SoundProofing Your Home Studio

[DudeAsInCool]

For Musicians, Solid Walls Make Good Neighbors

February 21, 2004

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Jay Braun, a guitarist for a New York City rock band called

the Negatones, is well versed in the science of

soundproofing.

"Sheetrock, soundboard and plywood, over and over," said

Mr. Braun, a fast-talking 32-year-old who has put up

soundproofing in two New York City living spaces. "We

really did want to be good neighbors."

Although musicians began recording in their homes as early

as the 1970's, the migration away from professional studios

to homes expanded in the 1980's, as drum machines and

multitrack tape recorders came into widespread use. Now

that computers and recording software are household items -

Apple Computer's new operating system comes with a program

called GarageBand - recording at home, for musicians, has

become routine.

"It's becoming harder and harder to find people who do not

have their own home studio," said Alan Fierstein, a

SoHo-based acoustic consultant, whose own professional

studio, Sorcerer Sound, recently closed.

"Twenty years ago, a studio was the only place you could

make music," said Russell Simins, drummer for the Jon

Spencer Blues Explosion, a New York City band. "Ten years

ago that was less true. Now studios are being avoided.

People have computers. They sit at home."

But with home studios came the noise. And the efforts to

contain it.

"It's the neighbors that create the soundproofing

equation," said Gary Silver, a sound designer who has been

soundproofing homes and professional studios since 1984.

"New York being what it is, that really makes it a

problem."

For Michael Mehler, who lives directly below a home studio

in a building on the Lower East Side, the most frustrating

thing about the musician upstairs is his choice of

instrument.

"Jumping up and down with the electric guitar is different

than playing Bach," Mr. Mehler said on a recent Saturday.

"It's not like he's a violinist."

Mr. Mehler added that the musician "could do it with

headphones."

That is precisely the advice offered by Richard Murdock, a

property manager in Manhattan, who has had to handle

complaints about a tenant with a studio in a Lower East

Side building.

"That boom boom boom, and the rattling of the dishes," he

said. "Most of these old tenement buildings are not steel

and concrete. Playing live music in an apartment, it's

impossible not to encroach upon your neighbors."

Muffling music is often harder than it seems. The first

mistake, Mr. Silver said, is the assumption that sound can

be trapped in a room by putting up some carpets.

"I constantly have people talking about foam, fabric and

egg cartons," he said. "You need mass. Sheetrock, concrete,

wood. Expensive, heavy things have to be built."

Mr. Braun, like most people, began on the low end of the

learning curve.

His first attempt at soundproofing came in 1996, when the

band rented part of an artist's loft in Williamsburg. The

band members marched to a Home Depot and bought plywood,

and slabs of Sheetrock and layers of soundboard.

"We thought we were so sophisticated," recalled Mr. Braun,

dressed in a rumpled suit jacket and sneakers on a recent

Thursday afternoon. "We were all high-fiving each other up

to the time we brought in the bass and the drum set."

But the new walls had a puzzling effect. Instead of

sounding softer, Mr. Braun said, the music "seemed to have

gotten louder."

It was a defining moment. Mr. Braun realized that "there

is, in fact, a reason for science."

The band left the building. For a while, they rented part

of a woodworking studio, where they played among table

saws. Meanwhile his peers were playing in rented Manhattan

Mini-Storage spaces.

Mr. Braun began wrestling with physics in a basement space

on Stanton Street. He hired a carpenter to design an

elaborate semi-suspended ceiling in the space, which was

not supposed to be lived in, but often was - several of the

band members called it home from time to time. The ceiling

was made of five layers of material: particleboard; two

layers of sound board, which functions as a thick cushion;

plywood; and Sheetrock.

"Sound is like water," said Mr. Braun, flanked by a laptop

computer and a console in the band's newly rented recording

space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. "If you drill one hole in

the wall, the sound will leak right through."

Month after month the band added new layers. They removed a

water pipe that carried sound into a neighbor's apartment.

They spent $20,000, by Mr. Braun's calculation. "We became

handymen," he said.

