D.I.Y. Vocal Booth - Phase #1

If you recall one of my past postings (Wardrobe Records) I once attempted to make a vocal booth by using materials that was available from around the house such as shelves, drawers, curtains, etc etc.. and unfortunately it didn't quite work out. There were several reasons for its failure...

First of all the structure was predominantly my wardrobe - which simply was too embarrassing to have anyone step in there and sing amongst my undies. Then there was the height problem - probably no more than 175cm in height it would have made it impossible for somebody taller than myself to use it. Lastly, it was just plain UGLY!

Ever since then I've been contemplating on making a more practical and decent looking booth... and after much research on the internet I finally got off my ass and did it. It was just as well that my sister happened to be around for a visit because help was something that I was going to need.

I started by asking myself "how big do I want it be?". The tiny studio that I operate from is probably only around 70 square feet in floor space, so I don't exactly have a lot of room.

After much thought, I settled on taking slightly less than a quarter of the room space, and planned to make it a perfect square dimension of 4ft by 4ft. To ensure that my tallest talent (who is 6'2") can fit in it properly, I decided the booth should be at 7ft height.

After a little research on material prices, I found out that it was not a good time for me financially to fully complete the booth, but I knew that I needed 'something' function-able in order to proceed with the upcoming projects. I therefore decided to split the project into 2 phases. Phase #1 is building the frame, and phase #2 would be the rest.

So off we went to the hardware store (armed with a scrap piece of paper that I doodled my 'plans' on) and bought myself materials to kick off the first phase.


Material List:

Wood (4x 7" long & 8x 4" long)
Nails
Wood glue

At first I had planned to simply join the wood together at its ends and simply knock nails into the corners... but after much careful thought, I figured that that approach of 'engineering' would probably make the structure superbly weak. So we headed to the store again for some L-shaped brackets and, since the brackets work better with screws rather than nails, we also got ourselves some long-screws and a Phillips-head drill bit.


And so work began early that day at 9am. A lot of careful measuring, marking, drilling, and drill-screwing soon took place and I quickly learned that the project was a lot harder than expected.

The wood was cheap and needed to be sanded down to avoid serious splinters. However, despite it's low price and quality, it was still strong enough to make drilling an absolute chore. So strong in fact that it broke the drill piece.. and that temporarily halted the project as we had to head out again and purchase another one! At that point the day was already half way through, and so far we had only managed to complete one side of the frame!



Making the 2nd frame was not easy either. Another drill bit broke and the work came to another unexpected halt. By the end of the day we had only completed 2 sides of the booth frame. Time was running short and a recording session was due the next day. There was just no physical way for us to finish it off.



We decided to call it a day and work ended at 2am. Two broken drill bits later and we had only done 2 out of the 4 sides. We had to quickly think of a temporary solution if the studio was to accommodate the upcoming recording. The best thing we could think of was to put the 2 complete frames up in an L-Shape, stuff 'em in a corner, and drop curtains around it (hmmm... reminiscence of my 'wardrobe' booth...). Ok so it wouldn't be soundproof, but at least vocals can be recorded without unwanted ambient and wall-bouncing sounds.

Work started the same time the next day day and we began the execution of our plan. Thank god things were a lot smoother the 2nd day; For some odd reason, problems were somehow easier to solve. For example, after putting the frame up to its planned L-Shape, we couldn't find anything to hold them together. We simply rolled a few rounds of masking-tape onto the two frames and problem solved!


After about half a day of assembling the 2 frames, a quick strip of curtains and its railings from around my apartment, the booth was finally done! Well, not quite... Ok so we've only managed to finish half of phase #1 but hey, it'll do for now.

So far the booth does the job... and it does it quite well. Provided that the studio remains quiet during recording (which I foresee could be a slight problem when talents start bringing their friends to recording sessions) I don't quite see the need to rush it to its 2nd phase.

In fact, some have complemented on how good the quality of the vocals are sounding in my recording nowadays. I'm actually considering keeping it this way! Now if only I could get my PC to quieten down...