John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi there,

I've been reading this forum for some years now and now it's finally time for me to design and build my own studio. My wife and I have bought a house and we are getting the keys on the 1st of august. The house we bought is a freestanding house in a residential area where the council allows you to run a business in your home.

Aboute me
I'm a professional musician, I studied at a dutch conservatory with bassguitar as my main instrument. I teach bassguitar at several musicschools in my area and play in a professional band.

What I want with my studio
It's my intention to make at least a partial living with my studio. As you can see on my floorplan there is room for an extension in the future but time and money is preventing me from doing that now. So what I want is a controlroom with plenty of space and a booth where I can record drums and vocals.

I need a spacey controlroom because the controlroom will also be used as a productionroom. I have a few keyboards and synthesizer modules that I'm using to create dancemusic. Also I want to be able to give bassguitar lessons in my controlroom.

We are going to use a Protools HD3 system with a 24 or 32 channel Pro Control or one of those new C|24's.

Budget and timeframe
I'm going to build and run the studio with a partner and we have a budget for the build of around 10.000 euro's (about 15.000 USD). We are going to do a lot ourselfs and we have good connections with wholesellers of buildingmaterials.

We are planning on finishing the project in three months time. Being a professional musician leaves you with some nice freetime during weekdays . Also we have a small band (4 musicians) comming in januari 2009 for our first paying recording session. So our timeframe is a bit tight...

The building
The building in wich we are planning the studio is a two floor building. Our studio is planned on the groundfloor, the office and greenroom is planned on the second floor. The building is a typical dutch building, massively build in stone with double walls with insulation between them.

Because I resized the my floorplan the measurement might not be quiet readable so here they are in metric and emperial

- floorspace is 8.5 meters (28.3 ft) long and 5.2 meters (17.3 ft) wide
- the space for the staircase is 1 meter (3.3 ft) wide and 3.7 meter (12.3 ft) long
- ceilingheight is 2.7 meters (9 ft)

My first idea
I have played around a little with one of the floorplans of John on the SAE site. It's the Garage Studio 1 Plan because it resembles my situation the most. I mirrored it to make it fit my building. The place on John's plan where studio is drawn is the place of my future extension. So for now I'm focussing on the controlroom and booth wich I need to be big enough to record a drumkit in.

My expectations from this forum
I've come to this forum because it contains lots and lots of information! I'm hoping to find some other ideas from you guys here and ofcourse I want to contribute to future studio builders with the knowledge en experience I'm about to acquire Also I'll keep everbody posted on my progression with pictures.

First questions!
I hope I've given enough information about my building and wishes. What I'd like to know is if there's anybody with other ideas for my floorplan.

Thanks already for this great forum!

Andre - I don't see what the problem is - the plan that you've selected appears to fit into the space you have.

When we bought the house your "Garage Studio plan 1" was the first thing that sprung in mind. I'm just curious if there is anybody out here with other ideas.

I'm busy right now with making more detailed sketches (i.e. scaling your "Garage Studio Plan 1" to my situation). I'll post them in this thread.

And thanks again John for this great forum! It's a real source for knowledge and inspiration. I also bought Rod Gervais's book, which is helping me alot.

Hai Andre, just wanna say welcome from one Dutch-Bassplayer to another





(now, doesn't that look sweet. Two pictures of different dutchies plugging them heavy strings . Who said bassplayers are posers? whahahaa)

Hey guys, we've now got two bass players and a guitarist 'gettin down' under an Aussie sunset!

Welcome Andre, and best wishes for your build!

Regards,

Lou.

Hmm... basstrapped

Good luck on the build! Sterkte met de aanleg van de studio!

_________________
Regards,

Edo