studio | JohnStevensonMusic.com | JOHN STEVENSON

UPDATE FOR JULY 2017:

My fifth home studio setup, thus Studio V. After years of analog PortaStudio’s and a bit of time with desktop DAW’s, the iOS platform is now my chosen Music Production vehicle. An iPad with iOS DAW Auria Pro, it’s Fab Filter plugins and the scores of synth, guitar & drum apps available is just as powerful as a MacBook with ProTools was three or four years ago.

I try to avoid being political in an overt way, prefer to let my lyrics and songs do the communicating. But as a life long Democrat, unashamed to be called a liberal (or even socialist for that matter), I feel I have to say this as the country spins into a regressive minefield with a sociopathic fraud at the helm:

2017 is more volitile, divisive and uncertain than 1967 was. We need the healing power of music now more than ever.

In the face of adversity, creativity is vital. I don’t just love to play music, or want to write music…I have to play music, I need to write music. I hope musicians young and old begin to use music as a vehicle for change again. I hope the microphone becomes a microscope aimed at the ills of our society. We must use the greatest form of art there is to do more than just sell soda and pound away endlessly at a party.

All the best in 2017, be safe, be creative…

Original setup in new room Jan. 2017:

A session I did before the old desk came back. For a solo musician doing the engineering too, this set up is very cool. Guitar, bass, vocal overdubs, synths, etc can all be added from the sweet spot. Luckily the room sounds pretty decent.

If you’ve ever read this blog or spent five minutes discussing music and/or technology with me then you know how much I love uLoops (www.uloops.net). And I love the Android phones that run the uLoops app, especially my beloved Fender MyTouch 3G. In a previous post I detailed how my Fender MT3G was totally ruined by the Android 2.2 “Froyo” update sent “over the air” by T-Mobile a few months back. Going from a fun, functional, awesome little phone to a slow, buggy, aggravating plastic paperweight really pissed me off and T-Mo’s customer care got a healthy dose of my vitriol; and I got a MyTouch 4G upgrade for my trouble…

While I love my new MT4G, I missed my Fender phone for uLoops. It’s size was perfect; not too big, not too small. Not to mention it looks great, come on it’s a FENDER logo’d phone that just screams music and “I’m badass”. Moreover, (love that word), after some experimentation I kinda preferred the mic and speaker in the Fender MT3G over the 4G’s (even though you don’t really use the speaker to listen to uLoops stuff it’s good for quick listens) . So after the last few months of poking around the many Android forums and asking techie friends for ideas, I finally found a way to get my Fender MT3G back to Android 1.6 and I am happy to report it works great.

If your Fender or 32A 3.5mm jack myTouch 3G didn’t take kindly to the OTA Froyo update you can use the method described here in this thread at the Android Forums of Phandroid.com to go back to the Android 1.6 “Donut” version that came with the phone originally. The xda developers forums also has info on getting back to 1.6 but this method doesn’t require rooting the phone and was really easy to pull off.

So my ‘uloops studio’ phone is back in action, along with the badass Bose IE2 earphones I use as my ‘monitors’. These in-ear cans are absolutely brilliant. They reproduce all frequencies without ‘hyping’ any segment of the frequency spectrum. I tried several different earbuds and headphones to use in conjunction with uloops but none felt right. My old Sony MDR7506’s were too bulky to use with the portable recording format that uloops provides and the several cheaper earbuds ($20 to $40 range) were well…cheap. I also don’t like the isolation style earplug ends most in-ear buds have. Just too uncomfortable for long term use and if not precisely inserted they can distort the stereo image as well as bass response (it’s true Junior!).

The closest I came to the Bose set was Dr.Dre’s ibeats, but they were extremely bass heavy to me. I paid $100 for the ibeats and was able to exchange them for the Bose IE2’s, also near $100, and was blown away. Perfect highs, lows and a great fit; they don’t “plug” into the ear like most isolation buds, rather they sit in the ear canal providing some isolation but outside noise can still come in. If you’re into uloops or just love music you should really try the Bose IE2 headphones (Bose should hire me, no?).

It will never cease to amaze me that a little plastic device the size of a box of Chiclet’s can produce music that rivals stuff done in a full blown studio. Me and my brothers in our uLoops music co-op The Collective have no monetary interest in uLoops, but I can speak for them that we will do anything we can to spread the word and make it as successful an endeavor as possible. The apps membership just broke over 50,000 members. If you’re not one and you have an interest in music production, have some musical talent and own an Android phone then you NEED to become involved with uLoops. End of story. Now, some pics of my ‘studio’…