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| Who we are....
2nd Floor Recording Studio is located in Fountain Valley, California (Orange County), and provides a private and discrete environment where musicians can work at their own pace. We are patient with first timers, and aggressive with experienced musicians.
The studio combines the best of analog and digital equipment to meet the needs of today's recording artists. We feature gear by Neumann, Sennheiser, Royer, Shure, AKG, Universal Audio, Pendulum Audio, FMR Audio, True Systems, Empirical Labs, Gibson, Marshall, Fender, Martin, Mesa Boogie, Line6, Vox, Pearl, Tama, Roland, BOSS, Tascam, RME, Steinberg and other fine companies.
Whether you want a full album, 5 song demo, or just a quick and simple recording, we do it all (including karaoke recordings). If you're a new artist (never recorded a professional album) be sure to ask us about how you can record for free. Seriously !!! We do it regularly for local artists who are struggling to get heard.
For more information contact us by email at dave@2ndfloorrecording.com
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So, what's new to the studio ...... We keep adding gear (almost) every month.
September 2009: We just added the Monster midi 3 drum set (software) for Toontracks. This upgrade includes 400 pre-recorded drum fills. I've been using Toontracks/EZDrummer on several songs. The patterns are really good, and the sound samples are great. I've been wanting a greater variety of fills (4/4 and 2/4), and this package has it. Can't wait to try it out (tonight).
August 2009: We added more mic stands to replace some of the aging ones we've been lugging to shows. We also added on an extra disk drive .... I think we now have over 5 Terabytes of attached storage. We had the Panasonic Ramsa DA7 mixer disconnected for quite a few months, but it's been reinstalled and adds to the number of live tracks we can record simultaneously through our Fireface 800's (using light-pipe to make the connection).
July 2009: Our friend Dana Angle has donated an Oktava MK-319 mic to the studio, and our friends from The Chin Beards donated a 1TB hard drive which now gives us about 5TB of attached storage. We're replaced a few mic stands ... they tend to take a beating, and added Superior Drummer software (VST plugin) which integrates with ToonTracks. We also added Steve Slate drum gigs last month ... there's some killer RedHotChiliPepper style drum samples.
March 2009: We just added ToonTracks, a drum looping software, to our bag of tricks and have been experimenting with it onThe Frenge's songs. This allows us to add some great drum tracks to songs where the artist may need percussion, but doesn't have a drummer. Nothing beats the real-deal, but this software is the next best thing.
January 2009: Last November we added a UAD-2 Duo card to our main PC and added a couple more Universal Audio plugins to the list. This was a very welcome update that gave us the capability to run many more plugins simultaneously. Well ... here we go again. We just added the UAD-2 Quad Omni which adds 10x's the processing power of the UAD-1 card that we had been using for the last few years. In addition, the Omni pack includes every plugin that Universal Audio offers. For a small studio, this is amazing. The UAD-2 card takes all the effects processing off the main CPU of our PC which allows us to do much more processing than we could ever do before (compressors / reverbs / EQ / special effects). The card and effects list for $5000, but we did a little better than that. Now, we're making it available for all our projects.
December 2008, we added a new Epiphone Casino acoustic-electric guitar to the rack. The Beatles purchased three of these guitars in the early 60's and used them extensively on their albums. There are many pictures of John Lennon playing his Casino while performing live and in the studio. We should have a professional setup done on it in a couple of weeks, and then it'll be ready for album work. Just in case you were wondering, ours has the natural finish, much like John's after he stripped off the original color. It's beautiful.
During the summer of 2008, our friend Dana Angle gave the studio a very special gift. It's a Kramer bass guitar, circa 1971. Definitely, one of the earliest basses made by Kramer. The bass weighs 10 pounds ... ouch ... and the neck is aluminum. I don't think you'd want to wear this to play live, but in a studio setting, it's perfect. When you pluck this bass, it rings forever ... and ever. We used it recently on a song by The Frenge where we needed a bass that sustained for long periods, and the Kramer fit the bill. We've also added a new Roland bass stack. The D-Bass 210 and D-Bass 115X provide amazing punch in the high-end and plently of clear support in the low-end. This is a great sounding amp for live performances also.
