About Dave Musial

Dave Musial has been building project studios since he was about fourteen. SkyRoom is probably the sixth one he's done in fifteen years, which is pretty remarkable when you consider that also during this period he went to college, graduate school, scuffled in the New York studio scene and pro audio sales, and has generally done more than any reasonable person does in about twice the time. I've never been able to figure out how he does it. He never seems particularly rushed or frantic - he's relaxed, affable, always seems to have plenty of time, etc. But he does all this stuff, to an incredible level of detail. All I can guess is that he must be hyperactive and never need sleep, coupled with a personality disorder that makes him into a really nice guy at the same time!

Anyway, Dave started out in Buffalo, NY. His music grew out of an active church involvement (he composes, sings and is a pianist and organist as well as accomplished MIDI keyboardist) which he actively maintains today, conducting a church choir in nearby Hoboken. He picked up a custom-designed Bachelor's degree in Communications/Recording at SUNY Fredonia in 1984, and settled down in Buffalo, working as an engineer and producer for Daybreak Productions, the production arm of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo. Working from his home studio, he did a lot of spec work for Daybreak, and built up a solid client list by word of mouth. He jumped on the MIDI bandwagon as soon as it emerged and quickly built up a solid "semi-pro" MIDI/8-track facility and excellent operational skills, including video and film-scoring chops.

In 1987, he received an unexpected offer of private funding to attend Juilliard for graduate study. As this was too good to pass up, he shut down his studio in Buffalo and headed off to the Big Apple to study classical music composition. He also enrolled at New York University to study Sound Design and took on an internship with Suzanne Ciani at the same time.

When funding for his graduate study suddenly stopped due to the stock market crash in 1987, he hung on at NYU and got to scuffling in studios around New York, doing sound design, programming, synthesis and MIDI consulting, jingles, etc. He set up yet another apartment bedroom studio, composed and produced a bunch of film scores, PBS work and the like, and kept plugging toward an advanced degree at NYU.

All this got a little much even for Dave, and so he picked up a full-time straight gig as a postproduction engineer at New York Sound, with his own studio room and a nice client list. However, after six months he began to really feel like toast and so he moved on to Sam Ash Music as a product specialist, picking up clients like Foreigner and the Beach Boys.

About this time NYU offered him a teaching fellowship (which has now lead to a faculty position in Music Technology) and he was offered the musical director position at a church in Hoboken. According to Dave, this combination allowed him to really get control of his life again, with enough open time to take on some really nice projects that also pay the rent.

He moved into a high-rise condo in Newport-Jersey City, New Jersey and set up yet another version of his studio in his bedroom (see why I think he never sleeps?). In 1992, the duplex opened up and he built SkyRoom.

Going through this period, David began to discover the secret to his own artistic balance. To satisfy his creative urges, he works on multi-media production in his SkyRoom studio, he gets his performance jollies directing music with a high-tech multi-channel MIDI and pipe organ system at a church on weekends, and he gets his intellectual and interpersonal rewards from his teaching at NYU.