How To Make Acoustic Panels

Yesterday's post on how to improve the sound of your room received such a great response that I thought we'd continue on the subject today. In that post, I wrote about how you could substantially improve the sound of any room by building a reflection free zone (RFZ) around your listening position. This is most easily done by using acoustic panels, and today we'll show you just how to build one.

This is an excerpt from the DVD that accompanies The Studio Builder's Handbook (co-written with my buddy, engineer Dennis Moody). There are actually a few variations on how to build these panels, but you'll just see the basic one here.

To read excerpts from the book, go to the The Studio Builder's Handbook page on my website.

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How To Improve The Sound Of Any Room

My new book The Studio Builder's Handbook (written with Dennis Moody) has just been released and I want to share an important excerpt from it. Most of the time when people are setting up a home studio they tend to throw a computer and some gear into a corner and that's it. The last thing they think about is the room itself, and it make a huge difference in your final product. If you can't hear it, you can't record or mix it.

But contrary to popular believe, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a lot of money to improve you sound in a big way. All it takes is a way to control the reflections in the listening area. The nice thing about The Studio Builder's Handbook is it shows you how to do that for less than $150. It won't be the Record Plant but it will be far better than you could ever have imagined. There's more to it than what you see below, but here's how to start.

By the way, if it seems like I have a lot of new books out all of a sudden, two different publishers seemed to have released books at a the same time.
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To improve the sound of your room you must first control the reflections in the room. It’s not too difficult to do this in the sweet spot of the playback position, but it starts to get expensive as that position is expanded to include more of the room. Regardless of the amount of money that you spend, many designers feel that you’re never going to widen the sweet spot all that much anyway, but in the world of small spaces and limited budgets, a small but much improved listening area works out fine.

Creating A Reflection Free Zone

The key to improving the sound of just about any room is the Reflection Free Zone, or RFZ (see Figure 6.4). As we outlined in Chapter 3, the RFZ absorbs the first reflections from the speakers so that all you hear is their direct sound.

Chapter 6.4 - The Reflection Free Zone

In order to determine the RFZ, sit in the listening position and have a friend move a mirror along the right wall. Anywhere that you can see the reflection of either speaker requires either wall treatment or a sound panel as we outlined in previous chapters. Do the same for the left wall. It’s advisable to treat a larger area than you can see with the mirror so you’ll have the freedom to move around in a larger area without being outside of the RFZ.

Although the ceiling might be more difficult to spot with a mirror, you can 

either hang panels directly over you just at your listening position, or in approximately the same area as the treatment on your side walls.

The floor of the RFZ can stay reflective with hardwood (which everyone likes because it’s easy to roll your chair around) as long as the ceiling is absorbent. Even if you have rug on the floor, you’re still better off to have the ceiling absorbent in the RFZ to eliminate any chance of early reflections from the speakers reflecting back onto the listening position.

You can read some additional excerpts on the Studio Builder's Handbook page on my website.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.

"Born This Way" - Lady Gaga Song Analysis

Whether you love her or hate her, Lady Gaga is #1 this week on the Ultimate Chart with "Born This Way," so let's do a song analysis. As with all analysis, we'll break the song down into four parts - the song itself, the arrangement, the sound and performance.

The Song - "Born This Way" is a straight down the middle pop dance song that follows a familiar form with a 124bpm tempo. The form goes like this:

Spoken intro, music intro, verse, chorus, spoken interlude, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus, spoken outro

About the only thing that's different about the song form itself is the spoken intro, interlude and outro. That said, the song does have a good melody and a strong chorus, once again in the tradition of all great pop songs.

The Arrangement - When you have a song that's built on a traditional form you have to play some tricks to keep the song interesting and "Born This Way" does just that. One thing that always works in any genre of music is dynamics and that's what the song employs to keep the interest high. Listen to the following places:

     The first half of the verse with just the vocal, pad and rhythm.
     The first 4 bars of the 2nd verse with just the vocal and kick drum.
     The first half of the bridge with spoken word, synth bed and sound effects.
     The first half of the first outro chorus with just vocals and kick drum.
     The last outchorus vocal where it breaks down to just the lead and harmony vocals.

The 5 elements of the mix (check out this post for an explanation) look like this:

• The Foundation - Like most songs, it's the bass and drums.

• The Pad - Like most dance songs, it's a synth pad that you can hear predominantly in the first verse, but it's there for the whole song adding the glue to the tracks as well.

• The Rhythm - This element utilizes an aggressive synth with a saw-tooth wave shape that you can hear predominantly in the 2nd half of the first verse.

• The Fills - Like most hit pop songs, there's something in almost every space where there's not a vocal. Usually it's some sort of synth but there are lots of sound effects as well.

The Sound - Once again, like most dance-oriented songs, "Born This Way" is compressed pretty hard, but the kick and snare are really squeezed to the point where they don't sound natural at all. Maybe that was the point, but I think they would've sounded better with more dynamics and better sounds.

The Performance - I think my favorite part is the breakdown to the vocals in the outro chorus. There's some nice ad libbing by Gaga, and the vocal harmony twists at the end is something that's small, yet attention grabbing.

As always, feel free to send me your suggestions of songs to analyze. I'll get to them in the first part of the week.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.

The 50 Worst Band Pictures

It's time to laugh a little, unfortunately at the expense of others. Today's post is centered around a something I found called "The 50 worst band pictures." The problems with most of the photos is that the bands just don't know any better. They think a picture is a picture and a photographer is a photographer, but just like a great musician, engineer or producer, you get what you pay for. As the saying goes, a pro is expensive; an amateur costs a fortune. Let's look at a few.


