The making of Sonic Clang's Studio Videos (updated 11-06-06)

vids are nice, pix are cool too. maybe some here?

Look here for some photos. http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=192327 Also, if you've got a myspace account, check my profile here http://myspace.com/sonicclang and click on my pictures. I've got two pictures of the studio painted and it almost looks done.

Well, I finally got part 7 done last night and I uploaded it to youtube this morning. You can check it out right here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF--LZQ-eOw If you're lost, or don't know what this is all about, check out the previous videos. If you watch the first one that will pretty much get you up to speed to watch the latest one. Enjoy :)

By popular demand.... They're back.... Chronic Slang, ah er, Colonic Stang, ah er, Sonic Clang.... Please leave your hammers at the box....

Ha!!!! http://www.drinkfocus.com/beer/beer-history.php It's true!!! :lol: OMG, the rituals you went through for that ceiling system... :shock: How many layers did you use? And is that drywall, or MDF, or...? I must say... Although it's a lot of work, you guys are sure having a lot of fun with each other. I'm genuinely jealous -- for the most part, my build is rather boring, in part because I don't have a gaggle of friends going out of their way to help me with mine! :( And I'd probably be too anal anyway! :lol: --Keith :mrgreen:

SonicClang wrote:

I suppose I can start putting more disclaimers in from here on.

That would be good... And you don't have to consume any air time doing so... A caption during the video here and there would do the trick. --Keith :mrgreen:

Yeah the ceiling took FOREVER! We started it in late 2001 and we didn't finish it until early 2006. So it took well over 5 years just for that portion of the build. But, as you'll see in upcoming episodes, work didn't continue on the same pace it has been. We went from working almost every night, to working one day a week for the last three years. But yeah, the ceiling tiles are constructed of two layers of 1/2" OSB and one layer of 1/2" drywall, and it's all bolted up to those 2X4's. And as you saw in part 7, we used weather stripping to seal each piece. Being able to remove parts of the ceiling was a major thing for me. When I was still living with my parents, we built a few bedrooms in their basement and we drywalled right over a bunch of utilities. The next spring we went to turn on the outside faucet and it burst INSIDE the basement ceiling. Water was absolutely everywhere. The next room they built they used drop ceiling... but that wouldn't work for me if I wanted my basement somewhat soundproof, so I designed this system. It's insane, but it fricken works. :) Eh... I'm not too extremely worried these days about including a bunch of disclaimers. I don't think anyone would find my videos on youtube randomly and think "Oh cool, I'm going to build a studio like this guy and follow what he's doing exactly". Most people are finding the videos off this site, and the HR site, so they're already doing research on the subject.

Part 8 is now done and up on youtube.com! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBVt1ow8ps It's getting close to the end now folks. Only one or two more episodes left and this will be all wrapped up. I hope you enjoy this episode and the one(s) yet to come.

Interesting observations:

• You're playing some Dream Theater again. :twisted:
• Tracks are from "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulance," and subject matter is mental illness. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm... ;-)
• Dream Theater mentioned by name. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
• You had people working two years ago whom you cannot identify now. :lol:

As usual, another very entertaining episode. --Keith :mrgreen:

Well that guy was only over for about 30 minutes and I can't remember his name. I mean, I remember him being over, just not his name :) I'm pretty sure he worked with pete at one of his previous jobs, but they don't hang out any more. Like I told you before, Dream Theater is almost all I listened to for a couple years :)

So, talk about how you kept yourself motivated to finish the job over such a long period of time. I realize you had a lot of starts and stops for various reasons, and that the time frame you had anticipated was (as is typically the case) much shorter than reality. Some people, when they get going on big projects that they didn't realize was so big, they start cutting huge corners in order to speed up completion... Yet that really doesn't seem to happen with studio projects, at least that I have seen chronicled here... :roll: It must have been hard at times to muster up the strength and motivation to down there to work, and then yet at the end of the day be just 0.01% closer to the finish line........ :? For me, although I don't usually consciously think about it this way, I usually have some kind of daily mini-goal I work towards and usually accomplish... It's kind of like running a marathon and just setting a goal to get to the end of the next block, over and over again... :roll: --Keith :mrgreen:

