Have Studio, Will Travel

As Sunette and I have been staying at the Ronald McDonald House just outside of Philly during the last week and a half, we've had several days of just doing nothing; which has been fantastic.  I was going like gang-busters before we got here and the rest has been nice.  Especially in light of the fact that we have our C-section next Tuesday and life is gonna get crazy quick. 

So I brought my little travel Taylor guitar up here with me, as well as my laptop, and a new little gizmo I picked up before I came up here.  I knew that I wanted to do some recording while I was here, but I couldn't afford to pick up a mini portable recorder like the Zoom H4, super sweet I might say.  Instead, I picked up a Belkin Tunetalk for my iPod.

This is a cool little deal that you plug into the bottom of your 5g iPod and it allows you to record in stereo straight to your iPod's hard drive.  You then just hook the iPod up to your computer and you can import the files to your software of choice.

For kicks, and since I'm completely stuck on Ryan Adams right now, I decided to record a cover of his song Easy Plateau from his Cold Roses album.  Excellent artist and an excellent song.  Lawyers:  this is not my song, I'm not selling it, I love the song and just recorded it for kicks, don't sue me, I'm poor.  Now that I got that out of the way...  I recorded my little travel guitar using the Tunetalk and then imported those into Cubase, my recording software.  I then listened to those tracks and recorded vocals using the Tunetalk.  After that I added some percussion courtesy of Toontrack's EZDrummer plug in, using the Latin Percussion add-on.

 

Yeah, the timing's kinda all over the place, but it was just a fun little experiment.  I really dig the Tunetalk.  My only gripe is that the stereo mic is not very directional, so you can't tell if I'm on the left or the right when I'm recording.  That kinda stinks if I wanted to record a jam session and get some separation of the instruments.  Anyway, check out the tune and lemme know what you think.

I think the vocals are a little hot.  I may remix and repost, but we'll see.

Easy Plateau

Comments

[Dave2]

Cool! It seems impossible that you managed to get such good sound off of that set-up! Isn't modern technology great? :-)

[John Boy]

hey man, that is pretty sweet. i liked the sound, that guitar sounds very nice through the setup.

ryan adams is beautiful period. be sure to check out whiskeytown too.

[John Boy]

oh by the way, check this little recorder i was checking out last week, and thinking about purchasing.
http://www.xtrememac.com/audio/earphones_recorders/micromemo_video/index.php

[Jabulani Jonny]

The Tunetalk is the same price and you get stereo recording versus just mono recording. It also has a 1/8" mic input so you could use that little sony stereo mic you have to record as well. I've heard the tunetalk has better quality than the one you link to, but I haven't tested it.

[Jabulani Jonny]

Thanks Dave! " I love technology". It really is amazing what you can do these days and the quality you can get versus what was possible even 10 years ago.

[tim]

Jonathan,
That is some good stuff. I've never heard Ryan Adams' version....and I don't know if I need to. Nice job buddy. And that's with a laptop and a little Belkin thingy!??!....nice!

[Jabulani Jonny]

Thanks Tim!! Am I speaking to Tim of Berry potter fame? If so...HEY DUDE!!

[Dan]

jonny... this sounds awesome.. especially considering what you used to record with.. sounds great!! you've got good ears! keep up the good work!