My goals and questions

T

TaylorDuke

New member
Hello all!

So I just wanted to get your feedback and advice on a few things. Long story short, I am very passionate about music and have a dream of building a home recording studio in my basement. I would like to record local bands at an affordable price for them. I am not doing this for the money, but for enjoyment. My goal is to save money over the next 2 years to build the room and buy the equipment. I would like to save around $10K to do so.

In the meantime, I would also like to learn as much as I can about music producing, sound engineering, etc....so I can be a little more prepared by the time I have my studio built. I know actually working with the equipment hands on will be when the real learning will start.

What are your guys suggestions on what I should start researching and learning about? Any books or anything you recommend? I also love near The Recording Workshop in central Ohio so I am considering saving up to take that class as well.

Thank you all and sorry for the long post!

Taylor
 
Hi Taylor and welcome.

My first question is how big is the basement? If you intend to record rock bands you really need a separate 'control room' acoustically isolated as well as possible from the 'studio' where the music happens and both need to be of reasonable size. Absolute ball park guess but say 3000cu ft as the absolute minimum?

Then, if you are doing all the work you will need a variety of skills. The main one at the start is acoustician, that is how to construct and treat the two spaces* (they have different requirements) . Next you will need some electrical knowledge. Obviously you will need the pro's in for mains work but then there is all the audio wiring to consider.

Right now, get hold of a modest Audio Interface, some decent headphones and a mic. Do you play an instrument? Record that and get to know, INTIMATELY! The recording software (DAW) Reaper is probably the best bet if you are starting from a fresh perspective.

*Do NOT have to be contiguous. Modern CCTV system are excellent and cheap.

Dave.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Dave, my basement is a large size but I would like to just use a portion of it so the wife can still finish it to her liking at some point. There is a rectangular area behind stairs that I would like to designate as my studio. This would include actually putting up a wall and door.

Ball parking now I would say it's 30 feet by 10 feet. To me that seems like it could potentially be split in 2 separate working areas.
 
What they are all saying above.

But also . . . if you are thinking about recording local bands, what is access like? Will they be able to get amps and kits in easily? Can they park somewhere nearby?
 
Thanks for the response, gecko.

It is in a neighborhood with plenty of accessible parking. Getting gear in and out would be no issue at all. I also have an array of instruments and amps.

Soundproofing would be an important issue though. I have neighbors. There's a decent amount of yard between houses but it's not exactly the country either.
 
30'x10' is too small to divide into a room large enough for a typical band + a decent-enough size room for a control room, unless you do your mixing in the main room.
Do you have any recording/mixing experience? Classes are great, but in the end you need experience, which only comes from doing it.

"Getting gear in and out would be no issue at all." - no stairs - straight in/out to a paved driveway?
"Soundproofing" can only come from MASS - heavy thick walls and ceiling, well insulated. Basements are typically good as they have concrete walls - but sound can get transmitted right through stud walls to ceiling to the rest of the house- and vice-versa. You have to isolate everything - rubber clips and bushings, floating floor. How tall is the ceiling in the basement?
 
I am in the middle of sessions but am interested in giving advice if I can. I subscribed to this thread.

Welcome Taylor. :)
 
Thank you, Jimmy!

Mike, thanks for the response. Yes there are stairs...I guess I was oversimplifying lol. But no way around that for me. Same with size of the room. Ceilings are high, 10 ft I believe. Also the area I would be be building the room is behind the furnace and the pipes that run from furnace to outside would run above my studio. Would that be an issue if I were wanting to sound proof the ceiling? And no I have no experience...that's what I would like to delve into and start reading up on while I save money to build my studio.

Thanks again for all the replies. Again, I don't plan on this being a big time studio but do want to get it nice enough to be able to get some local bands in. I definitely want to do it right. I will definitely have to work with what I have as far as my area for my room.
 
Soundproofing is a huge expense. I have a crazy neighbor lady 10 feet from my basement studio. She bitches about everything from bugs in my bushes to the way people park in the street. Never once had a noise complaint. She has been thrown in jail 5 times over ten years for harassing my family...

That being said I would love to talk to you more about your plans. I have two 27' 13' rooms as well as two smaller isolation rooms in my basement. They are all treated differently.

Maybe a Skype or phone conversation would help things along for you.

Where are you located? Nevermind. I know. :)
 
TaylorDuke said:
....I would like to just use a portion of it so the wife can still finish it to her liking at some point.
Click to expand...

See...that right there is going to be your biggest problem. :D

Honestly though...if it's going to be just a space for you, then split it up with her. If you're planning on recording bands...you really want that entire space.
It's just not going to happen in a 10' x 15' space if you split it up...and frankly, even if you get the entire 10' x 30" for your studio, I would still not split it up.

Use it as one, big open space, and just deal with the recording logistics.
You will need headphones for sessions, and some gobos to isolate players. That's not a bad thing...many studios record everyone in one big space. You will always be able overdub single tracks later on, also in the one space.
Don't get caught up with iso-booths and all that nonsense....you simply don't have the square footage.
 
