recording – Aaron J. Trumm

Recording Piano Wrong

September 14, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, do it yourself recording, home recording, nquit music, piano, piano mics, piano recording, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine

How breaking the rules can transform your piano recordings

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

The piano is an amazing creature. It’s ubiquitous in all kinds of music and its frequency range means it can play any role. It’s also so crazy to record that there are volumes written on how to record it right, including my piece “Caging the Beast” from May 2016’s Recording. Since that’s been done, let’s talk about the “wrong” way; nutso things you can do with piano recording that may yield something new.

Oddball Placements

A piano is huge, and there are a million “good” ways to mic it, including close miking, room miking, spaced pairs, mid-side pairs and so on. There are, however, several places considered not great, at least for capturing a traditional piano sound.

The Hole

Try a large diaphragm condenser like an AKG 414 placed right above one of rear holes. It turns out this might sound nice and can help isolate the piano in an ensemble. A dynamic like an SM57 pointed straight into the hole is a recipe for weird and muddy, but that may be perfect in the right context.

Under The Piano

There’s a whole world of tone under the piano that may not be considered normal, including a wealth of low frequencies that might even help a traditional mix. Try an omni-directional under the middle of the case and see what happens. Or try a ribbon mic to capture the movement of the pedal. Often that movement coincides with the rhythm of the tune, so there may be a rhythm track there.

The Foot

Nathan Rosenberg reminds us in his November 2004 Recording piece that “there is a wonderful place at the tail, just about where the back leg is, or often just outside the case. Here, the various registers tend to project in a surprisingly uniform manner.” This is a great place to place a stereo pair or even a single mic for mono capture. This isn’t particularly crazy, but it’s worth trying.

Wrong Mics

Tradition holds that the best microphone for piano is a condenser or ribbon. There’s good reason for this, as condensers and ribbons are good at capturing high-end detail. Mics like the AKG 414, the Neumann U87 and even the Rode NT1-A are common.

That leaves out dynamics, which are generally too sluggish to capture the detail a ribbon or condenser could. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying! As mentioned, an SM57 in a sound hole can result in something weird, especially if you were to, say, amp that signal?

Also mentioned before, the underside of a grand piano can be a treasure-trove of low frequencies. Maybe try something like an AKG D112 underneath and see what happens.

For that matter, what would happen if you placed that D112 above the low strings? As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what Recording contributor Jon Bare did on one location recording, and it made a baby grand sound like a 9-foot concert grand (see his article “Miking The Not So Great Piano” on Recording’s website).

Perhaps you could try that crappy vocal mic from your dad’s 1970’s live rig placed smack dab on top of the keys, or 17 omni-directional condensers under a closed lid, specifically placed to create phase problems. What if you taped a lavalier to the inside of the shell? The possibilities are endless.

Mess With the Piano

Next let’s try the instrument itself. There are tons of ways you can cause a piano to sound abnormal. Recently I put a sweatshirt on the strings to create a muted sound that proved useful for rhythms. Some avant-garde pianists spend hours before a gig preparing the piano contraptions placed on the strings, hammers and soundboards.

“Tack” pianos are made by sticking thumbtacks in the hammers so they make a tacky sound when striking the strings. (Beware: this is permanent, as it damages the felt.) Or what if the hammers were softer than normal?

You could prepare the innards of the piano, or you could mess with the outside. Try closing the lid, draping a storage blanket over it, and miking from above. You’ll probably get a dull sound, but what if you were to hold down the sustain pedal and let a ton of notes build up on top of each other?

For that matter, you could remove the lid entirely. In fact, that technique, which Elton John producer Gus Dudgeon was fond of, isn’t even rare.

Let’s not forget we’ve been talking about grand pianos this whole time. Uprights and spinets are a whole different world, and while there are “right” ways to capture them, there are also crazy ways. Most importantly, consider a bad upright. Perhaps you have an antique which can’t be tuned and has strings missing. Maybe there’s an opportunity for some interesting stuff by finding the worst sound it can make and recording that. This kind of buzzy, crackling thing can be great for creating interesting rhythm tracks, for example.

Play With the Playing

By now we’re placing wrong mics in wrong holes on wrong instruments. Awesome!

Now let’s play with the playing. There’s an incredible variety of playing styles available to the piano. Super staccato, flowing legato, damper pedals, low registers, glissandos and tigers and bears, oh my! Even staying at the keyboard, you can probably think of a hundred ways to break out of the box. How about using the lowest two octaves to create a bassline, replacing a bassist? What about recording the same riff 7 separate times in all the octaves?

Beyond the keyboard itself, a piano can make a lot of sounds we don’t normally think of. Check out The Piano Guys for a litany of examples, from plucking and poking strings to hand drumming on the soundboard to threading a frayed violin bow through the strings.

The cool thing here is breaking these rules doesn’t lead to any particular genre. You could end up doing pop covers like The Piano Guys, avant-garde craziness ala The Mars Volta, or even create hip-hop track.

There Are No Rules

Just like music in general, there are no rules with the piano (as long as you don’t destroy a piano that’s not yours!) You can stick with the tried and true and there’s a world of creativity to be had with such a versatile instrument, but if you get bored, run out of ideas or have a sticky problem you can’t solve, it may be time to do things a little wrong. You never know what might come of it!

—–

I‘m a singer, rapper and writer who uses the piano in a fashion that’s not always right. You can talk to me on social media @AaronJTrumm

Art vs. Science in Mixing – and Life?

August 31, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, acoustics, do it yourself recording, home recording, mixing, music mixing, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine, rob chiarelli

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

If you haven’t read a book called “Zen and the Art of Mixing”, stop now, order it, and then continue reading this.

Now that you’ve done that, I’ll tell you a story. One day not long ago I was sitting in a plush lecture hall in the Westin hotel in Los Angeles, listening to a workshop on mixing by Rob Chiarelli. If you don’t already know, Rob is a Grammy winning producer and mixer, known for working with such acts as Will Smith, Christina Aguilera, Pink, LeAnn Rimes, Janet Jackson, Stevie Wonder…and on and on and on.

Needless to say, we were all excited to hear what Rob had to say, and there were many enthusiastic mixers ready with a host of questions. As you might imagine, some of those questions were quite technical, and I remember early on somebody in the back asked something I thought of as – well – a little nit-picky. LUFS on pre-master mix buss, or something along those lines. Something that although I have the capacity to understand, would never have crossed my mind to ask, in 25 years of making records. Naturally I felt stupid.

