Tuesday 21st November has been declared No Music Day. The concept was suggested by maverick music business genius/lunatic Bill Drummond, whose eclectic CV includes managing 80’s legends the Teardrop Explodes, forming the KLF and writing the book ‘How To Have a Number One Hit’ which explained the process of taking your favourite drum beat and sticking your favourite TV theme tune or melody over the top, which he then proved to be true by releasing his ‘Doctoring the Tardis’ song as the Timelords. The KLF once notoriously played the BPI awards, but instead of performing their song in the regular manner they invited metal band Extreme Noise Terror to do a different version which culminated in Bill ‘gunning down’ the assembled speechless music industry with a fake machine gun. Allegedly, Bill had intended to spray the audience with pig’s blood but Extreme Noise Terror wouldn’t let him because they are vegetarians! And let’s not forget the legendary controversial burning of a million pounds of their own money by the KLF, the ashes of which they made into a brick to sell as a piece of art which was then valued at £60,000, apparently bought by Keith Allen… you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!

Anyway, Bill’s latest concept of No Music Day is an attempt to make people think about how they are taking music for granted; we are constantly bombarded with disposable pop and music is more easily accessible than at any point in the past. This should be a good thing but an unfortunate side-effect is that much of the mystique and feeling of belonging to something exclusive has disappeared from the acts of purchasing, discovering and hearing music. Attendance of live gigs is starting to fall because everyone can check stuff out on myspace instead of going to a gig on the off-chance. we have too much choice and most of it has been designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

You may think that No Music Day is a stupid idea and that Bill Drummond wants his head examined; but surely this is what music used to be all about? Conceptual Artists provoking thought and new ideas by challenging your world view, encouraging you to be (or at least feel) subversive and like you could change the world.

So let’s join in on No Music Day by not playing or listening to any music and spending that time thinking about what music means to us. Check out http://www.nomusicday.com for info.

Emiliana Torrini first got famous in Iceland almost by accident when she was a teenager. She recorded some songs for fun which generated lots of interest and resulted in some offers to record professionally. She was then ‘discovered’ by Derek Birkett and Arni Ben from One Little Indian records and asked to come to the UK in 1998 to record the album ‘Love In The Time Of Science’ produced by Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears fame. This album was trip-hop in feel and received worldwide critical acclaim and some commercial success.

Since then, whilst writing material for her current album, Emiliana has collaborated with a number of other artists including the Thievery Corporation and has written songs with the Sneaker Pimps.
The emotional poignancy and evocative quality of Emiliana’s voice makes it particularly suitable for use on soundtracks and she was invited to sing on the soundtrack of the Two Towers from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She’s also had songs featured on UK TV series Footballers Wives and Sugar Rush (set in Brighton where Emiliana currently lives) and a car commercial, to name but a few.

In 2004 Emiliana and her producer Dan Carey co-wrote ‘Slow’ with Kylie Minogue, proving that Emiliana is a truly diverse songstress who can express herself in many genres and styles.

SOUNDSCENE catches up with Emiliana Torrini as she takes a break from touring and promoting her album ‘The Fisherman’s Woman’ released on Rough Trade early last year. ‘The Fisherman’s Woman’ is a collection of beautiful, subtle songs played on acoustic guitars, lap steel, harmonium and glockenspiel. It cleverly blends elements of folk, soul, country and pop. Since January 2005 she’s been performing songs from the album with her band in Europe, the USA and Iceland and so far the gigs have been well received. In a couple of weeks she’s off to Australia and Japan to promote the album there.

SOUNDSCENE: So what’s your opinion on the ‘internet revolution’ currently changing the shape of the music industry?