Very good topic of discussion! How to stay motivated... The overall thing that has kept me moving is the fact that I want a recording studio in my house :) but of course when I come home from a hard day at work and I'm tired and I'm years away from finishing, that's not going to get me downstairs to work. So the big question is, what keeps you motivated on a day to day basis? In my case I think the fact that my friend Pete has been so closely involved has definitely helped. And once our band broke up, we went from practicing on Tuesday nights, to working in the studio Tuesday night. We enjoy hanging out together and we usually have a good time building and talking, it hasn't necessarily always felt like WORK. With the two of us working on this thing, we weren't going to let ourselves cut corners and build something that wouldn't be of the highest standards. If we did do that, we'd know it and we'd have a hard time looking at each other. Plus, when you've spent years working on a project, the last thing you want to do is get lazy near the end just to finish. "It's taken us this long to get this far, what's another year going to hurt?" In 2006 (as you'll see in the next episode) I got REAL sick of working on a studio. I just wanted to HAVE a studio. So this year there was a big push to finish and the most amount of work got done in 2006 than in any year since we started. Then in about July a local newspaper reporter saw a couple of my videos of the construction process on youtube and e-mailed me asking if he could come over and do a story on me. At that point I was still pretty far away from being able to say it was done. The walls hadn't been painted yet and all the ceiling wasn't even done. So I had a couple big "work all weekend until we're so tired we can't work anymore" sessions with my brother in law John. And then the weekend before the reporter came my wife helped me get everything painted and finished up. We ended up having to completely repaint the entire live room because we hated the initial color. And I was still hanging a door for the control room literally 20 minutes before the guy showed up. At the time, it was an extremely stressful couple of weeks, and I hated the fact that I had to work SO hard! But now the studio is about 99% done because of that big push. So I guess the best thing anyone can do to get motivated is to get interviewed by a newspaper. :) I promise you'll work your ass off to get it done.

very cool, sonicclang (the newspaper interview, not to mention being 99% done). Did the story run? Is there a link to it anywhere? Regarding motivation, it seems to me that a lot of people work feverishly until the studio is functional, and that last 1% seems to suffer (ig, see Woodlock, Paul....)

The story hasn't actually run yet. He gave me the text of it and it was really cool to read. It was almost like my life story :) He said they're waiting to run it for the week of Thanksgiving because a bunch of reporters have off that week so they'll need some stories in the hopper to fill the time. We'll see if it ever runs. I'm totally aware that it's complete fluff and has nothing to do with real news, so I understand if other stories take priority. I can't wait to see it run. I've always said that the first 90% of any project is the easiest part. It's that last 10% that takes the longest. So yeah, putting the final touches on the studio will probably take years, but some of them I'm not too concerned with. Could I stop more sound from getting upstairs? Maybe, but I can have music blasting downstairs at 120 db and it's barely audible outside. And it may take a long time for me to get enough money to buy the glass for the windows, so temporary plexy glass will have to do for a while. And trim work around the doors and windows can wait until I'm not so busy. But all the mojor construction is OVER!!! My furnace thanks me.

Very cool! I remember you talking about the newspaper story. I look forward to seeing that when it runs. Hmmmmmm... Maybe I'll have to reach out to my local media when I'm finished... :roll: --Keith :mrgreen:

The best thing I did was put "Verona, WI" and "Madison, WI" in my search tags on youtube. The BIG newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal, interviewed me for my usage of youtube.com. Of course they only used two lines of what I wrote, but that was ok, they typed what I screen name is. The big story there was about the dudes making those "Chad Vader" videos, who are also from Madison.