Yesterday we went to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. It was a good day at the museum, but we took my older son's best friend with us. Which basically meant that the boys were more out of control than they usually are. (Which to be fair isn't that much...they're pretty well behaved compared to a lot of other kids their age.)

Anyway, we decided to go north and eat at Ed Debevic's, a 50's diner themed place on Ontario St. It so happened that my son's friend's dad is a professional composer and owns and operates a studio about two blocks from the restaurant. So after dinner, we wandered over to the studio and Jeff let us in.

How cool it would be to WORK in a place like that! The computer software alone knocked me for a loop. Jeff runs ProTools, a pretty sophisticated software program that basically IS the studio. There were tons of rack mounted modules with keyboard synths and effects, but Jeff said they're mostly obsolete because of the computer software and its scope. Likewise some of the instruments. Jeff had an old Wurlitzer electric piano there, also a Hammond B3 organ, and a full drum set, but he said that he rarely uses any of them anymore, not even the live drums, because the software versions of these types of instruments are so good! Instead he uses a keyboard midi controller to lay down the instruments he needs, and they're very true-sounding.

There were actual guitars around the place, mostly in the studio control room, where Jeff said he uses them directly through the board. Again, the virtual amplifiers are all in the software, along with the effects Jeff rings out of the guitars. There was also a baby grand piano in its own sound room. The sound and feel of it were tremendous.

It is really cool for an amateur musician like me to see all this stuff. I've been in a pro recording studio a time or two, and so it wasn't a total surprise, but still - I'm impressed.

Catfish Studios mostly does commercial work, writing and recording the music you might hear in a commercial or in the background of a show or something. Stuff that might be used in professional promotional videos and such. But Jeff also writes music for himself and has released five CD's. I've actually had posts on a couple of them back in the archives.

The boys were less than knocked out by the stuff, his son because he's probably used to all that stuff, and mine because I have a lot of music stuff in our basement - my own little studio, even though I don't really write or record. But they had fun when Jeff had them talk and sing into the mic and pitch shifted their voices to make them sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks, or like a bunch of teenagers with low voices. They laughed so hard, I thought they were going to lose their Ed Debevics' cheeseburgers!