EMILIANA: I think that the internet is such a brilliant new way for music. Because when I was growing up and had MTV at home, I’d stay up all night to record a video or record the music on tape just to be the first to be able to play the new band next day; everything has to be your own discovery and the internet is the way for the younger kids to do that now. They want to discover something new for themselves that nobody’s heard, bring it to school and play it to their friends. That’s what it is to be young, always the first with something. The internet is almost the new punk because people are sick of everything that’s going on in the world; people feel that governments are failing them, the media is failing them, there’s war and horrible stuff going on and people are sick of it all. They’re sticking their fingers up to all of it and saying ‘No! We’re going to find our own way and take what we want.’ People have had enough of being fed what the media wants them to hear. I think it’s brilliant that there are websites where you can get some exposure for your music and end up doing your own tour without a record deal or press or anything, and still fill a 3000 capacity venue just on your reputation through the internet. It’s like a treasure chest; I think your instinct when you’re growing up is to say ‘what’s behind that mountain?’ and always to search somewhere further. The internet opens up a lot of treasure hunts that you can explore for yourself.

SOUNDSCENE: What was the first gig you went to see?

EMILIANA: My first gig ever was Rage Against the Machine when they played near Reykjavik. I wasn’t allowed to go so I had to sneak out; we had to hitch a ride to the concert but there were hardly any cars on the road. Eventually these guys stopped and we were pleading with them to take us. They said ok, but only if we travelled in the boot! So they put us in the boot all squashed with a big tyre, then they drove somewhere onto a street that had loads of speed bumps and they drove up and down over the speed bumps for about half an hour before they took us to the gig!

SOUNDSCENE: I guess that gives a new meaning to the term ‘headbanging’!

EMILIANA: Definitely! When I got back I tried to lie to my mother that I hadn’t gone but I was wearing a t shirt I’d drawn on; a picture of a bug or something, and the ink had run because the gig was so hot and sweaty. So by the time I got home my face was all covered in black smudges from where the colours had melted!

SOUNDSCENE: Growing up in Iceland must have been very different to growing up almost anywhere else in Europe.

EMILIANA: I think it was. We didn’t have so many distractions so we would do more things like make up stories, go exploring and have adventures.

SOUNDSCENE: What’s your favourite story?

EMILIANA: I remember once when it was a festival day or some kind of celebration and everyone was walking on the beach in Reykjavik, holding balloons in a big procession and a whale had come ashore and got stuck on the beach so he had died. All the people walked around the whale and my friend Siggi who is a big show-off climbed up onto the whale and was shouting down ‘Look at me! I climbed the whale!’ Everyone pretended to ignore him and carried on walking along the beach but suddenly there was a scream and Siggi had disappeared! All that could be heard was some muffled noises. Nobody could find Siggi for ages so eventually a man climbed up on the whale to get a better view; then he saw an arm sticking out of the whale and heard Siggi squeaking that he had fallen into the whale’s vagina! Lots of people had to get up and pull him out. He’s never got over that experience; now everyone calls him Siggi the whale vagina miner!

SOUNDSCENE: Wow! That’s an amazing story! Your experiences must have given you lots of material to write about.

EMILIANA: I started writing music relatively late in my career; I always considered myself to be just a singer of songs… I don’t care who writes them but if I like the song I want to sing it. And then I wanted to write but I thought I couldn’t write at all because I wasn’t that type of person. Then suddenly I was a songwriter but it was a fight to become one!

SOUNDSCENE: I heard a rumour that you originally wrote your single ‘Sunnyroad’ for Johnny Cash but that he died before he could record it.

EMILIANA: No, that’s not true at all! After the song was finished I thought it would have been amazing to offer it to him… I think it would have really suited his voice, he was such a great character and brilliant artist.

SOUNDSCENE: Judging by your recordings to date, you seem to like lots of different styles of music and it’s hard to categorize you.

EMILIANA: I feel like it’s a real comfort when people don’t know where to place me, because when people seem confused and have no idea where to put me then I can be whatever I want to be. It makes me feel I must be doing something right; it’s not that I’m breaking any new ground as far as the listener is concerned, but I’m constantly breaking new ground for myself and discovering new things when I’m writing.

SOUNDSCENE: So is there any unifying factor to all the diverse projects you’ve been involved with?

EMILIANA: I just take part in the things that I like, but usually it comes down to a good song, regardless of style. In the same way that you don’t want all your friends to be the same as each other or have the same opinions, I’m interested in lots of different types of music and in letting different things happen each time rather than choosing in advance.

