Developments
Nov. 27th, 2012 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillFirst, Larry, one of Kip's colleagues, has a band called the Emancipators and Larry asked if I would like to open for them at a little local coffee house called The Creek. So, hey, a gig. And it's on my birthday. The only fly in the ointment is that he suggested I bring my CD. And since it's got "It's Okay To Be Takei" and "Atheist's Anthem" on it, I'm not so sure that's a good idea. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that yet.
There will be another open mic night at the Unitarian Church in January. It's not the weekend of GaFilk and it is before we leave for Quarter Tone so I will probably go; I had fun at the last one.
I don't have a space to record in yet but I'm working on it. More on that below. Meanwhile to prepare I've gone to practicing an hour a day with the metronome. After more than a week of this, the metronome has matured considerably. Where it used to be a mortal enemy bent on ruining my music it has now progressed to being a clumsy but well meaning almost partner most of the time. So, progress on that front. I have been practicing recording. I meant to do an hour a day but so far I'm not attaining that consistently. I figure that will give me a lot of time to work on scratch tracks.
So, actual recording.
I haven't been, because the space I was using at the college where my husband works has been torn out and turned into something else. My backup plan was to build a recording booth at my house. I looked at recording booths online and once I had gotten back up from pretending to fall over dead at the prices (four thousand dollars? Really?) I wondered if I could build something myself.
And about that time I ran into Stuart at Con*Stellation and he said something along the lines of "Oh, I know a guy..." and introduced me to Terry, an engineer / architect who speciallizes in high end studios. And who kindly offered to chat with me on the phone in spite of the fact that my total budget for this project is probably less than what the big names spend on a chair.
I was thinking about building something in the Rumpus Room (don't look at me like that; I didn't name it Rumpus; that's what the circuit breaker board calls it. It's the room off the kitchen, with a little nook off it where the washer and dryer live, and a door to the workshop.) The problem is that 1) I don't want to reduce the resale value of the house (long-time readers may recall this was an issue for the boatshop too) and 2) I mix and master in the Rumpus Room so I don't want another structure in there making it less symmetrical and changing the way the sound bounces around.
My first plan was to build something that could be repeatedly set up and taken down. Terry convinced me that was probably a non-starter. There are two issues with recording spaces--sound entering from outside (hark--the neighbor has a new lawnmower!) and sound bouncing around inside (wow she sounds like she's singing in a shower stall.) While the sound bouncing around inside could be dealt with in the usual way (lots of padding; there is a reason why I refer to the padded room) a temporary structure couldn't be made heavy enough to screen out sound from the outside without very expensive connectors that are probably the reason the recording booths I looked at were so expensive.
While we were chewing this over he asked where the various doors in the pictures (I had sent him pictures of the Rumpus Room) led. And when I got to "garage but now it's my workshop" I thought "hmm." And I went out to have a look at the workshop.
There's a niche about 4 feet deep by 8 feet wide in the back of it. That's just about what I would need for a recording booth. And I think I could give up that much space in the workshop and still be able to build another boat if indicated. Certainly I should be able to build anything else that comes to mind easily enough.
Plus the floor is about four inches lower in the workshop, which gives me more height inside when I add floor and ceiling. This will be useful because the recording booth floor must be floated off the concrete slab a bit which takes a little space, and the ceiling must be padded, which takes a little space, and if I don't have enough headroom I hunch, which is bad for both my body and my voice.
So I think I may end up putting the recording booth in the workshop. It will have to have better sound separation, because sound from the outside seems to enter the workshop more readily than the Rumpus Room, but I can build the walls as actual walls--studs in the middle, layer of MDF or sheetrock on each side, which lets me stuff the wall with rock wool and hang the inside sheetrock on resilient channel to reduce sound conduction. If I don't mind making the walls really thick, I can do 2 x 4 studs on a 2 x 6 header and footer, alternating the studs to touch either the outside wall or the inside wall but not both, to reduce sound conduction through the 2 x 4s. This would take a bit more space than the resilient channel but might cost less. I need to think about how to get ventilation in from the house, because the boatshop gets pretty hot and cold, and I need to think about lights.
And thus I spent some time the last couple of days cleaning that area out. In this process I came across my 1/3 completed octave mandolin case that I really ought to finish. Because I really need a better mandolin case and that puppy will be really pretty. I also threw out a bunch of wood and plywood scraps that, let's face it, are too small or oddly shaped to be useful. And discovered that my dratted epoxy hardener has somehow eaten through (partially through?) its plastic bottle and made a mess on the floor that had to be scrubbed down with vinegar plus I need to find another dratted bottle. I hate to put it in a glass bottle in a workroom with a concrete floor but I may have to. Basically I have been discovering the kind of thing you discover when you move back into a working space you left unused for longer than expected.
There will be another open mic night at the Unitarian Church in January. It's not the weekend of GaFilk and it is before we leave for Quarter Tone so I will probably go; I had fun at the last one.
I don't have a space to record in yet but I'm working on it. More on that below. Meanwhile to prepare I've gone to practicing an hour a day with the metronome. After more than a week of this, the metronome has matured considerably. Where it used to be a mortal enemy bent on ruining my music it has now progressed to being a clumsy but well meaning almost partner most of the time. So, progress on that front. I have been practicing recording. I meant to do an hour a day but so far I'm not attaining that consistently. I figure that will give me a lot of time to work on scratch tracks.
So, actual recording.
