Opening up a small studio!

[xmidihcx]

hey everyone, I was just reading this post that 006 wrote a while back. He was thinking about starting up his own studio space, which inspired me to do the same. I currently have a small, soundproof but not acoustically treated room. It does the job for me and my band as of right now, however, i'm not stayin here much longer. I am planning on going away to a private college in September where I would be majoring in music, studying business managment and audio engineering(which i'm already certified in, and . . . look at the brilliant minds in this fuckin forum, do u think i need another teacher? . However, I am going to need 3 more years for a bachelors degree so if i'm gonna fork over a fuckload of cash, I may as well just put that money, or a mere fraction of it, into opening up a small studio. what kind of budget am i looking at from the absolute ground up? for the first year, i won't be concerned about profit. it's more about the knowledge. once i know how every piece of gear works inside and out and i've tried them out in every situation, I will start to have clients and hopefully make a part time living off of this idea. I am not a bad engineer, I went to audio school, I am certified. I can always go back to my school, free of charge, and improve my skills.

set my ass straight, i'm a young kid who thinks he knows what he wants. i'm not even 20 years old yet. If I do this instead of private school, i am still going to go to a local college part time and take education classes because thats a secure backup. I would not mind having to rely on teaching people how to play music to eat! bottom line is, if i went to the private school, they wont get me a job, maybe an intership at best. i dont need that, i am 100% confident in getting an intership by myself or through my original school (IAR).

andy once made a comment on this forum saying that he sees how all these kids waste money on going to school for audio when they could have bought the gear and tried everything out themselves. i dont wanna go to college and then wait around. i know college graduates, even ivy league grads that dont have a job or have a minimum wedge job. they are still in debt too. i am blessed with a passion and a gift for music, why not pursue it? thank you in advance to anyone who gives me a helpful answer as to deciding what I should do with the next few years of my life, and a whole bunch of moolah.

 

[Gomez]

went to audio school, I am certified. I can always go back to my school, free of charge, and improve my skills.

Hi!

Audio engineering schools only give you the very tip of the iceberg in my opinion. I got a degree on sound engineering and I though I knew a lot, but once I stepped out the real world, I realised how little I knew... and i'm still miles and miles away from knowing a lot, despite years of experience working professionally.

Before you try and set up your own studio, I recommend you to work for a few years in a recording studio. Even if you are celaning toilets when you start, rest assured you'll learn a lot. If you show interest and capabilities, you'll move on. You may know how to deal with equipment and know some theory, but things are very different when you are in a real session when someone is paying you to do the job. I think at the point is when you REALLY start learning.

I'm sure you know that there are no jobs in this industry. Totally saturated. It's difficult to get a job. And competition is damn tough.

Best luck!

 

[xmidihcx]

yep thanks a lot for the advice. dont get me wrong, i'm not saying i'm GOOD at it, i'm just saying that i have most of the basics down and i have worked at a studio for over a year; that gave me the courage to do what i'm doing now. i am friend's with my boss even today, and i still rent a monthly room from him and consult with him. i know it's a difficult field, now more than ever, especially in NYC, and i wouldn't want to get into something too big that i wouldn't be able to get out of, but i don't want to waste thousands of dollars on a 3 year degree just because the school has a couple audio classes. if i'm going to learn it, i'm going to do it myself until i master it, and i will receive help from all my proffesional friends and instructors. i am going to contact a successful freelance engineer that i am friends with and probably just become his personal assistant until i am confident that i can do everything that he does.

like i said, i'm not trying to make a living off of this, that is why i am not completely eliminating college out of my life. however, if i do make a living out of it, i'll have a better chance with my own little studio and a teaching degree as opposed to just a degree with a concentration on audio that essentially means peanuts a little bit more than my current degree but i'd owe those peanuts to the elephants anyways. .

 

[Black neon bob]

I am on the same page xmidihcx..

