Recording & Rehearsal Studio in an 18' x 24' Building

First of all, thanks a lot for this GREAT forum! I have been lurking around this fantastic source of information and inspiration on and off for a year or so, and now finally I seem to have found a location for my combined studio and rehearsal space currently at the planning stage. It is a 2-storey building on a farm (originally built for showering horses!) where I am planning to use the ground floor for this project. The interior dimensions are 547 cm x 774 cm (approx 18’ x 24’) with a ceiling height of 254 cm (approx 8’). The floor is rough concrete on ground while the outer walls are Leca brick wall, 22 cm thick (on the first 100 cm up from the floor the wall for some reason is 4 cm thicker, 26 cm in total, so this is the measurement determining the inner dimensions of the room). The room has a wooden ceiling, which carries the floor of the room above – ref attached pictures. In terms of sound LEVEL it will be fairly loud at times (rock bands), but that will be more a concern with regards to inside acoustical treatment than sound leakage from inside to outside (and vice versa) – the top floor is just a storage room (and hardly that) and it is quite a distance to the nearest neighbours, so with the brick walls and interior insulated room walls (when built) I am not expecting the sound level from the studio to be a problem. When it comes to budget I am hoping to manage below US $ 10,000 in materials. I am gathering friends and family, so hopefully I will manage to keep the labour cost fairly low, but some skilled supervision will be needed along with plumbing and electrical services so my budget target at this stage is probably around $ 15,000. For now, however, this is merely a rough estimate, which will obviously need to be revisited once I get the detailed construction-planning going… I can do pretty much what I want with the space and I have been juggling around with pen and paper for some time now, but I can’t seem to find the “right” layout. I have reviewed numerous floor plans and sketchup models, but now I am hoping to get some help from this forum to get things started in the right direction. So instead of posting a proposed layout, I’d rather post my sketchup model of the building as it is today along with my conceptual ideas and hope to get some good proposals or references from John or others in the forum! With reference to the attached sketchup model I am thinking something like this: 1. My intention is to brick up the opening where the garage door is today, and fit a regular entrance door somewhere to the right in this region. Walking through the door should take you to the entrance area with: - a door to the control room to the left - a door to the live room in the front - a door to the toilet to the right 2. As indicated I would like to have a toilet with sink immediately to the right when entering. The room currently in this area is quite large, but these walls can of course be relocated even though it is quite bit of water tubing and electrical components there today (small junction box, switches etc). The cylinder shown in my sketchup model is a large water heater tank currently installed, but this can be replaced with a much smaller one if needed – again the water tank which is there today is dimensioned for showering horses :lol: 3. As can be seen from the pictures there is also currently a room immediately to the left when entering, but this will be removed to accommodate the control room. 4. The live room should be as large as possible as it will be used to a great extent for band rehearsal. I am planning to build minimum 2 preferably 3 floating room structures – one for the control room, one for the live room, and one for the entrance area (with toilet). That way the entrance area can be used as an iso booth instead of taking space from the live room. One design I like very much is the one John did for Nukmusic, so I am attaching this picture as well. If this design is modified along the lines of: a) Inverted left/ right, so that the entrance and toilet are to the right and the control room to the left. b) Control room made somewhat smaller and studio area elongated (converting from a square to a rectangular building design). c) A door inserted between the entrance area and the live room. d) One live room instead of the two (studio + vocal booth) Then I think it would be very close to the design I am dreaming of! My only problem is that I can’t seem to get there on my own :? John, are you able to help? Thanks a lot in advance! Olve

Is this close?? cheers john

Fabulous! I love it! A million thanks John! I'll work with this and hopefully get my project kicked off within the next month or so. You'll hear from me again then :D Thanks again for your help! Olve

Hi John! It’s been a while, and in fact I had to put this project to rest the reason being that an opportunity for building my own house has come up and I’ll build the control room (and a smaller recording room) there instead – timeframe 1 year or so. The land where I am going to build, however, is not far from the house pictured in this post so I want to utilize both spaces – mixing and overdubbing in my home, while band rehearsals and possibly some drum tracking etc requiring more space will be done in this rebuilt farm garage. The target now is to have the reharsal space up and running in 3 months time. So here I am again looking for inspiration at this great forum! Would you have any thoughts on how to best redesign this space for its new use – primarily for reharsals, but still with usable acoustics and some tracking possibilities either all in one room, or possibly with a smaller control room? Many thanks again! Olve

I have started a new thread for this project in the Studio Construction forum as we have now started building this combined rehearsal and tracking studio: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7888 Thanks again John for the ideas and inspiration - the studio we're building is based on your design, and I will post pictures in the Studio Construction forum as we progress :D Best regards, Olve