During the first months of owning our new house, which we purchased in the spring of 2010, my husband Daniel and I told our story over and over—a gripping tale concerning the condition in which we found the place. We told people about the previous owner, who’d neglected the house to the point of serious, Grey Gardens-level disrepair, who shouted, “I hate this house!” at us on the day we picked up the keys. We spoke of the standing black water filling the kitchen sink. The broken dishwasher stuffed with garbage. The raccoons so accustomed to being fed they knocked with black, infantile fingers at the kitchen window each morning, demanding breakfast … (read more)

More photos of the house (the further you go back, the uglier it gets!)

An ode to Seattle’s Viaduct by Braniel.
Song: Brangien Davis
Music: Daniel Spils
Video editing: David Nixon

Recently, Brangien wrote the lyrics and melody for a song about the Viaduct.  After days of her casually mentioning the song idea (repeatedly), I finally got the clue. I had her sing the melody to a click track (telling her this was just so we wouldn’t forget the idea) then proceeded to write the music around the melody when she went off to work. As it was sung without a key in mind, her singing fell between keys and I had to tune all the instruments down about a 1/3 step  (40 cents, to be exact). Here’s the original idea track (sorry Brangien!):

My proudest moment was playing the drums and nailing the intro drum fill. I’m a crappy drummer at best, so this was an exciting musical achievement! Next up, we drove along the Viaduct with my Canon S95 and shot some video. David Nixon then pulled video together, editing our footage with other footage of the Viaduct coming down and some excellent WSDOT animations of the Viaduct collapsing in an earthquake and the digging of the tunnel that nobody agrees on. From a married morning recording session, to drums and guitar and backup vocals in the basement to video editing with David’s cats. Go team!

David’s songs are very personal, wonderfully sad and … short. I love short songs! The 10 songs that comprise the second video section have a total length of 11:30 (one song called “Wealth”clocks in at a whopping 19 seconds!). The theme of haves and have nots got me thinking about how we worked on this music together. Collaborating went something like this: a musical file from David would appear on my computer via the magic of Dropbox. I would open it. There I would always find David’s vocal and maybe some banjo or keyboards tucked into a Garageband session file. I would add some more music to it (drums, piano, bass, guitar, backing vocals), beam it back for David’s review and more music-adding. Then I mixed it all together. Some would call this the role of Producer, but the lines weren’t that distinct in our case. We never played music physically together or talked much about the tunes other than by adding to the composition. I’ve never worked like this before, but I have to say that if this is the future of music making, sign me up! It was fun, creative and had an exciting feeling similar to writing and receiving hand written letters back in the olden days.

There was a time when the only people who could record were the haves (those with money or a label interested in buying studio and producer time) or those who excelled at recording technology (people smart enough to figure out multi-tracking with tape or, eventually, software that was always just a little too complicated for the likes of me). Then the future arrived in the form of Garageband: a simple way for smart-but-not-overwhelmingly-technically-savvy musicians to record their ideas. In the last year or so I became aware of services like Dropbox and SugarSync that allow us to send these ideas back and forth with ease. The have nots have officially dropped the “not.”

I never imagined writing tunes with so little physical musical interaction or direct communication, but the experiment worked in this case. David’s tunes are fantastic (and, yes, they’re lovingly sad). Congrats, Mr. Nixon, you’ve made some great music. And thank you to the people that created Garageband. I know you’re probably referred to as a “product team” and have meetings about features and market share and such … but you should know that there are many formerly “have nots” out here in the world who love the simple tools you’ve created that allow us to have music.

Not "The Canoe", but a canoe I photographed in LA this past weekend

At our wedding (coming up on two years ago), Brangien and I asked that people not give us any gifts. Our reasoning was that we had two houses full of stuff and we were moving into one house and more stuff was counter-productive to our goal of combining our stuff. Our mantra was something like, “your presence is your present.” The truth can be corny, but now we find ourselves happily settled and “unstuffed”.

