John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hey, everyone!

Let me introduce myself, I'm Tim and I'm the singer and guitarist for a band called LORD, which was born out of the ashes of a band called Dungeon that I disbanded late last year. We've done quite a lot of tours both here and internationally and I've produced pretty much all of Dungeon and LORD's material here in my own studio.

It's been relatively fine to edit and mix in (despite the poor acoustic space - I've learned to compensate for the room's shortcomings) but tracking anything has been next to impossible for anything that's not DI'd, because the studio has really been moving from rented spare bedroom to rented spare bedroom.

Until now.

Let me also preface this post and say that when it comes to making an album sound good, I do OK. When it comes to building anything, I'm basically a moron and would somehow find a way to lose a leg just sanding down a wall with sandpaper. My time is also incredibly limited with the touring and recording schedule that LORD has over the next 6 months or so.

OK, if you haven't given up and gone to a more interesting post by now, here's what I have and what I want to achieve.


The space

I've recently moved into a nice 2 storey house that has essentially a self-contained granny flat on the lower floor. It's got 3 rooms - a large open room, a room which is currently used as a laundry area and a toilet area.

The floors are cement, the walls are brick and the ceiling is basically the wooden floorboards of the house above.

Along the top of the rooms are 3 beams - 2 wooden support beams that run the length of the house and one brick and steel one which goes right down the middle. Across the centre of the live room is a steel support beam too.

The walls around the control room and toilet area are brick and I don't know for sure if they're structural walls. They don't appear to be, but then again as I mentioned earlier, I'm a moron, so I'd rather not say for sure if they are or aren't!

The ceiling is 2.45 m high at it's highest point and the support beams come down about 20 cm, the main centre support in the live room down another 10 cm again from that. All of the other measurements are in the studio_top.gif graphic and in the next post, I'll attach the studio .SKP file which is to scale.


The surroundings

To the left is a creek and the back end of the neighbours large back yards (so they're a pretty decent distance away), to the front is the street, to the rear is a huge block that faces bushland and to the right is our closest neighbours, who are maybe about 15 metres away.


The goals of the studio

OK, well, these goals may change, depending on what we end up doing with the space.

Ideally, I'd like to turn the large live room area into large recording room and part-time rehearsal room, knock down the wall on the side of the control room and extend it into where the existing corridor is and leave the toilet/kitchen area as-is. I'd like to have a window cut out of the wall into the live room between that and the (hopefully extended) control room.

The control room will be an audio / video production studio. 2 computers - one for multitrack audio work and one for video work, which will be attached to a wall-mounted flat panel TV.

The computers are rackmount machines and are quite noisy so I'd be looking to work out some kind of sound isolation for them under the main console desk. I won't be running any large scale mixers or anything, most of my work will be done "in the box".


Noise issues

As everyone may have gathered, I play in a heavy metal band. We're not exactly quiet! We're not STUPIDLY loud but it's certainly louder than a couple of guys jamming with some acoustic guitars. If we were to use this as an occasional rehearsal room, we'd have drums, loud bass amp, guitar amps, and PA all cranking fairly loud.

The noise going up into the house isn't a GREAT concern but I'd rather limit it as much as possible, especially considering the floors aren't really that thick. We're quite far away from neighbours but again, a loud band is a loud band and I'd rather not have angry villagers with pitchforks and torches on my doorstep every night.

The control room is quite susceptible to outside noises too, especially people walking in the rooms above it. Again, not a massive concern, but something I'd like to minimise as much as possible.


Budget

We have quite a bit to play with, likely past the $20,000 AUD amount, but we'd like to keep it down as much as possible of course.


Time restraints

As I mentioned earlier, my time is very limited as to what I'm able to put into this because of recording and touring schedules, so I'd essentially be looking at getting people to build the studio for me based on the designs that (hopefully) we can work out here.

I'd like to very optimistically think it will be able to get done by February 2007 because I have a couple of big, well paying projects coming my way around then, but... well, after reading this board for a while, I'm dubious about that projected date!


Misc. info

Originally the studio was going to be just inside the live room area and split it in half, and it was based on the Small Studio design, but modified by John for me (thanx, John!). That may still be an option if we can't make use of the extra space like I'd prefer to.


There, how's that for a first post?

Be gentle with me, folks - you wouldn't tease a moron, would you? HAHA!

Any advice, criticism, abuse and/or gratuitous money is welcome. Cheers!

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Here's the Sketchup file. Excuse my poor Sketchup skills.

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Hey Lord Tim,

Good drawings bud! Good to see some juicy info and pics man.

I have a funny feeling that your designated area for CR will be too small....have a squiz at kangaroo st Studios here and you will see a similar space - without the wall....

Might be worth CR in large room and amp/ISO/drums in smaller room?

I know you wanna rehearse too so probanly not a good idea.

If you want to go down the path of smaller room as CR then put in walls and spaces and see how much room you have left. Grab dimensions off mine - and my CR is small....

cheers

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Sideshow
http://www.songcave.net

Yeah, that's what I'm a little afraid of.

With the control room just being JUST in the existing laundry area, it would definitely be too small. That's why I'm hoping I can trash the wall into the corridor to extend it (hopefully without the house falling on my head - that would suck ).

I guess at the end of the day, I'm happy to settle for what's most practical, although a space to record a fairly large drum kit is one of the most desirable outcomes if it's possible.