Really want to do the same as you are planning to do as well, and been thinking about it for a year now. im want to start mixing bands ,so i can invest in gear, gear, and gear.. and maybe one day, open up a studio where i can start recording bands, or at least have all the decent mixing gear.

Like you, i have been looking for schools that educate in audio and engineering as well, but never did, since there is a real shortage of that over here.. so screw that.. i just want a job during the day, and at night, i can just do anything audio related to keep up.. so a studio would be cool!

Sorry, did not want to hijack this thread, i hope someone like James, Andy, Brett, Razorjack, or simply anyone who knows or started a studio to let us in on some figures.. how much it all will cost, and what to expect.. i mean, we all have/had to start somewhere eh?

 

[unsilpauly]

yep thanks a lot for the advice. dont get me wrong, i'm not saying i'm GOOD at it, i'm just saying that i have most of the basics down and i have worked at a studio for over a year; that gave me the courage to do what i'm doing now. i am friend's with my boss even today, and i still rent a monthly room from him and consult with him. i know it's a difficult field, now more than ever, especially in NYC, and i wouldn't want to get into something too big that i wouldn't be able to get out of, but i don't want to waste thousands of dollars on a 3 year degree just because the school has a couple audio classes. if i'm going to learn it, i'm going to do it myself until i master it, and i will receive help from all my proffesional friends and instructors. i am going to contact a successful freelance engineer that i am friends with and probably just become his personal assistant until i am confident that i can do everything that he does.

like i said, i'm not trying to make a living off of this, that is why i am not completely eliminating college out of my life. however, if i do make a living out of it, i'll have a better chance with my own little studio and a teaching degree as opposed to just a degree with a concentration on audio that essentially means peanuts a little bit more than my current degree but i'd owe those peanuts to the elephants anyways. .

hey man, how are ya? if you have the connections in your local music scene to get bands to give you the chance to record them(for some money of course), then i would go for it. get some good books(there are a bunch) read them and practice and teach yourself. invest money in gear and the sound of the space youll be working in and in three years youll have an even better list of gear and a growing list of clients. as far as gear goes, there are so many choices. but the truth is plan on spending more than you think. same goes for acoustics. if you go super cheap youll just be buying more often. invest in quality(not necisarily expensive) gear that you can count on. if you plan wisely you can grow your business for sure. youll get alot of good advice on this subject around this forum.

 

[006]

Well MIDIHC, the list of equipment that I had come up with was very decent and had a lot of nice things on it. Ethernet connected headphone mixing stations, monitor management control, motorized control surface for the DAW, and an expensive PC at the heart. My list of equipment, which was capable of recording an entire band (16 mics on a drumset, 2 guitars, a bass, and a vocalist) at once, ended up being around $27,000. Thats just equipment. A building is the real kicker. If you are talking about having a contractor come out and pour your a foundation to your specs, and having people come out to build it for you, acoustic engineer fees, design fees, building materials, labor costs, electrical engineer fees, a/c fees, just everything involved....we're talking at *least* around $200k. Now, you live in New York, so those prices will be much higher than here in San Antonio, Texas where I am at. The Home Depot up there is more expensive than down here. Everything actually is more expensive in NY than in SA. The gear price will remain the same, but I'm going to imagine you'll pay a lot more than I would have to for the same exact building in New York.

Now, if we're talking buying a building that is just empty, and having people come in to design the studio walls, build it, run wiring, run the a/c venting, etc....still around $200k minimum. Over here you pay about $1/sq foot right now on a lease. So for $1k a month, I can rent a building with close to 1,000 sq feet of space. Thats how big the studio that I work at is. It's plenty of room, but it's really home-y and cozy. I would want a bigger place, so lets say about 2,000 sq ft. I'm already looking at $2k a month in lease payment already. Then the money to convert the building into a studio, about $200k, then $27k of equipment to fill it up.

Like I said, it will be more expensive in New York, so imagine my prices being insanely low for you up there. These are qoutes I got from a ton of sources: real estate agents, acoustc engineers here in town, contractors here in town, etc. The basic deal is that it is *NOT* cheap by any means.

