All language subtitles for EPIC RECORDING STUDIO SETUP 2021 Vance Powell (studio tour)

so today we're gonna go hang out with

four-time grammy award-winning producer

mixer and engineer vance powell

[Applause]

[Music]

so vance is a local nashville producer

and engineer who has a studio in

berry hill here in nashville tennessee

it's called sputnik sound he shares it

with his friend

mitch they both have their own rooms

it's an old house and the whole house

i just turned into this crazy studio

it's wild it's it's

really really cool vance has worked with

a ton of artists

that have been huge inspirations on me

personally and probably to you as well

obviously a lot of them being very very

successful projects

just to name a few my good friend tyler

bryant tyler bryant the shakedowns the

dead weather

jack white chris stapleton jeff the

brotherhood

danger mouse kings of leon and the

raconteurs the blunderbuss record and

the lazaretto record from jack white

were huge inspirations on me absolutely

so pumped to go and see this place it's

really rad so thank you vance for having

me out it was so much fun meeting you

and getting to check out all the stuff

and how you're using it and some of the

cool projects

very very cool vance is a very

successful engineer and producer so he

needs

no promotion whatsoever but if you guys

want to follow him i put his

instagram and his website linked down in

the description check that out so if

you're watching this right

now i'm in los angeles actually working

on some new

very cool projects gonna have some cool

videos coming out of that so if you're

not

subscribed hit that notification bell on

the subscribe so you can get notified

every monday when these videos go live

i've got some

really cool new gear right here let me

just show you real quick oh

oh we got some cool new gear and i'm

really really pumped about that and

gonna be working on

making some really fun projects using

all this gear and i'll put those videos

up if you guys want to check them out

also i link all of the gear that i think

is awesome down in the description they

are sweetwater links sweetwater sponsors

all these videos thank you sweetwater

for sponsoring the videos if you guys

watch these videos just because it's fun

to watch to see other people's setups

that's great if you're looking to get

your own gear you see something you like

use the links down in the description

the way that it works is they are

affiliate links

so if you click on them and wind up

getting either the gear that you clicked

on or

literally just any other gear that

supports my channel

through sweetwater sweetwater is the

number one online

distributor of all this stuff so if

you're looking for it

they've got it one thing that i really

like about sweetwater is whether you're

just getting started and you're looking

to get

a arturia keystep 37 as your first midi

controller or you're looking to get

a neve 33609 or some warm audio 273 pres

or some high-end converters or whatever

it is you can get

all of it from sweetwater they have

everything from entry-level stuff to

very elite high-level epic studio

gear so thank you sweetwater for

sponsoring the video guys use the links

down in the description

it's a tremendous help from me and you

guys have been so

freaking awesome i'm i'm very thankful

thank you guys for

all of the support liking subscribing

all that stuff if you want to book

zoom consultations we've been doing a

bunch of those that's been a lot of fun

you can

go to andrewmastersmusic.com all of the

services

listed here are available on that

website andrewmastersmusic.com

thank you guys for watching and let's go

check out vance's studio

hey vance hey how's it going i'm doing

pretty well we're a little overexposed

here that's fine that's all right um i'm

always a little overexposed

out here at sputnik sound sunny sound

yeah here in berry hill thank you for

having me you got it well let's let's go

in

and uh and i'll show you around was this

originally

this was a house a house it was built in

1942

and then my partner next door mitch dane

here he is in there working

so sweet out to studio we got to work

yeah

this side is all his and this is kind of

a common

lounge area and nice kitchen nice little

kitchen yeah so

when mitch purchased his house it was

only 900 square feet

so he had that tracking room on the

front it was all again

built during world war ii and uh and

then

this was the back wall of the house so

all this out back here was added on

okay this was all grass nice out back

here so

yeah come on back this is uh my world

back here

so this is um the hallway here

this has uh six years worth of work

on the walls oh five years will work

consultate

this is all console tape of mixes things

are mixed or recorded

uh the white is uh things were mixed and

the red is things that were recorded

that is uh mike fahey my

my assistant he writes like this

right and i write like this but this is

all his work he put all this together

wow and uh there are 1 000 songs

here oh my gosh this is our tech shop

here

where we have you know tech shop stuff

um you know we've got the cables

