Clever poster to put in a home studio

August 31, 2009 10:48 AM

What should I put on the wall in my new home studio?

I just moved my home studio to its own room (yay!) and there is an empty wall right above my screen that needs to be filled. I was thinking of a poster of a guitar chord chart, scales or the circle of fifths, which seems kind of lame. (I know most of these things by heart.) Alternatively it might be something in the spirit of Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz.

Can you think of something clever (and possibly helpful as a reference) that I might put there?

posted by cronholio to media & arts (6 comments total)

I've always been a fan of Blik decals, especially their Threadless line. There are several designs with a musical bent that you might end up liking. There are lots of other decals on ebay, as well. I've put up this one on the wall by my bed after falling in love with it.

Might not be particularly clever or helpful, but they're definitely lovely.
posted by Tequila Mockingbird at 10:56 AM on August 31

I would put up a big whiteboard for keeping track of various session things. Also, I have a Pro Tools shortcut cheat sheet by my monitor, but it's less than half the size of a sheet of paper, so that doesn't really help, I guess.

Some nice art would probably be best.
posted by The World Famous at 10:56 AM on August 31

If you use protools or other computer recording programs, start with a shortcut chart, because once you start using the keyboard shortcuts, you can save yourself a lot of time. There are hundreds of shortcuts for most programs, so depending on how much editing you do, it may or may not come in handy.

If you do any orchestral writing, get a chart of the instrument ranges of the different orchestral instruments. These are very helpful if you need to ever write anything for live players, since it shows you whether or not you are writing in the extremes of their range, which is never a good thing unless you have outstanding players.

How are your room acoustics? Some acoustic paneling is always a good thing if your room is not properly treated. If you go with a homebrew approach of making rockwool or fiberglass panels covered with fabric, you could paint or dye the fabric into a piece of art.

How tall is your room? Do you have room to hang a guitar or two up there? Do you need a place to hang cables (an L bracket on the wall is a cheap and easy cable hanger)?

If you do a lot of computer synth or sampled sounds, every time you find a patch that you love, or one that inspires you, write it down, and put it up on the wall. The next time you are in need of some inspiration, look up at the wall and just start picking patches at random to work with. If they don't continue to inspire you, pull them down. This way you have a constant list of things to get you going when you are stuck in a rut.

Lastly, if you are the type of person who is into seeing things grow in the long term, you can use that as a space to keep track of all of the music you write or work on. Put up a large piece of posterboard (or if you own the place, just write up on the wall), and every time you finish a piece for yourself or someone else, write it down with the date. After a while it will start to fill up, and you will be able to see the progression of your music in a visual form. Lots of studios have artists do this, and have walls covered with names and dates. It won't necessarily look good at first, so you might want to spruce it up with a piece of artwork initially, but over time it will be one of those things that has a lot of sentimental value, and should look pretty cool.
posted by markblasco at 11:09 AM on August 31

If you have a smashed up instrument, I think that would be super cool.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:53 PM on August 31

artsy and kinda clever
posted by laptolain at 2:06 PM on August 31

Thanks everyone! I still don't know what it'll be but that gave me some good ideas.
posted by cronholio at 11:58 PM on August 31