Episode 33: Studio Maintenance

Studio Maintenance Tips

In this episode of the Face Your Ears podcast, hosts Rich Bozic and Justin Hochella celebrate a milestone of over 2,000 downloads and share exciting news about their short video clips available on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube. The main topic delves into studio maintenance, discussing essential practices for both the physical and virtual realms of a studio setup. Highlights include tips for general cleaning, effective cable management, repair strategies, and data management. The episode also explores the benefits of tools like CleanMyMac, the importance of regular backups, and the pros and cons of cloud storage. Join Rich and Justin as they offer valuable insights to keep your studio running smoothly and efficiently.

00:00 Welcome and Milestone Celebration
00:41 Social Media Expansion
01:59 Listener Feedback and AI Episode
03:39 Introducing Today's Topic: Studio Maintenance
04:54 Physical Studio Maintenance Tips
10:16 Repair and Troubleshooting
15:28 Selling and Parting with Equipment
19:56 Virtual Studio Maintenance Tips
22:38 Backup and Cloud Storage
26:59 Conclusion and Farewell

Clean My Mac: https://cleanmymac.macpaw.com

DeOxit: https://a.co/d/egrMDUK

Compressed Air: https://a.co/d/dw2N4xD

Screen Cleaner: https://a.co/d/1efizf3

Google Cloud Backup: https://cloud.google.com/storage

For Production Services, Coaching and Lessons, visit:

www.rjbmusicproduction.com

For help prepping your songs/voice for the studio:

www.bozicvoicestudio.com

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Transcript

Rich 0:06

Welcome everybody back to another episode of the Face Your Ears podcast. I'm here with my good buddy, Justin Hoschella. How you doing, sir?

Justin 0:16

Hello, Rich. I am doing well here in Michigan. How are things with you?

Rich 0:22

Great. New Jersey is looking as gray as ever. I just wanted to tell you we have Reached a milestone. Of over 2, 000 downloads.

Justin 0:32

Wow! Amazing. Two thousand. That's a lot. Thanks, everybody.

Rich 0:37

Yeah, thanks. cool. I'm glad. people are listening. we also want to let people know we have started putting up some short video clips on the social medias. You can find them on Instagram, we even have some stuff on YouTube. YouTube shorts.

Justin 0:54

We were hesitant to do it. Initially, or at least I was because we wanted to really focus on the quality of the podcast and getting it off the ground. But we thought, hey, this would be a great way for us to expand. And, if anybody out there had this burning curiosity of what do these voices actually look like? You can now find out. So if you're curious to know what Justin and Rich look like, you can find out by visiting our Instagram or YouTube page.

Rich 1:23

Approach with caution. Remember podcasting is like the modern day equivalent of radio. So there might be a reason why we're

Justin 1:35

Yeah, You may find us so stunningly handsome that you fall over, or if you're driving and you happen to glance over at the video, you might wreck your car. We don't want that. So just brace yourself, make sure you're in a good, spot. But yeah, it's been fun to put those together and hopefully you all enjoy them. So check them out.

Rich 1:57

Justin, I got to tell you, We have received some correspondence.

Justin 2:04

Thanks. Bye. Amazing. Amazing. Tell me more.

Rich 2:08

I got an email from a listener who goes by Scotty Baby. And he reached out and, had some nice things to say about the podcast, and he actually shared some of the music that he was making. He commented specifically on the AI episode.

Justin 2:25

Yes, yes he Did.

Rich 2:27

oh. You have More info.

Justin 2:29

I do. In fact, Scotty baby, thank you so much for your email and your feedback and your kind words about the show. And Scotty said that the episode he listened to was excellent. He gave us five stars on Apple podcast, which was amazing. It's so humbling to get a review like that. And he said, just listen to your episode on AI and music. Thank you for having an honest opinion about your thoughts on generative AI songs. The topic was explored thoroughly. If this is your level of quality and competence in your genre, then this is brilliant content. Thank you and Scotty baby. Thank you for such an awesome review. And yeah, we just try to keep it real and stay honest about all these different crazy things happening, especially in regards to AI. It's, sometimes hard to keep up and it's sometimes hard to believe what is possible, but that's what we do here on face your ears as we. We tackle those topics and give our honest point of view, good, bad, indifferent, ugly, otherwise, so so much.

