Welcome to the latest installment of Show Us Your Space, a Reverb series that explores and celebrates the unique music-making environments of studio owners, independent builders, and musicians at all levels.
Through this series, we've seen studios and workspaces from all around the world—from Australia to Switzerland to our northern neighbors in Canada. Today, we're heading south to Árbol Naranja, a recording studio at the heart of Bogota, Colombia's rock and pop music scenes.
Keep reading to learn all about Árbol Naranja from studio manager Paula Peña. For more information, check out their Facebook page here.
Have you assembled an awesome music space that you want to show off? From bedroom production rigs to historic concert halls, we're interested in seeing and sharing it. Contact us at [email protected].
Árbol Naranja is a recording studio located in Bogota, Colombia. It was created in 2010 and has quickly become one of the most important recording studios for alternative music, rock, and pop in the country. The company is larger than just the recording studio, with 14 rehearsal spaces in Bogota and a large production company that works with the biggest local festivals and musical events, including Festival Estereo Picnic, Rock al Parque, Sonar, Cosquín Rock, and Hermoso Ruido.
Among our rehearsal spaces we have a warehouse that has been used by renowned local and international bands to put together their show with stage-like lighting, sound, and video capabilities. We have had high-profile artists like The Strokes, Florence and the Machine, Iggy Pop, Kasabian, Of Monsters and Men, Maluma, Carlos Vives, and Robi Draco Rosa.
The studio was conceived as a creative space for musicians, producers, and engineers. So we have focused not only on having great outboard gear and microphones for tracking, but also on having a great selection of instruments for recording. We have a large live room and a comfortable control room, which makes the studio versatile enough for both mixing and tracking.
Our main live room sounds terrific. It is 700 square feet with 16 feet high ceilings. The room has a nice balanced, natural decay that is great for drums, bass, vocals, guitars, and horns. It is a very versatile-sounding space that is great for recording individual instruments or full live band recording sessions. The sound in the room is also very flexible and variable depending on the setup. We can go from open and more roomy sounds in the back of the room to more focused and high sounds in the front part of the space.
The majority of our studio clients are independent bands and artists. We cater mostly to the alternative music scene in Colombia, but we also have clients that have recorded in our studio from Peru, Panama, Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela, Sweden, and even the United States.
We work mostly in rock, alternative, pop, and hip-hop genres. We have had the pleasure of working with some of the most successful bands and artists from Colombia like Bomba Estéreo, Aterciopelados, Superlitio, ChocQuibTown, and many more.
We have also had some internationally renowned producers and engineers that have worked at the studio such as Joel Hamilton (U.S.), Tweety Gonzalez (Argentina), and Hector Castillo (Venezuela) to name a few.
We have a lot of instruments in the studio. There is a great drum collection that features vintage Ludwigs, Yamaha Stage Custom, DW Collectors, Pearl Masters Customs, and Tama Drums. Our amp collection is also filled with great pieces, such as a Marshall JCM 800, 900, 2000, Vox AC30, Fender Twin Reverb, Fender Super Reverb, Fender Deville, Sound City, Ampeg SVT Classic, Ampeg Fliptop, Lovell Amps, and more.
We have a nice collection of guitars and basses from Gibson, Fender, Lakland, and Martin. Our keyboard and synth collection features a Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Moog Voyager, Moog Little Phatty, Roland Juno-106, Korg Monologue, Nord Stage, Nord Electro, and Yamaha Motif keyboards.
Our main recording system is an Avid HDX system with Pro Tools 2018, through Lynx Aurora converters. Our front end for recording is 100 percent analog with preamps from BAE, Quad Eight, Avedis, API, Universal Audio, Avalon, SSL, Focusrite, and Camilo Silva. Our outboard processing has a nice selection of compression from UREI, Empirical Labs, Elysia, and TK Audio.
Our EQs are from Kush, Tonelux, and Elysia. We also have a large selection of effects boxes and pedals from Eventide, Electrix, Yamaha, JHS, TC Electronic, Moog, Line 6, Roland, and more.
The studio's mic locker is filled with Neumann U87s, AKG 414, Peluso 22 47, Shure, Sennheiser, Cascade, and Telefunken microphones.
Our main monitoring is handled by a Crane Song Avocet controller and we have Yamaha NS-10s and Focal Twin6 Be (with sub) for our main speakers. And we just upgraded to a Solid State Logic Matrix 2 . All of our cabling is Mogami gold.
Having a modern and awesome-sounding studio in Bogota has helped us become a relevant part of an up-and-coming music scene that is making great strides internationally.
We love being a part of the artist's vision and creativity, and we feel that our studio plays a vital role for them in making their dreams come true. Nowadays, Colombia is being recognized more than ever for its alternative scene and it feels great for a studio like Árbol Naranja to be a part of all this creative evolution.