"High Tech" home recording technique

[815C]

I hit a new pinnacle of sophistication in home recording last night. I've spent a bundle on a Pro Tools Digi001 studio and have a high end Taylor acoustic I've been experimenting with. The sound quality I was getting was BAD - even by my standards.
So last night I had a rare brain storm - perhaps its the room reverb that is messing up my tone (my recording gear is set up in a spare bedroom with bare drywall walls). Instead of deadening the room by sticking acoustic foam rubber all over the place, I got a few mic stands and a king size quilt and made a tent - just like what your kids play in. I got inside, sat on the floor, positioned the condensor mic, played a few bars and presto bingo - great tone on the recording!

Maybe Quincy Jones will read this and recruit me to engineer his next project!

Peace.

[cotten]

Great idea! Glad it worked, but Quincy may not enjoy playing on the floor inside your tent.....

cotten

[NoPickguard]

Think it could help these guys?

[James Willer]

thats interesting as I'm setting up in a spare room, bare walls and such. Theres a little reverb in the room and I was thinking of what I should do about it. I haven't started recording yet so I don't know how it will sound yet. I'm glad somebody's thinking!

[Livingston]

815C,

I had a similar experience. I too have my recording set up in a spare room, along with a treadmill, two computer workstations, stereo system, book shelves, video shelves, CD collection and a few other odds and ends. Since the room had little bare walls and few right angled flat surfaces facing each other, I figured it would be suitable for recording my acoustics with mics.

I experimented for months and ultimately did not like the sound. I finally took several mic stands with booms and positioned the booms horizontally. I draped sleeping bags over the mic stands to create an isolation booth. Along with some decent condensor mics and specific mic locations, I found that the make shift isolation booth helped to create nice recordings of my acoustic.

It adds to the set up and break down time but I guess that's how it goes. Hoping to some day install something more permanent but with two kids and wife sharing this spare multipurpose room, it may be a while.

Good luck and let us know any further successes in your recording studio.

[Hondo]

Doesn't it get hot inside those tents?

[travisbrant]

I used to do some recording in a studio that had a giant parachute hanging from the ceiling! It was supposed to serve the same purpose as your blankets. Looked cool, sounded great but a bit strange... Whatever works I guess!

[rockdonnystyle]

It's legal to talk about prices of stuff other than Taylor guitars right? how much does pro tools cost?

[jcor]

815C,
Glad it worked out for you. david_m recently suggested making an isolation room out of bed spreads. I had no doubt he knows what he's talking about. Even so, now it's confirmed.

[815C]

Rockdonnystyle, here's what I spent for Pro Tools...

Pro Tools Digi001 hardware, software, and "Factory Bundle" of plug-ins was $1,200

A MAC G4 to run it on cost $1,600

A pair of monitor speakers, a couple mics, TOAST software (for burning CDs)....

The whole sheebang was around $4,100.

The price on Digi001 may be dropping as Digidesign has just released the Digi002.

[rockdonnystyle]

oh wow, that's not so bad...I thought it would be a lot more...btw, if you would like to buy a whole studio, there is one on sale on ebay for 90,000, lol...pro tools studio, drum set, client list, etc etc

[jira]

In my old studio I had oriental rugs hung on the walls. A kind of tapestry effect, which worked great. I imagine thick carpet could work pretty well also.

[Bob Womack]

Well, I held off answering this so that everyone else could get in his two cents worth. You've discovered that "necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows" (actually, of invention). In a studio, the WHOLE intent is to maximize the sound quality and we typically don't care if it ends up looking a little odd.

Large studios employ roll-around, half- and full-height walls with either reflective or absorptive surfaces. They call these, "gobos". To dry up an area or isolate a source, they'll surround a performer or his amp with absorptive walls. To liven up a sound, they'll use reflective gobos.

Congrats! You just intuitively created your own gobos! Experiment with creating an absorptive wall by draping quilts over a horizontally set boom stand. Try just placing the wall behind you or in front of you. Try creating a "V" shaped area in front of you or behind you.

Have fun!

Bob

[stratokatsu]

My biggest problem to get a good sound in a rather small spare bedroom turned music room has been to get rid of anything that could vibrate and buzz in the background. Without knowing what I was doing at the beginning, I put a bunch of stuff in that room including tools, cd's, office supplies, trophys and videos. Once I eliminated much of it, or put much of it on carpet swatches, the deadened reactive noise let my guitars come through.

I also had a strange phenomenom occuring where I'd play and think I heard the phone ringing when it wasn't. A friend who used to work in a studio explained some things to me about parallel walls and how to angle the amps and it got better. Being a small room, putting things at angles made it feel even smaller, but that also made me reconsider even more of the aforementioned junk above to get rid of it or move it to another room.

In the end, the best investment I made was to subscribe to Recording Magazine. Once I searched their back issues for articles about setting up a home studio and got those issues, things became clear and I'm making real progress towards creating a room with truly good acoustic sounds.