IT SOUNDS LIKE A TINY CASTLE
With the help of this room's unique natural reverb chamber, I can make your drums sound like they were recorded in a stone castle. Tiny Castle is equipped to track your band live up to 28 inputs, with zero-latency headphone mixes for every member. We can track to a click, to a tempo map, or "au naturale."
Yes, its just the basement of a house that my wife Lauren and I bought in 2016. But the basement is thoughtfully configured for tracking full bands in a comfortable setting, where amps can be isolated and drum sounds can bloom into a natural stone reverb chamber.
There's a private entrance for loading in and out gear, a nice little bathroom, and since I'm a homebrewer, the fridge is almost always stocked with fancy fermented beverages. We also have a guest bedroom upstairs if you're in need of a nap.
WHATS THE PLAN
Let's get this out of the way: I'm $35 / hour, with a 4 hour minimum per project. I work a day job, so I can only record on nights and weekends. Now for the fun stuff!
Tiny Castle is equipped to track your band live with zero-latency headphone mixes for every member. We can track to a click, or not - however you're comfortable recording. If it matters, I track and mix in Pro Tools 2020.5.
In order for guitar or bass mistakes to not affect a good drum take, we can mic up to 4 guitar and bass amps in my isolation room, so that the drum mics are isolated from the other instruments. Tracking together as a band and knowing that your flubbed guitar or bass line won't ruin the whole drum take can make a big difference. Vocals are generally best handled as an overdub, but we can do scratch vocals live if they're absolutely necessary.
Reducing amp bleed like this is also very important when the goal is to capture the beautiful bloom of drum hits in the distant room mics. We don't have to use a lot of the room mics in your final mix, but having the option is a whole lot cooler than not.
When the basic tracking is done for the day, we'll splice together the best sections of each take so everyone feels like they got their best possible performance documented. Then we'll move on to overdubs. Overdubbing is a crucial (and fun) way to take those performances to the next level, and really make the record sound huge.
MIXING AND MASTERING
We'll chip away at the mix as we go, but once we're done recording, I will turn my full attention to the mix, where I might do some micro-editing where needed and also set up a reference mastering signal chain to make the songs sound loud and polished. By request, I can turn that off so a pro mastering engineer has more headroom to work with.
I charge $35 / hour and a general rule of thumb is to allocate an additional 2-4 hours for the rough mix depending on how many songs we tracked.
To hear a lot of the work I've done since 2013, click on "My portfolio" in the header (www.grimoirerecords.com), or scroll down for a closer listen into some raw drum tracks! oOoooOOoooHH betcha didn't see that coming!
WHATS MY DEAL?
Hi, I'm Noel. I've worked for a digitization service bureau called Creekside Digital since 2011, and on the side I record bands and run a record label called Grimoire Records with my friend Phil. Writing and playing weird music was my first passion. Helping bands craft amazing sounding records without going deep into debt has now become my main passion.
Since 2013, I've engineered, mixed and mastered something like 80 albums - click the "my portfolio" button to check out a bunch of them on the Grimoire Records bandcamp page. Before Grimoire Records, I was just a musician with little interest in audio engineering - I just wanted to make weird, heavy music. When we would step into the studio, however, I was always left scratching my head at why our drums never sounded the way I thought we actually sounded "in the real world." I would show engineers examples of the kind of drum sound I was looking for, and get answers like "there's gated reverb on those drums." So, I said "cool, lets put gated reverb on the drums!" Womp womp.
As a musician, it took me years to discover that the sound I was craving came from the severely under-utilized art of capturing the sound of the drum room in addition to the drum kit. Now, as an engineer, I'm just obsessed with roomy drum sounds.
I graduated from UMBC with a bachelor's degree in graphic design in 2005. Then, in 2011 I was given an amazing opportunity (by my dad, Bill Mueller, a life-long audio engineer who worked at Sheffield for almost 30 years) to learn studio recording techniques at the Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts. Even though I had been bitten by the recording bug, I knew working in a commercial studio setting wasn't for me. I settled into my day job at Creekside Digital, and started recording bands on the weekends. In 2016, my wife Lauren and I finally bought a house with recording functionality in mind, and here we are!
GEAR
I have mics, I have amps, I have drums. Look at this one. Look at that one. Look at this one. Look at that one.
