H2 Blog

The building of Mike's Studio

This is a brief (or so I hope) breakdown of the construction of my project/practice/teaching studio which I have just finished building at my house in Cambridge, Ontario.

We bought the house in April of 2009 and, in addition to all the wonderful attributes of the house itself, I was particularly thrilled with the external structure that was included with the property. It had, at one point, been a one-car garage and then was converted into a basic storage shed.

When we started work in May of 2009, we basically stripped it all down, cleared it out, and started fresh. We quickly realized that the building wasn't as structurally sound as it should be so we reinforced by building two new walls inside the existing ones, replacing the beams across the ceiling, and a few other miscellaneous touch-ups.




As you can see, it ain't much... but it's all mine!!

Once we had it cleared out and repaired, we were ready to begin putting things together. For insulation, instead of the standard pink fibreglass stuff we went with a product called "Safe and Sound", which is made with stone rather than glass.

You can see here it's green in colour. Once that was all in place (walls, ceiling, around the door, and between the 2 X 2 framing that was constructed over the concrete floor), we stapled the vapour-lock in place (also seen in this picture):



Now, normally one would simply put all the drywall over the vapour-lock and attach it to the studs. We took an extra step here in order to create a "dead-zone" of air around the entire room. We covered the entire room with ply-wood upon which we then attached sound-channels, which act like studs on the ply-wood for attaching the drywall. The sound channel separates the drywall from the ply-wood with approximately 1.5 cms of room between. This creates a non-resonant zone that envelops the room and cuts out a lot of the external ambient noise.

For the entrance, there was an existing door that really doesn't look like much. I decided to leave it in place and add a second door directly inside it.



This door is steel reinforced with a numeric security lock and, when both doors are closed, creates an air lock for additional sound insulation.

Here are a series of pictures of the door construction at various stages:








I briefly mentioned the floor already. Already in place is a concrete floor which I was very pleased to discover was nice a dry even on the wettest days. (Once the new roof was put on, early in construction, I was confident we wouldn't have any leakage issues.)

We built a frame made of 2 X 2 pine which we filled with the same insulation as before, covered in vapour-lock, and then covered in press-board. You can see a bit of it in this picture:



My good buddy, Dave Reid (bass trombone, Calgary Philharmonic.. and long-time friend) volunteered, while visiting us here, to install the laminate flooring. He, with the helpful assistance of Myf, did a fantastic job. When I got home from my vacation, it was all in place and I just had to put in the baseboards:





Next to go in was the electrical. Normally, one would install all the wiring into the studs before adding the rest of the wall construction. However, I wanted to avoid putting any holes in the dry-wall/plywood in case it jeopardized the sound insulation. Also, I wanted to have flexibility post-construction with the configuration of the outlets. So we decided to install the electrical wiring outside the walls using steel coated 14 gauge.

We had to run 10 gauge cable from the panel inside the house for our source. My friend Brad Rush from next door is a certified electrician and construction site safety watch-dog.. He supervised and oversaw the work I did on the electrical installation so I know that everything is above code requirements.

Here are some pictures of me running the wiring from under the deck of the house, under the concrete-slab walk-way, and through conduits into the studio.


The wire runs, through conduits, under this walkway 14 inches below the surface.


The two ground-rods were placed (pounded 6 feet down) 10 feet apart outside the studio. And I somehow picked the hottest day of the summer to do this:



Next came the wiring inside the studio and plugging everything into the box in the closet:


And now it is all set up for hard work... now... where did I leave my trumpet... ??

I am very excited to get the acoustic treatment tiles in here and balance everything out for recording. That will happen in the next two weeks and will be fine-tuned when Sean comes up here to record within the next month or so...

Review of H2 by Jazz Inside Magazine

H2: MIKE HERRIOTT

AND SEAN HARKNESS

FLIGHTS: VOL 1—Self Released.

www.harknessherriott.com, seanharkness.wordpress.com, www.mikeherriott.com.

Songs:

Spring Break; Leap Year; Myfed; Nod To John; Kyra’s Song; Hedge Your Bets; Gambled; And Lost; Armario; Hammock Time

PERSONNEL:  Mike Herriott, fugelhorn; Sean Harkness, guitar

By Ryan Prestone

Te formation of H2 is a musical love story.  Two veteran musicians are touring a show in Japan for six weeks and they hit it off.  Back at the hotel they’re hanging out on their free time and they hit it off.  A friendship ensues and they begin jamming together and discover that they are kindred spirits. Although I am just paraphrasing what I read, after listening to the music, it is clear that guitarist Sean Harkness and fugelhornist Mike Herriott belong on stage or in the studio together—you can cut the chemistry with a knife.

Both of them put beauty and feeling first.  Their style, phrasing, and compositions are consistent throughout the record, but show such a variety of influences, from folk to funk and blues to jazz.  These two musicians have a great time, and you can tell how much they are in love with the music they play, and playing with each other.  You will be too—it is contagious.  For the tunes that need that extra bit of groove, they enlist their more than qualified friends, drummer Kevin Coady, bassist Jim Vivian, and trombonist Mark Miller.

Harkness is a technical virtuoso with his fingerstyle approach that brings together elements of both a Joe Pass style as well as steel string players like Tommy Emmanuel.  But he doesn’t use his skills arbitrarily—it is always in service to telling a story or creating a feeling or groove within the song.  His playing is in a sense, simple, in that you don’t have to have a “refined ear” to appreciate what he is doing.  His style transcends many genres and can touch listeners of many backgrounds.  Amazingly, he plays a custom Gibson style guitar with .14 gauge strings (the thickness of the high E string).  This is very thick, but he gets around the fretboard as if he were playing .10 gauge strings.

Herriott shares the same values as Harkness.  He is extremely lyrical and has a beautiful tone.  He has a graceful and easy approach to time, dancing on the beat with his gorgeous lines.  Both players’ compositions create feelings and moods that you will want to revisit again and again.  Flights is their first recording together—hopefully it isn’t their last.

 

page 68   September 2010  •  Jazz Inside  Monthly  •  www.jazzinsidemagazine.com