Anyone with studio experience, show me the way...

[kEVINk]

I'm designing a recording studio with a friend of mine in his basement. I qualify this by saying that he is pretty serious about music and recording and wants to do things right (he has about eight grand in recording equipment right now). However, between the three of us there is almost no actual studio experience, in terms of how a recording session is run. The intention is to build the studio for our use, and record other bands for free to get experience recording and mixing.

My question relates to the spaces, or lack of space. This is a basement studio, so space is a premium. The initial plan was a control booth, a main room, a vocal booth and a drum room. From here, the questions flow..

1. Do we need a separate drum room? Would it be typical to lay down drums first, without other instruments? Or would the band be playing live, relying on visual cues, and a separate drum room necessary for more controlled micing?

2. Separate vocal booth? Because of space crunch, this room is getting very small (5' x 7'). I'm worried that a room that small will have little quality to the sound and thus no one will want to use it. Also, same concern with drums. Would vocals be tracked later, or live?

3. If you saw an ad that said free recording, would you do it? The idea is we set up some limit on the amount of time allowed, but otherwise we record bands for nothing, aside from the cost of handing them an un-mastered CD or ADAT and the end of it and let them take it from there. They will be our guinea pigs, but they get something out of it in return.



At this point I should say that I know there is no right or wrong way for this, but people's experiences would be helpful

Thanks in advance,

K

[Tim Brown]

Originally posted by kEVINk
I'm designing a recording studio with a friend of mine in his basement. I qualify this by saying that he is pretty serious about music and recording and wants to do things right (he has about eight grand in recording equipment right now). However, between the three of us there is almost no actual studio experience, in terms of how a recording session is run. The intention is to build the studio for our use, and record other bands for free to get experience recording and mixing.

My question relates to the spaces, or lack of space. This is a basement studio, so space is a premium. The initial plan was a control booth, a main room, a vocal booth and a drum room. From here, the questions flow..

1. Do we need a separate drum room? Would it be typical to lay down drums first, without other instruments? Or would the band be playing live, relying on visual cues, and a separate drum room necessary for more controlled micing?

2. Separate vocal booth? Because of space crunch, this room is getting very small (5' x 7'). I'm worried that a room that small will have little quality to the sound and thus no one will want to use it. Also, same concern with drums. Would vocals be tracked later, or live?

3. If you saw an ad that said free recording, would you do it? The idea is we set up some limit on the amount of time allowed, but otherwise we record bands for nothing, aside from the cost of handing them an un-mastered CD or ADAT and the end of it and let them take it from there. They will be our guinea pigs, but they get something out of it in return.



At this point I should say that I know there is no right or wrong way for this, but people's experiences would be helpful

Thanks in advance,

K

Hi Kevin,

Here is what I would do personally.

Build a Control room, a vocal room, and a main room.
Put the drums in the main room....build what essentially amount to "closets" to put the guitar amps in.

Sometimes they are called "speaker coffins"....You make a frame that holds the speaker cabinet on it's BACK-and it's aimed at the ceiling. The Mic holder get's mounted on the ceiling, and you put a boom on it- that way you can have your mic several feet away, but it's not "floor space"...it's space that most of the time isn't used! so, instead of miking from 4 feet away horizontally, you're miking from 4 feet away VERTICALLY!

Then, the guiatarist can be in either the main room, or in the control room.

Tim

[John Sayers]

Great Idea TIM

[Tim Brown]

Originally posted by John Sayers
Great Idea TIM

Thanks John,

Sometimes I have a flash of genius....and then the voice of reason sets in and says "you can't do it thatway!"

Bah, Humbug!

I always tend to go against the flow anyway!

hahaha

Tim

[Brian Grey]

Ok... you know what depresses me???? I just typed for 15 minutes a reply to this, and my connection got lost as it was sending... and I lost it allllll!!! NOOOOOOOO. So, needless to say, I'm not typing it again. Use your imagination to think of what I might have said.

[ola]

It'll never work Brian. The cables will never support that amount of jell-o.

[Track Rat]

Brian, I was guessing what you might have written and was wondering if using microphones and farm animals like that is legal?

[kEVINk]

Rats! That's the second time this week I've been cheated from knowledge by uncooperative computers. If I didn't know better, I'd say there was some sort of cabal........come to think of it, there was that fellow in the top hat.......

So, Brian, you really think I need to buy you those monitors to help my knowledge along? Was it Meyer, or something like that? Let's see, where's my money clip.....

[Brian Grey]

Speaking of computers steeling what-might-have-been-knowledge... last night I was taking my last final (would that make it my final final?) of the semester. I got on my last damn question, it took me an hour and forty five minutes to get that far, and on that last question I had a question for the teacher. He came over and all of a sudden I got this error message reading "overflow." I asked him what it was and he said he didn't know but "press ok." I pressed OK and my test crashed... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I had to sit there and take that damn test again!!!!!!

Anyway... Ola, I've actually been able to get two bowls of jello over mic cables. But you probably dont' want to know how I did it... lots of pressure... and lots of time.

Track rat, you'd be amazed what we can get away with in Wisconsin... ohh man. We ARE America's dairy land ya know.