…………………

Emiliana Torrini may be reluctant to categorise herself but we think that’s easy; she’s carved her own niche and it should be called Icelandic Soul… soul in the true sense of the word as in music that comes from the heart and expresses raw and sincere emotion. With the help of sympathetic management and an understanding record company she’s been able to forge a career path that seems both credible and enduring. Hopefully she’ll be around for a long time to come; she’s due to start writing for a new album soon, tour schedule permitting so we can look forward to hearing some more of those delicate Icelandic Soul classics in the future!

For more information on Emiliana check out her website at emilianatorrini.com

Form a band, advertising, auditioning, poaching a musician, session musicians, band agreements, decide publishing splits, become a dj/mc/dance act, choose a name, write songs, rehearse, get a website, get some photos.

As with practically every aspect of the music business, there are actually no rules whatsoever; anything can happen in any way, shape or form and absolutely nothing can guarantee success or ensure failure. however, there are general guidelines and tried and tested methods which can maximise your chances and help you to avoid mistakes. The main thing to remember is don’t s**t on people on the way up coz you might need them on your way back down

The archetypical band consists of a bunch of mates who met at school or university and decided to form a band. This has its advantages in that there is likely to be a strong bond of trust between the members which will help to withstand any pressures later on; it’s almost more important that you like the people you work with than all having identical musical tastes as musical differences can be resolved or compromised on if you trust and like each other.

Not everyone is lucky enough to find themselves at school/uni with people able or willing to collaborate, but luckily there are other ways of finding people to work with. Try asking around at gigs, clubs and pubs, and tell all your mates to spread the word that you’re looking for people. Many successful bands have found members by advertising in the press (nme, kerrang, loot and the stage are the usual ones to try) or on rehearsal studio noticeboards. This can be disheartening but amusing at the same time; you may have to audition up to 50 people to find one with exactly the qualities you are looking for but at least you’ll meet a good cross-section of the musicians available in your area and this may prove useful later on… don’t forget it’s a small world and you never know who someone might be in a couple of years! The best approach with auditioning is to save time and expense by meeting up and playing each other some music (your own or your favourite bands). Try and find out if there’s enough common ground or chemistry to make it worth trying out in a rehearsal room.

Another option is to try and poach a musician from another band; if you’re at a gig and you see a musician playing who you think would be perfect, ask them if they’d be interested but be subtle! Some musicians and bands have a policy of being faithful to one project at a time; others are more flexible and prefer to play with as many people as possible. The latter type may well be session musicians and may require payment (rates can vary from around £50 a gig to hundreds) but some session musicians will play in your band if they like it on the understanding that you’ll pay them if you start to make money in the future.

When you’ve got your band together it’s a good idea to have a discussion about responsibilities, rights and finances very early on. It may seem premature but it’s best to get everything straight from the start so you can avoid arguments down the line. if the band takes off its a good idea to have a band agreement drawn up by a lawyer but initially you should have a verbal agreement covering things like; who owns the band name in the event of a split? Who is going to pay for rehearsals, equipment etc? How will you split the publishing money if and when you get a publishing deal? Who makes the decisions? Is it a democracy or does someone have the final say? Which musicians are full band members who will sign any future record deal and which are session musicians who will be on a wage rather than a split of advances and royalties?

Arguments about publishing splits have torn numerous bands apart; drummers and bass players often feel hard done by because the traditional way of dividing publishing money is 50% for the melody and 50% for the lyrics. This seems extremely unfair in a modern band set-up where everyone in the band contributes to the finished song and can result in members losing interest and the incentive to give their best. A good general guideline that many bands follow is to give every essential permanent non-writing band member a basic percentage (10-15% is usual) which will cover any small suggestions or arrangement ideas and then divide half the remainder amongst whoever wrote the music and half for the vocal parts.

If you’re trying to become an mc, dj or dance act, a huge record collection is essential consisting of both contemporary material so you’re up to date with the most recent styles, beats and production tricks, and obscure rare stuff to use as a source of inspiration. Once you’ve got your rhymes down or your mixing skills up to scratch the most important thing is to make contact with your local dance/club scene. Check out independent record shops where local dj’s source their material, look out for new clubs and open mike nights. MC’s need to find DJ/producers to work with to help with original backing tracks. DJ’s and dance acts can often work alone but will sometimes need mc’s, musicians and or dancers to collaborate with or to do live p.a.’s. These can all be found in similar ways to band members.. to find dancers, try putting ads up in dance studios.

When you’ve got your project together, obviously you need to choose a name. Sometimes this can happen spontaneously and naturally with everyone agreeing instantly that it’s the right name. If you’re having trouble you’re probably thinking too hard… unless it’s truly dreadful, most names become less important once people start to hear your music. Often the first decent idea is the best. It can be helpful to stylise the name into a logo or use a particular typeface to help give you an identity. If you want to check your name isn’t being used by someone else, you can go to www.bandreg.com to see if it’s been registered, or do an internet search to see if any band websites come up.

There are no set rules on how to write songs, a multitude of different approaches can get good results. Some bands find it easiest to write together in a rehearsal room by jamming out riffs and chord sequences; others prefer to work out the majority of a song before rehearsing with the band. It’s practically impossible to make every part of a song completely original as we all have to work with the same 12 note scale. The originality comes more from the arrangement, style, attitude, delivery and lyrical content.

Some writers, especially dance acts, often sample whole parts from other recordings and place them in a new context; others are more subliminally influenced by what they hear or copy the flavour or arrangement of someone else’s song. If you do sample another artist’s work, bear in mind that you will have to get ‘clearance’ for the sample before you can release your song; this can be expensive and cost thousands so make sure it’s worth it! Sometimes you may unintentionally rip off another song; many acts have been sued for royalties by artists claiming they have been plagiarised. The general rule is if a sequence of 8 notes or more is identical to someone else’s, it’s a rip off. Anything less can be said to be co-incidental. If you’ve never tried to write a song before, a good place to start is to examine one of your favourite songs by another artist. Notice how many different parts there are, how many bars to each section and the structure of the song eg. intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, chorus. Then use this structure with your own riffs and chord sequences.

When you’re ready to rehearse, you need to find a suitable rehearsal studio. These can range in price from £5 per hour to £100 per day ‘lock out’ for a top of the range studio. Most of the cheaper studios expect you to book 4 hours at a time and the price includes the vocal p.a. and mics but no drum kit or amps. Some smaller studios do ‘all in’ deals where backline of a kit, 1 bass amp and 1 guitar amp is included. Make sure you know in advance what to take so you don’t end up having to hire backline on the day. Some rehearsal studios have storage cages to let (minimum £15 per week) so you can keep all your gear on the premises and save hassle.

If your band is very commited and you all have the time to rehearse lots, it’s worth looking around for a small studio or industrial unit where you can have your own room permanently and perhaps share it with one other band eg. one of you has weekdays, the other has evenings and weekends. This can be quite expensive but can be worth it if you’d be spending lots at a rehearsal room. Look in NME, loot, yellow pages and music shops to find rehearsal studios in your area. Lots of bands treat rehearsals as a social occasion involving beer etc; while it can be productive to rehearse in a relaxed atmosphere and have a laugh, try and spend the majority of the time actually playing.. you can always go for a drink together afterwards to discuss your social lives!! You can accelerate your progress by recording rehearsals on a mini-disk, lap-top or 4-track and giving copies to the band or getting together to listen to and discuss the results. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to try and cultivate a good social relationship with your band; if you get somewhere you’re going to be spending a lot of time together so it helps to be friends!

It’s practically essential these days to get a website up and running as soon as possible. If you can’t do it yourself, try and find a friend who can do it free or cheaply; you can always improve and add to your site in the future if you start to get some income from your music. Make sure you have a mailing list section so you can notify fans and friends of forthcoming gigs, include lots of information about your band and photos if possible. Links to other sites relevant to your band are useful, e.g. to on line reviews and gig promoter’s websites. A forum where fans can discuss your music is a good idea, as is some way of users being able to hear a small piece of your music or download a song. You can also sell T-shirts, CD’s, badges etc through your website; if you want to do this you’ll need to figure out a payment method via credit/debit card or get a po box… don’t put your own address and phone number on the site!

