Are you a singer/songwriter or a full-blown band? We do provide the surroundings necessary to realize you project on a professional level!
The Doubletrack rooms
At the heart of The Doubletrack is a control and recording room designed by studio designer Michael Bucur. This room is treated for providing good surroundings for mixing tasks as well as excellent conditions for recording vocals, acoustic guitars and other live instruments. Here we produce our singer/songwriters and other vocalists and create the overdubs for our bigger productions.
Joe Astray's vocals recorded in The Doubletrack with the phenomenal Mojave MA-1000 tube microphone.
Electric guitars we record separately in an acoustically isolated room. That makes it possible to mic the amps at very high volumes. The musician performs her take in the control room, listening to what comes out of the monitors. We can optimize amp settings and the microphone position - while the air quivers next door.
Particular importance we attach to a high-class signal chain so that re-amping can be realized without loss of quality. This creates new possibilities for your authentic guitar sounds. The search for the one-time performance can be separated from the quest for the perfect sound for the mix. Without having to rely on amp simulations.
Drums are created in our large living/live room, which offers very good acoustics for drum recording due to its shape and the high wooden-coffered ceiling. Here we can record drums with 1 or more microphones in up to 96Khz, connected via talkback directly to the control room. For the microphones we rely on the classics (Neumann U47FET, U87, KM184, SM57, MD421), but depending on the genre and sound idea, many other dynamic, condenser or ribbon microphones can be used. Preamps are available from API, Chandler, Universal Audio, Kush, Warm Audio or from our 24track ARB console from Toft Audio.
As a drum set we use an old Sonor Force 3000 which we provide with appropriate skins and individual tuning.
If we are looking for a different sound or vibe, we will go to our partner studios in Hamburg, or - most likely - into the Tricone Studios in the Funkhaus Berlin.
The Tricone Studios at Funkhaus Berlin
As The Doubletrack we cooperate closely with the Tricone Studios in Berlin - located in the legendary Funkhaus Berlin, the former broadcast center of the GDR, which once was the biggest studio complex in the world.
In the Tricone Studios we have our own seat. This allows us to easily undertake larger band recording projects with the classic live recording approach. The whole band performs in the same room, with bass and guitar amplifiers located in a different room. Tricone Studios has two separate recording rooms (room 1 and room 2) and an excellent control room (room 3), which is connected via a window with the main live room. Designed in the Fifties, the rooms feature beautiful wood floors and ceilings as well as specially coated stone walls that provide unprecedented natural sounding acoustics resulting in a truly fantastic, organic balanced sound of the recordings.
On the left you can see the Recording Room 2 of the Tricone Studio: In this beautiful room complex recording projects can be realized on a very high level. The entire studio was recently renovated and technically renewed. If needed, only the basic rhythm tracks can be recorded in Berlin, while overdubs and mixing happens in Hamburg. In this respect we are completely geared to your needs.
More information you will find on:
The Rehearsal Room
If the budget or time do not allow for a regular studio session, we'll come to you into your rehearsal room to record your songs live. If you are well-practised and reasonably tight, that is no problem at all. Many good sounding records have been created this way in recent years. The guru for this way of recording in Germany is Moses Schneider, whom we all know as legendary producer of the Beatstakes, Tocotronic and AnnenMayKantereit. We visited a Masterclass of Moses Schneider to delve deeper into the possibilities of rehearsal room recording - et voilà, it works. The deliberate use of spill on the microphones creates a really fat and natural sound without effort. Learn more about this exciting technology on this site: http://www.mosesschneider.com/buecher.
Für besondere Produktionen, wenn z.B. ein Video-Shooting inkludiert ist, können wir mit unserem mobilen Setup auch in grosse, fantastische Räume einziehen. Wie wir das mit der australischen Band Parcels getan haben, als wir für eine Video- und Recording-Session in das grosse P4-Studio gezogen sind, ebenfalls im Funkhaus Berlin (den tollen Raum und seinen Sound kann man in den Youtube-Videos zu diesen Sessions sehen - unter 'Musik').
Wir waren mit The Doubletrack aber auch schon in umgebauten Ateliers und Lagerhallen, in naher Zukunft steht eine Kirche an. Hier geht alles - das ist dann lediglich eine Frage der Organisation.
Der Vibe, der bei solchen Produktionen entstehen kann, ist unvergleichlich. Also lasst Eurer Imagination freien Lauf.
