New Doors Vintage Keys (NDVK) is a recording studio and a space for creation, based in Belo
Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The studio welcomes both regular contemporary studio workflows and
more singular immersive approaches to the processes of recording, also making available a
collection of gear and historical instruments dedicated to the research in timbre and the
enlargement of sound possibilities in the field of arrangements, creation and musical production.
Audio infrastructure combines some of the most prominent tools used nowadays in big studios
with less common, unique-sounding equipment, equipment that is part of the history of music
and of the recording processes in the 20th century, as well as an extensive array of
microphones and acoustic musical instruments, electric and electronic. All of which is interlinked
in a flexible manner, providing hybrid formats of creation and sound recording.
The rooms were designed by the engineer Renato Cipriano, conceived to accommodate a wide
range of musical styles. There are six workrooms interconnected with individual audio cables,
each with different sizes and acoustic characteristics. The rooms are named after personalities
with affinity to the history of the studio or that helped open the doors to new ways of making and
conceiving music.

Conny Plank Room (control room)

In this room are centered the processes of recording, editing, mixing and audio mastering.
Connected to all the other spaces of the studio, the Conny Plank room is a control room with
approximately 47m2, suited to either analog or hybrid workflows, being also adjustable to work
merely on digital in case anyone really needs that. We have a wide range of sound equipment
with a variety of characteristics, manufactured in different periods of the history of studio
recording. Specially noteworthy is our LC-72 mixing console from Undertone Audio (UTA), one
of the ten made and the only under the equator. Our recording gear are the Studer A827 24
track tape machine, Studer A80 (2 track), Nagra III (mono) and the Antelope Audio Orion 32+
and Burl B2 ADC / DAC converters.
The space is named after the iconic musical producer Konrad “Conny” Plank, known for the
incorporation of unusual techniques and of electronic sonority to traditional processes of
creation in studio. Plank merged musical processes of electro acoustic and electronic realizing
its affinities with tendencies such as Jamaican Dub, where the mixing console is also
considered an instrument on its own right. His studio served as an atelier to the experimental
scene of the region and ended up collaborating remarkably with some of the most innovative
European artists in the post-war period.

Conny Plank

Carlos Alberto Pinto Fonseca Room (main recording room)

Adjacent to the control room, Carlo Alberto Pinto Fonseca room was built from scratch and it is
suited for large musician groups, due to its size and intern acoustics. The room has
approximately 95 m2 – 11 m x 9 m in its center cut , 5 m feet – and has adjustable acoustic
panels, acoustic curtains, handmade clay walls and two types of floor – one area covered with
Peroba Rosa Wood boards, and another with Ouro Preto Stone surface. In this room there are 5
tie lines, totaling 64 analog audio channels (48 input jacks, 16 output jacks and 10 network
connections). The room has a 1914 Stenway D concert grand piano faithfully restored for the
studio, a Hammond B3 organ paired with both a Leslie 122 and a Hammond tone cabinets, and
an italian virginal by Sassmann.

This room was named after maestro Carlos Alberto Fonseca, whose work has a huge
importance in the Brazilian symphonic and choir music. Fonseca founded and conducted, for
decades, the Ars nova choir, one of the most celebrated vocal groups in Brazil, and has also
conducted the Minas Gerais Symphonic Orchestra. His pieces are known for their syncretism,
with African influenced themes, strong rhythms, and became international reference in the choir
practice in the 20th century.

Carlos Alberto conducting

Wendy Carlos (synthesizers room))

This room holds the studios’ synthesizers, contemplating representative copies of one hundred
years of electronic music history, from electronic instruments of the first half of the 20th century
like Theremin and Hammond Solovox, to instruments that with automation technologies, like
Voltage Control and MIDI, with the most recent implemented MPE (MIDI Polyphonic
expression). There are iconic synthesizers like Moog Minimoog, Arp 2600, Roland Jupiter 8 et
cetera, a Moog Unit system with modules built by Roger Arrick, Arthur Joly and Vinícius Brazi
and Moog, a Buchla 200 system with modules built by Roman, Constantin, Verbos, Soundfreak
and Buchla, an assortment of synthesizers and sound processors by the British company
Electronic Music Systems (EMS). Other than the analog synthesizers of subtractive synthesis,
there are also digital and hybrid ones representing technologies like FM, Wavetable and 8 bit
chips. A fine selection of drum machines, samplers and vocoders, controllers and sequencers is
also present, making different sorts of workflows possible, all of which integrated with Ableton
Live 11 for both sequencing and recording. A Tascam 1” 8 track tape machine is also available.

