Ideas on tracking and control in same room

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elmerfunk

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I am starting to prepare a bedroom for studio dwelling. It is going to have to be my tracking and control room. I am looking for some ideas from anyone willing to offer. The room is 13.5' x 12' with a closet that is 38" x 72". I am thinking about closing up the closet door to a regular door size and deadening it and using it for a vocal/guitar booth. My main concern is drums and being able to hear what's coming out of the monitors instead of the drums themselves. Should I consider closing the kit completely in its own booth to cut down the sound? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I would like to get started and I don't want to waste energy on something that's not going to work, but I have to work with the room I have. Thank you in advance for any help that you have.
 
Can you run a snake to the basement and have the drummer play down there?
 
No basement......just a crawl space. This is going to be the room. I have a four bedroom house and now they are all going to be full. I used to have a control room in one and a tracking room in another. Those days are over now. I thought if I could cut the sound down a little I might be able to hear what's going on in the mix. Tough one. I have all this nice gear and want to use it once again. I play most instruments so I am the drummer. I want to keep the kit set up and mics on it so I can go whenever I want. I could set them up in the garage, but then I would have to tear them down, etc. etc. Too much work. If you have any other interesting ideas I'm willing to listen. If not it's going to be a lot of trial and error. Thanks
 
elmerfunk said:
I am starting to prepare a bedroom for studio dwelling. It is going to have to be my tracking and control room. I am looking for some ideas from anyone willing to offer. The room is 13.5' x 12' with a closet that is 38" x 72". I am thinking about closing up the closet door to a regular door size and deadening it and using it for a vocal/guitar booth. My main concern is drums and being able to hear what's coming out of the monitors instead of the drums themselves. Should I consider closing the kit completely in its own booth to cut down the sound? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I would like to get started and I don't want to waste energy on something that's not going to work, but I have to work with the room I have. Thank you in advance for any help that you have.
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There is no way given the parameters that you have stated that the drums won't not only overwhelm your monitoring but also bleed into the vocal/guitar tracks while you are recording them.

So just give up on the idea of tracking the drums and the others at the same time.

Use a click track to track the drums and then have the drums playing in the headsets of the guitarist, vocalist, and others when you track them.
 
Or find some way to relocate the drums to another room for a day.
 
drums=living room (kitchen ..whatever)

unless its just you recording then why worry about bleedthrough
 
elmerfunk said:
I am starting to prepare a bedroom for studio dwelling. It is going to have to be my tracking and control room. I am looking for some ideas from anyone willing to offer. The room is 13.5' x 12' with a closet that is 38" x 72". I am thinking about closing up the closet door to a regular door size and deadening it and using it for a vocal/guitar booth. My main concern is drums and being able to hear what's coming out of the monitors instead of the drums themselves. Should I consider closing the kit completely in its own booth to cut down the sound? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I would like to get started and I don't want to waste energy on something that's not going to work, but I have to work with the room I have. Thank you in advance for any help that you have.
Click to expand...

I'm a one-room home studio guy too. What I do is use headphones with good isolation (in my case, Sennheiser HD 280 Pro) and monitor thru them when tracking in the same room. Not ideal obviously, but it works. You end up cutting several short test tracks and then playing them back thru your normal monitors to make sure that what's going to tape actually sounds right. It's more tedious, but it works. The big thing is you need headphones with good isolation (i.e. not open-back 'phones).

D7
 
elmerfunk said:
My main concern is drums and being able to hear what's coming out of the monitors instead of the drums themselves. Should I consider closing the kit completely in its own booth to cut down the sound?
Click to expand...

Yeah a Drum-booth sounds good.

You open to Electronic drums? They've come a long way in sound, though most drummers still like the "real" ones which I can appreciate.
Like guitar players still lusting for the Tube amps instead of simulators all the time, just the special harmonics and feel.

Those $3K Roland E-drums are pretty well respected...
Direct In can be very very room friendly for a non-friendly room.
 
