Sound of Celebration Studios is staffed by volunteer engineers and a volunteer director. All of our volunteers are members of the Good Samaritan United Methodist Church. Tim Hanes is the director of the studio. Tim, John Brawn and Robert Brawn are the primary engineers, although many other people help out with complex setups and recording projects.
Ted Larson, Robert Brawn and Phil DeBar have acted as producers for various projects, and we are deeply indebted to them for their guidance and support.
There are several ways to answer that question.
Programatically, the studio is a part of the music program of the Good Samaritan United Methodist Church. The church purchased the equipment and dedicated space for it's use in order to better support the musicians and music ministry of the church. Please take time to read our Mission Statement.
From a facility standpoint, the studio is really a control room in a little closet adjacent to the sanctuary. By dragging cables around, we can use the Sanctuary, the Fellowship hall, or any of ten class rooms as our studio space. The Sanctuary is used most often because of it's good acoustics, proximity to the control room and large floor space for recording. The women's bathroom is used least often because of it's lousy acoustics and cramped conditions -- but it is used sometimes as an isolation booth for scratch vocals.
From a hardware standpoint, the studio is comprised of a Mackie 16ch-8bus recording mixer, an Alesis HD-24 24-track hard disk recorder, two ADAT XT 8 channel Modular Digital Multitracks (MDMs), an Alesis BRC, a Panasonic SV-3800 DAT recorder, two Alesis 3630 two-channel compressors, a Lexicon MPX1 digital reverb unit, an Antares ATR-1 Auto Tune pitch corrector, a pair of Mackie HR824 active monitors, Q-Mix HM-6 headphone/monitor mixer, several AKG K-270 Headphones, and at least one each of the following microphones: AT-4033, AT-3525, AT-853, AT-ATM25, AKG D-112, Shure SM-58, and Shure SM-57. We also have access to other equipment through our volunteer engineers such as: AT-4049s, AT-4051s, Sony MDR-7509, Mackie SRM-450, etc.
The studio would not have been possible without significant help and guidance from Guitar Showcase, 3090 South Bascom Ave. San Jose, CA 95124, (408)377-5864. The pro-audio department is really first rate, and the store policy includes significant discounts for churches and ministries.
Most of our commercial CDs were pressed at DiscMakers, 1-800-468-9353. The one time we tried to "save money" by using a budget CD replication plant and doing our own printed materials, it was a disaster. It ended up costing more, and the final product is nowhere near as good. Without naming names, the one commercial CD in our catalog with a black and white cover is the one we wish we had done at DiscMakers! We also use DiscMakers to provide us with CD-Rs and blank Cassettes. They have great products and great prices.
Markertek Video Supply has saved our bottoms several times with quick response to phone-in orders. We use them for all of our DAT and ADAT tape supplies as well as special microphone stand accessories, tunnel tape and gaffer's tape.
If you'd like to contact us regarding our experiences (good and bad) in creating a recording facility within a United Methodist Church, please e-mail "notSCS at angelinn period net"*. Be sure to tell us who you are, and what church you are affiliated with -- we don't have time to respond to anonymous e-mail messages.
*Note: Our old e-mail address, scs@angelinn.net was inundated with spam, so we deleted that account, created the new one spelled out above, and made it less easy for non-human and sub-human readers to find.