Technology in music series; (part 5) from one mic to 128 tracks (V)

The rise of home studios and inexpensive digital equipment wrought yet another major change in the recording business. At my right elbow on my desk is a digital four-track recording studio on which a competent musician can make a serviceable demo. It cost just under $200. Most new Macintosh computers – even the under-$500 Mac minis – come with Mac’s Garage Band, a functional digital recording program. For about 10 times that, an artist can assemble state-of-the-art equipment for a digital audio workstation.

The big dog in digital audio workstations is Pro Tools, a program that works on both Mac and PC. An artist or entrepreneur can purchase Pro Tools at several levels, from a free sample program that the parent company, Digidesign, offers on its website, to a program that comes with a recording and mixing console and software emulators for just about any kind of effects equipment any studio could want, all for less than $5,000. A few days in an A-list studio could cost that easily.

“When computer and hard-disk recording really got cheap and better at the same time,” lamented Wolf Stephenson, owner of legendary Muscle Shoals studios, “it just knocked the socks off a lot of studios, [Muscle Shoals] included.”

To exacerbate the current financial bind the recording studios find themselves in, recording advances have gone way down. Many artists opt to do at least the initial recording for their albums using digital workstation equipment, even if it means hiring an engineer to run it – or even better, hiring an engineer who owns the equipment to do the tracking. “You can buy a 24-track digital machine now for four grand,” railed Green Street Recording studio manager David Harrington. “It’s insane!”

“Many producers and artists feel that if you get a $30,000 to $50,000 budget to make a record, a home studio is a better investment,” noted one of the owners of the now-defunct Unique Studios in New York as they shut their doors. “If the record flops, at least you still have a home studio.”

The recording industry economy forced Unique to close up shop after 26 years in business. Still, the studio owners didn’t leave the business entirely. They invented several software tools for the digital audio workstations.

In 2004 and 2005, the fallout began in earnest, as some of the biggest-name recording studios shut their doors. Unique, Power Station, Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, Cello Studios, the Enterprise Studios, and the venerable, renowned Hit Factory all closed down. Beyond the home studios and the equipment wars, the recording studios had a similar fight at the beginning of the process of making a record as the retail stores had at the end of the process of bringing music to market. “In a rising market,” said George Petersen, editorial director of the recording industry trade magazine Mix, “a studio space’s land value can far exceed its business value.”

Other, surviving studios added Pro Tools rooms, figuring that even if artists record entire albums at home, if the record company is providing a budget, they might want to get it mixed professionally.

But this still can lead to a loss of the spark that leads to great music. Even more so than at a recording studio, where you know every minute spent eats away a bit of your budget, when you as an artist own the means of production, you can spend as long as you can stand it to get the sound just right, even if all real feeling gets lost in the process. Digital effects can even tweak the sound to make it more precise.

Still, if this is how the artist hears the music, and more importantly feels the music, then that’s the way the music should be recorded. For some artists, particularly in electronic, synthesizer-driven music, precision is the hallmark of their sound. It may not work for everyone, but it works for them. As Bongiovi said (albeit, before he sold The Power Station):

It is the musicians and singers who make the music. Not the engineers. I’m a producer and mixer myself. I’ve produced a lot of hit records, and I’m smart enough to know that the musicians I get around me are the people who make the records, not so much bass or treble I put on the record or what kind of microphone I use. It’s the song you’re selling and the musicians who are playing it. That’s what this business is all about.