The Frustrated Artist

My bronchial tubes are clear, I seem to be in tune, and I have a few spare hours, so I should be able to sing a few takes into a microphone for later mixing. Except as always there's a few problems.

The biggest problem is that I simply don't like making a loud noise when there's other people around. I really don't. An upbringing where the worst sin immaginable was to make a fuss has given me a lifeling dread of being obtrusive, standing out in a crowd, making a nucience of myself. And when the other people in question are the same people who gave me the problem - my parents - it's worse.

I can sing quietly - very quietly if I need to - but the quality of tone that comes with it just doesn't work with techno backings and occasionally agressive lyrics. It would be like belting out an introspective ballad with a gutteral shout like Lemmy from Motorhead, but in reverse.

Also, I can only get to the higher registers if I'm loud, and it's difficult to get emotion into quiet singing, probably partly because of the lack of dynamic range. Not that I'm an emotional singer - more Florian Schneider and Martin Gore than Andy Bell or David Bowie.

I have a reasonable bedroom setup of 3GHz PC with UKP200 soundcard and clever software, but it can only be used for recording or mixing when not occupied capturing TV shows and films, editing them and buring the result to DVD - all of which is usually after 1800 each day.

It's not easily portable, so I can't move it somewhere out of the way and well insulated whenever I want to record. Actually I did lug it back and forth to an especially grotty 'studio' rented by Strict Machines to record their second EP, but the process was a nightmare.

I do have a portable 8-track thing - significantly worse sound quality, but bearable. So where can I take it to record in peace?

I'm not going to rent a studio - they're expensive, difficult to get to and pretty unpleasant places to be. But mostly expensive.

The garage? There's a powerpoint there, plus relative isolation and even surprisingly good acoustics. But there's also a great big fuck-off car taking up the entire place - who's nutty idea was it to put a car in a garage?

Actually, the car is a Honda Beat - a miniature two-seater imported from Japan, where smaller cars mean less road tax. There's only about 30 of them in the UK, and it feels rather like being inside a cramped rollerskate. Or an MGB, which it replaced. But there's still no room in the garage.

The darkroom. My father used to be a professional photographer with a room full of strange equipment straight out of a mad scientist's castle laboratory. Now he's an amateur photographer with a digital camera and a PC, so his darkroom is a general storage space, with lots and lots of cardboard boxes that no one can get to because there's other boxes on top of them.

A usable space, but anyone who can hear me singing in my bedroom can probably hear me singing in there.

The coal hole. Yes, it's an old house (built 1901) with a basement adjoining a six foot cube built for storing enormous piles of combustible fossil material to keep the large edwardian family warm in winter. It's damp, rather cold, and also serves as my sometime gymasium.

I'll give it a go.