The main studio boasts a Steinway grand piano, and has windows to the other isolation booth and the control room.

The Studio

The studio is located in the basement of my residence in quiet Cumberland, about 20 minutes east of downtown Ottawa. But this is no ordinary home studio. There is 800 sq.ft. of dedicated floor space for the studio, complete with 2 recording rooms and 1 a separate control room. The studio was professionally designed by an architect and an acoustician, and the rooms use a balanced live design that make them sound very nice. Add some sound baffles, and they become as transparent as you wish.

The Gear

My philosophy is to concentrate on the performance and its capture as it was intended. I am first and foremost a musician, and I aim for musicality, always. For this reason, I put more emphasis on the music, acoustic spaces, microphones and pre-amps, and only then on processing. You will see I have an impressive set of microphones ranging from dark ribbons, neutral condensers, to tube classics. I also have some great preamps that range from transparent to quite coloured!

If you need more oomph!, don’t you worry. I may not have racks and racks of heat-generating vintage processors, but I do have lots of DSP processing power with emulation of all the classic racks. The recording platform is a PC running Windows 7 on a set of SATA hard drives, and I use Samplitude as my main multitrack and and mastering software platform. As for effects, I am a big fan of the UAD cards and their plug-ins as they are almost indistinguishable from the originals (without all the hiss, noise and heat!). I have also other plug-ins, samplers and keyboards that come in handy. I really enjoy this combination, and I especially like Samplitude for the quality of its sound, its robustness, but mostly for its efficient work flow.

The Hammond A100 in the adjacent room with its spinning tone wheels and the spinning speaker.

The Instruments

The piano is a Steinway from the 1920’s, salvaged from a church in the Northern US. It has been fully restored, and is regularly serviced and tuned. It has a great Steinway sound and its size is perfectly matched to the room. And don’t worry about it going out of tune during a session – I will touch it up if it needs it!

I also recently got an A100 Hammond Organ with matching Leslie. This organ has the same guts as a B3, so it’s the real deal, and it is mean. I also have a couple of guitars and a few basses, along with amps. And some percussion knick-knacks – great ear candy!

The Guy

Normand Glaude is the owner and operator of the studio. He has been active on the Ottawa music scene for over twenty years, working as a double bass and electric bass player. He regularly performs locally, and occasionally accompanies out-of-town artists. He also produces and engineers recording projects with local artists. He recently recorded and co-produced Tim Bedner‘s “Of Light And Shadow”. One of his latest projects was awarded a “Trille Or” for Best Children’s Album with french artist Jojo. Some of his performance credits include Marlene Verplanck, Michelle Grégoire, Martha Brooks, Guido Basso, Jefferey Smith, Bob Newhart and Mimi Fox.