I'll check out your studio, though! Cheers!

EDIT: Checked out your studio - awesome stuff! I'll be taking notes and stealing ideas, I think! HAHA!

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Go for your life Metal Man!!
That's wht I am here for - sharing ideas - hope it's not a one way street!!??
Thanks for the feedback.
A bummer re the "large" drum kit...as you see in John's drawing he did for us he widened the space for kit and mic stands etc etc without being too cramped....also allows for some limited ambient mics too.
The drummers I work with nowadays all seem to have smaller and smaller kits...BUT in the 80s and 90s!!! - wow my mate had a replica of Neil Peart's kit..crazy - and he could play as well too...I think the dedication (and being a pen friend of Neil's) showed the lengths we go to for our Muse huh!?

In relation to that wall - you are gonna have to get it checked out by a builder dude - you knew that. I can put you onto a guy in the gong if you need...lemme know.


My wife and I have residencies in a few places in the Gong and surrounds - but I ain't tellin you where 'cause you would come and try and intimidate our fans and I am not sure how you like renditions of Sabbath along wit other classics....in large clubs....

We used to play Transylvania by Maiden but nobody knew or appreciated it. Ah to be "wall paper" in a club...pays them bills and gives DJs and Hip Hop funsters a run for their money though..

keep rockin heavy dude - lemme know where you are playin and we might pop in and mosh for a spell...
Cheers

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Sideshow
http://www.songcave.net

maybe something like this - where the drums and guitars are more isolated and divide the drum room into 2 - drum and iso booth. use glass doors all around. this way all the players can see each other...

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Glenn

That's another awesome design!

It's good that it'd save knocking down the wall I was worried about but I wonder if it'd be far too small to record the size kit that I'd be thinking of recording. That also kills the idea of the rehearsal space (which may not be realistic anyway).

Good point about the control room space, though - I wonder if it'd still be too small even with that wall knocked down?




Ah, trust me, I'm not that scary when I go see a band, I enjoy it for what it is! HAHA!

It's pretty cool to see other people on here who play Maiden. Back when John's son was in Dungeon with me, we used to spend hours jamming away on Maiden songs, much to the annoyance of the other guys who just wanted to get on with the damn rehearsal!

All of our upcoming show dates are at www.lord.net.au (sorry for the spam, everyone!)

Anyway, after we get a workable design idea, I might have a word to you about that builder you know to see what we can actually do to the structure of the place.

Cheers to all for your help so far, I really appreciate it!

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it might not be too small after taking the wall down but it becomes the focal point of traffic into the live room or kitchen/bath room. another option is put the drums in the larger room and the guitars in the smaller one. are you using a neil peart sized set? I've recorded some metal/alternate bands with 15-16 piece sets in some fairly small places (8x10 room), so it really depends on the set and the drummer's configuration of it...

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Glenn

The kit is quite large, and has quite a lot of cymbals. Thankfully only single bass drum but I can bet any money someone's bound to come in with a double bass kit eventually for me to record them, so I'd need a fair amount of space.

And absolutely agreed about the passage way into the kitchen/toilet area - finding a way to get that to work well with a control room on that side would be quite the task.

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Hi Tim - welcome to the site.

could you maybe try a layout like this?? I can't post the skp as I'm still on damn dialup

cheers
john

Hey, John! Great to be here!

I figured you'd be busy with the moving and ISP issues and all of that stuff so I'd throw the question out to the forum at large until you were back in action. Hope the move is going well!

I'd really like to take advantage of the large space as much as I can to see if we can use that as a rehearsal space if at all possible.

Failing that, recording drums are really high on desirable list too.

The small kitchen/toilet area already has existing plumbing in there and a toilet and all of that kind of stuff (apologies to all if I didn't mention that earlier), so I'd really prefer not to do anything with that room for recording.

I'd be also looking to hang up a monitor on the wall in front of the console somewhere, above the dual (eventually triple) LCD computer screens so I can have an unobstructed view while video editing, so a door in front of the console would get in the way of that idea a bit.

What's really frustrating about this space is that there's a good amount of area to play with but because of the current layout, it'll be way costly to relocate a lot of the existing amenities and structures to make it all work more efficiently.

All of these designs so far have been absolutely fantastic but still not quite achieving what I'm after, and I have a feeling that's got a lot to do with the layout of the existing stuff. Sorry for being so picky, everyone!

I know this isn't ideal, but what if we were to use the entire laundry + corridor as the control room area, knocking down that existing wall between the corridor and laundry, and blocking off the door at the end of the corridor that leads into the kitchen/toilet, and having the entry to that area coming in from the large live room instead?

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Maybe this is closer??

cheers
john

OK, now that's awesome!

Provided we can knock down that brick wall on the edge of the laundry area (which I'd say we can) that would be perfect!

For the live room, is this taking into account any soundproofing at all? And will there need to be any diffusers, etc. in there?

Well, assuming the wall is smashable, this is a go! ... where do I go from here? Should I start calling in builders and archetects, etc.?

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No it's not - but it gets the starting point and a workable layout.

cheers
john

Ah, thought as much.

Well, time to get someone to look at this wall I want to trash to see if it's feasible to knock down before we get too carried away with it all, I guess.

Calling Sideshow! Are you still willing to share your local builder contact? I might give him a yell to get it all checked out. Drop me a PM and we'll chat.

Thank you, John, and thank you everyone! We're away!

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