Howdy all,
I was intrigued by the whole "building a studio- literally" thread. I too am looking at building a studio in a rural location, although my situation has some significant differences.
I'm a creative musician living off the grid in Southern Oregon up in the hills. I built a one-room palace up here with good quality solar and hydro power. I have a great collection of great instruments (vibes, percussion, Hammond, great piano, and the usual acoustic and electric guitars, etc.), and a couple great players and songwriters. We have a backlog of several albums worth of good material, and while we're majorly itching to get a good CD out and hit the road for a while (it's been too long, homesteading and that), we will inevitably be doing several CD's of our own and producing/recording several CD's of other bands.
The whole approach is having great sounding inspired performances to begin with and not doing much processing.
We have a good colorful lively tracking space, with a variety of ceiling heights and very few parallel walls (I'm partial to live room reverbs), and have gotten some very pleasing results, but with no dedicated listening space/ control room it is exhausting just to try to monitor things.
So we're looking at building a studio building adjacent to the cabin, mainly for control room but very likely also with a more dead (or more controllable) tracking space. I'm planning on using a masonry stove for heating (have one in the cabin- very even temperature and humidity- pianos and electronics cozy and dry), and either woodframe or strawbale walls with a healthy amount of masonry mass on the inside. Pretty much a barnlike-space-with-baffles approach.
I have great affordable contractors to work with, real craftsmen, which is big plus.
I'm not concerned about the zoning, which in my case is actually Forest Commercial. You can get away with a lot out here... it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission!
I want to do this right, but must work very inexpensively. I'd like the vibe to be "muy rustico", lots of roughsawn wood and stucco.
Any input? Where can I get good ideas for geat-sounding rooms and efficient design?
Ted :w: