Redneck Sound Studio- can garbage be your friend? (.....I'm needing ideas)

bachelorb

bachelorb

Cowboy Chord Virtuoso
Alright..... I'm in a bit of a pickle.... I've got this pretty cool room you might have seen before....

IMG_6859.JPG


The problem is, it is very echoey. Very very echoey!!!!f

I woefully overestimated my budget to get it ready to record in by the month of February because my budget ends up being ZERO dollars American.. I just record for myself, but would like it to sound the best that it can.

I have these materials:

Mattress, cardboard, particle board, old wall paneling, blankets, egg cartons, packing materials and styrofoam, paper, garbage bags.......

I am trying to achieve a " bedroom studio" kind of sound, I have a bedroom, but the grandson visits off and on, and I'd like to stay with the setup set up :)

All ideas would be greatly appreciated.....

Brad
 
Leave the floor hard...but you'll need absorption on the walls and ceiling.

Noting in your list will really do much of job....you need some traps.

It's gonna take a few $$$...but you can make them yourself, and for a couple hundred dollars, have enough material to build a decent number of traps.

Do it right as much as you can...otherwise you will just be fighting the room.
 
Thoroughly treat one corner of the room and get/build a couple of goboes. Use the goboes to enclose a small dead area within your large live room. You can move things around to dial more or less of the live part of the room into the recording.
 
garww said:
Excess room is only a problem if it's in your MIC pattern
Click to expand...
And usually even then only if it actually sounds bad.

I'd be willing to bet that once you get some furniture (like couches and stuffed chairs), throw down a couple area rugs, and fill those shelves with stuff (!!!), it'll probably be alright for most things. When you have some money to throw at it, do work toward trapping and/or goboes, but if your budget is $0, then you just do what you've got to do.

...But this is also going to be a mix room, which is a bit different consideration from tracking. Near field monitoring at reasonable levels is kind of specifically meant to take the room out of the equation. The sound from the speakers will usually be louder enough than the verb that you'll be okay. The first place you'll want to do "real" absorption will be right around the mix position - the old thing about first reflection points, ceiling cloud...
 
Well, with acoustic guitar, I just aim across the guitar down to the carpet - the angle at odds to any normal wall ceiling reflection and it's not often I have to add a foam or whatever to block something. What room do we hear with the MIC off the cone and the guitar amp blasting away(though, it wouldn't hurt cleaning that up) ?
 
ashcat_lt said:
I'd be willing to bet that once you get some furniture (like couches and stuffed chairs), throw down a couple area rugs, and fill those shelves with stuff (!!!), it'll probably be alright for most things. When you have some money to throw at it, do work toward trapping and/or goboes, but if your budget is $0, then you just do what you've got to do.

...But this is also going to be a mix room, which is a bit different consideration from tracking. Near field monitoring at reasonable levels is kind of specifically meant to take the room out of the equation. The sound from the speakers will usually be louder enough than the verb that you'll be okay. The first place you'll want to do "real" absorption will be right around the mix position - the old thing about first reflection points, ceiling cloud...
Click to expand...

This ^^^^ is where I'd start. Not to disagree with anybody else's suggestions, but things change quite a bit just getting the stuff in the room. And I know Miro said leave the floor hard, but do you have a large area rug or carpet scrap to throw down on the floor to try? I find that effects things considerably sometimes. And don't try too hard to make it dead. I agree this is more critical with mixing, but with near-field monitors and maybe that mattress behind you it might be just fine. I like a room with character. I've got the opposite going where the bedroom my drums are in is very dead just due to size, odd-ish shape and thick carpet...low-ish popcorn-texture ceiling. It's pretty dead and just doesn't have anything to offer the mix. I like to run my Radio Shack PZM mica I have with the custom preamps from Uneeda Audio out to the living room or something just to get some space in the mix.
 
Thanks all...... I really appreciate your input. I forgot to say that this will mostly be voice and an acoustic guitar... maybe a harmonica, or if I'm really feeling it, a jews harp....

I really have a zero budget right now. I'm just trying to get ready for rough songwriting recording sessions that I like to do every year.

I am going to try to just fill the room with stuff first to keep the echos down. When I was in the travel trailer, I just mixed with headphones, I think I'll still do that here.

This is going to be a really nice place someday.... just not now..... I'm sure I'll be leaning on you fellas real heavy when I start to go about designing the room.
I'm just trying to give it just a bit of function right now to use right away(....with the worlds smallest footprint mobile studio..... :) )
 
Don't get too hung up on the character of the room. That's my opinion. The space in which you record can really be another instrument in the band so to speak. Have fun experimenting with different mic placement and source placement (i.e. you :D). It's a whole new palette you didn't have when mobile.

I watched the documentary Sound City recently. I highly recommend it. A tiny blip of a point in the film was about the recording room at the studio...the dimensions and shape of the room should have made for problems...by acoustic design standards it shouldn't have sounded good...it was a converted factory, Sound City. But something about the room (who knows what) and that Neve mixing desk, well, it was good. Really good. And you can hear it in the pile of monster hits that came out of Sound City. That anomaly of a recording room was part of the ensemble. Embrace the room. This doesn't mean legitimate "problems" can't or shouldn't be addressed, but maybe wait to decide what really is a problem, vs maybe that "something" that makes what you produce absolutely unique to you and the offspring of Redneck Sound.
 
garww said:
Excess room is only a problem if it's in your MIC pattern
Click to expand...

Could you (or someone)explain this??? I really like to use my condenser mic when when recording the guitar, I think it sounds so much better than the acoustic pickup. I've been using the acoustic pickup the last couple of years, but would like to use the condenser more (or exclusively).
 
sweetbeats said:
And I know Miro said leave the floor hard, but do you have a large area rug or carpet scrap to throw down on the floor to try?
Click to expand...

TBH...I only said that because all the acoustics guys say it's better to leave the floor heard and treat the walls/ceiling.
Most pro studios have the hard floors...though they also toss rugs on them often.

That said...my studio space is half carpet...with wood only at the console/mixing area, but I also have a lot of wall treatment there.
Where the carpet is, I have mostly wood on the walls, some sheet-rock, and I treated the ceiling to lose the flutter echo.
 
bachelorb said:
Could you (or someone)explain this??? I really like to use my condenser mic when when recording the guitar, I think it sounds so much better than the acoustic pickup. I've been using the acoustic pickup the last couple of years, but would like to use the condenser more (or exclusively).
Click to expand...
It really just means to use the microphone's polar pattern and proximity to the instrument to minimize the impact of the ambient space. Essentially, use directional mics, point them directly at what you want to record, and get them in as close as you can.
 
Well, you can adjust the pattern with foam at the MIC, or, stick a hand up there. A dog will lick everything, 'til the vet sticks that cone around his neck
 
Is 2017 the year for completely nonsensical posts???

Been more than a few that have made me go huh???
:D
 
@bachelor brad

Dude you got it made. You got a nice size "live" room. Others wish they were so lucky.

Like stated before, furnishings, etc will help to tame things a bit.

I'd love to record some drums in that space.
 
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