CRAS AES & 513 Analog
On November 17th, 2013, CRAS AES Student Chapter had the pleasure of touring 513 Analog, a home studio in Tempe, AZ. Owner Catherine Vericolla (a CRAS graduate) greeted the students with open arms. Her and assistant Don (also a CRAS grad) taught the students about the gear, the construction of the studio, and the many aspects that goes into operating a studio. Control Room A, formerly known as the master bedroom, featured a beautiful, brand new Neve mixing console, serial number 100. Having both new with a classic equipment, room A's tape machine is a Studer A-800. In Control Room B resides a split-monitor Trident console made in England, 1979. Many big name clients have tracked on this console, one being Jimmy Eat World. At the end of the tour, students participated in a Q&A session. A few summarized useful tips from Don were as follows:Preproduction is very important and you must prepare your musicians for their session. Some ways to do those things are to ask them to change their strings, or even ask them what kind of shoes they're wearing. I know what you're thinking, "Really? What kind of shoes?" Yes. If the musicians are wearing flip flops, you're not going to want to run the AC. As upcoming engineers one key thing they told us to do is to take care of ourselves by eating well, and avoiding fast food. It's very important to be well nourished and well rested so you have energy and can think straight. As hard as it is to get out of the studio, you need to sleep. And lastly (when you're not sleeping) spend as much time in the studio as possible. After the tour was over, students and studio staff went out to dinner and continued to talk about the industry. The 513 Analog tour was very successful. Students came away with a better understanding of studio etiquette, and a real world experience of how an operating studio functions.
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