connectors

hard drives that clients haven't picked

up new extra q boxes

ssl parts broken stuff

extra ssl computer broken imac

and extra gear it's nice to have a

little spot like this yeah well you have

to have it in the studio really

um and then there's a full basement

you're standing on the door there the

trapdoor

oh wow and there's a basement under the

whole front of the house

and there's cables connectors

storage yeah it's a mess down there this

is my b room this is uh

this is where all the overflow crap ends

up

uh my b3 is in here this is also where

my assistant mike

where his station is is where he does

edits and where he preps

songs for me to mix and you know

sometimes we have amplifiers that don't

fit

down in the room they end up up here mic

stands

obviously an extra drum the head of

keyboard

you run lines in here too so you can

there are lines here they literally

run across the carpet there for the b3

now in here

we just have been working uh it's like i

said a little bit of a mess

but uh we've been working in here in my

machine room

cleaning up some racks so there's cables

on the floor here

there's an extra old 192 in here this is

my machine room

this has the ssl the ssl uh power supply

i'm an atomic power supply i have an

actual pair of original the analog

ones and then this is the computer

there's another spare computer i have up

here

and then around here is my pro tools rig

and

raid arrays and all for our backup

system

that room is putting in the work it is

doing some work so

and then down here you step down there's

four steps here the last one's a little

weird

you know these are all just posters and

things of concerts and records and

things that are

kind of important to me there's you know

a couple gold records platinum records

chris stapleton platinum records here

and signed one to jackson poster there

signed by her that it's real near and

dear to my heart

come down in here this is sort of we

call this kind of the guitar booth we do

get a lot of guitar amp stuff in here

sometimes we'll do vocals and guitar

we'll do that in here and then my

tracking room um

a lot of times there's my wurlitzer sits

over here my drums are kind of

half taken apart the mics are nowhere

near where they're supposed to be

because

yeah we've had people coming and going

keys over here piano

a lot of times we'll use these big gobos

here

this big gobo and that one to sort of

block off the drums

and then you know block off people i

love

the doors and the old windows just

hanging oh thanks

there's a flat panel up there you see

that's uh where the air conditioning

runs okay the air conditioner vent is

about this big around

so that it makes no noise wow and so

they couldn't get it in the arc of the

ceiling and i didn't want it exposed

so it created a little bit of a flutter

so these doors were from the original

house that was built in 42

these two are the bedroom doors and

these two are the closet doors

and this was the actual back door into

the garage

and so i still came in here and laid

them out on the floor while the guys

were building and i was like you just

got to hang them up

and they kind of did it they did it

and then a friend of mine uh named scott

gehen who's a

really great artist who's from here has

become quite famous but he painted these

doors and he

free handed all the ceiling because i

told him i wanted to look like a starry

night but the doors are actually

providing a

purpose their diffuser then there's um

703 on the top

spray painted black oh cool you can't

see it but it's

yeah it's a soft diffusion on the top

and hard

down here so this is just an armstrong

ceiling tile it's a one

square foot ceiling tile that's for

suspended ceilings

that you send to a guy and he drills it

out so it's an 80

cent tile that cost three dollars each

to drill

yeah it's a 3.80 tile yeah and there are

about 3 000 of them in here and

originally my original intention

is to paint these but painting them is

kind of a little bit of a problem

so we've actually found that you can dye

them there's an ink

that'll dye them and but i just never

got around to doing it so the curtain

rods are kind of a

it's a fluke these curtains there's four

of them

were um originally from a tour

some some toured they posted them on

facebook marketplace

these are velvet theater curtains heavy

velvet curtains and

chains in the bottom wow so these were

drops for a tour

they were sold as being 12 by 15

but they're only eight which was a

little bit of a bummer once i got them

and so we went in and we put these

uh wood pieces in and went into this

joist and put these

uh crossbars in and what's

awesome i was going to get them cut i

paid 500 for them

i was going to get them cut and it was

1200 to get them cut

and i was like okay forget that but

what's awesome

is that these gobos will hold them up so

we have done the drumbrella like you

bring this

bring this guy over right yep and

you bring the other one over and you

take this one and you

drape it up over the top you drape this

one up over the top and then make the

little drumbrella

so yeah you can make a really nice

