Arranging a usable, 1-person studio

J

jw1

New member
Hello,

My not-quite-finished basement studio space is approx. 12' x 12' with an open sheet-music closet off one corner. It's a room within a room, with approx. 14" between each of three walls and the basement poured-concrete walls. The fourth wall is directly coupled to another, unrelated room. I'm at the point of mudding the walls and laying the ceiling.

I'll be the only one using the space, and my question is, given the kinds of equipment I have, what are people's thoughts on laying out the space to be used efficiently? I have:

Roland A-80 (basically a full-length MIDI controller keyboard); this is my main instrument;
6 rack-mountable modules (some sound modules, an effects box, a sampler);
A Mackie 1202 (small end) mixer;
A pair of Alesis One monitor speakers and a power amp;
A pair of "huge" (compared to the amount of room I have) SoundTech speakers and power amp (for gigging, but they'll probably have to sit in the room anyway);
A tower computer and video monitor that I'll be using for recording and composition.

Currently, I have my rack-mountables and mixer in a "portable" (hand carrying) Raxxess case, but I'd really consider a more permanent placement, even a dedicated, wheeled case.

I also have a single mic and a drum pad I use, but their placement isn't so important.

A couple of times a year I tear down all my equipment (sans computer) and cart it to the local theatre for a couple of weeks at a time, but the rest of the time, it remains in place. (Currently, "in place" means in the dining room!)

The computer dedicated to this effort is a new addition... For recording, I used to lay everything to a dedicated sequencer (Roland MC50) and hope I didn't run out of polyphony on my sound modules. From there, I'd play back directly to audio tape or CD. For composing, I'd lay my ideas down to the sequencer and cart the sequencer to a computer elsewhere. My point being ... I've not used the computer directly with my setup yet, so I don't know how close I need it to be to my MIDI keyboard.

So... more specifically... Should I invest in a prefabbed piece of studio furniture that could hold my keyboard, computer, and modules? Or are there better ideas? Remember, I'm the one pressing all the buttons to record, play my stuff, and then stop recording :-) and my room is only 12' wide. Should I aim to be surrounded by all the equipment or would it be usable spreading it around the room?

I know the correct answer is "What ever suits me best", but I'd really like to hear what other people in the same boat like about their way of doing things.

Thank you very much,

James
 
James I've had a similar setup to you.

Fisrt you have to setup your monitors. Consider operating at 45 degrees to the room i.e. your desk is placed across a corner so your monitors are projecting into the longest section of your room and you have room for your puter monitor to project back into the corner. It would help if you could fill the corner behind the deak with something absorptive like a rolled up foam mattress or the like.

Put deadening material on the two walls behind you and put a couch and book shelf etc to break it all up.

I got a good sized desk and put the puter in the middle. I put my mixer to the left and the amps, CDplayers etc to the right, modules in your case. I put my M1 keyboard on the right at 90 degrees to the desk. I put a shelf across the back of the desk just over the monitor and put my speakers on it so they came up to ear height.

Stir and flavour to taste :)

cheers
John
 
John's way is also how I did have my studio set up (until there started to be two people in there, which meant I moved the keyboard away from the mixer/computer) and it works really well.

You can handle the keyboard and computer together for recording starts, or for composing work or whatever. What are you using to do composing on the computer?
 
Thank you so much for the useful replies!

For my music composition, I'm using Finale (www.codamusic.com), which is really notation software, but it has nice features that help me organize my scores and arrangements.

Thanks again for the input.

Cheers,
James
 
Being a cheap bastard, I've been using Noteworthy Composer (much cheaper then Finale) which has been doing what I need, but I was curious for other options
 
[now I'm officially off-topic...]

[I'm not familiar with Noteworthy Composer... but ...] You're right about Finale being pricy! OTOH, I was able to get in with a discount because I was "upgrading" (from their point of view!) from a competitor's product ... I used to use Encore (yeeears ago) which didn't give me the flexibility I started to need/want.

Two things that I -really- like with Finale (and which may be available in other products, but which weren't in the version of Encore I had) are (1) the ability to cut-n-paste into partial measures (e.g., shift everything from beat 2.5 in measure 12, back 1.5 beats) and to write in concert pitch and *easily* transpose to each instrument's native pitch.

Cheers,
James
 
The last one noteworthy has - I've never tried the first.

It is a pretty cool product - and cheap. Sort of like N-track in that way.
 
Thanks for the input and the link to the pictures ... I appreciate you sharing the links esp., as I'd not heard about Omnirax.

Cheers,
James
 
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