Building a DIY In Home Studio: Part 1- Isolation Booth

Here we are, doing something we have absolutely no idea how to do again. Except this time is slightly different. You'll find that most of our blogs are about things that have already happened, or that we've been working with or on for awhile. However, this time we are bringing you along with us as we fumble our way through this. This will be in parts as we build and experiment with what works best. So welcome to part 1.

Lets go back a little. Why did we decide to do this? Because we are broke musicians. That's why. Ok, maybe there were a few other reasons. Yes, we have a lot of songs and projects coming up, and no money to pay to be in the recording studio all the time. The idea of being able to pop in my office to record some vocals when my voice feels extra ready also sounded nice too, though. We can take our time (kind of), and it's always here. So we decided that we would build an in home studio to record at. Well....actually 2 in home studios.

We started building in Marlon's music house. He has a shed (?), Garage (?), In-Law-House type thing that he's turned into his musical haven. We figured that would be a great place to build our recording studio. Then I watched the Billie Eilish documentary and watched how she recorded in her brothers room, and it was just always there for her. I thought, "I can do that here too"! So we decided to set one up in the office at my house too. So yeah, now we have two. One at Marlon's where we have all the instruments we could ever dream of. One at my house that's always open and here. Since I can't drive, and my band is always here, we figured it would be nice to have here too.

So now we have our locations. Next was Mics, which we already had multiple of, because each of us had invested in one over the last year. Covid made us all go "Ahhh" and panic buy stuff incase we were never allowed out of our houses again. So we even have options! YAY! Check that off the list! I personally invested in a Blue Bluebird. I'll let you know how well it works once I fully know how to use it properly. You know, cause we are bringing you along with us on this journey. The good news is, though, we have mics!

I knew we somehow would need to create some isolation, especially at my house. If you've been following us for any amount of time, you know about Rigby/Big Rig and how loud that dog can get. I also live in a very tiny house, very close to my neighbors, that also aren't quiet, in the antelope valley where planes fly overhead all the time, and sonic booms occur on the regular. So yeah, isolation is going to be important.

As I've mentioned several times in this blog, we broke. I had the stimulus coming in, so I had a tiny bit to use, but also, there were other things that money was needed for. So I started looking up ideas online. One of the most popular ones was turning your walk-in closet into an isolation booth. It's a beautiful idea if you have a walk-in closet. I however don't have one of those. Trying to watch us fit in my closet would be like a clowns in a car. So we had to move on from that idea. The other thing is we share the office in the house, so it all has to be foldable/able to be put away. There were some pretty amazing portable and foldable isolation booths online, but they were a little out of the price range. So we turned to our good old friend DIY and google.

A lot of them kind of resembled a room divider. So we decided that's what we'd use for the base of our isolation booth. Then we bought some sound proofing squares and put them on the inside, and an isolation shield around the mic, and just like that, we had our isolation booth. It looked great, worked great, and even has a dual purpose as a backdrop for lives!

Step one of our in home recording studio complete! Next step is learning how to actually record, but you know, you'll have to stay tuned to find out how that goes!