Monday, October 18, 2010

Recording Booth - Entry 1

Hi – this is my trials and tribulations with building a recording booth. My name is Joanna Pearl and I am working towards becoming a professional singer. As a shameless plug, please check out my work at: www.youtube.com/joannapearl; www.myspace.com/joannapearl; www.facebook.com/joannapearl; and of course my website at www.joannapearl.com. I also have music on iTunes and Amazon MP3.

I have been an avid singer for all of my life and have known that my path definitely lies in doing what my heart desires and that is singing for a living. I have definitely had my ups and downs throughout the years but I have learned one important thing throughout it all and that is to “stay the course.” (2 points to those of you who know what movie that line is from ;-)   ) Anyway, I know that among those of you reading this and that have checked out my work, some will love it and some will hate it and then there will be some that are indifferent to it. You can’t please everyone, right?

Sorry for getting off track. As I was saying, this blog is going to be about me building a recording booth for myself. Over a year ago, I decided that I needed to really get serious about my music if I was going to do what I love as a career. And part of this decision consisted of finding a place where I could record quality music, hence my need for a recording booth. I could have found a recording studio to do this but as we all know that would have taken much more money that I can afford, so the next best thing is to build something that is just as good but costs me so much less. I did some searching on the internet for plans for building a booth and ultimately decided on purchasing the plans to a booth from DawBox (www.dawbox.com). These plans cost me $50 and came with 2 DVDs and a booklet showing me how to accomplish building the booth.

If you noticed, I indicated that I found these plans and purchased them over a year ago. Just like every good artist, I was very good at procrastinating. LOL You know how it is – life has a way of getting in the way of things. A lot happened to me over the course of that year. The most important being that I began working with an amazing vocal coach and mentor and my singing has improved immensely.

So fast forward to today again – now that I am on the right track again with my music, I wanted to get back to constructing something that will allow me to produce music at a higher quality. So I pulled out my recording booth plans again and began planning (no pun intended) how to go about building this thing on a shoestring budget.

So this blog is going to be about my trials and tribulations with building a nice decent recording booth where I can continue my journey as a musician.


Day 1
I went back to the website, www.dawbox.com, to see if maybe they had updated their plans and/or DVDs. I actually have version 2 of their plans and after looking over what I have noticed that while one can figure out how to build everything, there are definitely some holes present and you should have some knowledge of working with wood and construction before attempting this project by yourself. So I opened my email and sent off a quick message to see if they had indeed updated their plans and if by chance I would be able to obtain an “upgrade” from them before I started my project.

I received an email back indicating that they did update the plans but any modifications were very minor to the plans but they had added numerous drawings (one of things kind of lacking with the plans I currently have). But they indicated that since I had placed my order well over 6 months ago that they could not offer me a free upgrade. I understand this completely because not very much in this life is free and I was not looking for a handout.

So the decision was either to spend an extra $50 for the new plans or just stick with my current plans and proceed with them. I decided to forego spending the $50 and just proceed with what I have. One reason is that I feel I would have wasted the original $50 that I spent and the other is that I plan on contacting some of my friends who can help me muddle my way through any of the rough spots that I might encounter.

Day 2
Before I get started here, I just wanted to say that these days are definitely not consecutive. I am just numbering them this way to indicate that I am writing about the days where I have spent any time at all in working on this project.

Today I sat down and went over the plans for the booth. I should also mention that I am planning on building the 4x6x7 version of the booth. I watched the DVDs a couple of different times while going through the booklet. I have come to the realization that I am going to definitely need some help on this project. I am definitely the type of person that likes to learn how to do things but my knowledge of woodworking is limited and am going to need to find some friends that are willing to spend a little time to teach me about some of these things.

Day 3
Ok, after talking to a few of my friends I found a couple that are willing to help me so now that I have the support I need I have to concentrate on gathering the material that I need. I have been doing some research via the web on Home Depot’s site as well as Lowe’s site. Going by the material list contained in the plans, I have come up with a rough estimate of around $700 that it will cost me to obtain all the building material needed. This does not include the acoustic foam or other hardware needed for the ventilation system. My estimates are that it will end up costing me just over $1000 in material to complete this project. As I begin to incur expenses, I will post those on here as well so you can see the breakdown of material.