Well the really nice thing about electronic sets is you can record the midi and tigger whatever samples you'd like with your software, so the sounds in the module that comes with the set aren't even the only ones you can use.
 
My studio is all in one room. I use Ethan Winer's Real Traps as Gobos (sound baffles) around the kit, amps, and vocals. Works very well for isolation. Bass usually goes direct. For headphones I use several different pairs of isolation headphones and ALWAYS check the signal by recording a bit and playing it back through the studio monitors.
 
Is the room adjacent to your front yard, back yard, side yard? If you have the ground space for it, a 10' by 12' wooden shed type of thing could be utilized for a drum room. Build it then throw down a rug, put up 703 everywhere, duct in some air from your existing A/C and BAM! You've got a drum room. Just build it really close to the house so all you have to do is hop through the window. :D
 
I will be tracking pretty much everything myself. Maybe one other person laying down guitar/vocal tracks, but for the most part all the rhythm stuff will be me. It's not a problem laying the tracks down it's just getting them to sound the way I want them to. Like 'dumeril7' says I'll have to play a few test tracks and play them back to see what they sound like. I was thinking if I built a booth around them and deadened the sound a little and used headphones maybe I could get somewhat of an idea what's coming through the console. Instead of tweaking this..... playing it back.....shit too much midrange.....tweak again.....not enough. I know... I know...it's a one room studio. DEAL with it. Thanks guys. When I get going I'll post some stuff for you to check out. I got an MSR-16 coming this Friday. I can't wait.
 
Here's what I did when I was recording drums myself. I had a seperate control room and live room, but since I was always by myself that ended up being more annoying than helpful. I'd do a take, run back to the control room and listen to it, and back and forth like that.

Here's what you do and you'll be fine... if you're recording into a computer. Run each mic to its own track. Then set up some real-time effects on each trackSet up noise gates for each mic so you only hear that track when that drum is used. Set the attack really fast, and the release fairly long. After the NG, set up EQ for each track. After the EQ, set up compression.

Read through this guide on micing drums so you know you're at least micing up the set correctly.

Then, when you do a take, adjust the EQ on each track until each drum sounds good. Send all those tracks through a master stereo bus and set up some reverb and adjust it to your liking.

Set up this way you can do a lot after the fact and you don't really need to hear the drums in real-time. It'll save you a lot of time and money not having to build isolation. Hell, even when I record bands I more or less do it this way. You don't truely know what you've got until you're done mastering anyway. It's just a matter of building up your confidense with the micing process so you know what mic positions create what end product.
 
I'm not recording to computer. I am all analog. Tascam MSR-16. I am gonna start out with Kick, Snare, and 2 OH's. See what kind of sound I can get. Then maybe add some close mic'ed toms to fill it out. I'll just experiment I should be able to get a good drum sound. When I do I make a note of it and start there the next time. Thanks Sonic I'll keep you posted. I appreciate it.
 
I've got a small room - 14x 9.5" and the ceiling is peaked, 7-8 feet.

My first couple of years I covered the ceiling in bedding foam and wrapped up foam in carpets to make 4x8 panels on each of the long walls, a carpet on the back wall, and foam on the door. I built large bass traps from fiberglass insulation (4'x2'x5") for the corners. The results were very acceptable - see the link below.

Now I'm seeking to improve on the room sound - I'm replacing the diy bass traps with ones as follows:

each corner (vertical) 4'x2'x4" 703 panels (4)
along long side walls where wall meets celing (horizontal) 4'x2'x2" (4)
peaked roof corners at each end of room 2'x2'x2" (2)

The celing is going to be covered with 4" Auralex wedges

The back wall is going to be covered with 6'x4" Auralex d112/d114 (2")
the side walls are going to be covered with 8'x4' Auralex d112/114 (2")
The door is getting more 4" wedges

So I'm more than doubling the bass trappage, and replacing the cheap foam with better foam. It should also look much more professional.
 
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