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We are located a minutes walk from downtown Chapel Hill and Carrboro. There are many places to play music, get excellent food, tea, coffee, read, and relax. Our street address is Track and Field Recording Studio 100 B Brewer LN Carrboro, NC 27510 Use this to send a deposit and use with map quest to get driving directions. Our contact phone number is 919-951-8672.

We strive to be as accommodating and flexible as possible. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have specific questions, suggestions, concerns, to check gear availability, etc. We do not offer demo recording or lumped packages. We do not rent out tape. We feel that analog recording and the longevity of available media is very important to support. Tape pricing is still unstable; we suggest that you call around to find the best price and availability. sales@totalmedia.com 1-800-355-4400. If your project is done digitally, we highly suggest buying a firewire hard drive (www.pacificproaudio.com Oxford 911). We will not store your project on our hard drives once the project is completed. We charge a backup fee of $25.00 per DVD (about 20 minutes of 24 tracks at 24 bits and 48k resolution).

Rates are $200.00 per day. This includes a house engineer. This does not include media costs, digital backups, cdr's, or if you are bringing in a freelance engineer. These rates apply to all forms of recording and mixing scheduled. Sessions start at booked time, not when everyone shows up!

2" tape is $200-220.00 Call for current pricing. At 15ips (slow speed) = 33min
At 30ips (fast speed) = 16 min

1/4" tape is $50 per reel At 15ips (slow speed) = 33min
At 30ips (fast speed) = 16 min

DVD backups are $25.00 each - about 2 songs per disc!

Cdr's with your mix are $10 each - (MAM-A Gold 300 year cd's)

Cdr's w/ rough mix are $1 each

What to record onto?
Budget, time, application of the recording, personal preference, and suitability of the format are all basic considerations. We try to be as flexable and accommodating as possible.

How does this apply to my band or recording session?
Budget. Tape costs money. Consider tape an investment. You will have tape the rest of your life if care is taken with storage. Think about this. Tape does very nice subtle things to sound. You can record on it, release your recording, and next year when you have another set of songs, recycle the reel(s) of tape (you will no longer have the original tracks though) . If you are mixing in a digital medium, this is not too big of an issue since you can make individual wav file backups of your tracks (the digital equivalent of multi-track tape).

Time is always one of the biggest factors of recording and mixing. Time costs money. Use your time wisely.

Practice! I cannot stress the fact that there is nothing an engineer can do to replicate a band playing a song the way the song is intended to be played. Be familiar with your equipment and understand how to use it!

Maintenance: It is never a bad idea to have all of the equipment checked out before a session especially if it has a tendency to misbehave! Recording will often reveal qualities that have been "in-tolerance" during a live situation, but unacceptable in a recording environment. This includes: intonation of stringed instruments, cracked cymbals, rattling speaker cabinets and drum kits, string buzz (bass players take note), worn strings and drum heads, do not rely on "studio magic" to compensate for good intentions that just don't exist. Exceptions include all of the above if that is what you are going for.

Set up is crucial. Tonal adjustments to your equipment and getting acclimated to the environment of the recording situation. The idea is to avoid negative stress and play good takes. Communicating the intended process of the recording session (live tracking of all players, tracking the rhythm section, playing to a click track, etc) helps keep things going smooth when everybody knows what is going on. This is also incredibly useful and most important time to get the technicality of the recording process correct: microphone selection and placement, headphone mixes, and a multitude of situation based decisions for the engineer and band. That is always a good thing. Garbage in is garbage out! Giving the engineer time now will save you time in the mixing process, and it will sound better!

Application Analog & Digital: This is tricky one. If I played in a band that was unfamiliar with the songs, unrehearsed, writing songs in the process of recording: essentially a lot of work back and forth, micro-managed down and down or needed a ridiculous amount of tracks, or wanted to work on songs at home. Digital is really the way to go. However, if you have an option, my opinion and practice as a musician is to go to tape first, maybe not on most semi-pro small format reel to reels or cassette, unless that is what you are going for! I always prefer to mix to tape! I prefer analog going in, **mixing digitally is generally faster, ** and having your mixes saved is really convenient. **Means that it is really easy to lose sight of the recording when you start going crazy with plug-ins, editing, song arrangements, etc. I have found it a good practice to record something as best as possible. Your impulse to start messing with it as a musician, songwriter, or producer will greatly go into check when a source is played and recorded well.