good sized room

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timt

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I'm just beginning to plan for my home studio. I've got a room that's 26' x 10' with 8' ceilings. It's not attached to anything where people live, so sound proofing is not a major issue. I plan on recording full bands, live drums included. First step is to determine how many rooms (if more than one) and what sizes they should be. I looked around and didn't see anything for this size area on previous threads. If it's been answered, let me know.
 
Welcome to HR, you're in the right place. :)

It is a good sized room, but still considered a small room as far as live rooms go - and subject to all the problems that come with small rooms. If I were you, I'd keep it as a single room and focus your energies on treating it properly.

I get very good results from a room not very much bigger.

Congratulations, and start a construction thread when you get started.

-SC
 
isolation

Thanks for the quick response. Doesn't a single room make it impossible to obtain separation when recording multiple instruments concurrently? How do you contain bleed from the drums into the mic for guitar amp, bass amp (if used), or vocals? Is it done using a small isolation box for amps, or do you construct portable walls?

Forgive the rookie questions. I've done a good bit of recording as a player, but always in larger studios. Getting it done in my own place seems more challenging.

Thanks for the help.
 
TimDude :D
Welcome aboard.

I've got a smaller room too. Everything in it including drums and how I've done my sons band was to Mic the drums up, run the bass DI, and isolate one guitar cab as much as I could and track them first. Then I'd have the other guitar lay down his part and vocals last.

It's not perfect but they ended up soundin good. The bleed from the one guitar cab wasn't nearly enough to worry about when I got the whole mix goin.
There's always a way to work around stuff.
;)
 
When I want to achieve that level of separation, I record the instruments separately.

Try recording as an ensemble. Bleed is your freind. Use the close mics for processing individual instruments. You will need to experiment with mic placement, amp placement, and individual instrument volume to get a good "faders up" mix.
 
timt said:
How do you contain bleed from the drums into the mic for guitar amp, bass amp (if used), or vocals?
Click to expand...

Record vocals later. Everything else is mic choice and placement, and the way the room is set up (i.e. bass on left, guitar on right etc.)
 
Check this out:

If a band is playing in a room, and you go up and put your ear 1" away from the guitar amp speaker, you're going to hear almost completely guitar and in the background, way back there will be the rest of the band.

That's what a mic will hear too. So bleed through isn't a biggie, and it can make the overall sound better too.

How about make some dividers that you could move around. Make them so that when a person was sitting they're heads would be over the tops of them. I saw pics of a friend recording at Capitol Records way back and they used them. I hate drum booths!

What I wouldn't do is make your room any smaller by dividing it up, and I'd go easy on the soundproofing. Lots of people go overboard with it.
 
How about for mixing after the recording is done? Would you just have a movable desk with some fixed speakers?

Thanks to everyone for the friendly advice. It's extremely helpful.
 
timt said:
How about for mixing after the recording is done? Would you just have a movable desk with some fixed speakers?

Thanks to everyone for the friendly advice. It's extremely helpful.
Click to expand...

I set up my room so that it has a relatively ideal permanent mixing position:

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=253968

Lots to wade through, but you might get some ideas.

This is a really exiting time for you - take lots of pictures. :)
 
Anyway, set up your mixing position about a third into the room, with the speakers firing the long way into the room. Treat early reflection points symmetrically, and heavily treat all the corners you can afford to.
 
Welcome aboard. My main tracking room is only slightly larger than yours (13X27X9) and I've recorded up to 6 piece bands all at once. As already mentioned, cloce micing overcomes the majority of bleed issues, the ones it leaves add room ambience to the project and can often improve the final mix. You may encounter some phase issues but most of these can be overcome by experimenting with mic placement. A bit of room treatment will help a lot, bass traps in the corners and a cloud over the drums helped me more than I originaly expected. If you haven't already discovered it, avoid putting anyone or anything (other than bass traps) in the corners, low frequencies accumulate there and make recordings boomy. Happy recording and wish you the best.
 
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