This room was named after to Wendy Carlos, a physicist and musician that dedicated her life to
audio and synthesis since the 1950`s, having released in 1968 the all time bestseller album of
classical music, in which Wendy demonstrates various possibilities of the Moog modular
synthesizer, then being developed by Robert Arthur Moog, applied to the execution of Johann
Sebastian Bach’s pieces. She keeps following her research on the field of synthesis, being one
of the pioneer researchers on vocal synthesis by voltage control (Vocoder), digital synthesis, as
well as in the field of audio and musical composition, having worked along with Dolby, and also
exploring systems of expanded tonality and ambience music.

Beloved diva of transistor, Wendy Carlos.

Marco Antônio Guimarães Room 

This room holds musical instruments built by the artist, composer, arranger, instrumentalist and
inventor Marco Antônio Guimarães for more than 40 years. Born in Belo Horizonte, Marco
Antônio was the founder, director, arranger and main composer of the instrumental group
UAKTI. He composed ballet pieces for “Grupo Corpo” and soundtracks for movies like
“Blindness”, directed by Fernando Meirelles. His compositional work is characterized by the
dialogue between traditional forms of music with abstract elements, numbers, geometrical
shapes, games, schemes and drawing patterns. At the same time, Marco has developed his
own instrument building techniques that embodies, combines and reuse daily life objects, such
as PVC pipes, pans, glass, diverse wooden and metal objects, building acoustic and electro-
acoustic instruments. His work is inspired by the ideas of musicians like Walter Smetak and
Ernst Widmer, with whom he had contact at Universidade Federal da Bahia (Federal University
of Bahia), in the 60`s. Nowadays, Marco Antônio lives in Belo Horizonte.

New Doors Studio keeps a group of instrumentalists and arrangers in touch with the
instruments, to study the techniques involved and all philosophical and compositional aspects of
Marco Antônio Guimaraes work, with the objective of maintaining the collection alive so that it
can be used in the productions that may dialogue with its proposal.

Marco Antônio Guimarães

Skank Room

This space holds a piece of history of the building that today became New Doors, originally a
family house of the musician Haroldo Ferreti, and a place where Ferretti Studio used to work,
followed by “Estúdio Máquina”, that witnessed the birth of many bands of Belo Horizonte, such
as Pato Fu, Jota Quest and more notably the band Skank of which Haroldo was the founder. In
the old days this was a TV room, now reformulated to serve as a recording room for electrical
guitars, while maintaining the television and the cozy environment – besides being a versatile
space, allowing the recording musician to have visual contact with the Carlos Alberto Pinto
Fonseca room.
In this room are also kept the amplifiers for both electric guitar and bass, like the Fender Twin
reverb 70s, De Ville, Deluxe, the Matchless, DC30, Orange Rockverb 100, Riviera Knucklehead
100, Silvertone 1482, Lafayette 75, a WEN cabinet from the 70`s with speakers configured to
David Gilmour’s taste, Harry Joyce cabinet, etc. There are also some of our string instruments
and electric pianos, such as a Fender Rhodes Mark I, the Yamaha CP-80b and the Clavinet
Model D6.

Samuel Rosa with producer Renato Ciprino and Chico Amaral in the old studio Ferretti

Sylvia Klein Room

Located in a space adjacent to the Conny Plank room, this room is dedicated to voice recording
and that of other instruments that can benefit from this environment. It’s named after the
soprano Sylvia Klein, whose career is dedicated to the interpretation of consecrated operas as
well as to experimental work and popular repertoire. The room measures 10m2.

The House

Similarly to the maintenance of the collections of equipments and instruments, during the
renovation of the property there was the intention of honoring the history of the house, keeping
its cozy character by maintaining the architectonic elements original, such as the stained
glasses and façade. Even with the increase of studio area it was possible to increase the green
permeable area, including three small trees.
The access to five of the six rooms is possible through ramps, making equipment transportation
a breeze and providing ease of access for people with disabilities. Aside from that, one of the
three bathrooms of the house is also accessible.