Building a New Home Studio – Wood

I’ve been rather busy the past couple of weeks finishing the construction work in my new studio. I hope the first two installments about this project were helpful or at least a reminder and possibly a motivator to get you to try this yourself. It will truly save you a large amount of money if you do.

This post is about the wood I selected to use in the studio. I am again using photos cropped to demonstrate the different wood pieces used in the project.

First, the framing installation was all done using the standard 2 x 4’s most are familiar with. My choice was to work with 8′ long pieces as very little was needed to built using another standard of 12′ boards. The photo blow shows a small portion of the room that has already been built.

I chose this photo to demonstrate a single board use as well as a double and a triple, actually four pieces. The multiple pieces were nailed together using 12D nails 3.5″ long. Most of the room was framed using this pine wood material.

For the main wall material I used a knotty pine, tongue and groove material. It is 3/4″ thick and 7-3/16″ wide. Again, I used the 8′ material however, 12′ is available. These two photos show two styles; grooved and flat, used throughout the room.

To get a better view of the tongue and the groove sides of each panel please take a look at the next two photos. For those who may not know, the first one is of the groove side of the panel and the second one is the tongue side of the panel.

The next photos show them together. I offset them just a bit to see this better. The are placed groove, flat, groved, flat throughout the room to give a very good overall appearance to the final assembly.

Taking a slightly different perspective, I put a couple of panels together to provide the look of the knotty pine as it would appear on a wall once installed. Oh, I used 4D Finishing nails on an angle, on the tongue side of the panel, to secure them as each was set up and placed appropriately.

Beyond the generic 2 x 4’s and the main paneling I used several different sizes of wood trim, again, pine wood, to finish the edges and corners where two panels met from different directions. The photo below shows the following sizes of trim; 1″ x 2″, 1″ x 3″, 1″ x 4″ and 1″ x 6″. The largest size I used was a 1′ x 12″ and it was used only as the base of each shelf in the built-in bookcase. This is not shown in the photo below but I think you get the idea.

Here is a photo of how the trim pieces were used. It shows the left side of the built-in bookcase. The 6″ board is the vertical one on the left. The top 1″ board is actually one of the 12″ wide trim panels for the shelf base and the lower 1″ board is the 1″ x 2″ trim used to give it a somewhat decorative look. The were offset by 1/8″.

Here are two more showing a broader view of the use of the trim boards.

The doors were the most difficult for me to choose. I never new there were so many different style to select from. The next photo shows the 6-Panel Pine Doors used in the studio.

In subsequent posts, I plan on showing the tools I used to build the studio, the insulation used in more detail, the fasteners used and an overall room view so you can see the finished studio.

I hope this series of posts is in some way helpful or motivational to you. It is somewhat of my main topics for this blog however, it is definitely part of the environment in which I will be working at composing a lot more music in the coming weeks, months and years to come.

More soon.

Building a New Home Studio! – Part 2 Electrical

It was all Jeff’s fault:)

A co-worker of mine, Jeff, came by to visit me from New York to stay over the weekend. We had so much fun when I went out to visit him at his home and he reciprocated by stopping by and putting me to work, motivating me to get started on my music studio.  So, for that Jeff, thanks a million!

It was one of those projects where it would cost a lot of money, if hired out professionally, and it just never seemed to happen.  I had visions of a nice room or studio where I could write my music and enjoy the setting at the same time. Additionally, after spending nearly 10 years writing music out of a cold dark corner in my basement it seemed about time to put something together more suited to my taste and a lot more comfortable.

Jeff came by on a Friday night and we had a wonderful initial visit. He managed to get me to talk about what I wanted to do in my “old” studio. I had explained first that I needed to have some more electrical outlets for my equipment and that started the ball rolling. The general effort regarding the electrical will be written about in this post. I’ll cover other topics in subsequent posts.

This first photo is an example of the work we did over the next couple of days, mostly on Saturday though.We managed to install 10 new electrical outlets expanding my world a lot.

It's all Jeff's fault!

The background is of the cement wall painted over with a sealant to prevent moisture and any possibility of mildew. There is actually three layers of paint because sometimes I do over kill to make certain:) The flooring was laid out casually for the photo, otherwise the floor is normally a dark brown painted cement floor with a tan color showing through from flaking off. One of my earlier attempts to decorate my dungeon:)

Our “work” that weekend involved putting in some more outlets as shown in this photo. There are four now where there was none before. We put in these four, four in another location (a different wall) nearby and an additional two on this same wall. The 2 x 4’s showing in the picture were the beginnings of the new interior framing that was going in.

