Singing in an Apartment

[Adam!]

I just moved into an apartment building, which leads me to a conundrum: how the hell do I record vocals without pissing off the three suites adjacent to me? I’ve tried, but every time I realize how loud I am singing (which is nowhere near how loud I’d like to be singing) my voice falters.

Someone else out there in SongFight Land must live in an apartment; how do you do it?

[j$]

I live in an apartment. There's no real advice apart from frustration will overcome decency in no time

[Plat]

I didn't take any empirical before-and-after measurements, but I'm told throwing blankets on the walls did something decent, and they haven't set afire yet either. Killed the room reverb too.

Also, if you know your neighbors' habits, try to record when they're away. This is especially easy when you are positioned directly above their garages. Or organize a get-together with free pizza or something away from the building, and don't go.

Assuming you have honest friends with working ears, try singing and having them case the building to measure how loud you truly are. If you're feeling geeky/nerdy, record it digitally and compare sound levels (e.g. outside windows, outside apartment door, 6 feet from apartment door, etc).

[Mogosagatai]

I don't usually sing on recordings, but whenever I have, I've just gone off somewhere at night where no one was around. This method seems to work, given that you're nocturnal and don't mind breaking into buildings.

[pegor]

I'm in a room in the middle of the house with no one home, the house is in the middle of 2 acres of wooded land and Im still to bashfull to sing. GOD DANG IT!
oops sorry
god dang it?

[roymond]

I usually sing into a square of sofa cushions. Softly.

[jack]

actually, this is an interesting dilemma. personally, i use a large diaphragm condenser mic into a pretty decent pre-amp so there's really no need for me to sing loud, unless i'm really trying to emote something by singing loud. i can adjust the gain as much as i want. i'm sure if you were using a dynamic mic like a 57 or 58, there may be more of a need to sing louder but the pre-amp should cover that need if one exists. obviously, if i'm recording live with band, i can understand the need to sing loud, or at least have a decent stage monitor in front of me.

with that said, i can understand why puce might want to sing loud, given my familiarity with his vocal treatments, his arrangements, and he's a good example of someone who doesn't need to sing loud, but by doing so it opens up another "range" of options (mostly angst), and he mines it well to convey emotion in his material. the same thing can be obviously done without yelling (JB and frankie both use their vocals extremely well to convey emotion without singing loud). even watching metallica record in the studio, james hetfield never had that much need to absolutely scream his vocals. even when he was in an iso booth, he would mostly hold the mic close to his mouth to get the right signal gain but i don't think he ever sang really loud in the studio (at least not in the movie).

so why do you need to sing loud anyways?

[Dan-O from Five-O]

I usually sing into a square of sofa cushions. Softly.

I was just going to say that I read somewhere on here that someone did that. Was that you that posted that Roymond? As I recall, you or whoever I read did it like kneeling down facing the couch with a pillow on either side and covered by a blanket. Is that right? I'm sure it looks funny as hell but it might solve the problem Puce.

[erik]

so why do you need to sing loud anyways?

Singing loudly sounds different than singing at a speaking volume and then jacking up the gain.

[Adam!]

so why do you need to sing loud anyways?

Singing loudly sounds different than singing at a speaking volume and then jacking up the gain.

Especially for me. I can't really sing quietly (speaking volume): when I try I lose a large portion of my range, I can't stay on pitch, and my voice just generally sounds lame. I know you listened to those Brad Sucks live-ish covers I did; that's the volume I would like to work at. Right now getting my scream on isn't a top priority.

[Caravan Ray]

Until recently I lived in a 100-year-old "Queenslander" in inner Brisbane (a "Queenslander" is the traditional tropical-style housing - on stilts, timber walls, verandah and open widows to let the air circulate. Fine for the country - but in Brisbanes older suburbs where the neighbours are close together - you and your neighbours really have no secrets)

Anyway - I relied on lots of 'quiet' rehersals, so I knew what I wanted to sing - then when I had it right - scream my arse off - but get it done in one take. The neighbors hear you - but only once.

Except when you do layered backing vocals. Which I tend to like doing.

[roymond]

Anyway - I relied on lots of 'quiet' rehersals, so I knew what I wanted to sing - then when I had it right - scream my arse off - but get it done in one take. The neighbors hear you - but only once.

I love this. Like water torture. They wake up to this wailing that then goes away. The next day you're like "No, I didn't hear anything. You sure it wasn't a dream?"

Yes, Dan-O, I described my silly setup in some other thread. I have accepted my fate to sing softly for the time being so I've learned to do it. In that way it has opened up my range. But this is truly a frustrated singer looking for silver linings. I've had many plans to escape to our house in the country alone to lay down dozens of tracks, new as well as re-doing old ones. This has never panned out and with my wife now in grad school I fear it never will. If (when) we move, I have a requirement for a studio space where I can at least stretch out a bit more in the late hours.

[Leaf]

I got two ideas for ya:

IDEA 1: make a cheap vocal booth... maybe out of a closet....
1. get some rubber mats for your floor. You can even put it on walls. Rubber is relatively cheap, and it's got some mass. You don't need to kill lows really, just your penentrating highs.. right?

2. After creating a space that is "rubberized"...mats, staple to the ceiling and walls, then suspend some rope or wooden dowels or curtain rods...whatever, around a 4X 4 space in this area... if you got some cash, on ebay there are these "accoustic blankets"... I call them moving blankets, but whatever, these ones on ebay seem rather heavy, and heavy is good. So, make sure you are at least 6 inches from the ceiling, and suspend a "roof" of blankets. drape them around the 4 x 4 area.