Rich 3:39

That being said, and before we immediately get drawn like magnets back to the AI topic, can you tell me, Justin, what are we here to talk about today, the non AI topic that we were

Justin 3:51

Yeah. AI is a very sexy topic, right? It's very popular, very in vogue. And I am excited for us to bring up another really sexy topic on this episode of Face Your Ears.

Rich 4:05

Can I tell them?

Justin 4:06

Go ahead, Rich.

Rich 4:07

It's just It's so sexy. Studio maintenance, baby.

Justin 4:13

So sexy.

Rich 4:15

So today, we're talking studio maintenance. We're gonna get in there and get into the details of getting things working smoothly.

Justin 4:25

Yeah. I think it's important to pause every once in a while and look around your studio and make sure it is working as it's supposed to. It's comfortable. It's clean. All of those different things. So we're going to talk about that in today's episode. Some things to think about food for thought in your own studio at home.

Rich 4:45

Excellent. Okay, so let's break this down. When we were thinking about this topic, we broke this down into basically two big categories. We have the physical world around us, the actual environment around us, the hardware, and the virtual. Let's talk about the physical side of things first, Justin. What kind of general things do you have in mind?

Justin 5:07

Yeah, when it comes to the physical realm, the first thing that comes to mind is just general cleaning of your studio. So some things to think about and that are great to have handy are, things to help us dust. So like compressed air. is great, especially for getting those Dorito crumbs out of your keyboard or your synthesizers. So compressed air is great for just keeping those little nooks and crannies clean. Something that you brought to my attention, Rich, in your own studios using contact cleaner.

Rich 5:41

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin 5:42

So I guess pots and faders on your mixer. I think it was we're, kind of crackly and just making noise. And so you used some contact cleaner, if I'm not mistaken, kind of clean that

Rich 5:52

Yes, the way it works, don't be frightened when you use contact cleaner, cause it, when you spray the contact cleaner into something I'm talking, there's like a wave of liquid that flies out of the straw, and you fire it at the equipment. In this case, it was in the inputs and on some of the faders and switches. And it, it douses it with this chemical makeup that uh, actually evaporates relatively quickly, and it just kind of eats away at the dirt and corrosion.

Justin 6:25

Okay. when you said don't be scared. I thought you were going to say a portal opens up and demons come out and start eating away at the grime and dirt, but far less scary than that. So that's good to know. I didn't, realize that. I'm, not familiar with it. So thanks for that. tip, another thing that I love having in the studio is screen cleaner. So I have screen cleaner within reach at any given time as well as microfiber cloths. And that's for everything from my main studio display to my iPads. To phones, to synthesizers and any kind of screen I have and the microfiber claws are great because they just make sure that nothing gets scratched up or damaged in any way.

Rich 7:15

And that's an important thing to mention, because I know that Windex or something like that, Can be harsh on screens. I've, been, to some of my friends studios who have repeatedly cleaned like the little display on their keyboard with a non screen cleaning solution and man, it'll start to wear away at it and start to leave like a haze on the screen. So definitely use the right, chemical for the job if you're going to do that and don't spray it directly on the screen. spray it on the cloth when you're doing it.

Justin 7:46

That is a pro tip. Spray the cloth for sure. And I think about the mod X. So I used to have a mod X and you have one currently rich. And yes, in fact, you purchased my mod X for live performances. I miss it dearly, but I have too many synthesizers. So it had to be done. But I think about that screen and it's a touch base screen, right? So it's like soft almost. it's something like that. You want to be very careful with and just use the right cleaner and just the right cloth and everything like that, and just be really delicate with it. So yeah, screen cleaning is a key component of keeping your space neat and tidy and comfortable. And then of course, cable management and. I think there's a lot of different reasons to think about cable management. I can't help but think about how it just brings like a feng shui kind of vibe to your studio. So when, your studio is cable managed, it just feels better. It's more comfortable, like you can focus,

Rich 8:53

I can go as far as to say when I'm having a bad day and I just want to relax and I want to get my mind off things, I could just step down into the studio and manage some cables.

Justin 9:05

Yes.

Rich 9:06

better.

Justin 9:07

Yes, it's like your zen garden. You can, always come down to the studio and like prune things and like label.

Rich 9:18

but with

Justin 9:19

Exactly. it's like, bonsai for sure, but yeah, it just, it makes it feel more functional overall and it's practical as well. If things are cable managed properly things are going to be reliable, where things are plugged in, it just allows for easier troubleshooting if something isn't working properly. What else, Rich what else comes to mind for you as far as benefits?

