Ugh! I’m brain fried form working on the AudioCentrik studio website all day! Gosh. Taking a break.
I’ve been looking at a ton of other webpages of course…in the process of getting mine put together. And it made me wonder…if you’re were the next lucky person to score a big $150m winning lottery ticket, would you go buy yourself some new toys???
What would you get?
I’ll start. I need higher ceilings and more distance to my back wall. I’d grab a nice pair of used Augspurgers too. And I’d buy a different preamp.
If money was no object, I would buy the entire Sydney opera house and have it moved to my private garden. Then I would summon the entire Vienna orchestra to play in it and have them play all my scores, all day every day, while I conduct for them. I would live stream that on youtube and have no real need for any other gear or anything else.
Money is no object? I’d set up the studio as more of a jam space so that I could invite all the best musicians in to play and record and not worry about needing anything. I’d have a much more fully functioning MIDI setup.
Basically, I’d want it to be a space that serves 2 purposes:
I can record/arrange/orchestrate all my own crappy music the way I do now, except with fewer annoying limitations.
Work with and record really good musicians when I felt like it.
I certainly wouldn’t design a studio for commercial purposes, because I definitely wouldn’t want to be maximizing throughput. I’d want it to be more like a big play room.
I thought about this last night, and decided that I would hire someone to help me build a really great sounding space where I could do basically what I do now, except with all really nice stuff. I still want to be able to track myself. I’d probably buy a nice house on a lot of land and then build an expansion onto it for the studio. I’d want to get a ton of different instruments so I can try playing them. And most of all, I’d hire a lot of people to come and teach me things. It could really accelerate my learning. I just love learning.
It might also be fun to be able to invite really good artists to come in and record stuff for free, just to witness it and be a small part of it. More learning I guess!
Along with a bunch of gear that I’d like to try playing… I’d buy a drummer so I’d never again have to face the tedium (and my own complete inadequacy) of programming drum tracks. Life would be good.
Meh. I take that back. On an unlimited budget I’d have a fully loaded Hammond XK3 and probably MIDI it to the Hauptwerk pipe organ software. I might keep a Yamaha DTX midi drum set handy too. I guess I could snag a Roland Handsonic or a one of those OctoPads for drums but it seems like it’d be a lot more fun to just haul out a latin percussion rig and throw some mics on it. I guess what a musician who i set for life with $150m gains from MIDI is speed and workflow efficiency.
I can only imagine the amount of gadgets that Hanz Zimmer must have stashed in the warehouse that’s connected to his building!
I would have a medium sized studio built where you could use the character of the room as part of the sound. It would have a tracking room big enough to record a band live, but also have isolation rooms, and functional furniture to let you sit next to the console to track your instrument through the monitor system for overdubs. I would also set it up so everything was always live and maintained, with a motion sensor that would put the rig automatically into record mode as soon as someone walked in.
As far as gear is concerned, I’d probably just hire a guy I trusted and write him a check once every six months or as needed to get whatever was needed.
Which is more than I currently have, which means that I need more money than I currently have to justify buying it. Endless money would help me justify the $1000 expense.
