Starting Over

I got started in this recording business because I wanted a studio in my living room. I was a starving composer at the time (the late 60's), and it was my idea that the best way for me to develop my music was to use all this audio stuff 'n synthesizers. I figured I would create and perform my music myself, in the privacy of my own home. Does this sound familiar?

This was a little before the semipro revolution. Aside from the fact that the term "semipro" hadn't been invented yet, hardly anybody was doing it. Teac was still several years away from creating Tascam, and in fact didn't even want to know about multitrack work. I know this because I wrote to them about the possibility of adding sel-sync to their quadraphonic consumer tape deck in order to do multitrack recording and they wrote back saying that they had considered it but weren't interested, the market wasn't there, have a nice life, etc. Being crazy at the time, I forged ahead, and actually set up a little studio in my house, using a Crown 4-track tape deck (now there's a story!), a bunch of ElectroComp synthesizers and a home-made patch bay.

Several things happened as a result. The first was that I discovered that as soon as I had a small studio in my house, I wanted to have a bigger studio. The second was that as soon as word got out that I had a multitrack recorder in my living room, people actually came around and asked me to make recordings of them. The third thing was that I found I could use the small studio to make money to pay for a bigger studio. Does this, too, sound familiar?

These occurrences unexpectedly led me into the studio business. Little by little, the studio took over the house, which was only rented. When the owner wanted it back, I found a nice house plus machine-shop for sale, which I bought for not much money, and rehabbed the machine shop to make it into a recording studio. Over the following six years, I developed that studio into a fairly reasonable operation. However, I wasn't really into the business part of it and so I sold it when I got an offer to teach sound recording at the State University of New York College at Fredonia.

I didn't realize how much I gave up when I sold the studio. Once you have the monitoring, wiring harness, patch bay and console set, you can do a lot. Without them, it turns out, it's hard to get much done.

I had assumed that as a college professor, I would have lots of time to set up and work in yet another little studio in my living room, and be able to use the college's studios as well, in between the occasional classes I would teach and the wine & cheese receptions I would attend. Well, it didn't turn out that way. My students, having their own ideas, used up all the studio time, while the college ran me ragged. After seven years of this, Berklee College of Music lured me away from Fredonia to chair their Music Production and Engineering program, so I ran ragged for Berklee for another six years, while my students there also managed to use up all the studio time. The wine and cheese receptions were few and far between. Committee meetings were the norm.

COMMENTS

Post a Comment