At some point you’ll need to get some photos of you or your band to put on your website and/or to send with your CD if you’re trying to get industry interest. While it’s not essential to pay loads for a top photographer, they do need to be of reasonably good quality or else they’ll diminish rather than enhance your chances. You can get good results with a digital camera; try getting a friend to take some shots of you live on stage or in a cool outdoor location. If you don’t have a friend with a good eye, try contacting students on art or photography courses who will do photos free or cheaply if they need material for their portfolio.

When it comes to your image, the golden rule is; never wear anything on stage or for a photo shoot that you wouldn’t wear walking down the street or when you go out to a club. In other words, natural is best unless of course it’s part of your whole concept like Slipknot! Finally, whether you’re a musician, DJ, MC or dance act, one of the most essential things is… don’t be lazy! it’s a very tough competitive business and if you’re determined to make it you need to practice your craft as much as you can and if possible make sure you have good reliable equipment and instruments.

Fritz from Unit 11 studio design has been designing and building recording studios, both professional and amateur for about 20 years and has become an expert in all aspects of soundproofing and internal room acoustics. Fritz is an extremely intelligent guy who approaches each project as a personal vision. He works on every aspect of each job himself, from designing to building to choosing the décor and is reluctant to delegate anything in case the quality of the results should be compromised. SOUNDSCENE interviews Fritz over a pint at his local pub in north London after a hard days work on his latest commission; a studio at Westminster University.

SOUNDSCENE: What led you to become an expert in this field?

FRITZ: As a teenager in New Zealand I was playing in bands and couldn’t afford to go into a recording studio so I built my own! And then I became interested in the physics of it. The science of sound is fascinating, all about waves and nodes and interference patterns.

SOUNDSCENE: Did you need to learn any specific skills?

FRITZ: Yes, I had some training in building skills which is an advantage otherwise you have to employ someone else to do it for you and there’s certain aspects of soundproofing where you really need to know what you’re doing. It’s no good simply chucking stuff on the walls; you have to think about the structure.

SOUNDSCENE: What’s the best way to soundproof a room?

FRITZ: With soundproofing, you can either build a massive structure which is very expensive and impractical or you can use the ‘room within a room’ technique which is sort of opposite to what most builders are used to doing; they want to make things rigid and structurally sound but the idea of a ‘room within a room’ is that soundproofing is achieved because there is no physical or mechanical connection between the inner and outer rooms. You have to ‘float’ the floor on insulating materials and then work upwards.
Air is the best thing for sound insulation… the bigger the cavity between the external and internal rooms the better. You need a minimum gap of at least 2 inches otherwise the trapped air in the cavity effectively becomes solid, so you get the mechanical transmission of sound. When floating doors and walls, high-density rock wool is ok or there are other products available like neoprene and rubber balls and different types of suspension but it’s so expensive that the client would be better off moving to the countryside with no neighbours and no need for soundproofing!
In London or any big city, people are living like colonies of ants stacked up above each other, which is why I constantly get work soundproofing. If you have the luxury of space then all you have to worry about is the acoustic side of things.

SOUNDSCENE: It sounds like there’s a lot of demand for your services

FRITZ: Yes. I’ve done some work building studios for big companies like Sanctuary and Warners but what with modern recording techniques, computer hard disc recording etc and the cheapness of everything I’m more in demand by private individuals wanting to build a home studio set up. You can get all the equipment for a professional sounding studio for very little money now which is why lots of big expensive recording studios are going bust or closing down. In a way it’s a crying
shame because the quality of the rooms was much better, they had well designed live rooms and the control room was big enough to get good acoustics.

SOUNDSCENE: Is it possible to get good results in a home studio?

FRITZ: In your average spare room, which is, say 11ft square, there is something called a standing wave whereby the physical size of the room relates to the wavelength of the sound that the room resonates at, in the same way that an organ pipe resonates at a certain frequency depending on its length.
With a smaller room, assuming it is soundproofed, the walls will reflect most of the sound energy back into the room and you end up with a situation where if you play a low note, there are areas where you can’t hear it and areas where it’s really booming.
The room needs to be large enough to conform to certain ratios; Bolt’s ratio (like the Golden Ratio in geometry) whereby the height isn’t a multiple of the depth, which isn’t a multiple of the length of a room. Basically, if your room is a cube, that will suck!
It’s a bit of a fallacy about having weird angles or splayed walls because all that does is skew the standing wave in an unpredictable way. A random oblong or L-shaped room can work best because at least that is predictable and you can design in acoustic treatments to accommodate those predictable problems.