Rich 9:44

definitely labeling labeling of the cables. But then also getting into the realm of testing. Cable, you might want to invest in a cable tester. I find that could come in handy. Especially if you're dealing with people coming in and out recording stuff, or if you have rehearsals also in your studio, or there's a, you're pulling cables out. To do gigs and you're plugging them back in. And then sometimes you're like, Oh, now my equipment doesn't work. You got to have a way to troubleshoot that quickly. Cable tester would be highly recommended for that kind of thing.

Justin 10:16

I think that brings us to another topic or subtopic within the physical world that you're intimating at, which is repair. So if things aren't working we have to go into repair mode. And you brought up that cable tester which can be an important tool to help us with that. So can you tell us more about your thoughts when it comes to studio repair?

Rich 10:40

Yes, I know repair is like a whole nother world and a whole different skill set and actually for those of you who don't know our buddy Justin here, he is quite adept at, repair the man can solder, the man can solder.

Justin 10:55

It is a passion.

Rich 10:56

But where I would start if you have a piece of equipment that's not working properly, start where most people start. Go on the forums, type in your issue Google search it, see if anything comes up right away. That could be a quick fix. YouTube is a great resource for that kind of thing. This is all like your starting kind of section of stuff. My equipment doesn't work. What can I do? Because sometimes it's just a quick fix like it could be Connection is off somewhere or there's something easy that you can replace yourself After you've exhausted YouTube in the forums, obviously then you want to look for any kind of local repair Places. I know I had a an issue With the original MODX that I bought, I had an issue with one of the keys. And I was able to contact Yamaha and they referred me to a local guy who specializes in Yamaha repair. And if your equipment's under warranty, even better, because oftentimes the manufacturer will pay for that repair to happen. But even if it's beyond warranty and you love the piece of equipment, you want to get it up and running, look for the local repair guy Who specializes in what you bring to the table so you can get it up and running. Another option is also to send out for repair. So sometimes manufacturers will have the option of actually sending it back to them for repair. Or if there's not a repair shop, Near you that does that kind of thing like I know I had a buddy recently who sent out a drum module For his kit. He sent it out to a Yamaha repair guy somewhere else to get it repaired. I think he ended up doing it. At least he, I know he found a facility that does that. So that's another option if you can't find anything local.

Justin 12:46

Yeah.

Rich 12:47

it's not as bad as you think. And especially if it's a piece of equipment that you really, love using,

Justin 12:52

Yeah. And I've had experience with a couple of places. Funny enough, they're both in the Austin, Texas area. So one of them is called switched on and they specialize in more like vintage electronic instruments, like synthesizers, drum machines, that kind of thing. But they also do repair. They don't just use sales. They do repair as well. So they have the ability to receive items. That can send over to them down in Texas and they can repair them, which is really great because a lot of these like older synthesizers are hard to repair, or it's hard to find people that have the skill set to repair them. And another place that I love and I've used multiple times to repair my own synths is a place called Syntar. I'll put links to both of these places in the show notes. Definitely check them out. Super cool people. Centaur, I remember my wife borrowed a keyboard that I had that had like knobs on it. She borrowed it for a performance at school. She's a music teacher and so she Brought it home and one of the knobs had broken or gotten lost or something and I was devastated because I loved that keyboard and I found Sintar and they had replacement knobs and I was like, I'll pay anything

Rich 14:12

For one knob.

Justin 14:13

Yeah, but they were reasonably priced I picked one up and boom it was an exact match and fit perfectly so and then another synthesizer I purchased, I believe one of the keys was broken and I was able to look at the exact model and they had replacement keys and I was able to get those from them. so you can definitely find places online that have this stuff. And, if not there are places like eBay you can go on to where you can actually upgrade certain things. So I've got a few synthesizers where they have these old LCD displays from 40 years ago that are really hard to read. And it's if you're handy with a screwdriver and you have patience and you like taking things apart and putting them back together like I do, some of these screen upgrades or replacements are actually pretty easy to do and you can do them yourself. Yeah, it really makes a difference having a modern like LCD display in your equipment.

