One of the perks of moving back to the Midwest from California is the abundance of more affordable real estate. My wife and I took advantage of this back in 2017 and bought a 100-year-old house with a nice, big detached garage.

Rather than have me banging on things like drums and guitars, designing explosion sounds, and generally making tons of crazy racket under the main roof of our new humble abode, my wife most graciously granted me the use of this new garage. Awesome! Now the real fun could begin. Working with the general contractor that was also renovating the main house, I came up with a plan to get it ready for prime time.

My needs were as follows

  • Silence: We needed to soundproof the structure as much as possible. I wanted to be able to make loud noises late into the evening without worrying about disturbing the neighbors.
  • Space: I have lots of music equipment, so the floor plan needed to be as open as possible in order to accommodate this. The room also needed to be big enough to be a rehearsal space for any music projects that I’d be involved in.
  • Acoustic Treatment: The space would need to be acoustically treated to limit reflections and overly resonant frequencies. I didn’t want to completely deaden the space as I’d be recording drums in there, but most of the mischief still needed to be managed.

Over the next few posts, I’ll discuss what I did in order to tick all of the above boxes and make a space that I love to work in every day. Next week’s offering will deal with soundproofing.