Somewhat surprisingly, most people played by this rule. However, a few rule breakers gave us great, unexpected gifts. One gift came in the form of a note from Brangien’s Aunt Candida and Cousin Walker, offering us a canoe. Earlier in the year Brangien’s Uncle Cary died in an accident at his new home in Montana. Cary was a lover of the outdoors and a fantastic guy by all accounts (he and I never met). Candida and Walker’s note still sits on our desk, telling us that Cary’s beloved canoe awaits us at a neighbor’s houses in Stevensville, Montana (near Missoula), for when we have time to pick it up.

This past weekend we attended Bruce’s retirement in LA (that’s Brangien’s dad and Cary’s brother). Bruce said something to me about how all the digital photos that we take tend to disappear and never get viewed. Printed photos, on the other hand, had a way of ending up in photo albums that sat on tables and, over the years, were revisited and enjoyed. That got me to thinking about the canoe, which until now has been a bit of an abstraction, like a digital photo that someone snaps at a family event, shows you on a tiny screen, but which then travels off into the ether never to be seen again. So, before Cary’s canoe pixelates any further in my brain I figure I’ll try to complete its trip from Montana to Washington.

It’s been nearly two years and we haven’t yet found the time to travel to Montana. One issue is we don’t have a rack on our van for carrying a canoe. Another issue is that it’s tough to escape for a 16-hour-there-and-back weekend drive. These are both surmountable obstacles, but a simpler solution may be to see if we can find an adventuresome soul(s) already headed from the Missoula area to Seattle in a truck or vehicle with a rack that could carry a full-sized canoe. We would pay for round trip gas (note: free gas!) and you’d help bring Cary’s canoe to its new home in Seattle. Interested? Let me know …

Cary at his home in Montana.

On Saturday night Davis and Thaddeus ran into Choklate. She showed up on Sunday to “hang out”, which is coded musician-speak for wanting to record but only if the recorded material isn’t awful. Choklate ended up singing on two tracks (hooray!), one of which we invented in one take with vocals and piano, as she fortuitously captured it on video with her iPhone. We turned around and recorded it for real.

In other audio nerd news, I invested in a Roland octa-capture (who names these things?!) to enable the recording of drums in the basement. Hopefully I can replace drums on stuff I initially set-up in Garageband. Speaking of which, I have no idea where to take the following idea. I’m trying to use less reverb and delay in my mixes (drums, bass and vocals are dry in this example). Email me and I’ll send you the GB session to play around with if you’re interested.

P.S. here’s Ali’s 40th B-day song that pitted husband against wife in a battle of music/editorial control—end result, we both won.

Brangien talking to our cat, Pepe:

Adding music to a Mumbai street recording by Gregg Bleakney:

Adding more music to another Mumbai street recording by Gregg … this time harmonizing with a person singing in the background:

Theme song for Ali’s upcoming podcast about the Historical Dictionary of Slang:

Niece & nephew go potty on Easter hip hop track:

In 2006 I considered getting rid of this Rhodes. Thankfully I repressed my  inner purger and held on to it. It’s already a special Rhodes (the keys have been counterbalanced) and it should sing when David is done with it.

I’ve owned a Nord Stage since they arrived on the scene and love it. I have no desire to haul this 88 to club or studio gigs, but there really is something special about the feel and sound of a real Rhodes. I’ve used a fake Rhodes on the last three or so albums I’ve recorded and I’m not sure that I can tell the difference when it’s buried in a mix. Well, maybe I can, but played by itself there are all sorts of personality traits that are lost in translation. I can’t wait to place my fully restored forever Rhodes in the basement studio.

Here’s the 88 (on the right) next to a couple other Rhodes that David is currently restoring.