Your BEST bet, is to actually look for a 1-story house, outside of town if possible, kinda out in the middle of nowhere type deal. A house that has enough rooms clustered together that can work like a studio. Or at least something with a decent sized garage. You can then convert the garage into your tracking room, and use the spare bedrooms as the guitar amp rooms and vocal booths and a control room. The house may not cost a lot, but you'll still spend a nice penny on converting all the rooms. The upside to this way is, not only do you have your studio, but you also have a home. So you won't end up like me, having an apartment *and* a studio to pay for. I've been checking out some homes out in the country over here and they are actually pretty cheap right now. I found a 2,200 sq ft home with a big ass 3 car garage, 4 bedroom, 3 bath, for about $190,000. It sits on 3 acres of land, so I have a nice distance from any neighbors (noise issues). Three of the bedrooms are all right next to each other, and one of them is HUGE, like 15'x16', perfect control room IMO. The other rooms are decent too, and can be converted into vocal booths/guitar rooms. The master bedroom is like 16'x17', and it's completely seperated from the other bedrooms, as is the kitchen and living room, the "studio" portion is at the front of the house, and my bedroom and living room n stuff is in the back. Really an excellent example of how it should be for this purpose. The garage is a 3-car garage, gigantic, would be a perfect live room for drums. Now if you know anything about real-estate, you'll know this is an amazing deal for this house. If I were to get it, I would have to dump about $20k in treatment/construction (the construction I can do myself: building floating floors, sound proofing walls/garage, etc.), and then the $27k of nice equipment. Total cost about $237,000.

Just like the upside to having it being your home, also happens to be the downside of it. If you have a girlfriend, or a fiance, like I do, this will kind of bother them as far as having random musicians walking around in the house all the time when you are recording. When I talked to my girl about the house, she was happy, but then I started talking about converting the garage and a couple of bedrooms for a recording studio, she kinda got displeased with that and after discussing it, she would rather not want to live there just because of the random people always being there. Especially since we plan to have kids some day. However, I'm sure as time goes by I can convince her that it won't be that bad, as I'm sure you could to too.

I hope I gave you some kind of help on the matter, I wish I had somebody to just delve out all this info when I was looking into it. Right now my dream is on the back burner. Once I'm capable of buying that house, or a similar one, the gear, and the conversion costs, I will definitely be jumping on it. One thing I must stick into your mind right now, and this is from experience, you can't want anything *right* now. It is going to take time. Even if you have $300k right now to do it, it will still take time, at least 6 months before your building will be finished with construction, etc. It's a slow process no matter how you go about it, so be patient.

~006

 

[006]

Also, I would suggest you find some local real estate agents in your area and just tell them what you are looking for, and ask them for some qoutes on some property. Both residential, and commercial real estate. I think you will be surprised at the lower cost of the residential cost outside of the city.

~006

 

[xmidihcx]

hey paulie, thanks a lot for giving me some confidence. hey bob, i'm glad i'm not the only one who is thinking about going through with this.

as far as the local music scene goes, there are billions of new bands out there, and i'd have to say 90% of them have demos that make me laugh. i purposely buy band's demos just to hear what they think a pro studio recording is. look at myspace. it's totally filled with useless bands that think they can get somewhere. in other words, i'm in new york freakin city and i know more than half the bands out there from my involvment in booking, live sound, and experience playing with many bands, even as a substitute. i'm that music whore that ur friends tell u to stay away from. anways, i'm not so concerned about clientel as much as i am cost efficiency and quality. if you build it, they will come, at least in new york. not to mention, i would also like to use this space for making hip-hop beats and audio for commercial projects and ads so i can keep myself afloat with some $$. not very METAL but i've done it before and it pays well. i might as well get paid for the things that i'm good at, or i'd just be like any other person who is constantly unhappy and regretting his/her helljob but can't do anything bout it cus they are already caught up in the grind. once u get in, u don't escape. . dont get me wrong, i dont want to party for a living, i want my work to be justified in my heart at the end of the day.

