In praise of less bedrooms and more sanctuaries

Your kids don't need their own room, they need creative spaces

“I feel like I’m going to vomit,” he said, as he stumbled out, red-eyed, holding his stomach. He felt like he was going to vomit because he was too tired. And he was too tired because he felt like he was going to vomit. It was a common and familiar pattern, one that I knew well in months past. It was much worse than it is right now, but nonetheless, he needed distraction. He needed time, solace, and satisfaction.

I did my worst to fob him off. I got him to read in bed, get a glass of cold water, go to the bathroom 27 times, but none of it worked. What worked is what always works. We shuffle down the hallway to the room at the end of the house; a room that, for all intents and purposes, should have been a bedroom. But somehow we knew better. Truth be told, in its original inception, it was a guest room/music room, but when the drum kit landed, we could no longer pretend that guests would fit in there anymore.

There is a process and a ritual that grants comfort in its immediacy and its predictability. We turn on the synthesiser, an Arturia MiniFreak. We turn on the power supply to the small set of effects pedals up on the desk. We turn on the audio interface that patches the sound through to the mixer. We turn on the studio monitors. He flicks through the presets on the MiniFreak. He shows me what he likes. He shows me the sequences and the sounds that he loves most.

Slowly, I bring in the Chase Bliss pedals, manipulating knobs while he plays. He lights up and marvels at the shifting pitches, the warped sounds, time, space, and sonic textures bending around us. We both wear the same wry smile as things take interesting turns. I show him how the modifiers work. We can incrementally increase or decrease the speed of the echoes. How we can mess with the loop before we add to it, how the micro looper is always listening, ready to present us with a beautiful texture to accompany us along the way.

Behind me, the drum kit sits idle as it should, with another 10 children sleeping or falling asleep throughout the household. The MiniFreak has a computer monitor sitting behind it for when we’re using Logic, or different plugins. It’s flanked by the studio monitors, which are furthermore surrounded by a pair of identical Ibanez TSA15 amps, for the complete indulgence that is playing guitar in stereo. On the floor sits the monstrosity of a pedal board adorned with the collection that I’ve amassed and curated over the past six years.

I’ve been tired, exhausted, really. I didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with his insomnia tonight. Petulantly, I resented missing a workout, having to be around to manage the anxiety that has plagued him for so long. But in this space, in this sanctuary, there is peace, there is mirth, there is a disconnection from all that came before and all that will follow.

There is simply the movement and the pattern of fingers on keys, the guitar strings under the fingertips. And the joys and wonders of modern engineering, paired with the beautiful brute force and simplicity of gain staging, overdrives, distortions, and fuzz. The wonderfully antiquated technology of the guitar amp, which has seen little improvement for the past 100 years, juxtaposed, of course, with a home synthesiser that would have been a marvel in any professional recording studio 40 years ago.

As mentioned, for all intents and purposes, this should have been a bedroom, or it could have been a bedroom. We have 11 children sharing rooms. The most luxurious has two in it, our eldest daughters, 18 and 17. The busiest room has no less than five children in it, two bunk beds and a trundle that’s pulled out from underneath one of them. On most nights, one of us ends up crashing in there as well, my beloved or I, depending on whom the kids demand at the time.

One may argue that it makes more sense to spread them out to make use of the rooms, but the joys and the solace of the sanctuary of the home studio provides more than the seeming convenience and material comfort of less kids in a bedroom. But you cannot argue with the simple delight of the drumsticks in your hands, trying to be in the pocket, to syncopate the different aspects and elements of the beat that you’re trying to pull off, slowly drawing it together as you get closer and closer, tighter and more fluid.

I don’t know many who could capably make a case against the wonders of a spring reverb or a tape delay, or a low-fi modulator that gives the same sonic qualities of a worn-out VHS tape. The Montreal Assembly ‘Count to Five’ is a simple, baffling marvel and tool. It can be a delay pedal or a looper, depending on how you use it. And again, the manipulation of time, randomisation and the recordings is what gives it its peculiar delight.

The overdrives and the fuzzes are a simple, guiltless pleasure, to revel in an obsession with texture, tone, and sound. Eventually you find culmination and fruition in your perfect dirt pedals - a delight that many guitarists rave about online. That same satisfaction has taken root here in this sanctuary, one I half-jokingly call Studio Santa Cecilia, in honour of the patron saint of musicians.

Here is where so many of us flee, sometimes for scant minutes, other times for an hour or two, to delight in the wonder, in the whimsy of music, song, noise. In the corner sits a 700-watt Peavey bass amp beside an Ibanez bass. It’s a new addition, but it’s made so much more possible. One of my sons plays in bands, or a couple of bands, with a couple of sets of friends. To hear them clash and clang away, trying to pull it together, and slowly but surely, making progress is an utter delight to behold.

The other day, I was in there with my twin boys - one of them the rambunctious insomniac you met twelve paragraphs ago. I was on the guitar, one on bass, and the other on drums. As simple as can be. ‘Seven Nation Army,’ the three of us grinning like madmen. And the capacity to record, something, anything, is another joyous adventure in and of itself, perhaps unparalleled for its simplicity, its beauty, and its honesty. So yes, perhaps our children could sleep more comfortably or more quietly and more peacefully where they’re more spread out. But I’ll tell you now, we’ll take the home studio over the sleep any day.

The wonder, romance and delight of the purposeful space is unparalleled, and I can only encourage one and all to find a room, a corner, a nook or a nest… give it over to your craft. Drench it in purpose and as such, in peace, to give life to the works God has planted within you. When the opportunity comes, sleep, maybe. But sleep can wait. Some things cannot.