Finding your place

[xMannequiNx]

Hey guys,

I've been doin recordings in my room now, and after hearing my work, a few of my friends bands want me to record them...who woulda known.

My issue is that I can't use my house to record bands. I'm still 17 and living with my parents, and they don't want bands coming in and out of their house all the time, which is understandable. But I want to be making some cash over summer by doing recordings, and I need a space.

So my questions is: How did you go about getting your recording space? I wanna hear all your stories, and hopefully pull from them to get ideas for finding my own place

 

[Chryst Krispies]

One of my buddies records with a mobile rig.

I've seen Sneap and Murphy get a mobile frankenrig going too. Maybe that would work.

 

[Zack Uidl]

i would recommend the mobile recording thing for you dude. Record DIs and drums elsewhere and then do your thing at your house. Buying/leasing a location will get pricey and will probably make you spend more than you earn at this point

 

[Morgan C]

Are you guys suggesting getting a place, or using the band's rehearsal place or something? If it was the rehearsal place.. I probably wouldn't feel safe leaving all the mics n stuff set up, if it wasn't at one of the member's homes. And even then..

 

[xMannequiNx]

I've never been able to do anything mobile very well. All my recordings done mobile sound like shit cause the room isn't good. I've done some in practice spaces and some in friends houses, but since I can't do any treatment the rooms don't sound good (especially in garages...ugghhhhh they sound so terrible). Right now my setup is easily mobile (I'd just need to get a desk of some kind), but I wanted to try and get some kind of place.

Anyone have any experience with garages? I've had the option of using one but I haven' been sure if it would be worth it.

 

[MetallyGuitarded]

Mannequin, the guys around here that do the low-end studio thing usually rent a house somewhere cheap ( aka: high crime neighborhood, right next to train tracks, etc ) and just sound proof the crap out of them any way they can. Some actually rent commercial spaces in industrial areas. They charge on varying methods. Some are $20 a song, some are $50/hour... it's different at all of them. The pro studios here I think are around $200/hr plus to track and mixing and/or mastering are not necessarily included in that. I've heard CD's from both kinds of places here and I don't hear a difference in quality worth an extra $150/hr.

My last band rented a place like this and went in with a couple other bands to make it a permanent rehearsal space for all our bands. We all took different nights and even had a second room so 2 bands could play at the same time. We pooled some resources and even outfitted it with a nice PA for the bigger room.

Aside from shitty acoustics the only real issue with something like this is/was the inherent instability of musicians and their incomes. Many bands came and went and many evictions were narrowly avoided. It got to the point where you HAD to know the right people to get your band in there. It was nice though cause all the businesses in that complex were usually empty by 5 or 6PM and no one lived close enough to hear anything. We had a fridge, some old couches and made it our home away from home. There was always parties there after local shows too. We had thought about using it as a recording studio but it turned out to be too small for the amount of gear we wanted in there and you can't really have another band practicing in the next room while you're recording. We weren't prepared to invest in completely soundproofing it.

Anyway, I think all towns should do something like this. At least the 'serious' guys. If all your cities are the same, it seems that all the top players end up being in bands together in one combination or another at some point anyway. Kinda like a Rec center for musicians.

 

[John_C]

i'm in a similar situation to the original post.

The difference is that i'm going to uni in september, what would you guys reccomend doing while i'm there? try using university practice rooms scrounging time whenever i can, or go rent out a commercial space

 

[::XeS::]

I'm in the same situation. I've a mobile rig but I need a cool place where I can do my job.
Actually I record in my girlfriend vacancy house..it's pretty cool and it has lot of space but it's not close to the city and, expecially when we record drums, there is the possibility that the drummer has to sleep in the house....and sometime it's not very cool.