The new house is quiet. No roar from the Hawks Nest on game day. I’m less apt to walk to get groceries or coffee, but spend more time walking along Lake Washington. I drive more. Lucky for me, places can change people. After an adjustment period, I now love it. Which led me to tell Brangien about my first band, which I joined when I moved back to Seattle from Anchorage in the early 90s. I moved here with the simple goal of playing in a rock & roll band. I answered an ad for “keyboardist wanted” in the classifieds of the Seattle music rag The Rocket. The ad read something like, “original R&R band looking for keyboardist …” That was an exciting ad to read for a keyboardist fresh off the plane from Alaska. The overwhelming majority of ads were for guitarists, drummers, bassists, singers … anything but keyboardists. I got my nerve up and called the number (this was pre-internet) and quickly learned that the lead singer and guitarist were not only  recent Anchorage transplants (hadn’t I just escaped its icy claw?) but that there was a typo in the Rocket ad. It was meant to read “R&B band”. Damnit! I had my heart set on being in a rock band. It was the early 90s in Seattle (do the math). But there I was talking to Sid, who said, “rehearsal is this Thursday in Renton at our condo community center.” I arrived with my keyboard and amp and my previously unimagined Seattle musical adventures began. That typo sent me on a path that I hadn’t considered. I learned to play in a style that stretched my abilities. I wasn’t great, but I was good enough and I what I learned changed how I played. In future bands I was able to sprinkle my playing with a bit of soul—the result of an R intended as a B.

So, does the musician make the band or the band make the musician? Or for that matter, does the employee make the company or the company, the employee? Do I reside in the new ‘hood, or it in me? For me the answer is simple: if presented with a typo, take it.

1) to make sitting upstairs enjoyable for Brangien when I’m making loud drum, keyboard or guitar noise in the basement

2) not piss off the neighbors

I’m actually confident that #2 will be achieved. In my last house on Capitol Hill I built a rehearsal space that allowed Maktub and other bands to rehearse at full volume. My closest neighbor told me she could hear the kick drum in her living room (about 15 feet from the back studio wall), but not enough to bother her. Someone walking by the side street could hear the muffled sound of a band rehearsing at a low volume as it bounced off the brick wall of Immaculate Conception church. Again, never a complaint … but some amount of sound always finds it’s way out of the sound maze you try to construct as a barrier. In particular, bass guitar and kick drum frequencies are hard to contain. People with subwoofers in the trunk of their car (note: I was once one of those people) don’t realize how loud the boom is a block away. Same goes for subwoofers in home or movie theaters when you hear the intestinal bass tones from the blockbuster next door.

As for #1, I’m not so sure. In my last studio, a person sitting upstairs would hear just about everything downstairs. It wouldn’t be as deafening as the actual studio, but it was not possible to quietly read a book or even consider napping while rehearsal was going on downstairs. A person upstairs was pretty much in attendance by proxy for rehearsals downstairs.

I’m not an expert of any sort but I do have real world experience building, and therefore living with, a studio of my own design for a few years. This has reinforced my understanding of the weakest link concept: soundproofing is only as good as it’s weakest barrier. For example, with the last studio I went to the trouble of insulating, decoupling sheetrock with Z channel, caulking, etc … but there was a big air vent in the studio wall. Sound entered the vent, went up the heating ducts and back out through the vents upstairs. Not good!

Which brings me to the science-ish part. There are two concepts that come up when soundproofing: mass and decoupling. Mass (e.g. a thick cement wall) is required to dissipate sound and there’s no cheating the mass math required to reduce, say, a bass guitar or kick drum. However, decoupling is often overlooked by people like me building studios in their home. Here’s a common progression for sound nerds: band rehearses in garage and it sounds “harsh” so you cover the walls with egg cartons. That seems to soundproof things, but your neighbor complains and you realize that does nothing for containing the sound, it just deadens things inside the room. So you add some mass by insulating and maybe hanging sheetrock. That definitely helps but it doesn’t matter how thick you make the walls, a lot of sound still escapes (particularly bass and kick drum). Next you hear about “decoupling” and you get fancy enough to hang sheetrock on Z channel. That helps some, but the vibrations are still reaching the wall studs and that transfers into the rest of the house turning it into a speaker for those vibrations. If you dig a little deeper you start to understand the science and art of decoupling and mass.

