Home Studio Renovation: The New Attic Studios
- Nic Tassone
- Apr 2
- 5 min read
Updated: May 23
Grand re-opening in May!
The design of this studio space has been in the works for a long time. I've been fascinated with recording since I was 10 and have been perfecting my recording space basically since then. My first experience recording was at Rock Garden Studios in Appleton when I was 8 years old - something I plan to write about in a future blog post. This was a first-hand look at how recording music works in a studio. Fast forward a few years, and I got my first little 4-track recording unit and would spend hours recording myself in my bedroom. There wasn't much I could change about my recording environment at the time, nor did I have a clue what I was doing. But you could often find me on my bedroom floor with a circle of instruments laying around me at arm's reach. Easy access to my instruments is a feature of my recording space that has stuck.
The first time I really got to work on designing a recording space was during my time working at Appleton Rock School. The rooms there were medium/small, rectangular office spaces, and while they were very comfortable teaching spaces, they were not ideal recording environments. I created a whole bunch of square wood diffusers that I could retrofit in a drop ceiling, as well as a handful of thick absorber panels. A little bit of acoustic treatment went a long way. I remember learning a rule of thumb that roughly 1/4 of the surface area needs to be treated in a room for noticeable acoustic benefits. With access to a relatively small amount of acoustic treatment, I learned how to best arrange things to make rooms sound their best. Bass frequencies build up in corners, and when a room is small, it's kind of made entirely of corners. So absorbing low frequencies with thick dense insulation was high priority. Hanging diffusers in the ceiling opened up floor- and wall-space (note: I recommend seriously reinforcing your drop ceiling if you plan on hanging heavy wooden diffusers in it). The room had a window-wall and door separating the live room from the mixing room, which was really cool. At the time though, I didn't know anything about construction or isolating sound, so as the room was being constructed, we failed to insulate the separating wall, or add any extra dry-wall, so in the end, a lot of sound bled through the wall. There are lots of products out there for acoustic insulation/isolation and I highly recommend looking into them if you are constructing your own home recording space from scratch.
My next recording space was in my own home. I was able to spread out all my gear in the living room. The setup evolved a little over time, but this is where I really leaned into setting things up to optimize my own recording experience. When recording myself or others, I like to create as much of an uninterrupted flow state as possible. Part of that is reducing barriers between having a musical idea, and being able to record it. In this era of my home studio recording, I had all my gear set up in roughly a circle around a central mixing point. I had quick and easy access to a fully miked drum kit, a marimba and aux percussion area stereo-miked, bass and guitars at arm's reach and already miked up, and midi/synth keyboards near the computer. Basically any instrument I knew how to play was ready to be recorded within a few seconds. I tweaked and refined my presets and templates in Pro Tools and later Logic Pro X so there's no hassle in setting up a new recording project. I was hesitant to do anything to alter the house for the sake of resale value. I always thought it would be cool to have an audio snake ran through the walls, or use another room in the house to isolate guitar cabs or something, but never did. Simply running a snake around the outer edge of the room kept the room tidy enough, and I mostly recorded myself at the time so there was little need to isolate instruments. The floor plan of that room was pretty big and I didn't have too much issue with room resonances. The biggest sonic drawbacks were the combination of carpet and insulation panels overly-deadening the room, and the ceiling height limiting the amount of space I could get between the mics and drums.
Today, I'm in the final stages of Attic Studios being rebuilt as part of an addition/renovation to our house. The room is an L-shape with half being one story tall and the other half being 2+ stories. This shape was inspired by an impromptu visit to a recording studio in Longmont, CO while on a trip to record my friend's band, Queso Ra. This room shape provides two very different sounds out of different parts of the room - a live/ambient area for drums and a dead/controlled area for mixing. New foundation was poured so the majority of the studio is underground with cement walls isolating most of the room from the rest of the house. The rest of the walls are fully insulated to further help isolate sound from getting in/out of the room. Hard flooring means the sonic canvas I'm starting with is very live and reflective. It can be difficult to liven up a carpeted room, but you can always add more acoustic treatment to deaden a room. The room will feature lots of acoustic diffusion - an entire wall of diffusers, in fact. This will help retain the liveliness of the room, but eliminate the ringing and early reflections that can be detrimental a mix. I'm also creating a track system for the walls that will allow me to hang more diffusers or absorbers and easily change the arrangement of the acoustic treatment throughout the room to meet the needs of each recording session. We've installed more than the required amount of outlets so there won't be power strips cluttering up the floor. Flexibility is key in the design of this room. It's big enough to accommodate group performances, and small enough to be accessible for an individual musician. The acoustic treatment can be adjusted to range from large/open-sounding to small/dead-sounding. The different lighting options allow for well-lit video content creation or to set the vibe for recording that perfect vocal take.
Check out a sneak peak here:
Sound Treatment - Diffusers
Studio pre-tour
Let's get you on the schedule for your next project! Contact me at tassonenic@gmail.com to explore recording and mixing services.
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