Hi,

I have a Nissan Titan truck. Sometimes I sing driving down the road. It certainly has a different sound to me than in my office for example.

I was considering the idea of using it as an isolation booth. Of course, one would have to sit while singing. It is a good bit of work to give it a try.

What do you think of the idea?

Billy

Try it. If it works, it's a good idea. If it doesn't, you learned what not to do.

I remember reading that before these wonderful FX toys we have now, they hung a microphone in a bathroom door, and the sax player played into the open door and the echo/reverb was just right for the song they were doing.

I wish I remembered the sax player and the song, but I read that when I was a kid, and the names are hiding in my brain somewhere.

Notes ♫

Seems like it would be too hard surfaced. I have a big "C-Shaped" contraption I made for vocals that had soft foam glues to it (I still have that) and back in an older day I also took a bifold door and stapled a soft quilt to it that would go behind the singer. Inside that Frankensteinded vocal booth it was completely dead.

To look at it from overhead it would look like this

C->

where the hyphen is the singer facing the C. Whatever reverb I wanted I then added in the box.

I had a big piece of some kind of flexible stuff that I glued onto the kitchen wall behind the stove. I built a wooden "cage" from 1x2s, screwed that plastic stuff onto the frame to make an arc, glued on 24x24' packing foam from laptop boxes with spray adhesive and made a wider version of what the music stores charge $100 for. Works well and I made it from stuff I had at home.

Hi Bob,

I don't have any choice about the vocal recording issue. The computers make too much fan noise and the AC makes noise here in my "studio" if you can call it a studio...lol

I can use a small bathroom close by for a vocal booth. I can use the garage downstairs, which I have never tried for vocals. I have used it to record a guitar amp which works pretty well.

I assume this is a common "home studio" issue everyone has to deal with.

Billy

Hi Eddie,

I have such limited room and so much ambient noise a vocal booth is not really a solution that could be easily implemented.

I think I will try the truck idea. I have some other questions but I will put them in a different post.

Billy

You could put blankets or sun shades over the windows to help with frequency reflections.

Hi Steve,

None of this has been much of an issue with my terrible sounding voice...lol

Now that I have the possibility of recording a real vocalist I have been thinking about all this.

There should be ways to add some sound attenuation material in the truck without much of an issue.

My AC in the truck will make ice sickles so cooling it down then turning off the engine should provide a comfortable environment for five minutes or so.

There is little noise where I live except for Homestead Air Base.

Just thinking out loud.

Billy

Would like to see the look on that 30 year old vocalist Billy, when you say to her " cone on into the studio " and you head towards the truck!

Funny stuff. Well, I actually did not consider that!

I have said to her from the beginning that we could do recordings at my house. If we liked what we hear and think it has value then we will jump on a plane and go to Nashville or even perhaps LA and record in a professional studio.

We have had some conversations about the crazy stuff that we have both been through ( pretty personal and not all happy) so I sort of don't think "singing in a truck" would seem all that strange to her.

I think it will make a funny music video...lol

Carpool Karaoke comes to mind...lol

Thanks guys for putting up with me. I have been pretty vocal and animated lately. Perhaps the drugs have not worn off yet...lol I am so happy to just be alive I feel like a kid!

Billy

A closet with a lot of clothes in it makes a pretty good isolation booth. Place The microphone in with the clothes or slightly in front of the clothes. The singer stands in the closet doorway facing the clothes.

The closet has worked, as has the garage.
For my daughter, she likes the sound we get when she stands in the upstairs hallway that faces the open stairwell to the downstairs, she says the stairwell sucks the room sound away, yet the side walls help her hear herself.
Ya never know what's going to work for a given vocalist, all you can do is experiment.
Heck in Motown they would record on the dirt floor of a garage and feed the sound into the empty attic for reverb.
Nothing wrong with being creative and experimenting.

/But I wouldn't initially invite her over to experiment, not in those words anyway

I never even considered the stairwell idea. There is a platform five steps down and not far away.No AC outlet in the stairwell
I need to set up some sort of test in different places. A small mono speaker near the mic with a known good vocal? I have a high-quality signal generator 0-30Mhs? Look at the signal with a spectrum analyzer?
Look at the noise floor?

OMG, this is beginning to look like engineering. Looks like a lot of work...lol

Thanks guys for the ideas

Other good news, got cleared by the doctor this afternoon for unlimited physical activity.

Billy

Just in time to run the Miami Thanksgiving Marathon!!!

Perhaps fly an old WW2 warbird inverted over the Marathon but only gonna run to the airplane...lol

More like going bashing around in the ocean chasing fish.

Marathons are cool but only in a wheelchair powered by a 327 Chevy engine with twin Carter AFB four barrels, Crane 500 roller bearing high lift cam, and an Offenhauser high rise manifold...lol

See Eddie, this is the crap you get for dragging me away from studying all this diminished chord stuff.

Actually, thanks, I needed a break.

Billy

I have already lost my mind so I don't need to lose my pants also...lol

Billy,

I'm very glad to read your doctor has cleared you for any physical activity. That's very good news for you.

I think it could work well - or it could work terribly. Only way to find out is to try!

Suggestions about acoustic treatment - sure, that could help, or it could make it worse. Acoustic treatment is only necessary if the space you're in doesn't sound good - it's typically a bad idea to completely remove the sound of the recording space.

Thank you very much, Jim. I still have a few weeks of speech therapy and yesterday was the first day back in the gym in two years.

I need to lose a few pounds and my left side is a bit weak but everything is going in the right direction.

I am starting a medically supervised exercise program with a weight reduction of twenty-five pounds. The goal is to do that in four months.

Pumping iron sort of sucks but it is about the only way for older guys to maintain muscle mass.

I may only lose 20 pounds. It is not so good for older people to lose too much weight. New studies indicate that older people who are ten to fifteen pounds over "ideal" live longer.

Thanks for thinking about me.

Billy

I am super happy with all my health conditions now. January I go in for another scan which we expective to be negative. If that scan is OK then another one a year later. After that, it is a done deal.

There's actually quite a few videos on YouTube on the subject of using the interior of a vehicle for audio recording.

Here's one -
5 ways to capture dialog in a car

You either like it or you don’t.

For the last ten years all of Janice’s vocals have been sung facing a quilted table runner hanging on a file cabinet. It works for us but maybe it’s the Bowflex in the same room.

Jim... you beat me to the punch!!!
I have just finished a complete revamp in my "studio." I got rid of the big corner desk that was taking up half of the small room and exchanged it for one straight desk that goes wall to wall. It's giving me MUCH more space.

I also got rid of the carpet as all it was doing was catching dust. But by doing that I am left with an echo in the room. So my plan is to do vocals in the closet among the clothes.

Bobby

Is there an icon for "Ducking for cover"?

I am not too far from the base myself!