In his last blog Barney Chunn explored the benefits of home recording and how it has grown in popularity and as an art form. However, studio recording remains not only an excellent way to record, but has a tangible attraction for many young artists, to whom a studio is somewhat of a sacred space.

In this blog, we delve into the power and promise of studio recording.

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The power of an environment is compelling. It helps us to access mindsets associated with those spaces purely by being in them. The money that is being spent on outfitting modern offices to appeal to people working there is proof that our environment affects our work ethic and our motivation significantly. It’s intuitive too. