but we do like to get paid, especially now that we have a new loan for the construction to take care of.... a general idea:
100 bucks / for an hour, 300 minimum session.
if you are independent and have a budget 750 for an 8-12 hour day with our engineer.
500 for an 8-12 hour day in our studio and you provide the engineer.

If your a local band and we are not fully booked we might crank up th old pedal generator for 350-500 for a 6 or 8 hour session.

if it is a major or mini major with a budget we can work out reasonable block outs that include the lounge sleeping area / laundry / and kitchen, maid or chef, and either an engineer or assistant engineer or a tape op or pro tools op by the week or month
other options available to suit most budgets.

[dabigfrog]

we had three drummers in here yesterday.... DRUMS SOUND GREAT, FAT, THICK!!! This room is going to be very busy this year! One of the drummers was Brian Hardgroove - Public Enemy's live band leader and manager of a big studio in Manhatten... He LOVED the sound of the room and drums... might be the best sounding room in the whole South West! It's a live room, but not too live, treated just enough to kill the unwanted boom and ring verb. The trick is just enough treatment!


STUDIO * Frogville Records Indie Folk, Rock & Alternative Country Music for people who love, think & do.

studio web page on the label's website.... with rates

we need a new website dedicated to just the studio....

someday we might have a little dough left over to do that!

[greatgreatriver]

The live room looks great with the art on the walls - I wouldn't mind recording there. Great work!

[dabigfrog]

thanks! I used to paint a lot before the studio took over the house. It's been 12 years since I had "gallery" space to hang them. Some of them are stuffed with pink and covered in plastic on the back and a bunch are not, they do a good job of breaking up the parallel surfaces and cutting down on that type of verb reflections. I can't get over how good the room sounds! really!

Just ordered all the custom Mogami that will run thru the floor tubes to the input panels in all the rooms.

Starting to book sessions from now thru August and beyond.

[greatgreatriver]

Nice!

I also paint - last 10 years I have been busy making music but I'm slowly starting to miss painting. If I had a bigger studio room I would combine painting and music. That would be so cool.

Your studio looks so good!

[dabigfrog]

Here is a free track for you to listen to.
1st track with drums recorded in the big room!
by my engineer Bill Palmer...."the river"
recorded at Frogville's new studio

"the river -bill palmer" by Bill Palmer

no reverbs were used on the drums, 3 mics close plus room mic

let me know what you think!

[greatgreatriver]

Cool song!

The drums sounds great - The room have a different vibe that I like. Not like a concrete room where sounds can sometimes sound hollow. I don't know what your walls are made of but it sure sounds great. Glued together just the way I like it.

Thanks for sharing!

[dabigfrog]

we set up our lil headphone system and it works! didn't like the coils of blue and grey ethernet so we scored some cable covers here on the gs classifieds and cleaned it all up real nice.



here is a collage of the big room.



waiting on the new mogami snakes to run thru the floor pipes to the input panels. but we have a temporary snake running under the doors that keeps us working as we tweak it all.

[dabigfrog]

cable! almost 3000$ worth of custom mogami cable!

this is my last pic, I guess I'm going to have to start erasing the old pix in order to not exceed my limit here at GS... so more to follow.

next:
pull cable thru the floors
finish input panels
wire the input panels
custom configure the dsub snakes then
re wire the gear in the cr
.....
need
new computer
new 16 ch ad/da
new master clock
42" flat screen
wall mount for tv

[dabigfrog]

we decomissioned the old patchbays and cable we had frankenstiened together replaced with new dsub tt patchbays and all new cable.. more pix soon.

going to go thru frank here and cull some newer cables to be "d-subbed"