Later in this project I changed the electrical box covers to be the unbreakable ivory colored, nylon covers you are probably more familiar with. Also, as the project progressed and the building codes were understood more I changed to using the outlet boxes shown in the following photo. They were easier to work with but I think the metal ones are better over time. Personal choice I think, paper or plastic, but I did change to the blue plastic ones.

They come with a long mounting nail on the top as seen and on the bottom. You just simply locate where you want to place it and nail it down. One thing to remember is that you need to know how thick your outer wall covering is to determine the best depth location of the box, otherwise, you will have to pull them and relocate them later once the thickness is known.

In case you do not know, the yellow wire is called Romex and it is basically a black wire, a white wire and a bare copper wire wrapped in a plastic sheath. For those that do not know, the black wire is the powered or live wire, the white is the neutral wire and the bare wire is your ground wire.

Finding it necessary to study electrical work for home use I became comfortable with the idea of working with electrical circuits and electricity in general, thanks to the circuit breaker box in my garage. Fortunately, I learned the easy way as the hard way didn’t sound like too much fun:)

I was doing pretty good until I discovered that turning a corner was a newly discovered problem. How do you keep the wire inside the inner portion of the 2 x 4’s and turn the corner? Now I am not a very good carpenter but I had to figure out how to drill two holes that intersected through two 2 x 4’s on one side and three 2 x 4’s on the other where only one wire goes through all of the holes in both sections (note the right collection of joined 2 x 4’s).  Plus, I had to drop the height of the wire several inches for the second wall to properly place the outlet on the second wall. Geometry and me didn’t get along so well but somehow I managed to pull it off. The above photo shows my handy work and my level of understanding about interior wall construction, limited as it is.

Oh yeah, to hold the wire onto the 2 x 4’s  I used 1/2″ NM Cable Metal Staples. They came in a box of 100 and I didn’t think I would use them all too often but certainly what did I know? I put in a total of about 250 feet of Romex wiring into this project. I’ve got about two dozen of the staples left over.  I managed to destroy about 6 during the hammering process.

All together I put in five additional sockets, one double light switch box, four single light switches four overhead lights and one exhaust (ceiling) fan exiting stale air to the outside of my home. Not bad for a rookie. Yeah right!?! Remember my friend Jeff? He put in ten outlets so I think I have enough now:)

The total truth is that after Jef and I did all of that I hired an electrical contractor to come in to hook it all up and to make any changes necessary to meet the building codes for my City. He spent three hours redoing most of my work and he even told me a couple of good jokes:) He did say that I saved about 2 hours of his labor rate by  doing all of the “prep” and so I took that money and purchased more wood. Spending the money for the professional electrical services was pretty cheap insurance and for a novice like me, it enabled me to sleep soundly at night without concerns of an electrical fire or something nasty like that. I’ll be taking more photos of the overhead light fixtures and the two switch plates and post them in another post on this subject.

As my old Grandpappy use to say, “you don’t know what’s in the pickle barrel until you take the lid off’n it!”

Building a New Home Music Studio!

After four long years of saving money, I finally got enough together to build me a new home studio. It is planned to be 200 square feet of custom music space! I’m about half way done at this point in time! So far, the flooring is done, two new walls, all new electrical for inside the walls, all heating and air conditioning duct work,  and all framing, with the exception of one 12 foot concrete wall that will be completed tomorrow, all of this is done now.

Over the next couple of weeks I should be able to get this project totally completed enabling me to get back to work writing more music in a new studio workspace specifically designed for music creation! I plan on making several posts about my adventure into construction complete with some photos of the different things needed to be done to make a home studio.

This is not a world class $1, 000,000 studio rather it is a studio on a budget, a small budget where I supply all of the labor and where most of the supplies are purchased through Home Depot. All computers, musical instruments, software, hardware and additional equipments is already purchased and not part of the budget for the room.

This post is more or less an introduction to the project with no photos at this time. I’ll post again real soon with some photos of  work in process and maybe if I can figure out how to post videos I will do that too. After it is done I will take more photos showing the completed room with any furniture and then with the furniture and all other decorations making it a working studio. I will post them here as well.

Stay Tuned:-)

My CD’s – Direct Purchase Links Added!

Hey everyone! I finally discovered how to add the shopping cart so you can purchase CD’s direct from me on this site!

I didn’t think this could be done but have since discovered it not only could be but, that I could do it! Rather amazing for an old geezer with limited IT skills.

After you put in your State, Zip Code and Country, click on the Calculate Shipping Button and you are then transported into the Secure Zone! where you can safely complete your transaction.