 

[Hammer Bart]

Can someone under 20 years of age actually go to a bank and talk about buying a 200-300k $ house and be taken seriously in the US? I mean, I don't think any bank here would even consider that unless you can (A) pay a huge advance or (B) assure them that you have a really steady and substantial income.

By the way 006, I'm no real estate expert, but I think a house like the one you describe would easily cost ten times as much even in Holland's most remote areas. Wow, everything is bigger in Texas..

So xmidihcx, do you plan on buying or renting/leasing a place?

 

[xmidihcx]

wow 006, just as i expected, you set my ass straight. thank you so much for giving me the real facts that it takes to get started. you made me appreciate what i have right now, which is a small space that i can use for mixing until i make enough money to take this shit seriously. i'm sure if i just spent a few bucks on acoustically treating my room that i have now, it can be a perfect room for mixing and tracking various instruments. drums are the most crucial part of any mix, imo, so i would rather have them done at a pro studio or just do them on a top of the line v-kit? (does anybody have any experience with that?) anways when it all comes down to it, most tracks are recorded one at a time and i'm not making music for record labels so perhaps i'll be okay with what i have now, im gonna probably get a firepod or something. i think i'm also fortunate enough to know so many incredible musicians, sometimes i take for granted, but they are going to be the real shining stars on my upcoming cd's. . look out for brooklyn, new york!

btw, 006, u made me realize one important thing. studios all come down to one thing. SPACE! the space business is not an easy business. espeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeecially in NEW YORK. ny is so fuckin small and we have so many fuckin people. i should just be happy with my little room that i am paying practically nothing for. how many people have the freedom to make as much noise as they want at any hour of the day? probably more than i think, but in bk, ny, not MANY. not to mention type o negative used to record here, and perhaps they still do. they are the most famous nobodys i've ever met.

i might as well just use that space to open up a mini-storage center. then i won't ever have to work another day in my life! i'd just be able to pick up my check and make my own music in the bahamas. hey, nobody copy my idea!

 

[xmidihcx]

By the way 006, I'm no real estate expert, but I think a house like the one you describe would easily cost ten times as much even in Holland's most remote areas. Wow, everything is bigger in Texas..

So xmidihcx, do you plan on buying or renting/leasing a place?

lol wow the saying about texas isnt just about their omlettes. texas IS the shit... 006, lookin for a roomate? jk...

bart, i guess i'm just gonna continue renting my place that i have now cus i'm not an adult that can start planning his life, i still have a lot of loose ends to take care of. i shouldn't rely on a metal-production forum to make all my decisions lol but i know you guys know your stuff when it comes to studio-related advice.

i think i'm gonna go to college, get my bachelors, then work my ass off until i have most of the cash to do what i need to do, like a normal human. thatll also help me get my mind straight. for now, i'm just gonna continue on my path of using the most ghetto equipment to produce the most rocking' tunes possbile. ( i'm talkin bout micing drums with nothing but sm58's, yea bitches, 58's. u can flame me but thatll just be like laughing at someone cus their poor.) i know that i need better mics for overheads, but everything else is going to be triggered so what diff does it make what preamp i use. drumagog doesn't give a fuck whether you use a presonus or a neve. ANDY, the samples u posted are so fucking badass, in that lifechanging kinda way.

i just wanna say a big thank you once again to anyone that helped me or will help make my decisions. i am a kid trying to figure out what he wants to do with the next few pivotal years of his life.

