Getting the money...

Hi, I'm new here, as you probably already guessed, and I'm working at a studio in San Antonio, Texas that I absolutely love. I have been working there for about a year now, and I quit working here: KHM Studios, which is a multi-million dollar, 3 suite studio, which I loved but the work was too boring for me. Nothing but radio and television commercials. Every few months foley and ADR work for films would come, but not often enough, heh. So I found this studio The Looney Bin which is where I'm working now. We only do music there. It's a lot more fun and I didn't take much of a pay cut, lol. Now, I knew the owner of this studio when he was still recording bands at his house years ago, and my band even recorded there, then he attained the lease for this place about a year and a half ago and has been there since. The place was already a studio before he got it, so it was already treated, etc. He pays about $1,500 a month just for the lease, which works out to about $1 a square foot. My question is, how do you guys find the money to build your own studios? Whether it be a brand new building from the ground up, or converting rooms in your homes. I'm only 20 years old, I have about a year's worth of credit history, good credit history at that, and I really would LOVE to have my own building. I only can come up with the cost of equipment (console, interface, DAW, furniture, monitors, cables, mics, acoustic treatments, etc.), but not construction and materials cost. The equipment I would like to have ALONE will cost me well over $15k. And that is with getting things that I will want to upgrade later, meaning I am not getting the stuff I *really* want, but rather keeping it kind of within a budget. I can save up and upgrade later, yanno? I'm wanting to know what is a general price range for a small studio like the Looney Bin, capable of recording music only. A room big enough for drums, and walking space, a room for guitar cabinets, and two vocal sized booths. I have a "sketch" that I have done in PhotoShop of the layout I would like to have, but I have no way of putting up (hosting it) for anyone to see. I can e-mail it if anyone would like to take a peek and give me an estimate? I used the search and found prices and whatnot for studios that would be wayyyy out of my league in price and fanciness. So I couldn't get any kind of idea. Any help? Thanks so much in advance. ~006

I have a "sketch" that I have done in PhotoShop of the layout I would like to have, but I have no way of putting up (hosting it) for anyone to see

you can post it here using the "Add Attachment" facility at the bottom of the posting page. cheers john

OK a little off topic of studio design

how do you guys find the money to build your own studios? Whether it be a brand new building from the ground up, or converting rooms in your homes. I'm only 20 years old, I have about a year's worth of credit history, good credit history at that, and I really would LOVE to have my own building.

My answer... blood, sweat & tears resulting in a big ringing in my ears. I've been a gigging blue collar musician my entire working life. I'm 33 and have had my share of financial ups and downs. I started with good credit at age 18-20, but in my early twenties I spent a lot of money various pleasures.... long story but it screwed up my credit. Age 25 I smartened up, been clean for 8 years now. In this 8 years I've become a husband, a dad, a homeowner and cleaned up my credit (partially from moving from Canada to Florida) AND my career has taken off and stabalized. So how can I afford what I got and want? I keep good credit that I take advantage of when neccasry and pay it off. I make sure my income sources are stable and always try to make more money. As far as the big purchase goes keep good credit!!! You need two years of good credit and a minimum of a 680 credit score to get a mortgage. 720 or more is ideal. My brother in law at age 22 bought his 1st house. He did a lot of research, took advantage of many goverment grants like HUD, spent time waiting and did it. Good luck, Marc

Here is the layout I started with, it's got a control room, a live room, and a guitar amp/vocal booth so far. I still need to have an office, a smaller vocal booth (small enough for 1/2 people, and if somebody wanted to play an acoustic guitar sitting down, comfortably), a smaller guitar cabinet room (for kind of an "iso box"), a bathroom, a storage closet (for cables, soldering equipment, etc.). In the live room I want to have a cabinet to house all of my microphones, mic/instrument/speaker cables, drum things (zero rings, ring gels), pop screens, etc. I was just going to store all of my mic stands in the live room instead of devoting a room to them. I want a big live room so that an entire band can fit in there. Having the guitar cabinets isolated into booths, and bass going direct (or whatever), vocalist in a booth, that way they can all play together (except the vocalist, of course :P), and I can track them together as if they are playing a show or whatever. That way I can offer lower rates for people that just want to do something like that, quick session, just set up the mics, and hit record, yanno? Then I want the booths to be right, and nice. So that I can do a serious production for bands that want that as well. Have the drummer in the "live room" all by himself, and have the guitar cabinets in the other rooms, and have the guitarists in the control room doing scratch tracks while the drummer lays his tracks down...you know how this works. But it would be a pretty good sized drum room so that I can get that huge sound if I wanted, see? The glass in between the control room and the live room should be of pretty big dimensions, I want it to be most of that wall...or actually make up that wall, not all the way "floor-to-ceiling", but pretty close. Angled glass of course. I just can't figure out how to design the other rooms in conjunction to my hourglass shape of the control and live rooms. Any ideas? ~006

hey 006 are you building from the ground up or do you have a space to convert. and here is a layout i drew up last september

This is initially a ground up project. I want to see how much it would cost to do though. If it's wayyy more than what I really *should* spend, then I will convert rooms at the house. I have a two car (tight fit, lol, as in, you have to pull a car out to get in the other, etc.) garage downstairs, cement slab (of course), with the typical construction, and then upstairs I have a bedroom, and a living area with a bathroom. The dimensions escape me at the moment, but the living area is about the same size as the garage (maybe 2-3 feet smaller on l and w), and the bedroom is a good size for a control room. There is a closet (probably 4.5x5) in the bedroom that is a walk in, it's perfect for a guitar amplifier cabinet, or even as a vocal booth. Plenty of room for that use. The garage is big enough to fit a huge drumset, guitar rigs, and a singer...The attic is accessible upstairs through a door, and in the garage of course through the pull-down ladder thing. I can get to the garage part of the attic from the upstairs entry, and vice versa, so routing cables (XLR snake) would be no problem. Only thing is that there is a lot of stuff in the garage, along the walls, that would be a pain to find a new place to house, heh. We have metal cabinets and a fridge and freezer in there, as well as a workbench opposite the metal cabinets, etc. Still, I would like to find out the cost of building from the ground up. Nothing fancy for the outside. I would rather have the insides look spectacular and the outside appear to be a shithole, lol, if that would save me a bunch of money. I designed the live room on that layout after the garage here, so it's about the same size, like 15'x15' or so. I added some footage on the layout though to make it a bit bigger. I downloaded the trial for Sketchup..I'm not really prepared to spend $500 for the full version, because I can do simple designs in PhotoShop...they get the point across. The only drawback is that I cannot measure angles of things, etc. in PS...oh well. I'm not looking to building something that will be so amazing that I can compete with a studio like Keith's (www.khmstudios.com), but something along the lines of where I work now www.looneybinstudio.com. I know that nothing is perfect. And that anything can be made "professional" if you can get use to the environment and know it's tendencies (like I know I need to cut some highs when I mix in my bedroom project studio). But I would like to have it somewhat "right" so that it's easier to mix in. I like your layout. I'm going to keep trying to fit the rooms I want on the layout I'm designing. Maybe somebody can tell me what's wrong with mine once I'm done, so that I can make some changes. I noticed a lot of the designs that I have seen use a LOT of angled walls. I'm assuming this is to reflect sound to a certain spot in the room (bass traps, diffusers, etc.). I'm learning a lot about how a room *should* be designed just from looking at those. This is such a great forum. ~006

Aloha, Some of it depends on material/labor costs in your area. Out here (Hawaii) materials are at a premium plus shipping. :shock: I have seen estimates anywhere from $100-$150 sq/ft tossed around. Your mileage may vary. :wink: Aloha 8)