Foo Fighters: I read the news story and watched your great video and in it could see glimpses of your garage practice space. With its block walls, concrete floor, open ceiling and roll up door it is like a perfect speaker box for projecting your music to the distant neighbors, they should be grateful, but since they are not, here is a few things you can do help quiet down whats getting outside.
4 comments:
This was a very fun and informative article. Props to whatever engineer from the Foo Fighters took the time to give a crash course in basic soundproofing. The article clearly explained the basic types of soundproofing and gave multiple examples of each type. I really appreciated the link to an actual textbook about acoustics – that looks like a great read. It’s great to see such popular music group offering advice to a budding garage band. Altruism aside, I’ve always found the concept of soundproofing a very interesting but convoluted science. This article presents practical solutions to soundproofing a space, and it does so for a variety of budgets. Not everyone can afford engineered foam or vinyl, so it’s great to know that something as simple as an extra panel of drywall can make a difference. The author also suggests to use a simple spectrum analyzer app to see how the space is tuned in order to adjust. Overall, a very helpful read.
While I'd really like to know what prompted the publishing of this article (on the official Foo Fighters website, no less), I doubt I'll get that, so I'll settle for praising the thoroughness and clarity of this article that addresses an issue we in regional/commercial theater don't often think about. Not everyone is as able as theater companies to have dedicated performance spaces, usually in independent buildings with no fellow tenants or families with small children nearby. For the surround-sound enthusiast or amateur metal drummer, soundproofing is a real and viable solution to years of nasty cross-driveway glares and neighborhood association complaints. Sam, writing above, is correct in pointing out that not everyone has the budget needed to renovate their homes or spaces with engineered wall structures, most anyone can build a few corner traps with hardware store insulation, or DIY some dampening with egg cartons. I plan on bookmarking this article for future use in my career as a taiko drumming flamenco dancer, as I plan on operating out of a studio in a tenement in Lower East Side, a place rife with yoga moms and their kale-raised offspring.
This was a very interesting article with some great information included as well. One of the biggest headaches (literally) that I run into are spaces that are not acoustically treated or soundproofed. In my high school our old music building had dampening within the practice rooms, but did not have proper sound proofing between them—very frustrating. The thing about sound proofing is that it is best done when a building is being built, because it is either added into the walls, or is a change to the way the walls are built. It seems many contractors leave the acoustic needs of spaces until after the building is complete, and slap some dampening, or if you’re lucky, diffusion panels up to make it seem like they tried. Large spaces without acoustic treatment can be horrible for big events, yet that is what they are used for (obviously). Getting easy-access info on sound proofing out there can hopefully better motivate those designing, building, and funding new construction to ask “what are you doing to acoustically treat the space?” before the project is finished.
Sound is one of those things. It is truly amazing yet you can’t see it, so how do we learn about it. For the longest time I wanted to get a degree in sound design but I quickly learned that what I was really interested in was the system design and the engineering behind it. Sound reducing and noise canceling technology is one of those things that everyone wants yet it is never good enough. You can’t completely eliminate the element of sound but you can get pretty close. It just depends if you are will to pay. The structure of the article is really good in this sense; it is broken down by price and level of quality. One of the things that isn’t really discussed is the use of noise canceling technology, which uses more technology that density and mass. I can remember the first time that put on a pair of these headphones and it placed me in a whole different world and made it seem I like was totally alone. That is the amazing part, when you eliminate the concept of sound you are suddenly taken out of the environment.
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