Please feel free to stop by to purchase your very own copy of any one or all of my CD’s by clicking here – My CD’s!

Also, I’m still working on my new website and on developing the concepts of the more expansive approach for a much broader and still music related website. For now I am calling it The StringTunes Organization! I’ll be making more announcements about this idea in the near future.  So, please stop in or  watch for the posts about this.

Thanks in advance for buying my CD’s it helps to cover the costs of running these websites.

Thanks again!

Don

Trail Of Tears

I found this really cool place to post my music in additional to the countless other places out there. Take a look!

Don Rath Jr. – Trail Of Tears

Claudio Monteverdi

Nationality – Italian

Born: May 15, 1567

Died: November 29, 1643

Major Works: Nine Books of Madrigals – (1587-1651); La favola d’Orfeo – (1607); Incoronazione di Poppea (1643); Vespro della beata vergine – (1610); Il ritorno d′Ulisse in patria – (1640)

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi is considered to be the Father of modern music. Born in Cremona Italy as the son and oldest of five children of Baldassare, his father and a doctor and Maddalena (mother) he more than any other composer marked the transition from the Renaissance Period to the Baroque Period. His focus was Church Music, Madrigals and Operas. In 1599 he married and had three children, two of which survived youth, one became a musician and the other a doctor. He spent the majority of his life in Venice.

Monteverdi spent an enormous amount of time developing and writing his collection of nine books on the sacred Madrigals. His first volume was written and published in 1587. He continued to develop and write the Madrigal volumes, publishing volume number eight in 1638. His last and ninth volume was  published posthumously in 1651.

Another of his great contributions to music was his 18 Operas of which La favola d’Orfeo was his first opera and his most known. It is still performed today. This video is a performance of a portion of that Opera. Directed by Jordi Savall.

This video is a different perspective of the opera La d’favola Orfeo.

I would encourage my readers to follow the additional links to the various sections of this opera on YouTube.

Monteverdi was one of the first composers to utilize the techniques of Pizzacato and Tremelo for the strings. The composition Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) uses these techniques in the dramatic sections of the opera but also, in this particular work, Monteverdi also used the orchestra and the voices in such a way as to demonstrate two distinct entities as counterparts in opposition to each other while maintaining continuity within the work.

To learn more about Claudio Monteverdi please follow these links -

Wikipedia, Answers and Classical Music Pages

Red Violin Blog

Hey everyone! I wanted to do a quick post to let you know of a pretty cool blog called the red violin. This blog is in the native tongue of Portuguese so, if you do not read or understand this language, please view it with a language translation program. You can also copy the link to Google and press Translate this page too. It is worth the effort to do this if you are seeking different approaches for learning to play the violin. Here’s the link – The Red Violin Blog

StringTunes – Update 8/2/09

Hi Everyone!

I just wanted to provide a quick update for you this morning.

Great progress in getting my new logo design going! finally, while working with an excellent illustrator, I will be able to have a logo that reflects what I am doing!

On the inside – I am working on improving my follow up for all of you so it doesn’t take so much time do that rather I can spend more time composing! This effort is coming along nicely and in the next couple of weeks I hope to conclude implementing the programs to make this happen.

Play – 2B is almost finished! I am so excited about this composition:) Although it is a fairly long piece, I am happy with the way it is turning out. The arranging was pretty difficult but listening to it proves it was worth the effort!

Forlorn is almost done too! In this work, the arranging was considerably more easy than for Play – 2B was. Both seen to have come out pretty good and I am very happy with both of them.

The next step is to complete the engineering of them in CuBase and Wavelab. After that they will go out for final mastering! Can’t wait!

More soon,

Don

StringTunes – Music to Soothe Your soul!

The Violin Site

The Violin Site is featured in the Internet Brittanica Site as an excellent resource for performers and teachers for the violin. It is nice to see a site so rich in resources for a specific instrument, the violin. This one in particular offers a wide collection of articles, Playing and Performance based educational support, links to Luthiers, Composers of Violin Music, Music written for the Violin and links related to additional information of and about the violin.  I would recommend this site to you if you are interested in learning more about the violin. – The Violin Site

The Violin Society of America

Founded in 1973, the Violin Society of America is the premiere Society for all things related to the violin family of instruments. This Society provides a comprehensive body of knowledge and support for those involved not only in the Violin, manufacturing and bows,  but also in all stringed instruments; Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass and all of the bows used for playing these instruments.

The VSA publishes the Journal of the Violin Society of American as well as the VSA Papers. Both are highly prestigous publications serving the communities involved with bowed stringed instruments. I highly recommend you look into the activities of the Violin Society of America.