I was prepared for embarrassment, feeling sure that Rob would pontificate in great detail on the proper way to handle whatever it was, but was pleasantly surprised when Rob scoffed. I don’t want to say he called it a stupid question (he was very magnanimous) – but kinda.

Rob’s answer was basically this: does it sound good? Does it feel good? He did talk for some time in response to that question, but the lecture was about what matters in a mix, and that’s the song. If the thing feels great, it feels great. If it sounds great, it sounds great, and if you get so caught up in the technical mumbo-jumbo and fail to pay attention to the feel of the mix, you’ll probably mess it up.

That was a great relief, but in the next few minutes, Rob did talk about some very technical points, and he did end up addressing the question in some detail. What struck me was the deep understanding he had about the science of audio, as well as the overall goal. Here was a guy who has a grasp of the balance between art and science. He hadn’t scoffed at this question because he was stumped. Not at all.

It seems this is a pretty fitting analogy for life in general. We need to understand the details, and science has the been the way we’ve achieved most of what we take for granted now. It was a physicist (Loud Tommy Dowd) who gave us multi-track recording and the fader. An electrical engineer (Max Mathews) brought us digital audio. But when we get caught in the details and forget the reason for them, we risk losing the art entirely.

We’re seeing that battle a lot lately, not just in music. Science is being thrown away when it shouldn’t be, but so is its counterpart, faith. This is a dilemma as old as history. In college lectures on medieval history, we called it the battle of faith vs. reason. In every era one trumps the other and there are always consequences.

Perhaps this is what’s so magical about music and mixing. You really can’t get it right without both. Fail to understand the science and you’re left guessing, bumbling, and making mixes that sound like cats fighting or elephants dying. Skip the crucial details and you could find yourself overloading a speaker, losing a job, or recording silence at a once in lifetime performance.

Still, if you can’t step back and feel the music, let it tell you what it needs, and worry less about technical terms, peak meters and the next fancy plugin, you could end up making cold, dreary mixes that move no one. In fact, too much emphasis on the technical and you could end up with the same muddy, screechy mix as your head-in-the-clouds counterpart.

There are two abilities that set great mixers apart from mediocre ones. One is the ability to hear details – pick out the high-hat and hear that slight 3k resonance or hear the kick phasing just slightly with the bass. The other is to turn that type of listening off and hear the big picture. Listen to the way the mix grooves as a whole unit. Turn off the brain, notice the goosebumps, and feel your head nodding. The ability to be both analytical and emotional – sometimes simultaneously – is what makes a mixer truly amazing. It may even be what music is for.

It’s hard to be two opposite things at once, or at least we’re led to believe that. But I think in mixing, as in life, the great goal is balance. I think and I feel, therefore I am a musician.

So, if you ask me whether art or science is king in mixing, I’d say they share the throne. Whichever side you tend to lean toward, I encourage you to lean the other way sometimes. See what you can find by valuing both. Maybe you’ll be able to mix art and science a little better (pun fully intended). Either way, keep doing what you do.

—–

I’m always trying to learn more about balance, art, science and sound. If you want talk about it with me, find me on Facebook @AaronJTrumm

Favorite DAW? PShaw!

August 24, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, acoustics, best DAW, DAWs, digital audio workstation, do it yourself recording, favorite DAW, home recording, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine

Why choose only one?

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

A long time ago, in a studio far far away, there were many people involved in a song production, and the process included separate, distinct parts, each role played by a professional specialist. There was tracking, done in a tracking studio by tracking engineers. There was mixing, done in a mix studio by a mix engineer. And there was the dark and mysterious process of mastering, done in a mastering studio by a golden eared audio god immersed in single-minded technicality.

Now? Not so much. Yes, the traditional process still happens, but more and more it’s all one big jumble, especially for those of us producing track after track on tight budgets.

Of course, what has made this possible is computing. Gone (mostly) are megalith tape machines, and in their place the all-powerful DAW – digital audio workstation. Everyone has their favorite. Some people hate all the others. Debates are waged. Articles are written. “How To Choose The Right DAW For You”. “Which DAW is best?” If it weren’t for the loudness wars, the sample rate wars, and the regular ol’ guns and ammo wars, the DAW wars might rage uncontrollably.

But what would it be like if the world of the DAW was all kumbaya and lovey-dovey? What if you didn’t have to choose just one? What if all DAWs had their place in a wonderful world of DAW inclusion?

Or at least what if you, as an all-in-one production team, realized there may be a reason to use more than one. If you think of audio as audio, and not as DAW projects stuck inside a particular format, there’s a whole world of possibility for improving workflow, sound, and creativity.

There are a few reasons for this. One may be obvious – certain DAWs are better suited to certain tasks than others. More than that, certain software may be better suited to your way of doing that task than others. Some DAWs have certain built-in functionality, or a unique sound, and yet don’t work well in other ways (for you). Certain DAWs may not run a favorite plugin or two, or embed video the way you like, or warp audio in a way that makes sense to you.

An argument can be made for warping yourself instead, learning how to most powerfully use your DAW’s features, and that’s definitely a good idea. Still, it’s nice to know there may be other options.

Another fabulous reason to use different software for different parts of the project goes back to the traditional way of doing things. If you’re a one-person production crew, it’s very helpful if you can get yourself in a different mindset for each part of the process. Exporting audio and changing software can go a long way toward that goal.

Indeed, that can be inefficient, but it can be super helpful.

That’s not all though. You may find yourself collaborating with people outside of your studio, and those people may not be using the same software. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were the genius who could handle multiple formats, change back and forth, work within someone else’s flow, and make everything come together?

And of course, having a working knowledge of multiple DAWs is quite helpful when you travel to a session at another studio and your preferred software isn’t available. Perhaps you’re a Cubase lover, but you don’t have a grand piano, and you’ve been granted access to a ProTools studio with a beautimous grand. You’re given the run of the place – as long as you can pilot the ship yourself. It might be nice to be competent with ProTools – and know how to bring the project back into Cubase.

It can be costly to run multiple platforms, admittedly. Although some very good software is free, and other packages are affordable enough that you could replace one you can’t afford with three you can. So multiple packages may be the way to go if your budget is extra tight. Or it may simply be the cost of doing business to maintain a wide array of options. It all depends on your situation.

