$30/hour studio time. Pre-Pay ONLY. Beats starting at $25. Credit/Debit accepted.

Click here for song samples, project photos and fun pics:myspace.com/dansmithagency $30/HOUR STUDIO TIME. Pre-Pay ONLY. Beats starting at $25. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express Credit/Debit cards accepted. Call Dan Smith 816-214-6088.

DAN SMITH AGENCY Recording Studio has enjoyed rapid growth in business since becoming a commercial enterprise in November of 1997. I’ve recorded hundreds of musical acts including rap, hip-hop, R&B, rock, punk, country, blues, jazz, bluegrass, Hispanic, Celtic, Asian, gospel, folk, voice-overs, spoken word, etc.

Some projects of note that were recorded and mixed here include; Heet Mob/Soul Project’s song “I See Ya”, featured in the score for the Hollywood Movie Brown Sugar, staring Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def and Queen Latifah (check out Scene 15 on your DVD!), Emiel Cleaver’s E=MC which is one of earBuzz.com’s “favorite CDs of the year”, Prophett Maine’s The Rapper CD, Bulldog Front’s (later Go Generation) Fashionable Anarchist CD, Mark Reynolds’ Drosophilia CD and the self-titled Lust-R-Tones CD, all praised in The Pitch Weekly. The Death Ray Angels’ Patriotica CD, engineered at DSA, was Timothy Finn’s favorite local Hard Rock recording of 2002 in the Kansas City Star. Priceless Diamonds, “The Boss Bitch” columnist for the Pitch Weekly, recorded her single “Booty Pop” at Dan Smith Agency. Roger Suggs a/k/a Vigalantee received very good reviews at eKConline for his A.N.I.M.A.L., $5 Lick and No Jaangle Movement CDs that were recorded here. The latter inspired Steve Penn of the Kansas City Star to devote a whole column about the positive message of the album. Recent projects include Soft Serve Assault by Mr. Fish, Don’t Sleep and Gumbo by AK, The Birth of Hurricane by Hurricane, Private Stock by Perelli, Hit That by Raul Soto (Produced by hit maker Charlie Rosario), The Movement by UnKcanny (featuring C.S.T.), Keep It Poppin by Al Slikc, Drone Boyz by BrandoShis and Ant Da Vett and all of Legal Tender Records projects for their stable of artists, including Strike Burner, Crucc Da Conn, Mr. Dave and Malice Monte. K C Star’s Jason Whitlock produced a demo here in 2006. Even the likes of former James Brown backing vocalist, Marva Whitney, and Kansas City’s “Queen of The Blues”, the late, great Annetta “Cotton Candy” Washington, recorded demo tracks here in my humble little basement.

Presently, I’m engineering about two sessions per day, often seven days a week. With this much time at the boards, I’ve learned a lot about what works to make professional sounding recordings. Hence, I’m getting a great deal of repeat and referral business. My musical background as a professional drummer and band leader for KC’s popular Riverrock band has been invaluable.

The Studio gear:

DAN SMITH AGENCY Recording Studio consists of a Roland VS-2480CD Digital Studio Workstation which includes 24-bit hard disk recording, sixteen inputs, twenty-four mixing channels with sixteen tracks per channel for a total of 384 recording tracks and eight stereo digital effect processors which include three VS8F-2 Effect Expansion Cards and one VS8F-3 Plug-In Expansion Card. PLUG-INS include: Roland Bundle; Mastering Tool Kit, Tempo Mapping Effect, Stereo Reverb, Vocal Channel Strip, Preamp Modeling and Antares Autotune VS. I use the Roland VS-CD System for custom audio CDs and can use the CD burner to back up the multi-track data from the hard drives (up to six average song files) to 700MB CDRs. Or, I can back up data to 100MB re-writable Zip Disks using my Iomega Zip Drive. I can also master to a Tascam DA-20 DAT recorder or a Tascam CD-RW5000 CD writer. I can make quick CD dubs on a Tascam CD D4000 duplicator that can dupe CDs at 4X speed. There is also a Tascam 202 MK III Dual Cassette Deck for those still working in that medium.

In addition, the Studio has Roland V-Drums / TD-10 professional drum set (upgraded with the TDW-1 Expansion Board), an Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler/sequenser keyboard, a Boss DR-5 Dr. Rhythm beat machine, an isolation booth (for vocals, instruments, amps, etc.), custom JBL studio monitors, Yamaha KS10 near field monitors, assorted mics, including two Rode NT1 condenser mics with three ART MP pre amps, AKG D112, Sure SM57, Peavey PVM 38i and four EV N/D 257A dynamic mics, a Furman HA-6A headset amp and AKG headsets.

A word about Roland Virtual Workstations:

There are many formats available these days to record. Roland revolutionized the “Studio-in-a-box” idea with the VS-880 (eight channels with 64 virtual tracks). I began my career on this beautiful little machine in 1996, its first year. It was a recorder, mixer, editor and effects rack in a box the size of a portable typewriter and it had a hard drive that could “undo” mistakes and think like a word processor. As Roland introduced each new generation of workstations, i.e.; the VS-1680 and the VS-1880, I purchased them and raised my price just a little (and the quality of recording a lot). They had more tracks, more effects, more everything. By staying with Roland, the oldest of my sessions’ data could still be imported into the new formats, keeping those old multi-track recordings from becoming obsolete. With the purchase of Roland’s new VS-2480CD (now with the new VS8F-3 Plug-In Expansion Card), I have raised the bar even higher. The flat screen monitor brings the advantages of PC based interface to the world of VS systems. Clients can see their recorded tracks and watch the process of mixing and editing. This makes it easier to communicate with the engineer as the session is produced. The Roland Virtual Studios are designed especially for audio recording, thus they excel.