Day 4
I finally came up with a plan so that I don’t have to fork out all the cash upfront in order to obtain the material I need in order to get started. I decided to do this the American way and finance it. LOL This way I can put the expenses on a Home Depot or Lowe’s card and pay what I can on it over the next several months. Even though I hate doing this, it at least allows me to continue working on the project. Otherwise, I might just walk away from the project without even getting started.

I have also decided that some of the items (like the acoustic foam) I will have to buy outright, so this expense will be an upfront cost that is unavoidable. And while on the subject of acoustic foam, I did some research on the web again looking for prices for acoustic foam. After spending an hour or more, I have come to the conclusion that you really cannot beat the deal that DawBox has on their acoustic foam kits. Most everything that I found other than DawBox was double in price of what they are selling their kits for.

Day 5
I am so tired today. I finally decided to do all my purchasing from Lowes. They were having a sale where I could get 10% off my purchases so I went with that and picked up most of the material that I needed today. It took me well over 3 hours to collect it all and then another hour to get it back home. Just a word of caution here, if you are doing this yourself you may want to bring another person along in order to load everything into a truck. This is a lot of material and you will definitely need a truck to haul it all.

One of the reasons it was so heavy for me was because I decided to go with MDF (particle board) instead of OSB. I really wanted the soundproofing that MDF offers over OSB so I decided to spend the extra money on that. I’m sure OSB is heavy but MDF is very very heavy. LOL Take it from me, my arms are definitely soar after lifting those sheets.

Also, I wasn’t able to find all the material that I needed at Lowes either. The materials list was a little vague on the description of items but I think I managed to figure out what each item is so now I have to hunt down a few things that I wasn’t able to find.
My dog and me with some materials
I wasn’t able to find the J-Channel at Lowes. They did have some there for edging around mirrors but it was kind of expensive, so I decided to wait and see if I could find it cheaper online somewhere.  Another thing to note is that Lowes did not have the exact dimensions of some of the lumber that is called for. The materials list says to pick up 1.5” x 1.5” X 8’ lumber and Lowes did not have this, so I ended up getting some 2”x3”X8’ and will cut this down to make what I need. This obviously will call for me finding a table saw to help with this but I have that lined up already so I should be ok on this matter.

These are just some gotchas that I am running into that I wanted to make note of. Nothing serious and nothing that cannot be dealt with, so onward we go. “Stay the course!”

Day 6
Today was the big day that I actually began building the booth. I watched the portion of the DVD that deals with building the base unit and went over the portion of the booklet that deals with this as well. The drawings in the booklet left a lot to be desired but I think I have a good grasp of what needs to be done.
As far as tools, I was able to beg & borrow (no stealing) the tools that I need to get started. They are:
·         A circular saw - I chose not to have Lowes cut the MDF, so I have to do this myself
·         A straight edge - I didn’t want to risk not cutting a straight line so the straight edge will ensure that my cuts are straight
·         A power drill - for pre-driling holes. I was told that it was better to pre-drill so that I did not split my MDF. It takes a little more time but worth it to not have to go buy another piece of MDF.
·         A power screw driver – just used the drill for this fitted with a driver bit. In my case, I got an adapter that easily allows me switch out the drill bit with the driver bit.
·         A utility knife, respirator mask & gloves - to cut your insulation with. As another side note, the DVD shows that you are supposed to fill the base unit with insulation although there is no mention of this in the booklet.
I won’t bore you will all the gory details but I will say that I am very proud of myself in building the base. With some help from friends, it took us about 3 or 4 hours total to finish the base unit. I did notice that the plans called for me to paint the base unit but I did not see any need for this since the top will be covered by rubber mats and the sides will be covered by the sides of the booth, so I did not bother painting it. I have added some pictures here so you can see what it looks like. You will also notice that I have not covered the top of it yet with any mats because I have to go pick these up. This should be rather easy to do but will soon find out.
Completed base!

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