Speaking of which, everyone’s flow is different, so we all have our quirky little setups. I’ll leave you with mine, just to give you an idea how things might come together.

Tracking: Cakewalk by BandLab. Or ProTools if piloting the aforementioned piano studio.
Editing: Cakewalk. I can’t wrap my head around ProTools editing, even after 25 years.
Voiceover editing: Audacity.
Loop based composition, warping, and live triggering: Ableton.
Mixing: Cakewalk, and then MixBus for final tweaks and that special MixBus sound.
Mastering: Reaper, because it seems to deal with my preferred plugins best.
MP3 Conversion: Sox, a command line tool. I wrote a script which uses Sox to make every deliverable I need in one fell swoop.

Yes, everything I do can be done in any one of the packages I use. But I find it freeing to move smoothly from one to another. Maybe you could too!

I work with Cakewalk, Ableton, Reaper, MixBus – and ok sometimes ProTools. We can argue about it on social media @AaronJTrumm.

It’s All About The Room

August 11, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, acoustic treatment, acoustics, do it yourself recording, home recording, home studio acoustics, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine, recording studio acoustics

Why acoustic treatment should be your first expense

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Being the adventurous, un-monied, and fairly non-famous soul that I am, I’ve been in a ton of low-end recording studios. Project studios, home studios, studios in strip malls, studios in cottages behind houses. I’ve visited rehearsal studios in Houston suburbs, band garages in Austin slums, electronica dens in Albuquerque, and video production suites in Oakland. I’ve also been in my fair share of commercial studios. And of course, I’ve built out countless bedroom studios of my own over the course of a 26-year career. Some were pretty bad, I admit.

That’s not to mention all the studio pictures I’ve seen and remote collaborations on Skype and Zoom. I’ve seen enough studio desks to last me a lifetime, and almost daily I see an image of some slick piece of gear I wish I had. Video monitors, big bad computers, control surfaces, pre-amps, mics, you name it.

It turns out that almost without fail, you can a tell a professional by the studio they keep – and it looks quite different than some might expect. You can also predict with reasonable accuracy how a recordist’s work will sound by looking around their room.

Given the topic of this issue, you may not be surprised to hear me say, it’s not the $50,000 Pro Tools rigs or high-end monitor switchers that make the difference. It’s not even the expensive preamps or vintage microphones (although those things don’t hurt).

What it comes down to is the room. Capturing audio is all about the space of course, but especially when it comes to mixing – we all know what a poorly responding room can do to a mix. So, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come when I walk into a studio that boasts $100,000 worth of shiny new equipment placed haphazardly in a hard square box.

Why does this happen? Who knows? Perhaps we gravitate toward the prestigious. Perhaps we need to be able to boast about our equipment to draw in clients. Perhaps we think acoustic treatment is only for top-tier, multi-million-dollar facilities. Maybe people just don’t know why or how to properly prepare a room for audio.

Whatever it is, that’s why we at Recording Magazine dedicate an entire month to monitoring and acoustics. And perhaps this issue should have come out in January, because your listening and recording environments should be the first thing you deal with.

Especially if you’re revamping or building a new studio, rather than spending as much money as possible on your recording computer, microphones, plugins, software, keyboards, and so on, start your spending (and your building) with the room.

Don’t be afraid of running out of money. With some ingenuity you can properly treat a standard bedroom for not much more than the cost of a Rode Condenser – if that. And you can make it look good too! Remember, you don’t need to build a million-dollar facility with 30-foot ceilings, non-parallel surfaces, and outer walls full of sand.

And here’s a tip: Although every room tests out a bit differently, the solutions are pretty much always the same. So, you can finish 90% of your treatment before you even pick out a pair of monitors. In fact, that’s what I’d recommend. Treat the room and make it sound great on its own before you even bring in the furniture. Then get some great monitors, bring them and the other gear in, and listen. Then, if you’re so inclined you can test the room and make tweaks.

It won’t take as much time as you may think, and it won’t cost as much as you may be afraid of. Make the quality of the space your first priority with monitors a close second and you’ll be working with a foundation that’s far better than most other studios.

It really is all about the room!

I work in a small, well treated room. I talk about acoustics quite a bit. I think about acoustics quite a bit. We can talk about acoustics a bit on Facebook if you want, @AaronJTrumm.

Gift Giving For People Who Love Recordists

June 29, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, do it yourself recording, gift giving, gifts for musicians, home recording, nquit music, presents for musicians, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

When I was 16 years old, my mother bought me a 4 Track Tascam Portastudio – the kind with the cassette tape (yes I’m that old). She did it so I would stop commandeering her dual well cassette deck to make pause loop tapes. Ignoring for a moment the slippery path she set me on, the plan didn’t even work. Quickly I learned, and she learned with me, that I would still need to “borrow” that stereo deck to mix down my creations. I used that Portastudio, and that “mixdown” deck, for a surprisingly short time before more “things” were “needed” and quickly things ballooned past anyone’s ability to surprise me with studio presents. I think that Portastudio may have been the last piece of studio gear my family attempted to buy.

The point is, it’s DIFFICULT to give gifts to a recording enthusiast and as recording enthusiasts we should pity our loved ones.

First of all, let’s not pretend what we do is even remotely accessible without money. Recording gear is expensive, and there’s no way around it. Sure, a person can cruise E-Bay and probably find an SM57 for around $60 but unless their recordist is new or relatively mic-snobby, there will already be a glut of 57’s in their possession. So the loved one is faced with “the person who has everything” syndrome for anything even remotely affordable. Guitar tuner? “I’ve got two.” Mic stands? “20.” Little adapter thingies? “Drawers full.” If the family knows about it, we’ve probably got it in spades.

Alas, the family’s gift giving woes don’t end there. If your doting loved one decides to spend a little more, they have to know what to get, where to get it, and which brand to go with. And do they? Of course not! You must understand, dear recording guru of the neighborhood, to normal folk, your little room looks like a lost Star Trek episode. Knobs, buttons, neon lights, wires, inexplicable wall coverings, floor gadgets, desk gadgets, lava lamps if you’re old enough, razor blades and reels if you’re awesome enough, and the darkness – oh the darkness! Even a seasoned veteran would have trouble navigating your highly customized studio scenario, admit it! How is Aunt Maggie supposed to know what’s missing in this quagmire, or what you have been hoping for?

