Hello Black Leaves of Envy,

I read the news story and watched your great video and in it could see
glimpses of your garage practice space. With its block walls, concrete floor,
open ceiling and roll up door it is like a perfect speaker box for projecting
your music to the distant neighbors, they should be grateful, but since they
are not, here is a few things you can do help quiet down whats getting
outside.
The biggest change you could make would be to fill the block walls with
sand, this would help trap some of the lowest sub frequencies that travel
the farthest. With the ceiling open you could get easy access to the top of
the blocks and then literally pour in sand until they are full.
Cover the ceiling, 2 layers of drywall would help a lot but anything you
can find will make it better, plywood, house siding, etc, as many layers as
you can.
Fill large garbage bags with blankets, clothes, old socks, packing peanuts
most anything, dense and fibrous is best. Stack these on top of each other
in the every corner of the garage, floor to ceiling, they will act as corner
traps and help with low frequencies that build up in the room.
Add mass to the roll up door. This could even be leaning sheets of
plywood and mattresses against it.
Add mass to the walls, hanging blankets, carpets, mattresses everything
you can find, the thicker it is the lower frequencies it traps.
cover the floor in rubberized material, carpet pads, gym mats, rubber
back entry mats.

If you are interested in more about Sound Proofing and Sound Treatment
here are some of the basic principals and materials used.
There are 4 primary ways to soundproof.
Add Mass or Density
Many ways to do this, using concrete board, drywall, mass loaded vinyl,

plywood, sand etc.

The most common way is to add another layer of drywall over the rooms
existing drywall, the soundboard and drywall combination gets great results
as well. For major reductions you might have to layer some concrete board
and mass loaded vinyl.

Dampening
Damping means to reduce resonance in the room, by absorption or
redirection (reflection or diffusion). This is commonly done with various
kinds of insulation, Rockwool and semi rigid fiberglass being the most
common.
Sound Board, Sound Board, Sound Board or as it is also called, Fiber
Board, is a rigid panel produced from non-toxic organic material and natural
wood fibers that are wax impregnated which is lightweight, cost efficient
and easy to install, this stuff is your best friend for tonally tightening up your
space and quieting things down, made by many manufacturers and sold at
most hardware stores, usually runs $1012 bucks for a 4x8 Sheet. you
can glue it, screw it or nail it to just about anything, stack it or arrange it to
deal with different frequencies, it is not a cure all but is one of the best bang
for your buck in sound treatment.

Decoupling
Decoupling means mechanically separating the two sides of a wall to
make it harder for sound to pass through the wall. This is can be done by
building double walls or with rubber boots and pads to set walls and joists
on. Resilient channel can be used to add space and separate contact
between wall or ceiling panels. Any material with and air gap between them
(decoupled) will stop more sound transfer than the same material making
contact.
See images below:

Sound Treatment
When it comes to treatment of a room there is a common equation of
30%, 30%, 40%, which means, 30% absorption, 30% diffusion and leave
the rest in its natural reflective state. This works good for recording studios
but when it comes to the rehearsal space or jam room you may need to
over compensate in some areas as these are rarely rooms designed for
sound and usually have many unique sound traits.
Spectrum Analyzing
Before you start it helps to know what you are dealing with. this has
become easily accessed technology. From your smart phone you can
generate Pink noise or individual tones to run through your PA system, as
well there are some good spectrum analysis apps that will be calibrated to
your specic phone. Neither of these will be perfect but are a cheap and
easy way to get a good idea where the problematic sonic issues are in
your room.

Corner Traps
Lets start with the most common scenario. You have a square or
rectangle room that sounds boomy or cloudy when you play. Low frequency
energy will build up in the corners of the room, to clean this up you need
some bass traps. A simple way to apply this is get 8 large bags of denim
insulation and stack the on top of each other, 2 in each corner. Use twine
and screws to keep them tight in the corner, hang a blanket in front if you
want. You will be amazed how much this will tighten up the low end in your
room. Fiberglass insulation is cheaper and will work as well, but is a lung
and skin irritant. Please wear gloves, long sleeves and a N95 particulate
mask when handling it. if you want to build some corner traps here are a
few designs, there are multitudes of them listed on the web all with the
same basic concept.

A simple and cheap way to build a corner is to come off the corner about
18 in both directions, there anchor 2x2s into the walls from floor to
ceiling, cut 2 pieces of sound board to span the corner at a 45 degree
angle, roughly 4 by 30. start from the floor up, screw the first piece of
soundboard across the corner into the 2x2s. Then you are going to want to
fill the space behind it with denim insulation. When the lower 4 is full cut
the upper panel to leave a space at the top, attach and fill, repeat in all
corners.

Sound Diffusion
Now that your corner traps have cleared up the low end, you can think
about diffusing your parallel walls. Anytime there are large parallel surfaces
you will get reection resulting in standing waves and room modes. In most
rehearsal situation a few layers of soundboard will help deal with this on the
absorption side, but a combination of absorption and diffusion will create a
more sonically balanced room. Here are some examples of diffusers.

Low Budget Options

You can build a great dense diffuser with 2x4s and a sheet of plywood or
with some cedar boards as well as applying siding to sections of the walls.
The siding will help deflect the frequencies at an angle. Seen first below is
the normal installation, you may want to flip that upside down and install
from ceiling to floor which would then deflect sound to the floor rather than
the ceiling.

Floors to Ceiling Reflection

The same principals of corner traps and diffusers apply to the ceiling,
though when hung from the ceiling they are called clouds.

If you are interested in learning Everything about acoustics, here is a link to

a free PDF version of F. Alton Everests book Master Handbook of
Acoustics. http://bit.ly/1Rw4MTA