I'm totally new on here so please let me know if I'm posting in the wrong forum
I am embarking on designing and building a new studio space, and I would love to have some help along the way. And maybe in the process I can help out some of you by documenting my journey and offering some knowledge back as I learn!
O.K some background:
I am based in New Zealand, I have been recording, mixing and producing music for about 13 years. Most of what I do is in temporary spaces, either in a hashed together space in rented homes, or 'on location' for specific projects. Also, the majority of my projects are small acts - solo or duo acts, remixing projects, audio production jobs etc. I don't often work with a full band, and when I do I can always find a larger space for the project. I've done O.K with a pair of good headphones as monitors and a range of interesting spaces as recording studios. This has been fine up till this point, but now it's time to create a proper space of my own. I have a decent understanding of acoustics, and a good knowledge of recording and production.
Here is my website for a bit more info: http://www.corosoniclab.co.nz
Me and my partner have just finished building a small house on family land. It is a large section - 5 acres - surrounded by native bush. Very beautiful, peaceful and relaxed. So the main lounge in the house serves as a very nice studio, large enough to fit a band in.
What I wish to create is a standalone building, containing a control room/production studio. At this stage I can not afford to build a large studio with attached control room, and in any case I do not believe this is all that important. I believe the best thing for me to do is to build a single room that serves as both control room and production space, plus being 'live' enough that I can happily record in the same room. Or it may be feasible to build an attached vocal booth - but I also do not want to just build a stupidly small booth that is cramped and does not sound very good.
So it could be two rooms - one good sized control room, and another (maybe slightly smaller) studio. Or just one nice spacious room.
As mentioned above, the house works well as a studio space, so if the new building is close enough, then I can easily run a snake to the main house for bigger bands.
My Budget
I am starting with $3000 NZ$ this equals about $2000 USD.
This seems like a ridiculously small amount I know! But bear with me
I can do the building myself, so i will not be paying any contractors - except an electrician. The method of construction will be super cheap: locally milled timber as a frame, and probably a mud/straw mix as the wall filler/insulation. It will be on wooden foundation poles - concrete is good but expensive, plus we get floods so it needs to be off the ground. Also this budget is just a starting point, I'm hoping to get the basic building complete with this, and then all the rest will come later (acoustic treatment, painting, cabling etc)
Size
I can make it as big as I like, but with this budget I would like to keep it to a maximum of about 6m x 5m (20ft x 16ft) or thereabouts. It does not have to be rectangluar.
Questions!!!
So, here's why I'm here:
I would love some tips or advice on designs that would work for me. At this stage I'm more interested in the broad layout, rather than specific construction methods. I'd love to hear from others who have worked in or built spaces that are similar to what i want to create. And any traps I should look out for (not bass traps
)O.K I think that's a good start, thanks
Matt