Well, you could tell them. You could say “for Christmas, I would like a Manley Tube Pre”, and your Uncle Dave might ask why you want to be stuck in a tube and what it needs to be manly for anyway. Your spouse might Google it, but then you’d spend your evening in the ER treating sticker shock. You could be less specific, but then you’ve doomed your loved one to a year of research and looking lost in music stores. You might say, “I need a new set of monitors,” but that’s really just a mean thing to say to someone you like! Heck, even YOU don’t know which pair you want!

They could just take a risk, go to a store and pick something up they think matches the look and feel of your space, and that works just fine if the store has a great return policy.

But let’s face it, it’s kind of awkward when a bass player gets a guitar as a gift. “Yes…yes I see that it has even more strings…uhm…yes…that’s wonderful. Yeah, more…more notes. Thank you.” Ok, that scenario may be a bit hyperbolic, but you get the gist. It may be, even, that your family DOES know the difference between a Fender and a Martin, and in fact, you may even be shacked up with a fellow recordist. If so, your gift giving woes may be less severe, however there is another problem there. If you happen to live with a recordist, how do you know that the presents they give aren’t really for THEM? In this situation, I advise continual and open sharing!

If you’re like most of us, and the lone recording artist in the family, it’s clear you’re not likely to wake up on your birthday to a balanced patch bay with a bow, and you’re probably never going to find a power conditioner under the tree. But don’t be disappointed. Have compassion for the trouble you’ve caused your people by being a genius of sound and audio. Love them anyway, and ask for little. Try, if you can, to understand what they want for presents (even though wanting anything that doesn’t go in a studio does seem insane) and you be the giver. Remember also that you are probably no better at gift giving, seeing as how you tend to give earplugs as stocking stuffers and surround sound for your anniversary.

There may even come a day when your stocking is full of XLR cables, or each day of Chanukah has a different color Y cable but be patient. Until that day, when holidays, birthdays or anniversaries roll around, smile, say thank you, give big hugs…

… and use E-Bay to sell your gifts and get more gear!

Happy shopping!

I mostly do my own studio purchasing and I’m trying to be a better gift giver. If you want to exchange gifts with me, reach out on my socials… @AaronJTrumm on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

The Evolution Of Evolutionary Mixing

June 22, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio mixing, do it yourself recording, home recording, mixing, music mixing, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

The modern recording process has been set for quite a while. It goes:

Pre-Production (writing/rehearsing, etc.)
Tracking
Mixing
Mastering

Keeping these processes separate and distinct has its advantages. For example, a well written song composed, arranged and rehearsed is usually tracked smoothly, with fewer problems than ill-conceived ideas, even with non-traditional music like electronica. Well arranged songs also lend themselves to easier mixing. Mastering, meanwhile, needs to be its own process, with new ears and different gear, and of course getting a break from long tracking sessions and coming back fresh for mixdown can not only be more effective, but more fun and rewarding too.

The process has proven effective, but in the past 5-10 years, I’ve noticed a new paradigm developing for many musicians and producers, myself included.

In traditional mixdown, we bring recorded, edited final tracks to a mix studio, call up the tracks on tape, MDM or DAW and use a console and outboard processing to create the final mix. We move faders, dial knobs, make patches, and if our console isn’t automated (ie: the ubiquitous Mackie 8-Buss), rehearse and perform moves and changes in real time, sometimes working in teams (“move over, Bob! I have to twist the mid-range NOW to create that EQ wahwah! Make sure you fade channel 2 while I engage the delay…”)

These are often one shot sessions, with hours of listening on multiple monitors, boom boxes, computer speakers and car stereos to achieve translatable mixes. This works, but what if you make a mistake, or find out the mix is too boomy in Walmart? Can you recreate that session? Do you have the time and money to rebook? You can attempt to recreate an analog session, but it is painful and rarely works (remember the knob/fader sheets that came in 8-Buss manuals?).

Of course, DAWS and automated boards make it easier. A ProTools mix can be called up again and again, sounding exactly the same, especially if no outboard gear is involved, and an automated console can do the same. However even an inexpensive digital board sits in a single (expensive) room and so does a hefty ProTools rig, so there wasn’t necessarily a huge change to the process when digital boomed.

However, when laptops got powerful enough to handle multi-track audio, there was a bigger shift. In my own work, that shift was immediate and dramatic. Suddenly mixes could evolve over time. I could take the laptop everywhere, checking mixes and making small tweaks in video edit suites, project studios, theaters, houses or strange headphones. Add mp3s and stronger internet, and suddenly I was sharing evolving mixes with band members or label partners remotely, reading emailed feedback and correcting mixes while at coffee shops or on planes. Not only was there no longer a time crunch every session, I was listening in different ENVIRONMENTS, which is great for translatability. The result was lower cost and better mixes.

That change in process levels the playing field a bit, giving more artists another way to strive for world class material; but it can also change the fundamental recording process. With the ability to quickly tweak and change mix parameters (and save old versions), dialing in the sound can start earlier in the chain. Mixes can evolve with the writing, which is great for genres where the mix is a fundamental part of the composition itself, and while it can certainly be a double edged sword, if managed right, it can also lead to a more integrated and rewarding experience over all, and sometimes even to smooth as butter traditional mixdown and mastering sessions later in the process. Not to mention, there is a new sense of freedom there that wasn’t there before, and we artists do love our sense of freedom.

I like to call it “evolutionary mixing”. I wouldn’t call it a replacement for the traditional workflow. As I said, there are reasons that workflow developed, and some of the freedom afforded with a new outlook can be problematic. Mixing while writing and tracking can cause a loss of perspective, for example, and sometimes easier processes foster laziness. There’s also plenty of reason to hire and learn from masters of the trade. Having a laptop and an attitude is great, but taking that material back to an old master can really create that earth shaking sense of bridging past, present and future.

Personally, I still do my best to compose complete pieces first before doing much tracking, I’m adamant about hiring a world class mastering house, and on my next project, I’ll be combining the evolutionary mixing approach during tracking and editing to put my creative spin on things with a more traditional mixdown later in the process done by a whole different (better) engineer.

