Setting up a little rehearsal studio

GTE

Hey all,
Im trying to set up a little rehearsal space and recording studio and I need some advice.

Im renting a 10foot by 20foot storage room and with the band have done it up. It now has duvets around the drums, panels of insulation on the roof for heat and bedsheets covering the roof and walls to make it look well, which it does.

We also have a big table for the mixer and speakers, a rack for the interfaces and what not. Two speakers to use as stools and two nice chairs to sit on.

The equipment I own and use in it include:

Saffire Pro 40 plus Behriner ada8000
Behringer 4 channel headphone amp
Behringer MX3242 32 channel mixing desk (inline, so 16 and 16)
Toshiba laptop with lacie d2 quadra as my daw (Cubase)
A DI for the bass and whatever else I may need it for.

Microphone wise I have
Shure SM57,
Shure Beta 52
Sennheiser e604 (x3)
Se Electronics se1a stereo pair
Se electronic se2200a
Behringer x1800 (x3)

I have an entry level Pearl Target drum kit and a Ludwig Acrolite snare.

Amp wise I have an old Marshall Master Lead combo and I should have a Crate 60 watt solid state amp for the forseeable future.

We have one band renting out the space already and thats covering most of the weekly rent. A member of this band is a friend of mine so Im just charging something small for it. That was fine as we were getting great use out of it for the band and it was worth the money. Sadly though the band has to go on a break for a few months so I want to try and get money in from letting bands practice and record in it. I was going to do this anyway around the summer time but I have had to bring these plans forward.

I know the space isnt exactly amazing spec. It has decent space and overall decent equipment, but its no Temple Lane

So, I was trying to work out some pricing for it. I based it all on minimum wage pretty much.

Rehearsing:
10am to 3pm for 40 euro
3pm to 6 for 24 euro

So thats 8 euro an hour.


Recording Sessions:
10am to 3pm, 44 euro (about 8.65 an hour)
3pm to 8pm, 48 euro (8.65 for 3 hours and 10.80 for 2)

Mixing

8.65 per hour of mixing

I have never run a studio before nor have I been able to talk to anyone who does but I think thats really reasonable price wise?
Im sure there are things I should do different like the mixing charge. I dont want to be too optimistic in what I can charge so I kept it to a minimum wage.


Any thoughts?

Thanks very much
bbk

Welease

Are you really going to be able to record and mix something decent in that room? I doesn't sound like you have much in the way of treatment or isolation for/in the room, so it's probably sounds pretty poor.

I think you may be better promoting it as a basic rehearsal room and focus on that rather then churn out very mediocre sounding demo's which in the end or more likely to drive people away when they compare them to other studio's.

GTE

Welease wrote: »

Are you really going to be able to record and mix something decent in that room? I doesn't sound like you have much in the way of treatment or isolation for/in the room, so it's probably sounds pretty poor.

I think you may be better promoting it as a basic rehearsal room and focus on that rather then churn out very mediocre sounding demo's which in the end or more likely to drive people away when they compare them to other studio's.

Hey there,
Thanks for your reply.

I agree with you that its not the most ideal space for recording however the sound treatment we have done which is pretty substantial around the drums has produced some really rather good quality drum tracks with very minimal guitar spill. Those SE1a's are killer!

The amps do let everything down though. The Marshall is pretty old and beaten up and the Crate is good but not fantastic. And I have no bass amp. To an extent the drum kit doesnt help either.

Mixing wise, I have a mixing space setup at home with some KRK VXT's and that works very well from everything I mix at college, but they were recorded in much better spaces

Anyway, the room would be advertised more as a rehearsal space but I would have thought the provision for recording could appeal to young bands too, which it would but Ill take your point on board as its a very good one about eventually driving people away on comparison.

Pricing wise, what does it all look like to you?
Here are some pics of the room anyway to judge. (clickable thumbnails)

PaulBrewer

bbk wrote: »

Hey all,
Im trying to set up a little rehearsal space and recording studio and I need some advice.

