With our trip canceled due to the pandemic, what to do at home with the money we saved?  Build a basement studio, of course! We have two rooms that were storage spaces, recently emptied, because we had time to clean them!  We also made a playroom for the little one. He got the big room, while we got the smaller, cozier one to set up our equipment and “jam” in. Yessir, we’re going to have a studio!

We’re already making a list of everything we want.  My husband always dreamt of having synthesizers wrapped around him à la Rick Wakeman.  And for years I’ve dreamt of learning to play the theremin.  We discovered a great store specializing in electronic instruments, studio gear, and all sorts of stuff (I get the feeling this won’t come cheap!).

But first, we’ll need to focus on the basement.  We hire a contractor, we find the paint, the floating floor, we fix the ceiling.  Renovations done!  Except that I’m not sure anymore about the paint color! We’ll see, it’s only the playroom, the studio is fine.

We order the furniture for the small room that will serve as our cozy studio.  We move our collection of 2000 (!) vinyl records from the ground floor to the basement.  Yup, we actually moved 2000 LPs, in one night!

Finally, we buy the gear.  Synthesizers, beat boxes, consoles, a microphone, tons of cables (you can never have enough cables!), sound modules, boxes to put the sound modules in, computer monitor stands, guitar stands… (nope, I won’t tell you how much it all cost, haha!).  Finally, we get to play music!  It’s fun! Except my husband is very tall, and the room is very small; if we want to invite friends over to play music with, there won’t be enough space.

Okay, there’s the big playroom next door… “Honey, what if we put the studio in the other room finally?”

With our son’s approval to have his playroom in the small room, we move everything! The 2000 records, furniture, toys, instruments, and tons of cables…  Ah, the room is bigger. We have room!  But the color of the walls is all wrong.  I’m unable to recreate the atmosphere needed to write music. No, we’re not repainting, and there’s no question of moving the vinyl collection again. So we buy more stuff! Why are there never enough cables? What a mess! Finally, with a carpet, posters, guitars, and album covers hanging on the walls, and a few more synthesizers and more furniture, ah yes, now that’s pretty! 

But the guitars resonate and cause room reverberations! What if we installed acoustic wall panels?

And what about my theremin that I won’t receive for another 6 months?

  To be continued…