That's about it for now ... stay tuned for more ....
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| Who's currently in the studio ?
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12/11/09: In September, we recorded 'The Way', a Christian rock band that was huge in the late 60's -- early 70's. This was the 35th anniversary of their last concert in 1974. The original members got together for one night only and we recorded them by tapping into the front of house mixer. We're now working with Dana Angle to mix the concert into a live album. We'll try to have it done sometime in December. It was great meeting and working with the guys in the band.
12/11/09: The Frenge recently finished their second album here at 2nd Floor. Their first album FIRE 'EM ALL was amazing. Very fun and easy to listen to ... and the new album ROCK GODs is even better ... well ..... The Frenge is now recording their 3rd album and have posted one of the songs 'Looking Down' for comments and suggestions on our 'Songs in Progress' page. You can hear more of The Frenge's material at www.myspace.com/TheFrenge Check out the lead guitar at the end of 'Shadows on the Wall'. It's 5 lead-guitar tracks playing simultaneously.
In Progress: We've missed working with Sugah Daddy since they finished their full album last year. The good news is that we're working with Dana (guitarist) on some tunes that were written a while back, and never recorded. If you've heard Sugah Daddy live, then you know just how good he is, and it's a pleasure working with him on this project. While in the studio, Dana is also helping with guitar on The Frenge's album, so we get the pleasure of hearing him play a very wide variety of music .... Check out Dana and the entire Sugah Daddy band at ... http://www.sugahdaddyband.com/ ... last minute update ...
In Progress: g8 is currently working on their third album. All scratch tracks have been recorded and the arrangements are now finalized. We have a few final tracks recorded and are working through every song at the moment.
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| Dave hangin' with surf master guitarist Dick Dale (Mizirlou) |
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Hey, that's Dick Dale (left), king of the surf guitars, hanging onto Dave Williams (owner of 2nd Floor Recording). Looks like they're having some fun.
Remember 'Mizirlou' from Pulp Fiction ..... well, that was Dick Dale on the guitar !!! And he still rocks like crazy !!!
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| Dave & Robby Kreiger |
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I know this picture looks fake, but it's the real deal. It was taken with a cell phone and I was a bit closer than the other guy who was standing in front of a black backdrop. So who is it?
Well, that's me (on the left), and the other guy ... that's the legendary guitarist from The Doors, Robby Krieger.
He grabbed a Gibson guitar and right there in front of about 100 people played his famous guitar licks from the Doors song "Love Me Two Times", then autographed a picture (on my wall at home), and let us take this snapshot with a cell phone (thanks Marco). He was way cool about it all.
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| Dave & Gene Simmons |
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OK ... I know this picture is funny, but I'm posting it anyway.
In the middle of the picture is Gene Simmons (KISS). It was almost impossible to get close to him, so I walked around the ouside of the NAMM booth and my buddy Martin took this picture while I stood in the background, looking through the metal truss (the one holding the booth upright). If you magnify the picture about 10 to the 14th power, you can see it's me.
I later got within about 3 feet of Gene, but no picture with him, and his security team kept everyone at a safe distance, so there's no autograph .... nice guy though. And he was having a good time at the show.
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| Dave & Kerry King - Slayer |
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Hey, there I am (Dave, on the right) getting an autograph from Slayer guitarist, Kerry King. He was very cool about the autograph which is now hanging on the wall in my studio.
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| Dave & Alex Grossi - Quiet Riot |
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| I had the pleasure of meeting guitarist Alex Grossi (Hookers & Blow / Quiet Riot / Beautiful Creatures) and I gotta tell ya', he's a very nice guy in addition to being one of the busiest guitarists on the planet. We talked for a few minutes and he let me take this picture.
If you haven't heard him rock ... you're missing some great music.
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