When a casual study group turned into the official Story Grid Editor Roundtable podcast, it was suddenly important to go for a better sound than I was getting on Skype with a cheap headset mic, and the echoing void of my living room.
No way was I going to bike to some rented sound booth in a coworking space every Monday morning by 8:00 a.m., rain or shine, with my laptop and a snake’s nest of cables. But in my very small house there was no space for a studio.
Until I looked again at a neglected 15-square-foot (1.4 m2) kitchen closet.
Some former inhabitant had wired it with SIX electrical outlets and two light fixtures (can’t imagine what for…), so all I needed to do was clear it out, remove the shelves, lower the ceiling, carpet the floor, pad the walls, run ethernet, squeeze in a table and a chair, buy a real microphone, and voilà. Recording studio.
Stapling some foam and fabric to a piece of used plywood, and hoisting it up into the chimney-like overhead space, did a lot to cut the echo-chamber effect.
I utility-knifed a cheap IKEA rug down to size and stapled it to the floor, further damping the reverb. Cheap acoustic wall panels deadened the space entirely. Speaking into the space was like dropping a coin into sand. So I returned a little acoustic liveness with the hard surfaces of a little bistro table.
With zero finesse, I drilled a hole in the wall between the closet and the living room and ran an ethernet cable through. Black drapes left over from the Restraint book cover photoshoot and a spare bar stool completed the furnishing.
Here’s a deceptively tidy plan view:
And here’s what it actually looks like:
Before we start the podcast each Monday morning, I stick a sign on my front door.
Then I unplug my refrigerator, turn off fans and heaters, and put a loud-ticking kitchen clock under a pillow.
From this patchwork quilt of cords and cables, bare bulbs, crumbling lath-and-plaster, and makeshift accommodations, I get a warm, echo-free recording with virtually no external noise.
I use Zencastr to record quality tracks from each of the five Roundtablers in our respective quiet spaces across North America. We may not sound quite like we’re chatting in the same room, but we’re getting closer to that ideal.
The Roundtablers are Jarie Bolander, Valerie Francis, Kim Kessler, Leslie Watts, and me.
Love it, Anne! You are so resourceful!
Ha! Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. Hi Savannah.
I think there’s a definite up turn in sound quality so well done. Good thing to do given the content is so good
Hi Mark. I’m glad it’s making a difference!