Mining Melancholy, Doors, and Schala’s Theme

Hello!  Again, I’d like to thank you all for supporting my videos!  Thanks to your contributions, I was finally able to record Mining Melancholy arrangement, which had just been sitting on my hard drive for the past couple of years since I couldn’t afford the stuff that I needed to actually record it.  That video has just gone live, so here’s an update about other stuff I’ve been spending your money on, plus a preview of Schala’s Theme down at the bottom.

Studio Door

If you enjoy reading about doors and door-related topics, this update will be very exciting.  I’ve been working hard on trying to figure out the best/most economical way to achieve better sound isolation at the entry way to my studio, and I think I’m finally getting somewhere.

After Home Depot botched my first custom door order, and then almost botched my second one (I caught the mistake before the order was placed), I decided to just order my door from Lowe’s.  For some reason it’s gonna take a whole month to manufacture the door, but it should be getting here by the end of March.

The door is 1 3/4” thick, has a solid core, and is going to come with ball bearing hinges.  I’m going to add a layer of Green Glue (sound isolation compound) to it, and then fasten a sheet of 3/4” MDF to one side to beef it up.  When I remove the old door, I’m gonna have to seal up the space between the doorway cutout and the door frame with backer rod and caulk.  The new door will be fitted with an automatic door closer and some push/pull plates so that I can avoid boring a hole through it for a door knob.  Last but not least, I’m gonna add some acoustic door seals around the frame to make sure that I’ve got an airtight seal.  Here are some of the materials that I’ve gathered so far:

Oh, and I also bought some paint the other day.  I got a gallon of discount mistint paint for ten bucks ‘cuz I’m cheap af.

Schala’s Theme

Here’s a link to a preview of Schala’s Theme!  It’s not mixed yet, but I at least panned out the tracks and added some reverb so that it wouldn’t sound quite as messy:

https://soundcloud.com/user-789983357/st-premix/s-wOH69

I had been wanting to record this one for a while, but I kept putting it off because I thought the chimes would be expensive to make, but it turns out that conduit pipe is really cheap.  Here are the chimes that I made for this recording, which cost me about three bucks to make (I already had the wood and the twine):

And that’s about all for now!  I’m probably gonna start working on Frog’s Theme or Departed Souls next.  And now that I’m finished with Spiral Mountain and Mining Melancholy, I’m trying to think of a new Patreon goal to set (I wanted to use my mandolin to record Dragon Roost Island, but it turns out that the chords are really weird and don’t really work all that well on the mandolin.  Maybe I’ll keep working on it, though).