SpragueLand

SpragueLand is the name of my recording studio. We’re located in Encinitas, California around seven blocks away from the pacific ocean. From the office deck (which is directly above the studio’s control room) we have a great view of the wild blue framed with an old sycamore tree and a row of palms. It’s a really idyllic environment to play and record music.

Jimi Hendrix had his recording studio in New York City and named it Electric LadyLand and so I figured we needed a west coast cousin, far from the madness of the city streets, almost opposite in outward environments, like the opposite coasts. And that’s how SpragueLand was born.

I use the studio to record my own music as well as music for other folks. When I work on projects I generally assist in the song arranging process as well as the chart writing, guitar playing, engineering, mixing, and producing. It’s a lot of hats to wear and I love all of the diversity.

I think it’s a unique set-up having a musician engineering a project. I’m not only looking out for sonic solutions within a song but I also have my ear on the music content as well. If you need a substitute chord change for the last four bars of the song, I might be your man. I have a gang of great studio musicians that join me in the studio and together I think we’ve produced some cool recordings. Look to the discography page to see a list of the CD’s we’ve been involved with.

Here are some of the details on SpragueLand

We have seven isolated recording spaces, 4 of them visible via double paned glass and all of them visible by monitor screens driven by separate cameras in all of the rooms. Each musician can see all of the rest of the players. Each room is acoustically designed with high ceilings and non-parallel walls.

• Room One is the spacious control room with all the recording gear.
• Room Two is the main large room where we can have several musicians playing at the same time.
• Room Three is the piano room. We have a Yamaha C-6 seven foot grand piano (bought in November, 2000) and we keep it immaculately maintained. Pretty kicking low end on this monster!
• Room Four is a vocal/horn booth.
• Room Five is the office upstairs (with the ocean view) which is wired up and has a video connection for visual contact with the other players. With this setup, it’s possible to do a recording with a whole group playing at the same time for group interaction yet still maintaining sound isolation for recording clarity.
• Room Six is the drum shed and it’s a completely separate structure with total isolation to the other rooms.
• Room Seven is recording space that we usually put the acoustic bass in. Again total isolation from the other rooms.

I record to ProTools, which is an amazing software and hard-disk computer system. This system allows for total mixing automation and believe me, this is a great thing. After spending four hours on a mix, you can leave it and return a month later and be right where you left off. This saves time and allows you to really get it right. The rig also allows instant access to anywhere in the tune, so no more waiting for the tape machine to rewind. The editing possibilities are mind blowing and it’s a common occurrence to take a slightly out of tune and/or out of time vocal and maneuver it into a new home that even Donald Fagen might approve of. Actually, probably not, but he is THE most detailed fellow living.

The Trying Not To Get Too Overly Detailed List of Studio Gear

• Avid ProTools Ultimate system (2048 digital tracks) with HDX card running AXX Plug-Ins running on a Apple Mac Studio computer.
• AD & DA digital interfaces by AVID (one HD i/o and three 192 I/O’s)
• Digidesign C/24 mixing board/control surface for ProTools
• Alesis ADAT’s and BRC (32 tracks) (still around just in case)
• DAT machine by Panasonic
• monitor speakers by Genelec and Yamaha
• reverb by Lexicon (PCM 90)
• microphones by Neuman (U-87, TLM-193’s, KM-184’s), AKG (414’s and 460’s), Sennheizer (421’s), Royer (R122’s), and Wunder Audio (CM7GTS).
• tube mic preamps by Avalon, Summit Audio, and Drawmer
• outboard gear by Urei, Drawmer, and Behringer
• midi gear by Roland
• Hofa CD Burnfor CD burning and DDP file creation
• Melodyne for dealing with out of tune vocals; and Finale for music notation
• Full drum kit set up in the drum room.

One of the cool things about our studio is we have a unique headphone set-up in which each player works with their own 16 channel mixer to customize what they want to hear. This is a real breakthrough! No more compromising with what each player needs in their headphones to feel comfortable. It’s called the Furman HDS-16/HRM-16 system and it kicks.

We also do video recording at SpragueLand. Check out our Live(ish) From SpragueLand livestream videos on YouTube and here you can see we have great cameras in all of the rooms and a fellow managing the camera switching in real time. We use Blackmagic Design cameras and an ATEM Mini Extreme ISO video switcher.

If you have an interest in recording at SpragueLand or would like me help you with some aspect of your project, give a call (760.436.3906) and we’ll fill you in on our availability and prices.

More studio photos, click here!