SOUNDSCENE: Are there many people in your field doing the same job as you?

FRITZ: No, there’s hardly any. There’s a bunch of main companies who do larger venues, famous companies that have been going for years like Monroe, AKA, Recording Architecture but there’s very few who caters to the smaller market, i.e. Programming suites and home studios. Those jobs aren’t profitable enough for the big companies… the most I’ve had as a budget for a domestic job is in the region of £30,000.

SOUNDSCENE: What advice could you give someone wanting to build their own studio?

FRITZ: One important thing to consider right from the very beginning is air conditioning or a fresh air supply. If you build a soundproofed room, you’re building a really good oven! Sound insulation provides heat insulation as well so it’s a big concern. Air conditioning can be very expensive so you need to include extra costs in your budget for it. Also you will need to consider the fact that air conditioning can make noise and account for that.

SOUNDSCENE: If someone wants to build their own studio in a bedroom or garage, how much would it be likely to cost?

FRITZ: That’s very hard to say because it depends entirely on the amount of acoustic and soundproofing problems they are going to encounter. Also there are degrees of how far you can take the whole thing.
If you want to build a basic room within a room of around 10ft by 16ft using a fairly lightweight shell with 2 or 3 sheets of plasterboard, with high density rock wool as insulation, doors that are properly sealed and windows that are correctly glazed, all the materials you need to use can be bought from your local builder’s yard for between £3000 and £4000 but then you need to build it yourself or allow for labour costs on top.
When I take on a job my price can vary enormously because all the problems relating to ‘will it be properly soundproofed and is it going to sound good’ vary so dramatically.
Recently I designed and built a room for a band with a large PA system and drum kit that was on the other side of a wall about 4 ft away from where someone had to sleep and couldn’t be disturbed which was a challenge! We used about 8 tonnes of materials for a 4m X 5m room. If someone says they want absolute silence outside the structure, you get diminishing returns; The basic soundproofing cost around £5000 but we had to spend another £10,000 just to eliminate that last little bit of extraneous noise. You can get quite good results reasonably easily but getting total silence is very difficult as sound is such a pervasive medium. Think of it this way… if you lie awake in the dead of night when everything’s completely silent, you can hear a sparrow fart in Hackney!

SOUNDSCENE: Can you explain how to get the right acoustics for a control room and live room?

FRITZ: You mustn’t confuse the soundproofing with the room acoustics. Internal room acoustics is treating a room to make it sound the way you want it to sound… for a control room that would normally be ‘flat’ with no big lumps or peaks as far as the EQ is concerned. That is to say, if you record with a microphone in a live room, the thing you are recording is the exact thing coming out of the control room speakers with no added acoustics.
The ear perceives as natural a sound with a small amount of room reverb, as opposed to a completely dead room with no reflections, known as an anechoic chamber. These were popular in the 70’s; if you walk into an anechoic chamber it’s like stuffing your head into a pillow, which is no good for a control room where you’re monitoring sounds and listening to the mix. To a certain extent the ear relies on some reflections in a room; if you put an amplifier in a field, suddenly you can’t hear anything unless you crank it right up, because there are no reflections.
If you have a glass window in your control room, you need laminated rather than normal glass; normal glass pings if you tap it where as laminated just thuds so it’s less reflective. You also need to angle the glass away from you so the high frequency reflection doesn’t bounce straight back in your face!
When building a control room, the ratios I mentioned earlier are the most important thing. Then you need to suspend bass traps from the walls or ceilings to take out any harsh frequency reflections… you can buy stuff off the internet like ‘Studio in a Box’, products that use things like foam or Oralex, a whole plethora of stuff you can buy off the shelf and stick on the wall with Velcro and it will do mid-range to high frequency attenuation on the room. It’s the same if you hang duvets on the wall… or the old favourite, egg boxes! The cheapest, most effective method I have found is to use Rock wool covered with fabric. Don’t confuse any of these acoustic treatments with soundproofing… they’ll do little to stop the neighbours complaining!
Something that’s become increasingly popular is RPG systems. Basically it involves attaching slotted boxes to the walls, which resemble bookcases. The theory is based on thinking of sound as being like a ray of light, and the boxes radiate the wave in a diffuse pattern, like if a mirror is covered in dew, you can still see reflections or patterns when you stand to the side of the mirror, not just directly in front of it. The effect sonically is of diffusing or ‘smearing’ the sound across the bandwidth. You can buy these off the shelf and they do have some merit. In a small room they can make it seem as though the walls are further away than they are.

