The Basement
Never had a basement, never had an attic, only an apartment where I forever had static
When Large Professor said that, I flipped. That was me. I grew up in Southern California. We didn't have basements, we had earthquakes. My family never lived in a two story house, let alone something that had an attic for me to take over. When I moved out on my own, I was struggling. Apartments were expensive, and neighbors were not having it. That never stopped me. I set up a make-shift shop in apartment after apartment.
The closest I came to having my own long term lab was when my mother and her husband let me move into their garage. They had previously converted it into a room. For storage reasons it wasn't the entire garage, but a room built into the garage. It made for a great little sound lab. Isolated from the rest of the house, I put acoustical foam and bass traps up. For the first time, I had a really great sounding room. I mixed most of the True Indeed record in that room. Mixes came together quick on that album as I "knew" the room well (and it sounded great). Around that same time I met my wife, purchased a small little condo, and moved out. I still used that room for audio for a while, until my mother and her husband moved away and sold it. It's been a long time since that garage studio in the outskirts of Orlando.
Along with my new quest to put together new music comes the challenge of where and how to pull it off. I mostly work from home for the just-over-broke (it's actually a great career, no regrets), and have always had some type of room to work out of. It works better than most folk's "work from home" situation, so I'm not complaining. It is not however, the best situation for making new music. I'm at a place in life where neighbors and apartments are no longer much of an issue, but I will for sure annoy the family. For the last few years I had plans to build a small building in our backyard. A stand-alone structure where I could work on things late into the night without keeping kids awake. Recently my wife, who worked as an architect for some years, put together architectural and structural drawings for me and started the approval / permit process with the city. Unfortunately, I recently heard back from the city who denied us the building permit due to a "utility easement" that runs along the back fence in our yard. I'm not trying to build this and then have to rip it down when a company decides they need to run some lines across the back fence. So it's on to Plan B.
Not being down to take the L on this room, I hit the whiteboard and starting hustling up a new plan. After a lot of plotting, scheming, "what if we ...", and "oh... that won't work", and an eventual suggestion from my Mother-In-Law, I think I've finally got a plan that is going to work. It's going to take some serious nights and weekends effort, but I'm going to make it happen. It's not going to be the largest room you can imagine, but it'll be a dedicated space for me to focus. So for the next few weeks (probably months), I'll be doing my best Bob Villa as I build out a music room for myself.
Having a space to dedicate to the craft makes a real difference for me. It's the difference between chasing the muse into the early morning hours versus shutting things down as it's getting "too late". There is something to be said about professional discipline, the ability to turn on creativity on demand. I get that, and understand it. I also don't want to have to lean on it. I'm looking forward to once again having the space needed to build, create, and explore musically.