The Nutritious Studio Project (pic heavy)

[Nutritious]

Hey everyone. I recently moved to a new house locally in town, which provided a very nice dedicated office space for my studio (pic below). It has an L-shapde built-in desk with drawer space as well. I initally set up my studio to have the computer input & audio/video monitors on the left and full-sized synth keyboard on the right. After working this way for a while, I decided I didn't like the setup and endeavored to improve it.

This thread is to document/share my project for anyone curious or even interested in some DIY studio improvement themselves. Without further ado, on to business.

Initial studio setup:

After a little time working this way, I came to the conclusion that I wanted my synth keyboard in front of me while composing as I had previously. Not having any sort of elevation to utilize on the desk, I decided to build a simple shelf that would fit over the keyboard (a full size 88-key unit) to hold my video & audio monitors.

Materials needed: wood, black spraypaint, nails, 4 metal brackets, & self-adhesive felt pads. Total cost ~$35. At my local hardware store, they sell 1x12 boards, which is a perfect depth for my purposes. They even will cut it down in the store, so I just gave them the dimensions and they took care of all the cutting.

Once home, I nailed the two shelf legs to the shelf & spray painted both sides black. After it cured, I attached two metal brackets on each side for stability & the self-adhesive felt pads on the bottom of the legs so it will move freely on the desktop without scratching.

The desk space on the right side of my office is the larger side, so I decided that would be the best side to use. I moved my computer tower and mixer to the right side of the setup (all the outlets in this room are above the desktop and I didn't want to drill big holes into the desktop to snake cords through). Then, hooked the audio & video montiors up on top of the shelf.

The only issue at this point was that the desk isn't deep enough to accommodate both synth keyboard & keyboard and mouse. The obvious solution was a keyboard tray, however, since I utilize a mouse, keyboard & gamepad in my music production process, it was difficult to find anything wide enough to handle all three. Also, anything approaching decent quality was anywhere between $100 - $300. That said, I did some online research and found keyboard tray hardware to do it myself.

Materials needed: Keyboard tray hardware, wood, spray paint (bought). Total cost ~$28. This time I opted for fiberboard. Again I had them cut it to the correct dimensions (16" deep for the hardware, 34" wide to allow space for all 3 components). Once home, I spray painted the fiberboard and attached the hardware to the sides.

The hardest part was mounting it to the bottom of the desktop, but with some help from my wife, it wasn't too bad. The hardware itself allows for a customizable height, however, even at the most spacious (lowest) setting, while sliding the tray in my mouse is brushing against the front of the desk due to trim installed at the edge of the desk that comes down about 5/8" from the buttom of the desktop. Sliding the mouse off the mousepad before closing fixes that issue, though.

Tray mounting with some support help from a rolling file drawer:

Once the tray was installed, I drilled a 5/8" hole in the desk to allow me to snake the mouse and keypad cords to the desktop from below. One added bonus to this process was I realized that the rolling file drawer is a perfect height & dimension to hold my APC20 clip launcher, so now I can wheel that around whenever I want to perform something live.

With a bit of cleanup, the finished product:

That done, I have a couple future projects/needs that are still in the works. Due to the monitor shelf casting a shadow on part of the synth keyboard, I'm planning on rigging some cold cathode lights to the bottom of the shelf that I can turn on to illuminate the workspace. Also, I plan on getting a boom stand to allow me to use my mic without having to shift around the space.

That's it for now. I hope this is helpful/inspiring for anyone interested in making your studio space truly your own.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Nutritious

[avaris]

Nice a little ingenuity and hard work goes a long way! Now make some sweet tunes Justin!

[Argle]

Cool, I need to save this for reference later.

[XPRTNovice]

This turned out a lot better than my studio building project, I think, which ultimately resulted in a desk that reflects sound all over the place come build my studio

[Anorax]

That's pretty awesome dude, it looks great. Reminds me that I have to "clean up" my own desk at home, and this actually gives me some ideas.

[Nutritious]

Thanks for the comments, guys. It's been a really fun project.

This turned out a lot better than my studio building project, I think, which ultimately resulted in a desk that reflects sound all over the place come build my studio

Hah, I doubt I'm any more handy than you in this regard. I really haven't tried anything like this before. The biggest thing I learned, I think, was not to underestimate myself and assume something like this is too difficult to do. I'd just advise lots of thinking and planning before hand as well as measuring 2 and 3 times before doing anything.

By the way, I didn't mention it above to avoid making the post too lengthly, but I did make some mistakes and errors along the way. Initially, the legs of the shelf were 3.5" taller than shown above. I only realized it was too tall after putting the monitors on it and realizing how high they would be. I didn't want to pull the whole thing apart, though, so I literally stood the whole thing on the side of a workbench and used a circular saw to cut each leg down. Definitely not a recommended way to accomplish this, FYI.

Another lesson learned is that you need to be pretty precise when drilling the holes for the keyboard tray. If they're at all off-center, the tray will slide out unevenly or will be difficult to slide in and out at all. I had to make some minor adjustments in this regard after initially attaching it. It was really my fault because, while I had my wife help me mark the spots for each hole while I held the shelf, I later drilled the holes and screwed the tray in alone, which probably indroduced some margin for error.

[Argle]

a really badass project would be to make a sliding tray for your MIDI keyboard. That way you free up a ton of desk space.

[Chernabogue]

Really nice! Good job! Now I feel like creating my own!