That all said, it is exciting to see technology changing the process in a way that increases access and creates new art and inspiration, not only for up and comers, but also for salty veterans who may need a kick in the pants. After all, new process: new result.

I’ve been searching for a good mix for 27 years. Most of the best ones have evolved over a little time. I’m currently outside…in fact I just took the picture at the top of this… talk to me about this and other music, creativity, and outside related things on my socials… @AaronJTrumm on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

The Importance of Going Outside

June 15, 2021 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, do it yourself recording, health, home recording, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine, work life balance, work/life balance

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

I was talking to a friend on Twitter (ironic start to this I know), and he sent me a picture of a beautiful lake. We got to talking about that lake, and how his habit was to take long walks around it. I said I thought it was important to go outside as much as possible, and he agreed. I told him there was a similar (former) lake outside my department in grad school, and that I’d head out there whenever I wasn’t in the studio, but back then, that wasn’t very often. He shared that a certain recent song production had been finished while walking around that lake with a friend, and it occurred to me that there’s more than one reason to get out of the chair and hit the fresh air.

As engineers, producers and musicians, most of us spend the majority of our time squirreled away in dark clubs and darker studios. Night is the preferred (or necessary) time of work for most musicians, and isolation from the world is necessary both acoustically and emotionally. This isn’t bad, but we spend our energy mercilessly in the studio – people who have never mixed a record have no idea how much physical energy it takes. That’s reason one to get outside. It can kill a person to sit in front of a mix desk or a computer all the time and never see the light. Sitting has even been called the new smoking. So, it’s important to get up, leave the room, leave the building, and go outside. Take a walk, get some more serious exercise, or just look at something natural.

My Twitter friend pointed out reason two with his story about the song. Inspiration comes from “refilling the well” (to paraphrase Julia Cameron), and if you sit too long in your own production, you can run out of perspective and ideas. Personally, I’ll probably never write a lyric about a pristine lake; that would be boring to me. But refilling the well is more about replenishing energy than direct and literal inspiration. Sometimes a walk around the lake just causes that last, elusive idea to come.

In this case, getting outside is both literal and metaphorical. We need to get outside of our heads, outside of the room, and outside of our own thinking. We need an outside perspective. That’s why there are mix notes. That’s why great mixers clear out the control room. There needs to be someone who wasn’t there the whole time to come in toward the end and give an outside perspective. Sometimes it may even behoove us to hire an outside mixer, producer or player, or take a project to an outside studio.

Reason three: Ears need breaks. Listening fatigue causes poor sonic judgement and especially if things are loud, ears can get damaged over time. Getting away from the sound at regular intervals is as important as keeping volumes reasonable and wearing ear protection. If you live in Manhattan, going outside may not help you here, but as I recall, it’s only about a 5 minute walk from Hell’s Kitchen to Central Park, so maybe all is not lost for you New Yorkers!

If health isn’t your bag, and inspiration is coming out your pores at all times no matter what, maybe reason four is enough to get you outside: You can’t get famous if you never meet anybody. One could argue that you can use the internet for that, but we all know that meeting people face to face is so much more powerful. Getting outside in this case just means out of your house, and you still may end up constantly in dark clubs, or once you achieve this fame, deep in penthouse suites drinking chardonnay and eating thousand dollar fish guts, but if you want that to last, I refer you to previous paragraphs regarding health.

I for one have changed the way I do business and make music. I get up in the morning now, I keep the windows and doors open 95% of the time, and I built my new office/studio in the sunniest room in the house. I never book a session longer than four hours (usually it’s two) and I stand up and walk out the front door repeatedly throughout the day. All-nighters are a thing of the past now, as is the romance of the dungeon studio.

For me, it’s more than just nature, sunshine and lakes, and it’s more than literally going outdoors. For me, it’s about work/life balance, something that people in other professions enjoy, but it seems that musicians usually don’t. For me, it’s about treating my dream job as WORK, and not a hobby, which means, I get to have a life outside of work/music. We don’t HAVE to be squirreled away all the time and miss the beautiful, varied, colorful things that live out THERE, not in HERE, just because we make music.

I may not ever meet my Twitter friend by the lake, but I’m glad he reminded me to take it outside. If you need me the rest of today, that’s where I’ll be.

I’m a vocalist, pianist, producer, engineer and – as you can see – writer. I’m currently outside, but when I come in, you can find me at @AaronJTrumm on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Master The Craft And The Art Will Follow

February 11, 2021 by Aaron

home recording, home recording studio, recording, recording magazine

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

One of my earliest mentors was a man named Dale, but we always called him “the old man”. He was a documentary producer at the local public television station where I got my start. I worked under him as a work study generalist, but he quickly put a camera in my hands and, recognizing my bent, had me heading up sound on set within weeks.

Dale and his other protégé Manny brought an artfulness and soul to documentary making that I’ve rarely seen matched. We were the wild men of KNME, the ones with big beards and foul mouths, and it often seemed to me we were flying by the seat of our pants. Some days we would just grab a hi-8 camera and a pistol grip boom and go down to the worst parts of town, just to see what we could find.

It may have seemed crazy to me at the time, but one of Dale’s favorite things to say to us was “master the craft and the art will follow”. If it’s not obvious, what that means is this: Amateurs try to be creative first, thinking up wild ideas and trying to figure out how to do it. Professionals do this too but what they do first is work hard to understand their craft. That gunslinger you think doesn’t have a care in the world? He doesn’t, but that’s because he’s so well prepared.

An audio engineer from the days when audio engineering required actual engineers, Dale taught us to know our tools very deeply; how light, sound, physics, gear and even people worked. He taught us to prepare thoroughly and love the craft. For me, what that meant was it wasn’t enough to know where the record button was. I wanted to know how to white balance, what an iris does, how to manipulate the f-stop, what kind of lavalier would actually work in a noisy environment, and what a change in light would do to a long shoot.

Sure enough, as Dale predicted, the more I learn, teach and write about the craft, and the more I understand the mundane details and deep fundamental concepts, the more creative I feel. There’s nothing to block the creative flow when you truly know your medium and your tools.

That’s one of the major reasons I write for Recording. When it comes time to teach something, there’s no choice but to know it in and out, and when I do that, I tend to find a creative wellspring as a reward.

