Lonnie's Farm Recording Studio

07/12/2025

The best musicians in the world come to this room to make a record.

05/27/2025

We hope you can join us for the music and art festival.

We’re excited to announce this event! The 3rd annual ..and growing! Noon - 10pm. (or later) we’re blocking off the streets in the Belleville Historic Brewery District. 9th and 10th streets at West Main. Between the landmark TOCO Shop Belleville and world famous 10th Street Baking Co.
All ages ..under 12 are free.

(If you’re an art vendor or want to showcase, send your email, asap to [email protected], final date to submit is June 2nd)

05/15/2025

Marshall Goodman

05/14/2025

04/22/2025

Music & Art Festival - July 26 - Belleville, Illinois - Historic Brewery District - 25min from downtown St. Louis.

03/25/2025

Depending on the tone desired for a song I often incorporate transformers. (or vacuum tubes, or even transformer-less circuits, sometimes a combination)

Transformers do alot of jobs, stepping voltages up or down, increasing output level of microphones, bringing instruments down to mic level, balancing inputs and outputs, matching impedances, eliminate ground loops and eliminating DC interference.

With all that, the thing is, Transformers also sound really great! mostly because of the unique ways in which they fail to be perfectly clean and linear.

Transformers exhibit a distortion phenomenon called "hysteresis." This is where the core, after getting magnetized by a signal, stays magnetized for a short period of time after the signal is removed. Hysteresis creates low-frequency, harmonic distortion at all signal levels, not just when the core is saturated.
This same effect is a large part of the desirable sound of analog tape and some of the reason why sounds get naturally compressed a bit when using a transformer.

Transformers are perfect for adding balance over the frequencies whole range, adding weight, tightening lows, creating depth, more punch, harmonic sweetening & smoothing of transients. Because of all these qualities transformers are often used during tracking and I sometimes put them inline with instrument direct outs, like guitars. I’ll sometimes use a pair or more of transformers on the mix buss to add weight to a song or smooth out transients over the whole tonal range and glue things in place. They can make mixing easier with less need for compression and eq. ..and plugins.
lonniesfarm.com

03/01/2025

I do not like when people record a real person playing real drums in a real band and replace the drums with sampled drums. I love great sounding drums, but I’d rather hear the sound of okay recorded drums in the room than sampled drums. Stop doing that.

02/21/2025

Found some ancient photos. This is the control room of the first recording studio I opened. It was 1988. I was a teenager. It was located in the back of a building at 23 West Washington in Millstadt Illinois. The front of the building was occupied by ‘One Stop Video’. Before I moved in the band Oktober rehearsed in the space. Great band. The rooms had plywood floors and masonry walls. I used a sliding glass door turned sideways for the window between control room and live room. The ceilings were nice and it sounded lively. The control room was small, 3 people could fit and they had to stand. The studio was a reel to reel multitrack tape setup. A band could record 8 tracks and I sometimes used SMPTE to synch midi to the multitrack tape machine on track 8. That would give bands 7 tracks on tape, and all the midi synch sounds they’d want. The mixing console was a Fostex. Sometimes I’d chain mixers together to get more channels. There were three compressors, 2 Peavey and 1 DBX, and one Realistic Stereo Graphic EQ. The Yamaha NS10 speakers in the photo I purchased new in 1986. I still use those actual speakers (just mixed a song on them this morning). After tracking, songs would be mixed down to a Tascam stereo D.A.T machine. The D.A.T was cutting-edge tech at the time. Sometimes I would mix down to a 1 inch video tape machine I’d picked up from a scrap sale at a local TV station. The top floor above the studio was an open room the size of the entire building. Residents of Millstadt would gather to throw Horseshoes and drink beer in the winter time when it was too cold to throw outside. It was a popular place. When i wanted to watch a movie I’d walk to the front and pick one out. A lot of bands recorded there and some great memories are best to not advertise.
Today, The ‘Premiere Academy of Dance’ is housed in the building. I haven’t been inside since I moved the studio out in 1991.

Premiere Academy of Dance

02/13/2025

A pleasure to work with Gary McClain & Craig Billhartz in the studio. Gary McClain, a member of The Guild, a St Louis based group active 1968-1976 who also included members Michael McDonald, (from St Louis, vocalist for the Doobie Brothers and backing vocalist for Steely Dan), and Tom Kelley, from Indiana/Illinois, who was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame for co-writing five #1 hit singles with Billy Steinberg, including "Like A Virgin" (for Madonna), "True Colors (Cyndi Lauper), "Eternal Flame" (the Bangles), "So Emotional" (Whitney Houston) and "Alone" (Heart)”I'll Stand By You" (the Pretenders), Tom Kelley attended college at Eastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale before dropping out to pursue music. Gary McClain, along with teaching music and writing songs, has helped launch the careers of many young musicians and artists throughout his career.

01/23/2025

01/16/2025

songwriters Tracy Lowe and Tony Vrooman of the legendary Vitamen A band on some 24 tracks tapes. New music? Maybe. definitely be a dream come true for fans

Vitamen A

01/13/2025

Kim and Jeanette of KAINOA GIRLS.
New EP soon