Hello... Newbie Here......Drum Room Help???!!!!!

First off I would like to say that this is a really neat forum. I'm really thankful that there are people who care enough to help others out in time of need. My Hats off to all those who go out of their way for others. I would like to express my aggrevation with all the searching I have done trying to find as much info on building a room for recording drums. If I had alot of money......well.....I probably would have hired professionals to get the job done right from the start. But that's not an option right now. So I have to do this the hard way. Let me explain the situation. I want to build an add-on to my house. And I want to use it to track drums. The room will be roughly 17' X 14' X 8". But the height can be whatever I like. I can make it up to 10'. Maybe 12'. But 12 would be pushing it. Something that high might look a little cocky up against my house. Starting with this, here are some of my questions I really need some answers to so that I can start buying material. Remember I am starting from scratch. 1. How should the walls be built and with what? 2. Do I need a floating floor? 3. Should I arch the ceiling? 4. Should I line the walls with wood? If yes is it 1/2 way or all the way? 5. Should the whole floor be hardwood or just where the drums will be? 6. Do I need to make plans for Bass Traps and Diffusors or not? I would appreciate any help with these questions. Web sites or any other form of help would be greatly appreciated. I find alot of info for listening rooms and such but hardly nothing for drum rooms. Thanks a million, Matt Haynes Dallas, Tx.

Matt - it really depends on what sort of drum room you want - should it be live, semi live or dead - those are the options. You can build a very live room and they are great but they are always live except for some high end deadening you can achieve with curtains etc. Alternatively you can build a room which is variable - by changing the wall treatments you can go from relatively live to relatively dead. Go to my site (click John Sayers Productions log top right) and check out the drum room in Cloud Studios and then check the larger room in Left Bank studios. Cloud is totally live - no traps etc. nothing but glass and lots of angled timber - it works great and has a short reverb of around 1.2 sec which is great for drums. Flutes,percussion digeridoos all sound cool in there also. Left bank on the other hand is deader and has variable treatment along one wall that changes the rooms decay. Drums sound great in there also as does the piano. Once you've sorted that out maybe then we can talk about how to build it :) cheers john

Thanks for the reply John..........I would very much like to build it to accomodate Drums. That's first and foremost. But if can change it a little to where an acoustic guitar, mandolin or fiddle sounds sweet enough to track then that would be great also. I have done mixdowns with various studios around Dallas and in Nashville. And everybody's rooms are different ( just adds to the confusion by the way ). But there is one inevitable truth. A room with good acoustics makes really good tracks. You can take cheap mics and place them in their sweet spots and you will get a sound that's what I like to call "Set in Stone". But on the other hand, I've seen the most expensive mics in a bad room and you couldn't hardly find a sweet spot. Poor guy was moving mics forever and a day. Waste of time and money if you ask me. Especially when somebody else is forking the bill..... I will try to explain to you the best way I can to give you the best idea as to what I'm looking for. The genre of music will be mainly Bluegrass/Country. Very acoustical music. At times there will be some blues, Christian and a little Light Rock/Pop. As seasoned as you are John I'll bet you already know what kind of drum room I'll need. My favorite way of mixing down drums is big & fat and up close in your face. So they need to be pretty dry/dead. And tracked right to begin with. But Don't want to completely rid it of some of the rooms natural acoustics for good stereo seasoning. Clean Natural Reverb whose frequency "untouched" is as flat as possible is what really turns me on. We are looking at alot of brush work as well. So the drums will have to be intimate at times too. I hope this helps you out. If not let me know and I will try to explain more in detail. Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't rightly know what kind of room I'm looking for. The rooms that I've worked with in the past have never been exactly what I was looking for but, sounded alright nontheless. Although they were a little too live for my taste. There was just too much ringing from the cymbals in the overall rooms sound. And the room mics were always the ones to capture that. Lot's of producers loved it, But I hated it. Thanks again, Matt Haynes Dallas, Tx.