I haven't been, because the space I was using at the college where my husband works has been torn out and turned into something else. My backup plan was to build a recording booth at my house. I looked at recording booths online and once I had gotten back up from pretending to fall over dead at the prices (four thousand dollars? Really?) I wondered if I could build something myself.
And about that time I ran into Stuart at Con*Stellation and he said something along the lines of "Oh, I know a guy..." and introduced me to Terry, an engineer / architect who speciallizes in high end studios. And who kindly offered to chat with me on the phone in spite of the fact that my total budget for this project is probably less than what the big names spend on a chair.
I was thinking about building something in the Rumpus Room (don't look at me like that; I didn't name it Rumpus; that's what the circuit breaker board calls it. It's the room off the kitchen, with a little nook off it where the washer and dryer live, and a door to the workshop.) The problem is that 1) I don't want to reduce the resale value of the house (long-time readers may recall this was an issue for the boatshop too) and 2) I mix and master in the Rumpus Room so I don't want another structure in there making it less symmetrical and changing the way the sound bounces around.
My first plan was to build something that could be repeatedly set up and taken down. Terry convinced me that was probably a non-starter. There are two issues with recording spaces--sound entering from outside (hark--the neighbor has a new lawnmower!) and sound bouncing around inside (wow she sounds like she's singing in a shower stall.) While the sound bouncing around inside could be dealt with in the usual way (lots of padding; there is a reason why I refer to the padded room) a temporary structure couldn't be made heavy enough to screen out sound from the outside without very expensive connectors that are probably the reason the recording booths I looked at were so expensive.
While we were chewing this over he asked where the various doors in the pictures (I had sent him pictures of the Rumpus Room) led. And when I got to "garage but now it's my workshop" I thought "hmm." And I went out to have a look at the workshop.
There's a niche about 4 feet deep by 8 feet wide in the back of it. That's just about what I would need for a recording booth. And I think I could give up that much space in the workshop and still be able to build another boat if indicated. Certainly I should be able to build anything else that comes to mind easily enough.
Plus the floor is about four inches lower in the workshop, which gives me more height inside when I add floor and ceiling. This will be useful because the recording booth floor must be floated off the concrete slab a bit which takes a little space, and the ceiling must be padded, which takes a little space, and if I don't have enough headroom I hunch, which is bad for both my body and my voice.
So I think I may end up putting the recording booth in the workshop. It will have to have better sound separation, because sound from the outside seems to enter the workshop more readily than the Rumpus Room, but I can build the walls as actual walls--studs in the middle, layer of MDF or sheetrock on each side, which lets me stuff the wall with rock wool and hang the inside sheetrock on resilient channel to reduce sound conduction. If I don't mind making the walls really thick, I can do 2 x 4 studs on a 2 x 6 header and footer, alternating the studs to touch either the outside wall or the inside wall but not both, to reduce sound conduction through the 2 x 4s. This would take a bit more space than the resilient channel but might cost less. I need to think about how to get ventilation in from the house, because the boatshop gets pretty hot and cold, and I need to think about lights.
And thus I spent some time the last couple of days cleaning that area out. In this process I came across my 1/3 completed octave mandolin case that I really ought to finish. Because I really need a better mandolin case and that puppy will be really pretty. I also threw out a bunch of wood and plywood scraps that, let's face it, are too small or oddly shaped to be useful. And discovered that my dratted epoxy hardener has somehow eaten through (partially through?) its plastic bottle and made a mess on the floor that had to be scrubbed down with vinegar plus I need to find another dratted bottle. I hate to put it in a glass bottle in a workroom with a concrete floor but I may have to. Basically I have been discovering the kind of thing you discover when you move back into a working space you left unused for longer than expected.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 01:09 pm (UTC)I like your studio plans. Hmmmm...IIRC, mass is what stops the transmission of sound. Might brick be appropriate for one layer of your walls? There's some discussion of the issues here: http://lenardaudio.com/education/04_acoustics_3.html, but defer to your consultant in this.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-29 01:42 am (UTC)Regarding brick--I had in mind a structure that could be torn out if a new owner of the house didn't want it there. Brick is exceedingly difficult to remove. The studio design books I've been reading seem to think a stud wall as described, perhaps with two layers of sheetrock or MDF on the inside, sometimes even with two layers of different thicknesses inside, does the job. Also I know how to work wood, and MDF/sheetrock looks fairly straightforward. Brick would be a whole new skillset.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-29 04:23 am (UTC)I can see the problems with brick. So, bad, or at least troublesome, idea. Do you plan to do your own acoustic isolation details, or is your consultant willing to provide them, perhaps for a fee? It might be worth paying him for details, unless the design books are really trustworthy and down and dirty with how walls, floors, and ceilings are put together. It's hard to get details right, and fixing them once you've built them wrong can be expensive and time consuming.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 05:29 pm (UTC)After more than a week of this, the metronome has matured considerably.
*snerk*
no subject
Date: 2012-11-29 01:50 am (UTC)Regarding bringing the CDs, one of the tunes on the CD is called Atheist's Anthem. It's quite a positive song (you can stream it here if you want)but this *is* the bible belt. And my husband works at a Baptist college.
And another tune is called It's Okay To Be Takei It's about George Takei offering to let people use his name to mean "gay" when the Tennessee Legislature was considering the "Don't Say Gay" bill forbidding teachers to mention homosexuality in school. It is available here if you're interested
So yeah--not politically charged in any sensible part of the world. But I live in rural Tennessee.