little dead room with them and then here

on the piano

you see i just sort of pile the thing up

on top and let it fall down the sides

there's microphones on the back so

they're just sitting up here on top of

the piano you know

yeah yeah and i just do the mic press

here on the

piano and then we just send line level

into the other room because you you're

doing

probably one of the few guys still doing

a lot of live stuff

yeah almost everything i do yeah it's

like a lost art man it's awesome well

it's weird how that's a lost art but

yeah a lot of people don't do that

anymore it's fine it's very cool

it's cool they can call me and this is

call me and this is a

really cool space to do it in because

some rooms are like way overkill

over the top i wish this room was bigger

yeah but it can't be

because the city wouldn't allow us to

build it any bigger we had to have

parking in the back and then drainage

and

all the stuff they did we this is as big

as it could possibly be i mean i've i've

done a six-piece band in here it gets a

little crowded but you know what it's so

what it's fine yeah man

so what i mean i've done a couple

records uh i did a couple toddler bryant

records where we just put the drums here

and then we put amps on either side and

everybody just played in the room live

my original idea again was for all this

to be painted another color but

yeah all the wood is from a 160 year old

barn up in kentucky

it had all been dried and treated so

there weren't any bugs or anything

and then it's hollow behind it so it's

just a it's just an air

chamber behind it okay so it's a trap

what are some of the um

common practices i guess in this room

dry mics are pretty simple uh

you know i usually either do um some

sort of i kind of like mono overhead or

a stereo or like an xy overhead

sure uh which is usually an r88 or a

kohl's

oh yeah um km84 on the hi-hat

57s on the snare the kick drum d12

and then i've been using this paluso 47

or i have a fat 47

yeah uh i kind of been liking these

little uh earthworks mics

for toms pretty cool yeah what is that

that is a little that's a little special

sauce of mine a little special

that's an ampex 1101 it is i

think an omni wow it was a microphone

sold

for reel-to-reel recorders in the 60s it

was made to hold in your hand and talk

into with your family

yeah you know that kind of thing at some

point i

bought one i just found it to be really

awesome for this position

here yeah for vocals in the control room

uh harmonica because i originally bought

a harmonic i have a harmonica version of

it with a volume control

and again we're not really set up here

sure i've got i really love

symbols yeah so like yeah symbols that

go like

yeah you know but i've got really great

high hats and i do have a bunch of good

symbols but

you know i like broken stuff and i

peeked on this kick drum real quick uh

because i i thought i had the same one i

think this is a 20 or 22 right it's a 22

22 i have the i think it's an 18 of this

right but it's a 65 champagne this is

about 65

yeah and the toms are 47 ladies

and i have that kit it's not that one

it's this one over here i have a 20 inch

lady that's from the early 60s

i have the 47 lady which is a 24

and i have a 49 back there that says

crazy dan that's a 49

lady that's a 28. and then this little

red kid here

those red toms those one of meg white's

kids

oh cool from uh the hardest button to

button video

where there was like 19 kids moving

around it was just in a box i asked jack

if i could buy it he's like no but you

can have it this is um

this is where all my headphone headphone

amps and all that stuff are

but this is also where a bunch of like

kind of the weird and

weird of woolly mics and this is uh this

is one of those 1101s

oh cool look at that that's crazy this

is a wireless microphone clips but the

only thing that fits

and then the reason i bought it is that

i actually bought one of these

which has been modded to have a volume

pot

for harmonica yeah and it's really good

for that and i just have a lot of

weird stuff back here some some of it's

weird some of it's not weird

and the very first microphone i ever

purchased in my life section 57

that was uh painted by a friend of mine

who's an artist

bird cage copper phone i got a couple of

those

couple bk5as a ball and biscuit

an old turner telephone microphone

uh old a static i actually use this

quite often

this is a little piezo pickup and just

clip it on things and plug it into

amplifiers

makes things sound really bad and

awesome

and this is a furman system right it's a

furman yeah it's a

mixer hrm16 yeah yeah yeah that's what

the mixers are called

yeah this is my little uh little tiny

booth here we just small room here

my my wurlitzer's in here at the moment

but a lot of times we'll do guitar amps

in here

yeah yeah and then back here this is

where microphones

pedals snare drums uh

old tape echoes full tones full tones

bongos headphones and microphones

are and more pedals more microphones

some amplifiers

some ribbon mics down here pedals pedals

volume pedals

d-i's keyboards drum machine

and my plate right here oh nice the echo

plate 3.