When it comes to recording, making a good live sound requires a more artistic interpretation of a room, and to some extent it’s a question of taste. For a live room where you do want natural reverb, you need to think about the materials you use for the surfaces of the walls as the absorption coefficient determines what frequencies will be bounced back. Some people love the sound of bathrooms because the shiny surface of the tiles reflects all the frequencies back into the room.
Personally I like the sound of good quality wood floors with some carpet to take out the harsher top-end frequencies. On the walls, tongue and groove panelling can sound really good; the small grooves in the wood resonate in a pleasing way because it’s an irregular, chaotic surface.
For a drum booth, you need character and flavour. A hard irregular surface like slate tiles or concrete is good with areas of absorption like fabric or carpet panels to control high frequency reflections.
For recording vocals you do need a very dead room or anechoic chamber so that you can control and add your own reverbs afterwards.

SOUNDSCENE: If someone wanted a career designing and building studios, what’s the best route to follow? Are there any courses available?

FRITZ: As far as I know there are no real courses for the structural side of it; Guildford University does a course in Applied Acoustics which teaches some of the scientific and mathematical principles involved, but I don’t know of anywhere that specialises in the musical side of acoustics. There are some good books that you can use to teach yourself; How to build a Recording Studio by Paul White is a good place to start. Try looking at Studiospares.co.uk or in music shops. Obviously some building experience is useful but other than that you just need a feel for the subject and an interest in sound.
Go into a room and put a sine wave on your stereo, then walk around and listen, use your ears and you should be able to hear the nodes or peaks and troughs of the sound waves as you walk around. Then you’ll know where in your room the sound is ‘true’ and where it’s being corrupted by reflections. You can also buy room analyser kits, which you plug in to your system and they will work out how your room is behaving, but they won’t tell you how to fix it… that’s where I come in!

BANDS:

Welcome to SoundScene, the new dedicated hassle-free music site. Showcase your songs online, get your own page and web address and build up your mailing list. At soundscene, we’re only interested in your music, not how many friends you’ve got.

All you have to do is upload your songs and create your backdrop with some band info and we’ll do the rest! You’ll automatically get reviewed and rated by our editorial team, and playlisted on our radio station. If you’re in more than one band, you can link your members to other band pages so your fans will know what else you’re up to.

If we like you, or if you get lots of downloads, we’ll feature you in our magazine; we’ll either contact you for an interview or review one of your gigs. You can advertise your gigs and events on your page as well as in our classified section, where you can also buy and sell music related products and services or find new band members.

Your fans can add themselves to your SoundScene mailing list so you can notify them of forthcoming gigs and releases, and contact you by writing on your message board. In the near future, we hope to be able to start charging your fans for downloads so we can pay you for your music.

We also realise that there’s been loads of amazing bands out there that no longer exist. At SoundScene, we want to provide an opportunity for that music to reach a wider audience, so if you’re wondering what to do with all your old tunes, you can create a ‘Classic Band’ page and upload them.

MUSIC FANS:

Check out loads of happening new music by browsing our band index: download your favourites and sign up to as many mailing lists as you like to get emailed advance notification of gigs and releases. Contact your favourite bands by writing on their message board. You can also find music from bands that have split or ceased to exist in our ‘Classic Bands’ section.

You can listen to our radio station which features the best soundscene artists on heavy rotation, read our music magazine containing new and archive interviews, reviews and articles from all areas of the music industry or log in to the forum if you want to chat and make comments about something. Visit our classified ads page which contains everything from gig listings to musicians available/wanted and musical equipment or services for sale.