Grateful Dead Music Forum

Furniture? You mean amps, drums, monitors, keyboards, mic stands, that kind of thing? Maybe I can fit an ottoman in there somewhere and still have room for musicians..

wow, blast from the past memory 10+ years back....

was rehearsing in a basement and the sounds were bouncing everywhere, the room had standing waves, bounce-backs would be nauseating, etc. We weren't gonna invest. Then one day we are smoking cigs outside and we see the neighbor re-carpeted their house.

we go over there and grab it all and into his garage, pull off nails and staples and shit then used his carpet cleaner.

voila! tossed it on the wall...

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Carpet on the walls does wonders...

as for soundproofing a room, I always thought that was more so that outside sound didn't get into the recording space.

I played in a basement way back where a guy had the entire place (walls and ceiling too) eggshelled with cardboard egg-crates. I thought it was very nice...takes a while to get enough, but pretty cheap to do assuming you like to eat a lot of eggs.

Our keyboardist went all out. We have our whole jam room in sound proof foam. A nice soundproof window to the other side where our protools and what not is hooked up. Pain in the ass but if you record a lot like we do it is worth the investment so you don't have to pay for studio time. And it is good to have a soundproof room for those late night fucked up jams.

I'll chime in on this one...our jam room is at our drummer's house. It's a SMALL room in his basement. Nothing special. Normal drop ceiling, carpeted floor. Painted drywall walls. The trick is, we don't play too loud and truth be told, we sound better in that room than at most of our gigs. Not because of the sound of the room, but because we're all so close together and can more easily listen to one another....I dunno...a lot to be said for a decent, little space. I always feel like we should turn WAY down at gigs and stand a LOT closer together.

Emoto wrote:You make a fair point.

I did mention the rug that I put down. I didn't mention the (soft cloth) furniture I have in the room. Nor, did I mention that the room sound isn't very good right now even with just an electric guitar and voice.

I did mention that I haven't found anyone who thinks the (expensive) foam is worth anything. True, I didn't explicitly say that I wouldn't be buying any, but I kind of figured that saying it wasn't worth a damn strongly implied that.

What I did say was that a specific Armstrong tile supposedly did a really good job, and that people I respected made traps with it and they worked well.

Unless you knew me, you wouldn't know, but I am pretty frugal. I work hard for my money and don't have a ton of it to throw around. That is one of the reasons that I started this thread - so maybe I could learn from people who have already been down this road...

Sorry, didn't mean to suggest or project. Just wanted to emphasize, in general, don't spend all kinds of money on new stuff until after trying what we already have laying around (intended in a positive, pro-environmental spirit).

This is all good stuff, guys!

Sorry I was in a pissy mood before.

Jon S. wrote: I did mention the rug that I put down. I didn't mention the (soft cloth) furnitur Just wanted to emphasize, in general, don't spend all kinds of money on new stuff until after trying what we already have laying around (intended in a positive, pro-environmental spirit).

Not always good advice. Had a dead hooker laying around back and tried hanging her on the wall. Didn't work out as well as you would think...

Back to drinkin!

hahahaha...We have a couple of dead hookers on the wall in the Moose Cave.

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This thread has definitely gotten some chuckles out of me this AM!

Two more ideas. I haven't tried either myself but friends have and they seemed to work quite well.

(1) Tune your ceiling with planks. I learned this trick from Mark Bartel (Tone King Amplifiers). Seriously, you can tune your room but setting up your ceiling so you can add or remove planks to change the room acoustics (Mark has actually done it).

(2) Save and use those empty plastic egg cartons. Another friend saved up a whole bunch of those plastic egg cartons and taped them to his walls. He said they're as effective as anything to kill unwanted reflections by breaking up the surfaces. (That is, if you don't die of cholestorol-choked arteries first. )

Jon, this is interesting. Can you go into any more detail about using the planks? Are the planks being used to increase/decrease reflective surface flat against the ceiling? Or are they being mounted on edge to break things up? Or...?

Emoto wrote:Jon, this is interesting. Can you go into any more detail about using the planks? Are the planks being used to increase/decrease reflective surface flat against the ceiling? Or are they being mounted on edge to break things up? Or...?

Ditto that. My ceiling is probably the biggest decision I'm facing. That, and what to do with the one cinder-block wall in my garage (property line, fire code)

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