i use pedals a lot earthquaker

those these guys are awesome uh they

hooked me up with a few pedals

and they've been just really awesome

just the best

yeah best seats and then here

it's the control room now i've done a

lot of uh videos and things in here and

a lot of

people have seen it but 827 at the

moment it's kind of just holding my

this is a tool box by the way it's got

little tools in it that says cookies

and it's kind of just holding things

right now but

i do use it quite often yep and that's

remote of course

this is originally started out as tape

storage

and diffuser for the back of my room and

it's sitting on a big trap

underneath here there's a big trap down

below here it's turned into a wall of

memorabilia

it's a pressing version of revolver up

there uh apple

records version of abbey road thank you

cards

you know some old cheesecake pinups um

the flying

i was given a flying okay

i mean when people say i don't give a

someone actually did and they gave

it to me

it's pretty great little grammy shelf

over here well it's just yeah that's

beautiful

yeah congrats another one over here and

these are the second place trophies

that's when you get nominated but you

don't win and then you know

um

care some of the things that you know my

console i have a this is a ssl 6000e

um it has no mic pres it was a film desk

so it's

line input only so a lot of this

a lot of this gear is mic pres

yeah because the console doesn't have

any it actually does have four

but i never use them yeah because i

listened to them once and was like yeah

we're never using those

yeah bae's end there is a real one

there's two real ones

oh yeah and then rca is down here the

ba11s

and then these are basically a ba11 but

with a tilt control

but these were made for pa systems yeah

they're

a little a little bit less gain and

so that's cool obviously a bunch of

cappies

flickingers apis chandler

aea's burls spectrasonics

and then i have uh i have a 12 channel

neotec this is my old desk

which the rest of it's in a you know

wrapped up in cellophane this is my old

neotech it's a 12-channel sidecar

how long have you been using the cappy

stuff uh i've been using for quite a

while

you know that's six seven years

something like that i first met jeff

about six

seven years ago and actually uh jeff

built

uh custom boards for me for my ssl

for the routing switches those are all

custom boards

and switches all new switches and leds

and

what is this thing i saw this and i

wanted that's an apple set

that's my it's my monitor controller

because the ssl i just leave the monitor

wide open

yeah i am in the market for monitor

controllers right now so i hear they're

three years out

you can buy one if you order one now

they're three years ago oh my god

because the semiconductor shortage and

all that well this is not a g

it's an e oh okay and it's a six

thousand not a four

thousand okay so the six thousand had a

film matrix here which basically was

three stereo busses in dialogue

uh right dialogue effects music uh and

these

it didn't really ever sound very good to

me so i took that out so underneath this

panel

is a api summing bus with actual

cappy 2520s nice

yeah the jeff steiger made so it is a

custom console to me you have this

sound anchor what's it called dw

workstation or something yeah

i think it's just called it works this

thing is like

one of the most industrial i can't see

very well but

yeah like i have two of them yeah it's

great i just had um

re-umbilicaled this so i haven't quite

got all this sorted out but the

one of the optical thunderbolt cables

that i had stopped working

so i had to buy this new optical usbc

thunderbolt cable which by the way is

quite expensive well that's a how about

yeah yeah owc it's great owc okay yeah

so

so basically this just comes in provides

usb there's a usb

hub here yeah so it provides usb but it

also allows me to patch in

another monitor here it allows me to

patch in something thunderbolt

thunderbolt 2 thunderbolt 3 it has an sd

card

reader it's got um a usb

um like a usb 3 on the other side just

four on this side

uh it's got an optical out here for

audio optical audio

and that's just one thunderbolt 3 going

to the one thunderbolt three

going to the computer i have two of

these long cables another one's back

here

and then i have two thunderbolt two

cables on adapters

back there yeah and then i have a

uh 50-foot 8k uh hdmi cable

oh my gosh this monitor will only do

about 4k but it's everything's really

small so i can't really see it

and then i have a 50 foot usb

3 optical i don't ever work off client's

drives

ever so if a client brings a hard drive

which

they do often and they're and they

sometimes they just leave them here

they're in my drawer here

now i can plug them in here without

going to the machine room

yeah and i get full speed transfer

speakers what do we got here

all right well um i have a set of atomic

reactors it was built by the

late great norman drews i also have an

atomic power supply on my

atomic industries i should say a power