Rich 15:20

To pivot on something you just mentioned you spoke the word eBay. And that got me thinking of something else here. So So, Okay, you've gotten to the point of where, you're, tidying up, and you notice you have some equipment laying around that you don't use anymore, or that just doesn't work and you really don't want to invest in repairing it. It might be time to part ways, and there are a few things you can do with that. You can Of course, sell it and you can even sell equipment that is defective as long as you label it properly when you're selling it because sometimes people will be interested in the parts of that equipment, especially that old, some of those older since, things like that, guitars, things like that people are sometimes interested if you have, Something that they need a piece from to buy off of you. Don't toss it right away. See if you could always check and see. There might be someone else doing the same thing. You see what stuff is going for. But hopefully if your equipment does work you could go on a site like Reverb, eBay even your local Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, things like that. I've sold a lot of equipment on Facebook Marketplace with great success because you see who's contacting you and whatnot. Do you have anything to add to that?

Justin 16:40

I, have a lot of experience with Reverb and eBay. I do not have experience with Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, but I think that Reverb and eBay are really catered more to online, whereas Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are more catered to local transactions with people in your area, and that can be great I'm actually curious to try those marketplaces out myself, because it seems like they could potentially be faster

Rich 17:07

Oh yeah, you don't have to ship it. You know what's cool too? Believe it or not, man. I've sold stuff in the past. The next thing this person comes to pick it up and then we like, start, talking shop with another musician. You know how it works.

Justin 17:18

Yep. Yep. I know. We also want to talk about room considerations as my heater kicks on and starts blowing air and creating noise.

Rich 17:29

That's okay. we're a casual

Justin 17:32

Yeah, we are. But that's one of the things is noise management. If you're going to be recording, obviously, noise management is important. And so something to think about in your space and how to manage that in a way where it's both affordable, but also effective. And we're not going to take a deep dive because noise management is a topic in and of itself,

Rich 17:53

Yeah, we might do that on its own at some point.

Justin 17:56

Yeah, And so there's, plenty of resources out there to help guide you in that process, but it's something to think about because again, if you're going to be recording like vocals or like an acoustic guitar or something like that, it becomes even more important, I think to make sure you're getting a really good sound printed to your DAW uh, some other things that are good to have are like a dehumidifier. A dust collector, an air purifier, just so that it's comfortable. We, want to make sure we're comfortable in our studios and we want to make sure any guests we have, any musicians that come over are also comfortable. And it just makes sure your equipment also stays healthy as well. So keeping things clean and at the proper humidity level ensures a long lifespan. For your precious synthesizers and other gear that you have laying about.

Rich 18:51

just another thing to add uh, to the uh, kind of dust management thing you can get dust covers for some of your equipment too, which actually helps. I sometimes would browse Amazon and I'd be looking at. Accessories or whatever for the equipment I got and then I keep seeing like these dust cover things coming out of my come on, this is ridiculous like Why would you need this kind of thing? But then I mean after doing this for years and seeing how things build up over time It's not a bad idea. Just when you're done for the day cover things up prevents some buildup. It's gonna get in there regardless, but it can slow down the process a little bit. Especially for things like mixing boards and synths. Because there's a lot of keys and a lot of little nooks and crannies in there.

Justin 19:35

Yes, indeed. And it's interesting. There are even like custom, I've seen custom dust covers for very specific pieces of equipment. So if you Google like your piece of equipment plus dust cover, chances are good you'll find something for it.

Rich 19:51

Fantastic.

Justin 19:53

So Rich, we've been talking a lot about the physical world. Let's pivot now to the virtual world. What are some things we want to talk about here?

Rich 20:03

Let's talk data management, software updates, and drivers

Justin 20:07

Yeah. Those are really key things to think about in the virtual world. The first thing That comes to mind for me is hard drive cleanup Our hard drives are a limited resource and if we're recording a lot They can fill up very quickly. And it's something that we have to constantly manage. It's a, finite resource. It's an incredibly important resource in our studio. It's something that we want to be monitoring. And there's actually some really great tools out there to help us with that. One that I use that I really like is called CleanMyMac. And it's an app that sort of monitors the overall health of my Mac including data. So it will tell me if, for example, my, my trash on my Mac hits like two gigabytes. It'll tell me like, hey, your trash is. Pretty full, might want to empty it. And you can set that threshold yourself. It'll also analyze your hard drive and show you files that maybe you haven't used in a really long time. Or like apps that you haven't used in a really long time. So that way you can make a decision of oh yeah I don't, need that stuff. Or yeah, that stuff I don't need right now. I can delete it and re download it again later. That kind of thing. It really takes a lot of the guesswork and the tedium out of having to sift through millions of files on your computer and just really cuts to the chase. And it even alerts you of reminders to run it regularly. So if you haven't run it in a while, it'll be like, Hey, remember me, you should run me again, just to see if there's anything you want to get rid of or, look at.