 

[xmidihcx]

one more thing. . . you guys don't really have a frame of reference when it comes to my work and experience. if ur interested, i dont have any serious album credits, however i did mix (and master ) two bands demos so far. you can listen to them at

www.myspace.com/lastwill

or

www.myspace.com/bypasstheband

they are not great at all but i learned so much from those projects. they needs lot of work and if i had to go back and redo them i would. keep in mind this is also before i found out about this forum or had any experience. hey were both done in a live studio environment with no sound replacement. just straight up mixing for my life in vegas. i managed to salvage the drum tracks from the band "bypass" which happens to be the band i play bass for. we are going to redo the songs and post them up in due time.

dont judge what i should do with my future by these two crappy mixes, i just want you to get an idea of exactly what point i am at, as far as mixing goes. for the most part, imo, all of my old mixes are way too muddy.

my personal songs @ www.myspace.com/midihc are usually not mixed at all. i program them in fruity loops 5 then export them as mp3s. the band is more of a hobby/ joke but if anyone would like to take a shot at mixing one of my tracks i'd be very excited.

you guys rock!

 

[006]

I use to have a really nice Roland V-Drum kit, and I used the Roland TD-20 module, and ended up just recording the MIDI and sending it through DFH2 or DFHS. I used this setup at my house where I had my Digi002, and then I had my closet for guitar amps/vocals. I don't have space or an enclosed room large enough for a real drum kit. So I spent $10k on that setup and made the best of it. Most drummers didn't like it, some thought it was neat. The ones who didn't like it eventually did after hearing me put their playing through DFHS, and they could see the possibilities. I've recorded probably like 50 bands there to date and those recordings sound better than some of the studios they go to around town and pay a lot of money for. The first 10 bands I recorded with that setup were free, since I was learning the whole DFHS/electronic drums/MIDI thing. The other 40 or so got charged a very small fee for my services. They were all very happy with their cd's.

However, I sold that setup a while back, actually right before I joined this forum last year. And now I send bands to the studio I work at to record the drums, and then we do the guitars, bass, and vocals at my house. That way they spend very little but have a good recording of everything.

The V-Drums and DFHS route is very handy. I liked it, but it got time consuming in the long run. Setting up the kit for each drummer (the actual e-kit *and* DFHS) got to be a pain, you know how drummers can be picky, . Anyway, yeah, my suggestion is to just buy the gear over time, one peice at a time, and then once you're more capable/old enough to have banks even consider you, then go for it. I think thats what I'm going to end up doing. It sucks but there's not much you can do about it short of hitting the lottery, which I'm trying to do every time it comes up .

~006

 

[xmidihcx]

lotto! i'm an idiot, i always forget to play. but as far as the v-kit into DFHS route goes. . i'm totally down on that. i'm planning on monitoring it with the original roland module but then transfering the midi data later in dfhs in fl studio. we're talkin bout a serious v-kit ova here. . . i'll let u know it's almost set up. do u have any experience with the FPC? i think it's one of the coolest under-used parts of fruity loops. i've been loading my samples into it lately and getting good results, when i randomize the volume, res, cut, and the pitch a tiny drop. but am i really just better off using dfh program? reason also has some sweet drum samples and usually sounds more like a kit than most drum synths.

 

[006]

DFHS is probably one of *the* best, if not THE best drum sample libraries available to date. The depth of each sample is just rediculous. Over thirty GIGS of samples. Some of the peices sampled are things you can't even buy. I have worked with my own personal samples before that I have made with nice drumsets, and we use FruityLoops all the time for my band TFR, but DFHS owns everything I've ever used.

I've tried BFD Drums as well, which is suppose to be the competition, but it doesn't hold a candle to DFHS, as far as I'm concerned. Just everything about DFHS is seemingly years ahead of the game. Meshuggah used it on their newest album, Catch 33 for ALL of the drums on the album. There's not one single part on there where Haake is actually playing. I like them a lot. I was surprised to hear that, but also very happy as I have DFHS so that just proved to me even more of it's value. I've even had death metal bands come into the studio here with DDrum triggers (the nice ones), and triggered every peice of their kit, except the overheads, because they knew what DFHS was and wanted that over their actual drums. I've replaced triggered snares and toms from pop and hardcore bands with DFHS several times using Drumagog's MIDI controls.

It's well worth it to get DFHS. You will love it.

~006