Music room organization and furnishing ideas?

[marczellm]

I'm starting to get annoyed by the mess that is the cabling and general looks of my home musicmaking corners. I'd like to tap y'all's collective wisdom about how to improve it. If you have a suggestion based on your own stuff, pictures would be appreciated. Some of these questions might seem obvious, but I'm just starting out and need any info I can get.

- I have my two synths to my right hand when I'm at my desk. Normally both are connected to my PC via USB, and my audio interface via jack. When I take them on gigs, what is the better alternative to the end of these cables lying on the floor picking up dust?

- I am fortunate to have a small rehearsal space at home. Mixer is in one corner. I was given the idea of running cables to all of the mics, amps etc. on the floor along the walls so that nobody steps on them. But how to make sure they stay there?

- What kind of carpet do you use and what is the best way to clean it?

- Lighting and decoration ideas to foster creativity in rehearsal space?

[Stokely]

Kind of against what I would have thought, but I've heard it said that hard floors are better for studio listening rooms...rugs tend to suck up high end but they leave the lows and mids alone. That said, I have a combo of tile and an area rug that I can take out and clean if need be.

 

I have very little hardware these days, no mixer, so I'll leave that bit for others! As far as the cables left from the gigging keyboards, if the stands remain then perhaps velcro them partially up the legs so at least they aren't on the floor.

 

I would like to hide the various drives, power and usb cables on my desk, perhaps some kind of monitor riser...I have a rack-mount Crown amp I'm still using so perhaps a desktop rack unit so I could tuck everything in there.

 

I am pretty into lighting (how it can affect mood and vibe) and am still messing around with my room. I have a ceiling fan overhead that never goes on unless I'm looking for something! I have a couple salt lamps that I leave on, really like their light, and I had a long behind-the-tv strip (to provide backlighting) that turned out to be too large for my monitor. I ran it around the doorway, looks super cool and I have it changing colors. Likewise an ikea lamp with an led color-changing bulb I have on the floor under my desk. I have a couple lamps if I need actual light to see stuff by too Basically my area kind of looks like an old star trek episode with various changing colors, kind of also has an 80s neon theme (obviously with no actual neon).

[The Real MC]

Hard floors reflect sound and can make a room sound terrible. I used to rent a place with hard floors and it had an awful midrange resonance. Carpet remnants help to reduce reflections. Use shallow carpeting, much better on the feet and is more forgiving of stands. Tan or beige seem to be the colors with minimum maintenance and cleaning.

 

Lighting definitely contributes to vibe and mood. This is a very subjective area as everyone has their preferences. I can say avoid fluorescent lights for work lighting as the flickering can fatigue the eyes. Stay away from halogen light bulbs, I had one burst while in use.

 

I have lived multiple places the last 20+ years and I can report that no matter where I move, the studio setup is never the same.

 

There are options for cabling management. Look at computer supply sources for them.

[Old No7]

Stay away from halogen light bulbs, I had one burst while in use.

Ha! When I worked at Sylvania Lighting, they had a fancy phrase for that -- "non passive failure"!

 

I agree with the comments about lighting -- very personal, but it can greatly impact the mood and atmosphere. When you learn about the Kelvin scale (for light colors), it's really amazing how wide of a variety of "white" colors there are in lighting, and it expands from there with all the other colors that LEDs offer. You'd be amazed at how many industries had a standard "white" light color they would use -- all depending on what they were trying to do -- or sell. (Food stores use special lamps to make meats look redder, don't you know...)

 

As for decor, you could put up posters of your favorite bands or artists, classic album covers or famous keyboards -- or maybe just some "hotties"!?!?

 

As for me, I posted my "keyboard heroes" (see below, with my lab 'Jack Daniels' checking it out) above my stack as some inspiration.

 

Old No7

 

[stoken6]

Hi Marc,

 

I've had success in using coat hooks attached at about waist height to tame unruly cable runs.

 

And sign me up for plenty of white light, ideally daylight. "Mood lighting" doesn't mix with expensive instruments in my experience.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[FatFingers]

My favorite addition to my small studio has been an easy chair. Taking a break in the same space as my keyboards instead of wandering off to some other room seems to improve my resilience after a round of practice.

[Docbop]

Over the decades lots of music space/rooms and always had carpet to help with the sound. Figure there are enough other hard walls to liven things up. One my best setups I got sheet of that what used be called acoustic board. If was fiberboard so not too heavy and was white on one side and the fiberboard brown on the other. I nailed a full sheet to one wall with the brown side out. That was more porous and I could use map pins to put up pictures or notes or etc. With the carpet and that one wall with the acoustic board the room sounded good just live enough. Cords and stuff as long as not out to be seen or tripped over I didn't care if they were in nice neat runs. Lighting always like darker rooms and then use table lamps or the lamps on a arm as necessary. Having a good chair was always essential for me both doing music or computers. Then small bookcases I always had lots of books, but have small bookcases gave me a lot of shelf space to keep things handy.

[Ed A.]

 

 

Doggo approves of your photos.

[Piktor]

This is not at all fancy, but along the walls in my upstairs office/studio space I have run lengths of plastic corrugated hose to tie audio and midi cables together semipermanently. I used something like sump pump discharge hose that I slit lengthwise. Label the end of each cord if you are likely to reconfigure or move pieces at times, so that you aren"t having to trace line sources, etc. I added an extra pair of lines for miscellaneous pieces that I occasionally bring up from the main rehearsal space (if I can still call it that) downstairs.

 

Adding bookshelves full of books to a listening space has often been recommended. I positioned one so that studio monitors face it and that seems to help.

 

**** I wonder if any of you have tried using mass loaded vinyl as sound proofing material. It is supposed to be very efficient at dissipating energy of sound waves.

[Docbop]

Something I have in my current setup that has been more handy than I expected. I use studio monitors for my speakers for my home setup so needed a place to set the monitors next to the keyboard and I didn't want to use speaker stands. So I got two small tables and put one on each side of the keyboard. They are the height of the keybed and top is about 30" x 16". So they hold the monitor on a isopad and have enough space for miscellaneous practice things like my oversized coffee mug, iPad stand, notebooks, metronome, etc. Underneath I have crates for books and more room to put things like a small mixer. They kind of define the main keyboard space in the room.