Studio Feng Shui and an Efficient Workspace

After you’ve conquered the studio crickets, you’re ready for the other side of the studio, which I consider to be as important as the acoustics for getting inspired and allowing creative energy to flow freely.

Now, I’m not Chinese, but this makes a lot of sense to me, and the Chinese have been practicing it for thousands of years. My guess is that if this didn’t work, they would have stopped doing it a long time ago. I’m not going to get too philosophical here, so don’t worry. It is important to understand that if you aren’t comfortable in your workspace, you’ll have lower odds of creating something that you are going to be happy with in your Cubase studio.

By being comfortable, I mean when you walk into your studio, are you filled with inspiration, or would you rather spend more time in the living room watching TV? Your comfort and the comfort of everyone you record are important in the studio. Some professional studios have pool tables, hot tubs, and lounges for artists to relax and unwind before they jump in front of a microphone. Sure, some of these things sound excessive, but artists have different needs, and whatever helps them create their art is very important. I’ve heard of famous artists who have had rooms in studios designed specifically for them (and their animals!). I’ve also heard of artists who hire models to stand around and others who like to ride their motor scooters in multimillion-dollar studios. When you’re making a lot of money, I guess you can get a little carried away, and top-dollar recording studios don’t really care what you do as long as you’re paying your inflated studio bill.

You don’t have to have a lot of money to practice some great studio feng shui. All you really need to do is figure out what inspires and motivates you. This can be anything from having a poster of an exotic island to filling a room full of instruments. If you like a particular color, decorate your studio in that color. Don’t be too afraid to let yourself go. If there are several other people that use your Cubase studio, it’s important to get their take on the décor. The more they are comfortable, the better your recordings will be. If your guitar player has a fear of snakes and musicians have to walk over a snake pit to get to the studio, chances are that the guitar player is going to have other things on his mind besides delivering the best musical performance. Studio feng shui is a delicate balance of everything in your musical world coming together in one room.

The reason I have three walls of windows in my control room is that sunlight inspires me. As I mentioned before, windows are horrible for sound isolation. For me, it’s much more important to have a creative atmosphere than it is to have a quiet room. If plants make you feel comfortable, you should add some plants. If you feel more comfortable in a room that is painted black with no windows, so be it. Obviously, my point here is that even though the sound of a room is important, your comfort is equally (and sometimes more) important.

Just remember that no matter how much you love your first piano, that leather couch, or that giant lava lamp, everything you put in your studio is going to affect the way your studio sounds. The line between a good-sounding studio and a creative atmosphere is never completely clear. Only you can decide where to draw that line. For those who are very serious about sound, there is no other way to live than to have the best-sounding room no matter what the cost. That being said, a good performance is magical and requires more than good studio chops, a good ear, and a great-sounding room.

Studio efficiency is slightly different from feng shui, though both are subjective. Most people feel more comfortable in a well organized space, whereas some artists feel that organization takes away from their creative energy.

Here are some basic organizational tips to help you balance your studio and make it a more efficient workplace without crushing anyone’s vibe. All of these tips are things to do before you start a recording session.

• Keep your computer, speakers, external hard drives, and monitors all on one simple workstation desk (see Figure 3.9). Your computer should be off the floor so you can easily access the back of it at any time.

  Figure 3.9. A very efficient Cubase computer workstation studio desk by Omnirax.

  

• Manage your cables. Use cable wraps (or even tape if necessary) to group cables together so that they don’t turn into a large pile of spaghetti behind your desk.

• Use power strips. Keep all your power coming from one place. There is no reason to use four different wall outlets in your typical Cubase studio.

• Organize your CDs and DVDs. Keep all your computer system’s programs on one CD spindle, keep all your music on another spindle, and keep all you Cubase projects on another spindle. Store more projects on hard disk than on CDs or DVDs.

• Keep all your programs’ manuals and documentation in one place. When you’re in the middle of a session, it’s good to know where your manuals are when you run into problems.

• When working with multiple monitors, try to keep it simple by using the same type of monitor, and make sure you have enough room on your desk for all of them. Using different sizes of monitors arrayed haphazardly around you is going to make things a lot more difficult.

• If you’re running multiple programs that require USB security dongles, try to combine multiple programs on each dongle. You shouldn’t need a dongle for every program you have.

• Keep instruments that you don’t use often (and aren’t a tremendous inspiration) stored away so that you have more space when you’re working on your computer.

• Keep printers, fax machines, answering machines, paper, blank CD/DVDs, and other standard office supplies and equipment away from your main computer desk. If you need this stuff close by, use an extra shelving system that is separate from your desk. Try to keep everything that isn’t directly related to recording away from your desk.

• Mount guitars (or other instruments that require stands) on the wall. This will save you some space and keep you from knocking over your instruments when you’re shuffling everything around during a recording session. You can buy fancy guitar mounts, but if you want to go cheap, your average hardware store sells tool hooks that usually cost less than a dollar and work well.

• If you’ve got old gear that you never use lying around in the studio, get rid of it. eBay is great for that sort of thing. That old gear (or, as a friend of mine calls it, “space junk”) will just sit around and haunt you forever. If you have a fear of letting something go, just remember that if you miss it later, you’ll probably be able to find it again on eBay when you need it.

• Make sure you have adequate space for people to stand or sit, including yourself. Chairs are very important in a studio because you could be sitting for hours at a time. A lot of professional studios spend a lot of money on comfortable chairs (see Figure 3.10) because it really makes a difference to the comfort of the producers and recording engineers who put in 14-hour days in the studio.

  Figure 3.10. The comfortable Herman Miller Aeron studio chair.

  

Your Cubase studio budget is obviously going to have some effect on how comfortable your recording environment is to you, but you should consider everything, from the type of computer to the color of paint for your studio walls, because everything will have some sort of effect on your final recording.