These guys are from Finland, so maybe things are different over there, but:
1) Do these costumes have anything to do with the band, or do they just think they're cool?
2) The post growing out of the head of the 2nd guy from the left is a bit of a distraction, as is the house on top of the head of Thor on the right.
3) Are these guys actors or musicians?
4) Cellphone cameras are nice and all, but it sure would be nice to see some depth of field.
5) There's this really nice grassy knoll in the background. Think they could've used that instead?

Here's a good example of a photo that's just plain bad. Let's count the number of things wrong with this.
1) Band doesn't care enough about the photo to dress for it
2) No matter what anyone tells you, it's never cool to give the finger in a photo.
3) Bad picture of the band that's not very clear
4) Even worse Photoshop job.
5) If the little guy on the left was raised up a bit, they could've used the natural cut toff point at the waist to frame it better.
6) Would you hire this band? Yeah, me neither.

I can't believe that anyone would even consider this as a band photo.
1) Fat and out of shape guys should never take a picture with their shirts off. It's even weird for a guy who's really cut to do it.
2) Once again, "Let's take a really bad picture from your girlfriends iPhone and Photoshop the background out. Yeah, that will do it."
3) "While we're at it, let's Photoshop some lighting bolts in there." That has exactly what to do with shirtless fat guys? Shirtless fat guys have exactly what to do with music?

Here we go again. Just the kind of photo to NOT get you the gig.
1) "Let's rub fake blood all over us to make us look like crazy killers." This has exactly what to do with their music?
2) "Hey buddy, take a picture of our band with this little pocket camera. Make sure the flash is on."
3) Doesn't the fact that the guy on the left is in the dark bother anyone?
4) How does the setting and background relate to crazy killers who think they're a band?

This one's a little better on execution, but does it make you want to hire the band? Does it make you think that they're even a band at all. As the caption on the original website said, "They'll get you a good deal on cell phone accessories."

To see all fifty of these gems, go here.


Here's an excerpt from the Electronic Press Kit chapter of The Musician's Video Handbook that covers band pictures.
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Make sure that the still photos are professionally done. Nothing screams out “amateur” than pictures that are blurry, aren’t framed well, and worst of all, aren’t suitable for use in an article. This is one of your key assets and will be used more than anything else except your bio. They don’t have to be studio portraits - they can be crazy and creative if it fits your image. 

If you don’t have any pictures, avoid the temptation to have a friend take some unless he’s a really good photographer. An amateur-looking photograph is almost as bad as none at all. That being said, almost all the techniques used for lighting and framing video also apply to taking photographs, so you can check those chapters for some help.

If you decide to use a pro photographer, stay away from one that does family-style portraits because you’ll get one that makes you look like a family. They don’t do music and most don’t have that kind of mindset. If there’s a local modeling agency, ask them for some suggestions. That way you’ll get someone who’s a lot more inventive and that will result in some photos that are more interesting. If you go this route, make sure that you get an agreement up front that you own the copyrights on the photos, if you can.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.

6 Mic Placement Tips For Electric Guitars

Time for another excerpt from The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook, this time regarding 6 mic placement tips for electric guitars. Actually, most of these tips can be used for any instrument, not just guitar amps.

You can read some other excerpts from the book on the Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook page on my website.
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A common recording process has an engineer EQing, compressing, and adding multiple mics in trying to capture a sound, yet never taking into account what the sound in the room at the source is like. That’s why it’s imperative that every engineer use the following steps in any serious microphone placement:

1. Go out into the room, stand in front of the amp or acoustic guitar player, and listen to them play the part from the song you’re about to record. Playing the song is important because you might be deceived if it’s another song or just random playing. Listen for the tonal balance from the amp or instrument as well as the way the room responds. Listening to the amp or acoustic guitar in the room will give you a reference point to the way it really sounds so you have a better idea of what you’re trying to capture. 

2. Find the sweet spot. There are several ways to find the sweet spot.

• To place an omnidirectional mic, cover one ear and listen with the other. Move around the mic or player until you find the spot that sounds best. That’s where to place the mic to begin.

• To place a cardioid mic, cup your hand behind your ear (instead of covering it) and move around the player or amp until you find the place that sounds best.

• To place a stereo mic or stereo pair, cup both ears and move around the player or amp until you find the place that sounds best.

• As an alternate method, crank the amp until it’s noisy, then put on headphones and listen to the mic as you move it around until the noise has the best combination of highs and lows.

3. You can’t place the mic by sight. The best mic position must always be found, not predicted. It’s okay to have a starting place, but it’s usually never what ends up being the best spot.

4. Change the mic position instead of reaching for the EQ. Chances are that you can adjust the quality of the sound enough by simply moving the mic in order to avoid using any equalization. The EQ will add a least a small amount of phase shift at some frequency and can’t be undone later. Moving the mic (which amounts to an acoustic EQ) will usually sound smoother and more pleasing to the ear.

5. Give the mic some distance. Remember, distance creates depth. The guitar and amp will sound a lot more natural than using artificial ambience. If possible, leave just enough distance between the mic and the source to get a bit of room reflection to it.

6. Be careful miking multi-speaker cabinets. 4x12 cabinets like the typical Marshall 1960 pose a special challenge in that at a certain distance you have phase anomalies from the multiple speakers that you really don’t want to capture. The cabinet will sound fine when close miked from right against the grill cloth to approximately three inches away from the best sounding speaker in the cabinet, but until you get to a distance of 18 inches where the sound of all the speakers converge, you may be capturing some speaker interaction that’s not all that pleasant sounding. That distance varies with the make and model of speaker cabinet.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.