[steveyraff]

Excellent food for thought, great responses. I will try to answer as many points as I can for now.

Originally Posted by jhbrandt

You will most likely need your father to design some trusses for the roofing so you can get rid of the posts. Also have him design it so you can vault the roof slightly.. as high as possible. Ideally you should shoot for at least 11ft ceiling height.

Actually, I discussed this with him and he said he has to have a closer look at the trusses already visible in some of the photos, but he thinks they will be up to standard as they are, and the vertical posts are actually un-necessary and the remnants of old makeshift cattle pens. Panelling over the gradient of the roof up until the point of the horizontal trusses, then going across at this point, should leave us near the 11 ft mark. Do you think it might be wiser to only have the ceiling at this full height in the Live Room area, or would it be suitable throughout the build ?

Originally Posted by therealbigd

The thing is, you have a space with so much potential. Doing 'just enough to do some recording' would be a shame, as the space has all it needs to turn out a great studio!

You have the equipment and budget of a Hobbyist Basement Studio.
You have the building with potential to be a Superb Professional Studio

Originally Posted by dykstraster@gmai

you could easily start as a one room studio, and build the rest as you can afford and design it. Do it in baby steps yeah?

I realise there is a lot of posts, and probably will be a lot of posts, about how I have a great opportunity, a blank canvas that most of you would just love to have, and that it feels like I have the potential to do something spectacular - and it may seems frustrating that with this in mind, I am still setting a relatively low bar with a small budget. It IS frustrating, and it is frustrating for myself. To be extremely honest, I don't really deserve an amazing studio as I have only been at this 5 or 6 years and I am still learning a lot everyday - implementing state of the art design features may seem like subtle advantages to my ears.

The other point of view is that I should be making the most of this as you guys suggest, take it in baby steps and slowly build it up into the best I can do, rather than rush into it. This way, as my experience and career in this field progresses, I will grow into the studio, and I will appreciate the things I made sure to do at the early design stages. But this is why I am here, and this is why I am asking those with greater knowledge and experience. Perhaps my budget can be stretched a little further if I take my time at this and have a little patience.

On idea I've had is to crack on with the live room and control room areas, leave the lounge area totally untouched for now. It seems to me that it will be that whole area which does not need any special design features and will only need some aesthetic attention. I can have a fully operational studio before that area is even started in reality. After all, smaller studios do not even have an area like that - its a bit of a luxury item.

Originally Posted by therealbigd

If you wish to make it a commercial recording studio, ie people give you money, you give them music, you need to get planning permission to make a studio inside it. A lot of people think planning permission is only required to build stuff, and not required to convert barns into recording studios.

Luckily, this IS one thing that I am on top of. This is exactly my fathers area of expertise. He deals with these cases on a daily bases for his work. So he knows things we can and can not get away with in terms of building regulations. Neighbours is not an issue. It is a rural area and he stipulates that you only have to worry about those living within a 90 meter radius. 90 meters doesn't even take you outside of our own farmland surrounding the barn.

Originally Posted by dykstraster@gmai

seriously man, check out some financial avenues... AFTER you have some CAD or Sketchup drawings of the potential. Everyone has an old aunt that believes in them somewhere!

How do you feel about your potential for a client base?

Originally Posted by dykstraster@gmai

Look at the big picture, and don't get focused on the cost until we can get a grasp of what it would actually cost. A few decent sized projects can recoup quite a bit.

Location and competition... Well this is something I have been putting a lot of thought into. Northern Ireland is a relatively small area. I have done a lot of studying maps and looking at the main areas and cities clients are likely to come from, the easiest routes to my location from those locations, and most importantly, my proximity to other popular and successful recording studios in Northern Ireland. I believe a lot of younger bands simply go to the closest, so I would be making life hard for myself if I was doing this near by others.

My initial idea, before this offer all arose in the first place, was to rent a 4 bedroom house in town and change two of the rooms into a studio etc. Not ideal by any means but it was all I had going for me at the time. The idea was good for location as the town is one of the biggest in the country, and is right between the two major cities, just over an hours drive from each. So it seemed nice and central. The only part I do not like about this new location idea, is that its on my homeplace farm land. It is at least 10 miles outside of that town, so it is not as straightforward to get to, and it isn't as convenient. However people seem to assure me that if my promotion has made a band interested, and they are paying to record with me, they are gonna go find the place by all means necessary. I just worry about location really.

In saying that, studying my competition carefully, makes me amazed at how some studios here have became so popular. One guy is quite popular and is basically running a glorified bedroom set up, from a small terraced town house. Another guy is running out of his converted living room in a location twice as rural and isolated as mine - and seems to be constantly busy. I have modest but quality equipment, and comparing our equipment lists I definitely have the edge in that department.

Anyways, long story short, there will be location issues, but I feel confident. I am a bit of a sceptic at heart so I can be relentlessly realistic at times, some times too much so - but I can't see how I don't have a good change of being relatively successful. If I can just pay the bills I'd be happy for a start.
I guess another advantage is, if this doesn't prove a huge 'COMMERCIAL' success, it isn't the end of the world. It would be much worse if I was relying on it in a rented property. This way, during any unfortunate periods of downtime, I don't have to worry, its would be mine, and it would be permanent.


Well thats my location rant down, and I hope I answered as best I could to how I feel about my client base !


I like the baby steps method though, it would be good if I could use this £3k to get up and running yet keep it a work in progress. If that would somehow be possible.

I am going to go out to the Barn today hopefully and take some measurements for those who were interested in those details. Hope I answered all questions and ideas. Thanks for keeping interest in my project and for all the help so far!

Stevey.