Home recording studios are the hot rods of the music nerd set. We spend hundreds of hours researching, soldering cables, cleaning and calibrating equipment, and gabbing about these things with our friends, all for something that we usually do in solitude. Our choice of equipment and how that equipment is assembled and arranged reflects on our personalities: after some time, the mixer becomes something like an altar and the home recording studio a shrine. It’s where we spend our most inspired moments, channeling whatever energy is flowing through us onto a recordable medium.

I sometimes find pictures of other peoples’ studios, and I especially like seeing people’s recording setups from the previous decades in films and archive photos. Here’s a highlight of some of my favorite pictures & stills:

Collage of stills taken from BBC 4's "Synth Brittania" program. I wonder what the battery is for. This is a great example of a basic home recording setup from the 1970s.

This is the home recording studio of HomeRecording.com member JedBlue.

See this thread for the source of the above image.

WOW.

Photo from the University of Washington

That looks like an Atari computer. Late 1980s, early 1990s? I can't find the source of this picture.

I think this is the first version of my home studio. 2009?

A very well equipped home studio from the early 1980s. A lot of great music must have been made here.

Follow this link for the image source.

I’ve been struggling to create new, exciting material for the record that Alex and I are putting out. We pushed the due date back because we were both having difficulties with our projects.

This has to be the single most challenging creative project that I have ever undertaken. I had no idea that it would be so difficult to put together a 20-minute collection of completed work. Most of the recordings I made before this project were just clever demos, some more “complete” than others, and the stuff I’m working on now totally surpasses my old material in terms of complexity. It feels like I’m in totally new, alien territory here.

I’m trying to make something which truly represents where I’m at as an artist, and my perfectionist tendency sometimes gets in the way of honestly evaluating the pieces I’m creating. I’m learning to manage this, and conversations I’ve had with some close friends about this have been very encouraging. I think it will get easier as I do more work, and hopefully whatever I do after this record won’t be such a big stress-out. I HOPE. I’m going to be very happy when this is finished.

On another topic, I’ve been rearranging mental furniture lately, and so I haven’t felt much like writing. I’m OK with this, but I will write more when I feel the urge.