It almost never fails. Deep dive into the subtle and elusive art of cleaning and punching up low end in a mix, and you find your mind conjuring up a song laden with sick kick drums and slick bass lines, just so you can mix them better than you’ve ever mixed before. Learn once and for all what happens when you treat a room and how to do so, and suddenly you’ve got nothing standing in between you and that cello masterpiece. Get a systematic view of the mics available in a certain budget window and what you can expect to hear from them, and suddenly you can picture an elusive vocal mix with no question about how to achieve it.

There’s an interesting and tricky balance that goes on there. Some recordists are absolute perfectionists. Some believe there are details that don’t matter. Try asking a Facebook group about MP3s and see how many answers you get. The one thing that remains constant though, is that the more knowledgeable an artist is, the more empowered they are. That’s probably why we continue to debate the physics, science and psychology of sound and music. We want to know. We want to have an unburdened creative flow. We seek mastery.

When we’re young, we want it quickly. We often want to skip the boring stuff and get straight to being wildly creative. We worry that we need to chase the art, or it will fly away without us. That’s ok too, but sometimes we tend to go great guns without preparing, only to wonder why the final product isn’t what we envisioned. Our sifus, senseis and mentors tell us “master the craft”. We say “but we want the ART!”.

It turns out, the muse is attracted to skill. That creative spark we all seek and hope will come our way is enflamed and incited by our mastery and love for craft. It’s looking for the artist that will do it the most justice. Every time you learn something about HOW to make the art, the art comes sniffing around.

So, we at Recording hope to help you some in that regard. We hope we can be a part of your on-going love of the craft of making incredible records, and it turns out that really helps us on our path to mastery. We’ll keep making records and writing about how, and you keep making records and reading about how. Write about it too, we’d love to learn what you know!

After all, as The Old Man says, master the craft and the art will follow.

I’m a producer, vocalist, pianist, writer and craft masterer – hmm…. Anyway, look for me on Twitter or Facebook at @AaronJTrumm.

Listen Different

August 6, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio monitors, audio recording, home recording studio, home studio, listen different, listen differently, monitor speakers, music, music recording, nquit, nquit music, recording, recording magazine, recording studio, speakers

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

There’s nothing in the world like a great pair of…monitor speakers. It’s true. Whether you’re into Adam, Genelec, K-Rok, Events or Mackie, even if you’re old school and can’t get by without your trusty NS-10s, whether sub or no sub, there’s nothing like a beautiful set of monitors (in a properly treated room!) with an incredibly clean, accurate sound to not only get you in the mood, but make that mood shine through when other people hear your brilliant opus. You need that accuracy, and you need to be used to your go-to monitors. You need to know their ins and outs, their strengths and weaknesses, and what tends to happen to a mix when you use them. You need to be loyal enough for long enough so that you really feel comfortable and master your monitors.

But comfort can be a dangerous thing, and no one, not even your mom, will ever listen to your mixes on your monitors in your room. Maybe not even your client. So your loyalty, while strong, should flex. You may need, as they say, to have an open relationship with your monitors. In fact, in order to really get your mix right, you might need to be rather promiscuous with your listening. Of course that includes the obvious: if you’re in a big studio, you’ll have loud speakers, mid fields, near fields and great headphones to check mixes against. But don’t stop there. If possible, how about another set of nearfields, maybe an alternate pair of mid fields?

Of course, that kind of buying power is rare, and in reality, you might have to settle for one set of really great, perfect-for-you monitors. That’s ok, because there’s more to do anyway. Check the mix on your go to headphones. Check on it $10 computer speakers. Check on the laptop speakers. Download an mp3 to your phone and listen with earbuds, then listen without. Does it still sound like a record? Listen on a boom box – a crappy one. A famous studio/label who shall remain nameless is said to have had a small broadcast station, which they would tune in to while sitting in an old truck in the front. Listen in mono. Get a cheap “pillow” speaker and try that out. DEFINITELY listen in your car. Listen a LOT in a LOT of cars. Make a CD and take it to every boom box in every department store in town.

When you’re not in the studio, make a lot of notes. When you are, make small tweaks. Return to your favorite monitors and check to see that your adjustment didn’t throw things out of whack there. Usually you can find a balance between disparate systems with small tweaks, but be careful of chasing your tail. Just check and check and check, and at some point, stop.

This advice is especially for those self-mixed musicians, producers and dreamers who don’t have access to the Bob Clearmountains and Chris Lord-Alges of the world (or their gear). Your lack of the absolute BEST resources need not stop you from achieving great and translatable mixes, and where that begins is with multiple listening environments.

While you’re at it, go ahead and get multiple ears on the mix too. E-Mail an mp3 link to some people who will listen differently than you. If you can stand it, bring somebody into the studio who is NOT an expert. Yes, bring the lay people in on it! Let your kids, your mom, your dog and your neighbor’s best friend’s plumber in on the fun. Don’t try to get technical terms out of them, just listen for their reactions. They won’t say “the vocal is a bit muddy, can you trim 100 HZ a bit?” They’ll say something like “what’d she say?”

That’s not to say you should leave your expert friends out. Don’t be afraid to send the mix all around, including to feedback groups you trust out in the social media world. Just make sure you make small tweaks, and remember that you may not be able to please EVERYBODY. But try. And listen, listen, listen.

Oh, and that means listening to other music. That’s obvious, right? Certainly you tune your ears a bit with known tracks before starting a mix session. But have you been listening to those tracks on those other systems too, learning what the mixes you like do in those situations? That can be quite enlightening and pretty encouraging too, because no, the great mixers’ stuff doesn’t necessarily sound that great on a pillow speaker! If it sounds better than yours though, think about why. What do you hear, and how can you get it?

This kind of critical listening is just that – critical – and you will be glad you upped the ante on perspective. There is a limit, and at some point you need to go ahead and finish and move on, but there’s great value in listening around, as it were. Try it, you’ll like it!

I’m a producer, vocalist, pianist and listen differenter. Look for me on Twitter or Facebook at @AaronJTrumm.

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Tune That Room

November 4, 2019 by Aaron

aaron trumm, acoustic treatment, acoustics, budget acoustic treatment, home recording, recording, recording magazine, soundproofing

The art of DIY Accoustic Treatment

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Ask an amateur recordist where they spent the most in their studio, and the answer is likely a piece of gear. Ask any PROFESSIONAL audio engineer what the most important thing in the studio is, and they’ll say acoustics.