supply um

norman was uh as crazy mad scientist

and he built these they're they're built

around

looking like an altec 6 10 or 6 13 or

something like that they're a three-way

speaker

with sub on the back and uh which you

can see there

wow they're really amazing for uh

just a two-way speaker there's a there's

only a crossover on the sub

yeah they're passively crossed over they

just i'm

really really amazing sounding and then

proax

studio 100s i have three sets of these

i've been using these for

15 years pretty much wow and then it has

tents these are my original

ns10s i bought in 94

wow something like that and they've

never been reconed or redr

re-drivered and they have the yamaha amp

and the cool thing about the yamaha amp

they're running is that the very first

pa system that i ever worked with

about 10 years after it had been sold

off

i found that amp from that pa system

no way it was it used a yamaha 2200 and

i bought it and i

am using it to this day what are you

using this ipad for

oh it's just the pro tools control it's

for

it's for place markers and play

in that kind of thing and then i love

that you have the

fader port well the same thing it's just

for transport

transport but what's nice is that

you know i have a couple clients who

really love their car and so

i'll set up audio movers stream it to my

phone

and then i'll take the ipad and we'll go

out back

and i'll hit play with the ipad out back

it streams the audio movers in their car

yeah they listen in their car

and they're like can you bring the vocal

up a little bit and i can yeah yeah i

can

wow and just do it here with faders but

obviously still

going through all the good yes i think i

saw something

with jack or white yeah where he was

yeah he was doing that with uh we were

doing that with a radio

transmitter how long have you been in

this building in june

it was seven years so a little over 70

years and you guys did

all of the construction we did what had

happened was

the people who bought it bought it after

world war ii all these houses

in berry hill were built to house

officers and workers at the airport

which there was a

consolidated there was a big plant they

built planes and on the other side of

the cemetery

there was the uh naval and army

air corps selection center if you're

world war ii

and you get drafted and you go i'd

really like to fly and they've got good

eyesight they went oh really and they

sent you here to see if you

actually could and the reason it's

called barry hill is because

nashville's airport at the time was

barry

field and then later it became

nashville airport the airport code if

you ever fly into nashville is bna

barry nashville airport this was outside

of nashville this was not nashville at

all

right and uh and they have their own

laws and and zoning

one of the things they zoned all of

berry hill mixed use

so berry hill can be residents oh right

it can be a business

that's right there's 400 permanent

residents and there's 53

studios wow in one square mile i was

really curious

when i saw how you were using pedals you

had sort of them

stored yeah they're stored on the side

here these are my

frequently used they're on the side here

this side of this is all velcro

and so i can pull one off and i've got

the tape echo on here got some stuff

back here

so you can um let's say line out pro

tools

right or send from the desk or something

yeah yeah

it comes from radio up here yeah and

then comes down into there's two loops

so yeah and i can just patch whatever i

want here and then like the flanger

doubler has and that's on the front

and then i made this sand zamp with an

output so i can

patch it right in yeah this is actually

xlr this is the

plasma rack it's really great that's

awesome and you got the old

the classic yuris yeah yeah have you

used this much i haven't used it yet

just got them i'm excited and i got the

delay too somewhere

around here okay and then you got the

little laps yeah so you can kind of

i have two of those split it out

everywhere do you have any stuff that

just came out recently or coming out

soon

that you uh we can tell anyone about

yeah probably

[Laughter]

i think you can find my wikipedia page

yeah and my management page i tend to

not

sort of self-promote sure things are

coming out i

sort of would rather people find out

about it there are a couple things

there's some puremix.net

stuff coming out there we go so i really

do uh do a lot of stuff with them

there's some content coming from them

be on the lookout a couple really cool

mix breakdowns

okay and then remixes things i did and

then

probably next year there's a huge

start to finish that we did and

it'll probably be 16 20 episodes maybe

wow and that's pure mix puremix.net

puremix.net okay yeah i'm a mentor on

there so check it out

sweet awesome well thank you so much for

joining us great to meet you absolutely

absolute pleasure coming in here and

checking it out well all right be safe

and uh

stay out of trouble kids all right later

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