Ribbon mics:
Beyerdynamic m160 (2)
Beyerdynamic m130
sE vr1 (2)
sE x1r
Cascade Fathead
Condenser mics:
AKG c535
sE 4400a (2)
sE x1d
Rode k2 (tube LDC)
Rode NT4 (stereo)
Rode m5 (2)
ATM 450 (2)
CAD m179 (2)
CAD e-100
Audix F90
ISK Pearl
Dynamic mics:
Beyerdynamic m201 (2)
Heil pr20
Heil pr30
Heil pr40
Heil pr28
AKG d112
AKG d200e
Shure beta 52
Shure sm57
Granelli G5790
Electro Voice n/d 468
Sennheiser 604 (3)
Audix i5
​
Amps: Mostly the bands that record here use a mix of their gear and my gear. I don't have expensive or boutique amps, but I do have amps that sound cool on their own, and might sound great blended with some of your existing gear.
Dean Costello HMW 100w (yeah)
Univox U-1011 100w
Fender Tweed 5E3 Frankenstein Clone
Peavey VTM-120
Peavey Butcher (yes, a real Butcher from the 80s)
Peavey MK III Standard
Traynor YRM-1
Traynor YBA-1 (modded for ridiculous chainsaw-levels of gain)
Orange TT15JR
Orange Dual Terror
Orange MT20
Carvin X60B
Marshall Artist 3203
Marshall Lead 20 1x10 combo
Alamo 2566 Fury 1x15 combo
Cabinets:
Peavey 4x12 (matched with the VTM-120 w/original Celestion G12k85s)
Ampeg V4 4x12 w/Eminence Legend GB128s
Custom ported 4x12 w/Celestion G12T-75s and Eminence Swamp Thangs.
Custom sealed 2x12 w/Celestion vintage 30s
Pharaoh oversized 2x10 w/Eminence Legend B810s
Traynor 2x12 (Oxford 12HB-15 12-inch Alnico Woofers)
​
Effects Pedals:
A bunch of decent pedals from Wampler, Earthquaker Devices, Barber, Boss, Electronic Audio Experiments, RAT, God City Instruments, Damnation Audio.
Drums: Bands that come here to record will usually bring their own kit, we'll mic it up and get tones, and if there's a real problem, or something we really want to experiment with, we'll use some of my house kit's parts. On weeknight sessions, however, it's understood that my kit will be used for the most part, to reduce set-up time:
Tama Rockstar: 14x5.5" snare, 24" kick, 12" tom, 16" floor tom.
Pearl 4x14" Marvin "Smitty" Smith snare
Pearl 5x14" Sensitone Aluminum snare
Maple/Alder 6.5x14" snare
Signature Copper Snare Drum
Zildjan K 22" ride
Zildjan A 18" thin crash
Sabian hhx 21" groove ride
Zildjan K 14" hi-hats
Assorted 1960s-70s Zildjan A 14" hi-hats
​
Here's the part where you're *really* not going to be impressed if you're into expensive recording gear.
​
Digital Interface:
RME Fireface 802 - 30-in/30-out interface with zero-latency DSP effects for headphone mixes, into ProTools 2020.5 with lots of legit, fully paid for plug-ins.
28 channels of pre amps:
RME Fireface 802 (4 pre amps)
MOTU 8pre USB (8 pre amps)
Focusrite Octopre #1 (8 pre amps)
Focusrite Octopre #2 (8 pre amps)
​
Monitoring:
Mackie Big Knob
MR5mk2 nearfields (2)
Primacoustic RX5 (2)
Sennheiser HD 600
Audio-Technica ATH-M20x (4)
Sony MDR7506 (2)
Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro
Beyerdynamic DT250
DirectSound EX-25
​
HERE ARE SOME OF THOSE PEDALS I MENTIONED
LET'S RECORD SOMETHING
I have a 9-5 job, so I currently only offer weekend hours of 10am-10pm Saturdays, 10am-6pm Sundays, and week nights from 6-10pm. Tracking, mixing and mastering time is 25/hr, and the mix is usually delivered within a week of tracking. Get in touch and we'll put a weekend on the calendar!
Tiny Castle Recording, Towson, MD
