The Studio

I'm lucky enough to have a semi dedicated room at the top of the house although unfortunately it's not detached from the neighbours so I have to keep it reasonable! Although it's quite small, it's a good rehearsal space for a 3 piece band and I've also gone to considerable effort to sound treat the room. This consists of:

Panels of Rockwool mounted on Chipboard with an airspace behind them
Pyramid Tiles
2 large bass traps between the walls and ceiling

The overall effect is quite dramatic - you walk into the room and it intangibly feels "different". This is not a particularly scientific treatment but I can guarantee that my recordings are better since I've installed the sound damping.

The Kit

I have to my name:

Spanish Guitar (walnut with solid top and pickup)
Gibson Les Paul Studio (dark red with gold hardware)
Acoustic Guitar
Oil Can Guitar
Boss GT3
Marshall 60W TSL601
Cort Bass
Oud
Saz
Chinese Moon Guitar
Sitar
Istanbul Sultan Series Hi Hat
Misc Percussion
Beringher large diaphragm condenser, SM58, SM57 Beta

Recording Methodology

I record on my PC through an Edirol FA-66 sound card. I record in Audacity then import the samples into Fruity Loops. Typically I'll lay down a rhythm guitar part to a click track, then vocals, then flesh out the song from there. Quite often I'll go back to redo the guitar and vocals last and keep improving the song by iterations. Recently I've been experimenting with a live Hi Hat to "drive" the song along. It appears to be much more effective than a machine Hat, without obviously sounding like it's from a different drum kit.

Normally in my production I'll keep everything as natural sounding as possible but I've recently been experimenting with Compression to bring the sound of the music and vocals in particular as close to the front as possible.