My New Home Recording Studio

So today is a happy day....after years of saving, buying a house, acquiring gear, renovating, etc. I finally put the finishing touches on the home recording studio that I have been building in my basement.    Thought I'd share a few pics with my fellow musicians  

 

Thanks a lot man!   I have been playing music my whole life, but have never recording anything......this has been a lifelong dream of mine.     I literally just finished yesterday...I've been doing a little writing and I'm probably going to record a cover track or two to get a feel for my gear and software.   I also need to grab my mixing monitors before I do any real recording, the KRK Rokit 5's and the 10s sub are only for tracking/jamming with my synths.    I'm looking at a few different options for 8" mixing monitors for my room.
 
The entire room is acoustically treated, yes.     There's about $300 of soundproofing fiberglass insulation in that room...in the ceiling, walls, the home-made bass traps, etc.   The acoustic foam also helps take care of some of the high frequencies from basement duct-work, support beams, etc. 
 
Thanks for the compliment on the vibes, I worked really hard on designing an inspiring room on a budget.   Decided to go with a funky retro-chic kind of look in there with the couch and the sweet 70's bar that I turned into my mixing desk.   The pictures don't really do it justice, I've also got integrated LED light strips built into the sound absorbing panel which hangs over my desk....it's hooked up to a sound module that gets the led lights to flash or flow between colors to the beat of the music.   It's pretty damn trippy, lol. 

 

Will do for sure!   Prefer not to disclose my location as the other half of my basement consists of the hidden grow lab found in my sig, haha.    The grow room was first order of business, now the studio.   Voila the basement of my dreams!  

 

Drop me a link to your stuff and I'll check it out!  Is it on Soundcloud?    What kind of music are you into making?

 

You're right on that one.   I'm pretty good with both musical and techie stuff though, so I'm confident it'll be a steep learning curve.   I'm also a bit OCD and did a fairly extensive amount of research and studying while I saved up for all my gear so I'm not starting out a total noob.    I'm already up and running with all my synths and drum machines being controlled by my Novation Impulse49 MIDI controller (which is freaking amazing for the money btw), and is running into Logic through my Roland Quad Capture interface.  I'm already laying down basic tracks and making some noise       
 
For those of you that record, I really can't recommend the Impulse MIDI controller keyboard enough......it's AutoMap software kicks ass, and there is zero manual mapping required.   Hook it up to my Mac, and it's automatically synced to control everything in Logic:  the transpose controls, the mixer, plug-ins, etc...totally seamless.    I've also got it controlling my Moog Slim Phatty and Korg Volca Bass and Volca Beats....switching between units is a breeze, and the touch-pads are super handy for hammering out complex drum parts.
 
Still lots of learning to do, but so far I am extremely impressed with the power and versatility of my set-up.  

 

Will do!   I'm not sure if you are familiar with the Korg VOLCA series, but I have the Volca Beats and Bass....they are little analog synths with built in sequencers that make laying down patterns and beats a breeze.  They are totally badass.   Layer some FAAAAAAT   Moog sounds on top and you've got a groove 

 

Cool man!  I definitely like my hip-hop, but my music-making interests are more on the garage/psychadelic rock side of things.  That said, the Volcas I mentioned above are very condusive to hip-hop and I've been fucking around with some funky trip-hopt style beats and bass lines.

 

Nice man, that's a great little space       I feel your pain on not being able to afford gear, this is NOT a cheap hobby!     It took me 3 years from the time I bought my house to finally get all the scratch together for everything......it makes it all the sweeter when you finally bring home that shiny new gear though  

 

For anyone interested, here's the exact specs on my space and my gear from a journal I have on another forum:
 
Space:
 
My studio is a 17' x 19' room in my basement which will be used for all aspects of the recording and production process. Prior to the build, it had cement foundation walls on 3 walls which had been framed and insulated with fluffy pink insulation and vapor barrier. The ceiling was bare and the floor was bare cement. The 4th side of the room only has a partial wall as it backs onto the staircase leading down from my main floor, beyond which my basement opens up into a little workshop and laundry room.

I was happy with the amount of space I had to work with as most are forced to start out in something a lot smaller. The space needed a lot of work however, to acoustically treat it and make it a comfortable and inviting place to work. Being a new homeowner, I was on a tight budget so I lived on the online classifieds looking for gear and ways to finish my room. The rest of my time was spent here on Gearslutz researching DIY room treatment.

To cover my bar walls, I got some half-decent looking wall panels ($150 for entire room) on sale at Lowe's, and for the floor I found some heavy-duty commercial carpet tiles for dirt cheap ($25!). The floor tiles are a wonderful shade of burgundy, so I decided to embrace a retro vibe for the entire studio. I found my control desk (originally a 1970's bar which I converted), and the retro corner couch for a combined $100 to complete the look. Everything can be seen in the attached pics.
 
 
Instruments

- Fender Jaguar HH Special
- Danelectro Dano Pro
- Gretsch Alligator resonator guitar
- Fender Excelsior Pro
- Vox AC4
- Moog Slim Phatty
- Korg Volca Beats
- Korg Volca Bass
- Korg Monotron Delay

Studio / Recording Gear

- MacBook Pro with i7 processor and 8 GB RAM
- Logic Pro 9
- Novation Impulse 49 Keyboard/MIDI controller
- Roland Quad Capture audio interface
- Behringer Xenyx 1002 Mixer (for live jamming with synths)
- KRK Rokit 5's and 10s sub for jamming and tracking synths
- Yamaha HS8 studio monitors for mixing
- Shure SM57
- Audio-Technica 2035 condenser mic
- Shure SRH840 monitoring headphones
 
Acoustic Treatment

This was a priority for me, and I wanted my room to sound as good as possible on my budget. Rather than spending big bucks on expensive monitors, I went with the cheaper (yet surprisingly great) Behringer monitors, and put a good $500 into treatment.

First, I found a studio selling off some used foam, and grabbed 60 sqft of it for really cheap. Secondly, I bought a lot (and I mean a lot) of Roxul Safe n Sound insulation. A bunch went into ceiling between the joists, with cotton sheets stapled to keep it all in essentially making my entire ceiling one big bass trap. On top of this:

- super-chunk bass traps in the two front corners
- 3'x5'x 3" ceiling cloud (with integrated LED lighting)
- six 2'x4'x6" wall traps, 2 on each side wall (hung 5" off the wall), 1 on front wall/ceiling corner and one of rear wall/ceiling corner.

I've yet to test my room as I literally just put the finishing touches on it, but I will be in the near future. What I do know is that all the treatment has made a profound difference to my ears.....last night I cranked my sub and let some bass lines rock on the synths, and was absolutely blown away by how much better the room, my equipment, everything sounds. I pushed my sub to the limits, and it never really felt like there was too much bass in the room, everything sounded extremely tight and focused. Gotta say, I'm glad I went through the cost and effort of treating everything as both the look and function of these traps have far exceeded my expectations.

 

[quote name="mrsilly" post="19350057" timestamp="1389850458"]Congratulations bro happy mixing.[/quote]Thanks man!

 

So I just got back from the music store with the final and key addition to my studio - some decent studio monitors! After some side-by-side listening in the store, I went with the Yamaha HS 8's, they are so fucking sweet. Went in intending to spend a little less, but with all the time money i've sunk into acoustic treatment, I didnt want to skimp on my monitors. These Yammy's blew everything else out of the water in store, so I couldn't say no.......quite confident that I got the best monitoring speakers in the sub-$1000 price bracket.