Im renting a 10foot by 20foot storage room and with the band have done it up. It now has duvets around the drums, panels of insulation on the roof for heat and bedsheets covering the roof and walls to make it look well, which it does.

We also have a big table for the mixer and speakers, a rack for the interfaces and what not. Two speakers to use as stools and two nice chairs to sit on.

The equipment I own and use in it include:

Saffire Pro 40 plus Behriner ada8000
Behringer 4 channel headphone amp
Behringer MX3242 32 channel mixing desk (inline, so 16 and 16)
Toshiba laptop with lacie d2 quadra as my daw (Cubase)
A DI for the bass and whatever else I may need it for.

Microphone wise I have
Shure SM57,
Shure Beta 52
Sennheiser e604 (x3)
Se Electronics se1a stereo pair
Se electronic se2200a
Behringer x1800 (x3)

I have an entry level Pearl Target drum kit and a Ludwig Acrolite snare.

Amp wise I have an old Marshall Master Lead combo and I should have a Crate 60 watt solid state amp for the forseeable future.

We have one band renting out the space already and thats covering most of the weekly rent. A member of this band is a friend of mine so Im just charging something small for it. That was fine as we were getting great use out of it for the band and it was worth the money. Sadly though the band has to go on a break for a few months so I want to try and get money in from letting bands practice and record in it. I was going to do this anyway around the summer time but I have had to bring these plans forward.

I know the space isnt exactly amazing spec. It has decent space and overall decent equipment, but its no Temple Lane

So, I was trying to work out some pricing for it. I based it all on minimum wage pretty much.

Rehearsing:
10am to 3pm for 40 euro
3pm to 6 for 24 euro

So thats 8 euro an hour.


Recording Sessions:
10am to 3pm, 44 euro (about 8.65 an hour)
3pm to 8pm, 48 euro (8.65 for 3 hours and 10.80 for 2)

Mixing

8.65 per hour of mixing

I have never run a studio before nor have I been able to talk to anyone who does but I think thats really reasonable price wise?
Im sure there are things I should do different like the mixing charge. I dont want to be too optimistic in what I can charge so I kept it to a minimum wage.


Any thoughts?

Thanks very much
bbk

Might be worth checking how your insurance will work with all that flammable material - or the fire officer.

Best of Luck with the project.

Welease

Given the short time slots, and the lack of isolation/treatment it would be a nightmare to record in there, those mics will pick up everything in the room including all the band members, your equipment (PC's etc) etc. So I don't think you would ever really get into a situation where people would need you to mix down recordings made there..

If it was me...

I would rent it out as a rehearsal space, and for maybe 20-30 Euro on top, I would record the sessions live (with no real post session mixing) and provide a CD.. and even then its gonna sound rough, with no way to control the drums bleeding into the other mics and vice versa.

Paul also makes a very good observation.. that draping on the wall looks like a fire hazard waiting to happen..

GTE

Welease wrote: »

Given the short time slots, and the lack of isolation/treatment it would be a nightmare to record in there, those mics will pick up everything in the room including all the band members, your equipment (PC's etc) etc. So I don't think you would ever really get into a situation where people would need you to mix down recordings made there..

If it was me...

I would rent it out as a rehearsal space, and for maybe 20-30 Euro on top, I would record the sessions live (with no real post session mixing) and provide a CD.. and even then its gonna sound rough, with no way to control the drums bleeding into the other mics and vice versa.

Paul also makes a very good observation.. that draping on the wall looks like a fire hazard waiting to happen..

Thanks for the replies. Indeed there is a fire hazard with the draping but I can take care of that. Even with my own band things like smoking is for outside and all the wall boxes and lights are switched off at the circuit board when leaving.

With regard to the rehearsal and recording the sessions live, how much would you think I could charge for the rehearsal alone? Would what I posted be around right?

The time slots are just based on whats done in college and what I do with the band. It seems like a good place to start with anyway.

Ive been lucky so far with the recordings I have made with the band spill wise so the live recordings should come out fairly decent.

Thanks and regards
bbk