Here’s what I did to reduce sound in my previous rehearsal space:

• caulked all the gaps in the ceiling and wall framing
• insulated every wall and ceiling cavity with standard R19 insulation
• installed Z channel (aka resilient channel) between the framing studs and joists, and the ceiling and wall sheetrock in an attempt to decouple the vibration between sheetrock and the rest of the house
• installed double-pane tempered glass windows with laminated exterior glass
• installed sealed storm windows in addition to the double-paned glass
• installed an exterior grade sliding studio door with a tight seal around the perimeter of the door

What I learned from living with that rehearsal room for 7 years:

• soundproofing is only as good as the weakest links (in this case: big air vent & Z channel)
• Z channel is good in concept, but is almost always short-circuited by sheetrock screws during installation (even when pros install it) and it passes along vibrations
• adding a third pane of glass to the window bays resulted in an amazing decrease in sound levels outside the house (an air chamber separated by a window or door is probably the most awesome sound reduction tool)
• all-in-all this room worked well for my needs—upstairs in the house the sound of a band rehearsing was loud, but outside the house it was low enough in volume to keep the neighbors happy

In the new house I decided to pull out most the stops and spend the time and money necessary to truly decouple the basement studio from the upstairs. I asked Seattle Sound & Vibration for help in designing and choosing all the sound reduction materials and enlisted the studio construction talent of Brouwer Contracting.

Here’s what I’m doing to reduce sound in the basement studio of our current house:

• installed double-pane tempered glass windows with laminated exterior glass (if required, I’ll add a third pane)
• floated the one framed wall in the basement on compressed fiberglass with rubber bushings between the lag bolts and framing
• installed a spring-suspended ceiling with one layer of 5/8″ plywood followed by two layers of 5/8″ sheetrock
• used isomax clips for areas where springs weren’t possible
• sealed the 1/2″ gap around the ceiling membrane with sound foam and acoustic caulking
• installed 3 heating duct silencers (with rubber clamps) on each air duct run to reduce sound as it enters the air system
• installed 5 exterior grade solid-core doors with full sound sweeps for all the basement closet doors and an exterior grade solid-core door at the top of the steps and one double-paned exterior grade window door at the base of the stairs
• installed three layers of sheetrock (2 on the front, 1 inside the closets) on the single framed wall in the room
• caulked every gap in the door frames
• packed fire-proof putty in all the gaps and holes of the light switches in the wall to prevent sound leaks
• installed sconce lighting instead of ceiling cans, to prevent unnecessary holes in the ceiling membrane

I won’t know how well this works for about another week. Mudding and taping is occurring as I type and we’ve still got to do the final caulking seals around the perimeter of the wall, ceiling and windows. Once that’s all done I’ll close the airtight doors, crank up a guitar amp for starters and see how it works.

Before we started this project Brangien and I could have a conversation without raising our voices while she was upstairs and I was below her in the basement. Since the ceiling, walls and doors have gone in we can’t hear the radio downstairs but we can still yell and hear each other. Keeping with the weakest link theory, I have faith that the final seal around the ceiling, windows and doors will reduce the sound even more.

Before:

Cleared the closets and clutter, moved the heating ducts to the crawlspace, sandblasted the floor and walls, acid etched the floor, installed new gas furnace:

Installed three silencers (connected with rubber clamps) in series for each of the two air duct runs:

Framed the walls with walmatt and anchor isolator rubber bushings:

Used rubber isolated ceiling springs and metal channel to hang 3 layer ceiling:

Three layer ceiling consists of 5/8″ plywood and two layers of 5/8″ sheetrock:

Isomax clips for attaching ceiling to furred out section under fireplace:

I’ll add more pictures and report back on how the sound levels behave directly upstairs and outside the house. A couple other nerd things to mention:

I’ll likely add Indow Windows to the inside of the window frames if the outside noise level is too high. In my last studio I was amazed at how much an extra chamber of air reduced sound. The two exterior grade doors (which just means they’re solid-core and thicker than interior doors) with sound sweeps reduce sound traveling up the stairs, and the large air space (in this case the length of the staircase) between the lower door and the upper door helps to reduce noise levels. That air space is where a lot of the sound dies out.

One other great advantage I have to soundproofing this room is that the basement is underground and surrounded by cement walls. Basically, it’s a bunker. Concrete and earth = mass. So I’m focusing my efforts on the suspended ceiling, floating wall, doors and windows. The bunker should take care of the rest of the sound escape routes on its own.