They recorded albums in the space in the meantime, not

bothering to wait for perfection. But the noise and

activity was eventually noticed by city inspectors, and

they were given two months to leave.

Mr. Fierstein said that many penny-pinching musicians

skipped soundproofing altogether. Instead, bathrooms and

closets become recording spaces.

"People can't afford soundproofing, but they have to have

the ability to record a singer," Mr. Fierstein said. "The

bathroom is the closest thing to a concert hall."

As more musicians stay at home to make music, professional

recording studios have suffered. Bill Tesar, the owner of

the Toy Specialists, a large sound equipment rental

company, said improved technology for home recording and

reduced budgets from record companies have caused business

with studios to decline over the past three years. His

company, in business since 1983, closed last week. "I'd say

more than 60 percent of the midsize recording studios that

were in business five years ago are now out of business,"

Mr. Tesar said. "That's not an inflated guess. There were

literally hundreds of them in the New York metro area. Now,

if there are 40 or 50, that's a lot."

Even freelancers are worried. Adam Kendall, who plays in an

electronic music group and also records bands out of his

apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, says he is concerned

that the amount of work he's had the past several years

will decline.

"I'm the person big studios hate," he said. But he added

that Apple's release of GarageBand "is my karmic return."

He added, "I gave up hope for making money recording

music."

Some musicians said home studios and computer equipment

were making recording quieter. Richard Bernstein, lead

guitarist for Rammstein, a German heavy metal group, said

the recording process was less collaborative now, more a

solitary plinking on a computer keyboard than a group

playing effort.

"You don't have to listen loud anymore," said Mr.

Bernstein, whose concerts feature feats of pyrotechnics.

Music today is "everyone is cooking in his own kitchen by

himself," he said, in his home studio on the first floor of

a former firehouse on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. "It

used to be five guys playing together, but that doesn't

happen as much anymore."

"You can do everything without other people's presence,"

Mr. Bernstein said.

Besides, says Mr. Kendall, "am I really making more noise

than a guy on Sunday who is watching an Arnold

Schwarzenegger movie in Surround Sound?"

There are those musicians for whom such questions are not

rhetorical. Howie Statland, the musician who lives upstairs

from Mr. Mehler, said he could not afford soundproofing

and, even if he could, his neighbors' blaring music and

yelling children would give him the right to make noise

freely. He has a guitar amplifier in his bedroom and plays

often. Drums were his one concession.

"The guy downstairs gets upset when I put the guitar too

loud," Mr. Statland said.

A basic philosophy, however, prevails. "I've had people

yell, `shut up,' but they're out there, and I'm in here.

What are they going to do?"

Not everyone records at home all the time. Many musicians

still use large studios for much of their final products.

"People who are making big money music are still going to

the two or three big studios in Manhattan," said Mr.

Simins, whose own small recording studio is not in his

home. "Britney Spears doesn't sit at home in front of her

computer."

As for Mr. Braun, he sums up his hard-earned wisdom in

soundproofing succinctly. "You can follow the rules note

for note, but if you have an old lady sleeping downstairs,

that's it," he said.

Recognizing that there are advantages to a separate studio,

his band rented one in Williamsburg last year. The main

criteria: no soundproofing required. The studio is in an

industrial zone on a corner, just beneath the Williamsburg

Bridge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/nyregion...56e3c4658141007

[joeyz]

Many new artists don't have the financial means to get music produced in a big studio when they're starting out. Home recording is a great way for new talent to to lay down some tracks and have a hard copy of some of their work. Dawn Kinnard independently recorded her CD in her fathers church and recorded her last few songs in a band mates livingroom. My boys from Gabriel Young independently recorded and mastered their demo in Kalen's playroom. They built a hut out of blankets to abosorb backgound noise and played way. Sure they would like to ultimately record their CD in a professional studio, but having a way to independently get their music out in the form of a sampler is essential to having any type of success in the music world.

Joey Z.

[DudeAsInCool]

I think we have a couple threads in this forum to help bands do their own recording. Apple has just developed an inexpensive system--garage band. Also, analogx.com provides some free tools at his website

[joeyz]

Sweet dude... I'll have find those threads and check them out...Thanks for the info