3. basically, you want at the minimum, 6 inches of air before the blankets... this will kill at lot of DB... cause you want noise reduction. NR is mass & space... so heavy blankets! Six inches of air, followed by some decent STC barrier followed by more space will kill kill kill the transfer of your vocals.

IDEA # 2:

You actually have more money...

1. Get neopryne. Maybe spell it right.

2. get plywood and some two by fours. for a 4x 4 space, you'll need about 16 - 32 square feet of neoprine. Don't use rubber...it compresses over time and looses it's NR qualities... for plywood, you'll need MAYBE 2 seheets...at about 15 bucks a sheet. Get about 12- 15 two by fours...at about 4 bucks or less a piece...that's like $50 bucks.

3. lay the neoprine on your floor in preferably two layers of 4X 4.
4. Lay down a 4 x 4 peice of plywood on it.
5. lay a frame of two x fours over top, spaced about 16 inches apart...like a little box with framing inside.
6. Stuff the inside of this frame with something... something heavy prefeably...like patio stones or something. I think for like 4 of them, you could get them for maybe 10 bucks a piece.
7. lay another sheet of plywood over top.
8. here's the fun/tricky part. frame walls on this...stud 16 inches apart... make a ceiling on it that is a MINIMUM of 6 inches from your current ceiling.
9. using remaining plywood, bang up on the frame so you got walls.
10. you might want to grab 4 sheets of drywall ...at 11 bucks a sheet. You could screw that on the exterior. Make sure you put a 4 x 4 chunk over head.

now, you got a vocal booth framed in... ov course, you gotta leave a door... so don't box the whole thing in!!

11. now, hang blankets allover it... and where you left like a 16 inch gap as your "door" the blankets hang over... you could go all out, and get hinges and make a door..but I bet, if you actually did all this, you wouldn't need it.

12. inside, do some noise absorbtion by buying a cheap foam mattress pad..those ones that look like a grid of triangles, and staple it up to the frame inside. oh yeah...put a lamp in there too!!

The neoprine will stop any floor transfer noise, and will "float" the booth in the room. Neoprine allover the thing would be cool... but rubber is like 69 cents a square foot, so if you wanted to rubber the outside that would work, cause it won't be compressed like the floor stuff. The walls will absorb your sound and limit sound transmission, and by the time your vocals get past potentially rubber, drywall, studs, foam and blankets, it'll have to travel through the remaining air of the room, then the next wall that seperates the apartments. I completely doubt that anyone will hear anything more than "hhmhmmmmfffffpppphhhh".

.... anyway...hope that helps and makes sense. Probably cost under $200 bucks to build, and if you use screws, you can take it apart when you move.

or something like that anyway...

[ken]

Talk to you neighbors. Find out their schedule. Let them know you are a musician that does home recording. Give them a CD, give them your number. I find most people are reasonable, and pretty supportive of musicians in general. I've had band practices in garages where the neighbors eat dinner outside to listen. I've also played in places where the neighbor was pregnant and wanted to sleep when we wanted to practice. That was a tough one, but we started playing earlier and on weekends, she slept on the other side of the house.

Certainly adding some mass to your walls couldn't hurt either. Or at least figure out which room has the least shared walls and use it. Maybe make a vocal booth out of a closet? Buy some of that Sheet block stuff that is really dense...


Ken

[Egg]

Drastically change your concept of music to include structureless and tonally uninformed sound collages which actually make the fact that your parents are talking on the phone with the TV on in the same room that you have your computer in. Err, this isn't helpful. Damn it.

Try forming a band with your neighbors! Or make songs about them. I think those are both good ideas.

[roymond]

Or make songs about your neighbors.

HAHAHA this is the way to go!

[Hoblit]

My neighbor sleeps like a stone.

I apologized to her one night for being too loud and recording while drunk in the middle of the night...she said she didn't hear a thing.

I'm lucky.

My last apartment... I had to record during the day. Period.

I know none of this helps...but I like Roy's pinch idea. I say go with it.

[Sober]

I never had a problem, except with the drumset. That bugged the guy two floors below me.

Sometimes I would make like a ghetto booth thing - basically draping a couple heavy sleeping bags over me and singing into a mic at a weird, hunched angle. This is what I did on my St Peter. Plenty loud, and at 3am.

Do this - just try singing loud, and when (if) someone comes knocking on your door, apologise and ask when they'd be out. If no one complains, you're fine. You'll feel silly if you do all this stuff and come to find that no one could hear you anyway.

[Caravan Ray]

Some of my favourite "I bet the neighbours are wondering what the hell I'm doing" moments have been:

1. Screaming the word "HOBLIT" at maximum volume, over and over again on a Sunday afternoon for the recent themesongfight.

2. Recording the repeating fading coda bit from my "Janjaweed" entry - which involved singing the words "the world is full of f*cking c*nts" over and over again in 5 part harmony - while I could hear the lady next-dooor cooking tea.

3. The ululation solo in my "Ninja Gang" entry - the recording of which unfortunately coincided with neighbour have friends around for a few quiet drinks on their verandah. I could hear their quiet conversations quite clearly from my recording room. No doubt they were receiving my helllish caterwauling with equal aural clarity.

[Adam!]

I’ve found a solution of sorts. I have built myself a 40â€

[Smalltown Mike]

I sincerely hope you get a camera, because I need to see this.

I'm glad you figured something out; life would always be easier if we had tons of money, an isolated studio and no neighbours.

[Bjam]

You also now have a fort. Kickass.