Here is a plan for the layout of the studio. I have brought the guys at www.studiopeople.com on board after a very frustrating period of time waiting for a designer who was based miles away to do what he said he would do. Chris and Peter at Studio People have been excellent so far, I'm really looking forward to having this take shape.
Ok so we're building a recording studio at our house in Childer Thornton on the Border of Cheshire and The Wirral. We're converting a 19th century coach house into a three room studio, this will incorporate a live room (18 sq m), a control room (16 sq m) and an isolation booth (4 sq m). The live room will also double as a practice room for the band I am in (Conan - www.hailconan.com). The studio will, in time, become a commercial venture and my aim is to build it (and myself) up to a level where we can confidently take bookings from bands who wish to record there. I will personally work there as lead engineer but will of course be open to people doing their own producing there if they prefer. I dare say that once I get the right setup people will express an interest in producing their own stuff there (with their own producer) and that's fine by me as I have a day job too.
I'm not currently a recording engineer / producer, so what the fuck am I playing at? Well, I am starting right at the beginning - from scratch. I did once have a small business recording bands in their practice room but gave up shortly into that. I had a laptop with half the screen broken, a few cheap mics from Maplins and bigger ideas than I could put into action. However, now we have this property to work with, it became clear that we have an opportunity to build something that I can practice in with the lads in the band, as well as renting the studio out for new recordings with other bands. I will 'cut my teeth' so to speak doing demos and recordings for bands I know, at little cost - and certainly some pre-production demos for Conan (we see all our recordings being done by Chris Fielding at his place down in London). I'll even record a few bands for free at first before I start to consider myself worthy of payment. Although I am taking on a lot, considering my little knowledge, I've been given lots of advice along the way on what I need to get at the outset, so I have a shopping list for my first venture into 'gear purchasing' - thanks to Chris Fielding, Matt Richardson and Matthew Dick (others too probably) for all your help so far. I also have my Wife, Holly, to thank for allowing so much of our joint investment to be committed to the studio. On that front, it will certainly be a huge personal help being able to practice right next to where I live. Currently we practice quite a way away from where we live. Paul, Phil and I all drive to our regular spot in Liverpool which is about 45 minutes each way. We then have to set all our stuff up from scratch and often we will only actually play our instruments for an hour, where we've actually paid for four. I guess if our time keeping was better we'd start earlier, but now that this new studio is in our sights the 'older' way of doing things just seems like such a chore - again, first world problems for spoilt dickheads like us! Nevertheless, at least I can still do the bedtime routine with the kids now instead of skulking off to Liverpool at 18.30 each week.
I'm currently messing around using Reaper at the moment on my PC. Through this I'm messing about with some stuff but I'm drawn to getting a set up based on Pro Tools. The frustrating thing is that no sooner do you agree to do one thing in terms of gear, you are talked out of it by someone who prefers a different setup and then you change your mind again. First world problem, but I think I'll move to Protools asap.
The studio will be complimented by accommodation incorporating two bedrooms (will sleep 6 to 8 people when it's all done), a kitchen, a shower room and a lounge. It will have WIFI, television and DVD player and will be two hops and a skip from the door into the studio across a small courtyard. This accommodation is being built into what used to be servant's quarters at the house.
Anyway, the house we bought (which brought with it the coach house) is in the midst of a full modernisation currently. Seemingly endless is the amount of debris in the house and outside, but full marks to our builders for keeping the place very tidy, considering the circumstances.
Will leave it there for today, need to sleep off the snowball fight we had before.
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