I'm fortunate enough to have my own studio to make music in. It's small, but it's a space that's completely my own and I've been able to shape it exactly how I want it.
We've only been in this house for 18 months, and we renovated the whole thing - so here's some pictures showing the various stages of the studio renovation, starting with...
A bit of a shell
The room was even smaller before - more of a large cupboard than a room but we moved the right hand wall out by about 40cm (making our main bathroom smaller!). In the following picture you can see the new wall to the right, the one on the left is the original...
Walls Plastered
Looking a bit better in this one with the walls plastered, radiator mounted and all the electrical sockets wiring in. There is also a Cat6 cable in the back wall which feeds directly to the networking cabinet under the stairs (if you are going to renovate a whole house you may as well have network cables to all the main rooms).
Painted
Painted now and with a new floor down and the sockets fitted.
The Floor
I opted for a wooden floor as that's supposed to be the best acoustically for a studio. It's engineered wood rather than thin laminate and I've gone for keeping everything light and clean looking. I knew there would be enough other stuff in the room so wanted to keep the walls and floor simple.
Desk
Now - the desk! To make the most of the small space, it's custom built to fit to the walls. It also has some music producer friendly features:
- 19 inch rackmount space built in between the desk and shelf. There is 3 x 6U of space to put rackmount modules.
- Lots holes for routing cables around. I knew there would be a lot of cables so let's keep what we can out of sight. There are 3 cable holes in the top shelf, then 3 large ones at the back of the rackmount sections and several smaller holes in the main desk for things like mouse and keyboard cables.
- Large cable tray under the main desk for cables, power strips, power adapters etc.
Clean Setup
And here's the finished setup soon after it was completed and you can see the cable management working pretty well!
Today
And finally, here's a "reality" view of what it actually looks like right now as I write this. Partly because I promised @stickupboys a messy picture of my studio at some point and partly because I think it's interesting to see how the space typically looks when I haven't tidied up for a photo or a live stream!
It can be a lot messier than this if I'm in the middle of reconfiguring some gear (especially the modular)!
Notable additions you can see in the above:
- The large modular on the right hand wall which is now my primary instrument.
- I fitted two bass traps (you can see one of them top right in this picture) to try to tame the acoustics of the room. Unfortunately small square rooms like this are the absolute worst acoustically and this helped a little bit.
- Some old 80s/90s rackmount gear - but that's a story for another post :)
- The large box on the right of the desk is actually a mixer which has been loaned to me and I'm using to record multiple tracks from the modular at the same time/whilst live. It's actually rackmount, but unfortunately it's 8U so won't fit in my racks built into the desk :(
- You can see one of my wall mounted streaming cameras on the back wall. The other one is on the left wall out of shot.
- My very worn out office chair! It's past it's best but still comfortable and there's always a module to buy that is more important than a new chair!
I've also added Philips Hue lighting - 3 spots in the ceiling and a lighting strip at the back of the desk.
If you didn't catch it before, the below video talks through how I'm using the multitrack mixer during my live sets (this also shows off the lighting!):
The Future
It's still early days in this studio so I'm sure there will be a lots of additions and changes - that's all part of the fun. I'm very happy to have my own studio to be my musical home!
I have my eye on some artwork for the left hand wall. There is still plenty of rack space available and I am thinking about extending the desk along the right wall to make a larger surface for keyboards/non modular gear. I also need somewhere to hang up my several sets of headphones!
What about you?
Do you have your own space for doing the thing you love? A music studio or art studio for example? How did you go about personalising the space to make it your own?
Btw - I decided to put this post in the Man Cave Community because you could consider my studio a 'man cave' - so I'm also interested in people's man (or woman) caves! Please share your favourite spaces!
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