Jimmy- that would be great! I'm about to head to work but maybe tomorrow we can exchange info.

Miroslav - the 30x10 would be my entire space. The entire basement is much bigger than that. But yeah probably just one big space would work best.

Any realistic price I should target just for the room build alone? Like I said earlier...$10K was my goal amount but that was for equipment as well. Maybe not realistic, I'm sure that's a complicated question.

Thanks again for responses guys. Getting real excited just thinking about it.
 
If you source the build materials and do the work yourself (not knowing the actual condition of your basement or what's currently there)...you could probably get a lot of it down for a couple thousand, maybe less. It also depends how far you want to take the aesthetics of the space, and not just the pure acoustic treatment.
 
Would I be better off just leaving the whole area open and not putting up a wall and door? I'll try and post pictures tomorrow, but basically my thought was I have an area that already has 3 concrete walls from the basement and was going to build 1 to make it an actual room. But maybe I should just leave it open?

Sorry did the rambling... posting from work. My previous post was kind of wrong. I would want to put up 4 walls anyways, because I would want it all to match and look nice.
 
Sorry did the rambling... posting from work. My previous post was kind of wrong. I would want to put up 4 walls anyways, because I would want it all to match and look nice.
 
If you have no recording/mixing experience, I would suggest you start right away wiht a simple audio interface and just start doing some work wherever you have your computer now - get used to the ins/outs/procedures. It's a long learning curve.
 
Hi Taylor,

A couple of years ago I closed my studio of 40 years in a commercial building in town and built a new studio in my basement. We have an average size 3BR ranch with a basement. The house is of brick construction and the walls are plaster. With no soundproofing the basement is less susceptible to outside noise than the treated space I had in town. This obviously saved me a lot of money. So the first thing I would do is put a drummer ar guitar player with a really loud amp in your basement and go outside and listen to see if there is really a problem or not, and if there is, how bad it is. It may be better than you think.

The other issue (and probably a larger one) is how to keep the noises from within the house out of your studio and if the sound coming from your studio will disturb other people in your house. My kids are married and gone, my wife works during the day and often has night meetings, and we don't have a dog to make noise clicking his nail on the hardwood floor in the upstairs hall. So, internal noise from others isn't a problem for me, but it may be for you.

The final noise sources are appliances like refrigerators and freezers, furnaces and A/C, and sump pumps and well if you have those. These are sources that are difficult to shut off although I turn the furnace and A/C off for limited periods if we are recording vocals or acoustic instruments. If you can put your recording space away from these noise sources, you'll spend far less on soundproofing.

Unless you are building a new house and have an unlimited budget, studio construction involves a bunch of compromises. When I build my new control room at home, I documented the process from the planning, through construction, the installation of equipment and finishing and final tuning. Everyone's situation and needs are different, but this will at least give you an idea of the thought process and how I dealt with the issues that I had and compromises I made. There are 8 posts in the series, here's a link to the first one. Home Studio (Part 1 of 8) – Introduction – StudioMicZone
 
Hey StudioMicZone, thanks for the great info.

I will continue to research and check out these threads while I save up. In the meantime, does anyone think a portable recorder like the Tascam 006 or 008 would be a good way to start and practice? I figure I could take it to my band practices and places as well go get some hands on practice recording and the uploading and mixing.
 
I would say any form of recording would be a good start. It just takes time of finding what works for you. and how any room sounds.

I started recording 30 years ago with a 4 track cassette Akai in a SureGuard Storage aluminum walled 30' x 20' rehearsal space with only carpet on walls and a bbq grill as a heater. The room worked ok for recording somehow. Well, for the time and metal genre. Mixing room is much different.

30 years later I still haven't got it perfect. The main reason is that every musician, guitar, amp, singer, genre, tone....Is all different. Over time one learns how to approach different situations, but is is a constantly evolving learning experience.

The treatment you need in your mixing room/space will be much more intense than the recording room. If you have to compromise in one room, then I would make it best for mixing. You really only need to heavily treat the front wall and side reflections for the mixing position in a 30' room. Others may say different but that as worked for me. I record vocals and acoustics in my main room. 15' back from my desk has only 2' x 4' x 2" Roxul 80 panels. It is quite live behind my desk. For vocal tracking I use two of those panels hanging from ceiling in a 'V' around the back of the mic. Drum room is the same size as the control room but has a shizzle of ceiling stuffed with Roxul and a bunch of panels. But I was able to record drums in the front room as well with decent results. The issue was with isolation.

I would say to never break up your room. I will give that a 'DO NOT EVER BREAK UP YOUR ROOM! It will cause more issues with room modes IMO.

I would say get started with any means and start forming 'your own' opinions. Only 'you' can actually hear the space and learn from it. Others can only speculate from their experience.
 
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