Anyone who’s mixed in a boxy room knows how hard it can be to hear what’s going on, and plenty have experienced the sadness of a poorly translated mix that’s boomy, tinny or muddy in other places. Or, you may have noticed the terror of vocals recorded in an empty room – that hollow, boxy sound that should be reserved for bad indie movies and tele-conferences.

The reason for these problems is sound reflecting and interacting, creating nodes (where a given frequency is cancelled by its out-of-phase reflection), peaks (the opposite condition), comb filtering, ring, flutter and plain ‘ol reverb. The size and dimensions of a room determine where and at what frequencies problems occur, but any normal room has 3 pairs of parallel surfaces, which is the worst possible situation for acoustic interaction.

These facts are becoming more apparent to musicians, and there are fewer square boxes with $10,000 DAWs and no treatment. There are still plenty of expensive studios built to spec, but what about bedroom studios, renters and low budget recordists? Can they build a trustworthy space they can use to get great results? Yes, and it’s not that hard.

Before We Begin

First off, let’s distinguish “acoustic treatment” from “sound proofing”. “Sound proofing” means ISOLATION, which is different than treatment. Isolation means making a room that lets no sound in or out. Doing this effectively takes structural work (which renters can’t do), and is a very different physical phenomenon than treatment. Treatment is making a room sound and function better as an acoustic space, by taming or eliminating reflections INSIDE the room that cause problems. We’re talking about treatment, not isolation, and the great thing is we can do all of our acoustic treatment ourselves.

We also won’t talk about measurement. While measuring a room’s acoustic response with testing equipment and by calculating modes and resonances using room dimensions can be useful in some situations, generally the solutions are always the same. So measurement is outside scope of this article.

Low Frequencies First

Figure 1 – The author’s incredibly terrible early attempt at treatment

Often home recordists just tack a lot of acoustic foam or egg shell mattress on every wall (figure 1). This can be ugly, and it doesn’t work very well. In a room like that, you might clap your hands, hear no reflections and think you’re done. The problem is clapping can’t tell you what’s happening with LOW FREQUENCIES. When you tack up acoustic foam, you’re only dealing with high frequencies. To illustrate, consider this chart:

Material	125HZ	250HZ	500HZ	1000HZ	2000HZ	4000HZ
OC 703	0.17	0.86	1.14	1.07	1.02	0.98
OC 705-FRK	0.60	0.50	0.63	0.82	0.45	0.34
Sculpted Acoustic Foam	0.11	0.30	0.91	1.05	0.99	1.00

Absorption coefficients – 2 inch thick material applied directly to a wall.

Absorption coefficient is a number that represents how much sound is absorbed by a given material at a given frequency. In this small chart you can see that at 2 inches thick, all these materials have pretty pitiful absorption below 250HZ. You can also see that Owens Corning 703 and 705 rigid fiberglass (or equivalent) does a better job than typical acoustic foam.

There’s a better approach, and that’s to build from the ground up, frequency wise. Start your design with LOW frequencies. Low frequencies (below about 200hz) behave differently than higher frequencies, so the solutions are different, and it’s low frequency reflections that cause nightmares like boomy rooms, weak low end response, or untranslatable mixes.

There are a couple of common misconceptions to address here. One is that if you listen at a low volume with near field monitors, the room isn’t a factor. Actually, sound is always reflecting and interacting, and those reflections must be dealt with. Another is that low frequencies don’t have time to “develop” in a small room and thus aren’t a problem. In reality, low frequencies are always present and reflecting off walls, even in a small room.

So what to do? For all frequencies, there are two options: absorb or diffuse. It’s mostly impractical to diffuse low frequencies, so we need to absorb them. Since that’s not a matter of throwing up some foam (unless it’s 10 inches thick or spaced 16 inches from the wall), we need other solutions. First, start with the corners. Low frequency build up occurs in corners, so the first and most obvious place to start absorbing is vertical corners. There are several ways to do this, but they all boil down to spanning and/or filling the corner.

An easy, relatively inexpensive and effective way to do this is by spanning a corner with Owens Corning 705-FRK rigid fiberglass (figure 2). These come in 4’ by 2’ foot panels, so in a typical room, it takes two to go from floor to ceiling. 705-FRK (FRK is a paper backing with a foil face) is dense – 6lbs per square foot – and isn’t as good for high frequency absorption as 703 (3lb density), but spanning a corner with it is great for low frequency absorption. A 4 inch thick panel is best here, but 2 inches works too. Optionally, fill the space behind the panel with fluffy fiberglass. Face the backing into the room to reflect high frequencies if you don’t want the room too “dead”, which will improve low frequency absorption a little.

Figure 3 – Fiberglass triangles for a superchunk bass trap

Another method, the “superchunk”, is more costly, but it’s even more effective and easier to make pretty. A superchunk is made using OC 703. Cut the panels into triangles (figure 3) and stack the triangles into the corner. Then cover the entire structure with some kind of acoustically transparent material (muslin, burlap, anything breathable) to make it attractive and keep the fiberglass contained (figure 4).

A warning: Fiberglass, while not toxic, is itchy and breaks off into airborne pieces. Wear sleeves, gloves and a mask when working with it.

There are also commercial “superchunk” products. Auralex makes a “bass trap” which is a corner piece of acoustic foam and RealTraps make a corner trap which is exactly a superchunk module with the addition of a “limp membrane” face, which increases low frequency effectiveness, just like the FRK.

If your budget’s REALLY tight, and you’re willing to compromise on effectiveness, you can fill a corner with a lot of things. I once filled a corner with old clothes and contained it using pegboard (figure 5). This isn’t as effective as a superchunk or 705, but it’s certainly better than nothing. You could also stack fluffy fiberglass bails in corners without even removing the packaging. It’s ugly, but effective if you have room.

Figure 5 – An odd bass trap in the author’s former studio

Vertical corners aren’t the only corners in a room. There are also the floor/wall corners and wall/ceiling corners. In most rooms, you should absorb as much low end as you can afford to, and you really can’t do too much, so consider doing something there (figure 6).

Figure 6 – A drum studio with corner traps and ceiling traps

Corners are a great start, but probably not enough. Especially with LF absorption, effectiveness is about treating a high percentage of the surface area in the room. As mentioned above, it’s effective to put up very thick material or space it out from the wall a good ways (think 4 inches with a 16 inch gap). That takes a lot of space and still isn’t very effective below about 125HZ, but there are other solutions.