Rich 21:45

So basically. You have not escaped since you were a, child, a ca, a child of capable age of taking out the garbage, you still have people telling you to take out the trash,

Justin 21:57

Yes.

Rich 21:58

it's digital,

Justin 21:59

Yes, in the digital realm, you get a reminder to take out the trash, yes. But organization, I think, is also important. Having a tool like CleanMyMac is helpful, for certain tasks, but as a human being, it, it helps to stay organized and keep things in folders and that makes it easy for you to locate projects quickly and easily. I've had instances where I've been working with a client and then I have to go back to a project months later. And it's been easy because I have a specific filing system and folders that I use to help me do that. And that's something that's really top of mind for me, is just trying to keep things as clean and organized as possible especially with my own Work that I'm doing personally, And then backup, of course we need to talk about backup. That's an incredibly important element. It saved me. Several times we want to make sure that our backup drive is in good condition. And that's something that, that CleanMyMac actually can also do is check on the health of the drive. So we want to make sure, That drive is healthy. We want to make sure that our backup drive has ample storage. So I generally recommend having a backup drive that is twice the capacity of your internal drive. The reason for that is so that you can have. A pretty extensive history of backups. And so as a Mac user, what I use is Time Machine which is backup software built into the Mac operating system. what I love about it is it's in the background. I really don't have to think about it or worry about it. It just does its thing, but it also keeps historical backups. So that way I can go back in time quite extensively because I have.

Rich 23:56

Oh, yeah.

Justin 23:57

terabytes for a two terabyte computer

Rich 23:59

Oh, yeah, guys. This is a big deal I was once working on a project and for some reason one of the audio files Disappeared. I don't know how in the project and I was like, what am I gonna do and So I went at the time machine I went back to a date when I thought This audio file was here at this time and sure enough. I was able to go in extract that individual audio track and bring it to the present. I felt like a time traveler.

Justin 24:31

It's amazing. It really is magical. It's like one of the best feelings when You can pinpoint a specific file or folder or something and retrieve it back and restore It

Rich 24:42

tell you that.

Justin 24:43

It's, the best.

Rich 24:44

Let me ask you something. Cause I hear mixed thoughts on this. What, are your thoughts on cloud storage?

Justin 24:49

I think cloud storage is amazing and it's come a long way. From the early days of cloud storage. I think the old adage used to be like, Oh, a cloud can't be used for backup. You shouldn't use a cloud for backup. But I think nowadays there are services or even methods to back things up to a cloud.

Rich 25:11

Yeah.

Justin 25:12

I think it should be an addition to a physical local. Backup you should have a physical hard drive sitting Near your computer that's physically connected, that is backing up, and the reason for that is having a, physical drive connected allows you to restore things much, much faster than from a cloud based drive. But one of the benefits of cloud based backup gives you is in, case there's God forbid a catastrophic incident, like a fire. If your backup drive is consumed in a fire or destroyed in a fire there's, really not much you can do to, restore that data. And so having, things backed up on the cloud just ensures that things are safely backed up

Rich 26:02

Yeah. Just a note on that. we use here we were like Mac users Apple, products. And we got the, what is it? The cloud storage the Apple cloud storage. And I was, iCloud, yes, and I was hopeful, oh, I'll be able to, I'll be able to sync Logic projects. unfortunately, iCloud doesn't allow you to do that with Logic. So then, I had to look elsewhere and I saw that. Google, when you get the Google Google Drive, and you pay for a little extra bit of storage, Google Drive actually allows you to pinpoint specific files on your computer and sync, and, back them up to Google Drive. So just a little side note on that.

Justin 26:50

like I said, there's just all kinds of different options available nowadays. It's a different world out there for cloud storage,

Rich 26:59

Justin, thank you so much. We've covered a lot of ground here, a little bit of studio maintenance help here. thank you for joining us and thank you, Justin, for sharing all that good information and for the conversation.

Justin 27:11

Yeah. My pleasure. It was great to go over everything from the physical realm and the virtual realm. And we'll include some links to some of the things we talked about in our show notes. I feel like this episode, we're going to have a lot of links. There's just a lot of different tools and resources that we want to share. But yeah great, conversation, Rich. Thank you so much. And we'll talk again soon. Thanks everybody for listening. Bye for now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.