Figure 7 – An untreated beam ceiling is a great opportunity

In an unfinished space with support beams (figure 7), you can put a couple nails in and rest a piece of 705 on them, creating a ceiling trap. You should probably cover that with fabric (figure 8).

Figure 8 – Beamed ceiling in process of treatment

Optionally, fill the space above with fluffy fiberglass. For a no budget alternative, foam and old clothes might work (figure 9).

Figure 9 – Poor man’s beamed ceiling treatment

Panel Traps

All of the solutions we’ve discussed so far are called “velocity absorbers”, because speed drives sound into the material, and that’s dampened when waves hit it. Panel Traps work on a different principle and are called “pressure absorbers”. Placed at room boundaries, they take less space and can be effective to lower frequencies (figure 10).

A panel trap is a little more complex to build, but it’s decently cheap and easy. The main difference is that a panel trap is a sealed box with a thin plywood face and fiberglass inside (figure 11). They’re usually sealed to the wall, but can be made to stand alone, as long they’re located at a boundary. I’ve built several, once with futon slats I found in a dumpster! While panel traps take a little more effort to make, they’re an awesome way to increase low frequency absorption with little space, and since they’re reflective at high frequencies, won’t make a room too dead sounding. Plus, you can paint on them and make them pretty.

There’s a great tutorial on how to build panel traps by acoustician Ethan Winer. I highly recommend referring to it: http://ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html

The Highs

Once you’ve dealt with the lows, it’s time to deal with highs and mids, and the physics here are much easier. High frequencies can be thought of like a ray of light – they bounce off of reflective surfaces at the same angle they come from. Any surface that shouldn’t reflect, you can absorb or diffuse.

Diffusors spread reflections in an even manner. They’re a great way to even things out while preserving liveliness. You can build several types of diffusors or buy them, sometimes for a decent price (figure 12,13). If you’ve got no budget, you can create some semblance of diffusion with book cases and other random items. While an acoustician would say this isn’t true diffusion, in practice it works ok if things are various sizes.

Real diffusion is a great way to even out the sound of a room and keep it live, but it doesn’t work in small spaces. A typical bedroom is too small for effective diffusion, so strategic absorption is often the best bet. For that reason, that’s all we’ll say about diffusion.

High frequency absorption is the easiest to deal with. 2 inch OC 703 absorbs beautifully down to about 400HZ, and there’s a trick you can use to increase absorption even more. Mount panels away from the wall. The ideal distance is the same as the thickness of the material, so mounting 2 inch panels 2 inches away from the wall or ceiling is perfect (figure 14).

Figure 14 – Absorbing panel spaced from surface

Where to mount them depends on the room and your needs, but if you’re treating a mix/control room, you should start with a “reflection free zone” (RFZ) around the main listening area. You can see where to treat with a mirror, or just sit in your chair and look left, right up and down. These are parallel surfaces you should treat. You should maintain left-right symmetry, and you should treat that area of the ceiling, but leave the floor alone. If there’s carpet you’ve got some high frequency absorption already, but that’s not ideal for various reasons, so leave the floor as is if it’s wood or another hard material. You can always throw a rug down for extra deadening.

There are a few options for materials here, and if you have to settle for egg crate foam, do it. If you have to nail a bunch of blankets to the wall, go for it. Ideally, make panels using OC 703, and cover them with an attractive but breathable fabric. Spacing of these panels from the wall can be as simple as four wood blocks from a scrap heap (figure 15).

Figure 15 – Spacer blocks salvaged from scrap heap

If you’re treating another kind of room – say a recording room or home theater – then you probably want an even sound everywhere. If you space high frequency absorbers around, alternating with either panel traps or plain wall, you’ll start to create a kind of “pseudo diffusion”. If you have no budget, don’t be afraid to nail blankets to walls, just remember: the thicker the better.

Creating a booth is pretty easy if you have a closet. You can pack the closet with clothes, hang blankets from the walls, or use a more professional approach and install fiberglass panels. In a booth, you want the deadest sound possible, and that’s about all there is to it.

I keep mentioning rigid fiberglass because it’s the best sound absorbing material and it’s cheaper than acoustic foam products, but if you can’t spend money, there are plenty of alternatives. You can even go around your neighborhood and ask if anyone has anything “soft” they need to get rid of! This can work great – but it may not lead to the prettiest space.

Modularity And Aesthetic

We’re talking about DIY acoustic treatment here, rather than permanent professional studio installations. So you may have to move your studio when you move to a new space. Or if your “studio” is a shared space, you might have to try for a pleasing look. Even if it’s not, you may tire of working in a space that looks like the inside of an egg-carton or a construction site. There are plenty of ways to treat a room and make it ugly, and plenty of ways to permanently install treatment and effectively ruin the room once you leave, but it’s just as easy and not necessarily that costly to do things in a way that doesn’t leave a mark, is easy to move, and is nice to look at.

Figure 16 – High frequency absorbors designed to hang like paintings

In my current space, everything is built to move. All of my high frequency absorbers are small painting size boxes with pretty frames and colorful fabric faces (figure 16). They hang just like any picture (figure 17).

Figure 17 – HF absorbors hanging like paintings.

Ceiling treatments are lightweight and hang from tiny hooks (figure 18).

Figure 18 – HF ceiling panels in author’s studio

My “superchunk” is really 4 small modules that I can take out and move (figure 19), and my panel traps are standalone boxes set on the floor or hung with picture wire, with decoupage designs by an artist friend (figure 20).

Figure 19 – Modular superchunk corner trap.

Figure 20 – Author’s panel trap with art by an artist friend

The room doesn’t necessarily look normal (figure 21), but it’s certainly not crazy making like my first attempts 20 years ago. In fact a lot of people mistake my HF panels for art.

Figure 21 – The author’s one room studio space.

Just Do It

Nothing we’ve talked about here is much different than what would be done with a big budget, except structural work. Other than that, acoustic treatment on a budget can be as good as any expensive installation. You can hire contractors and consultants to design and build, or you can follow some pretty straightforward principles and do it yourself. It’s one place where you really needn’t compromise, and it’s the one place where you really shouldn’t. So have fun and get your room tuned up!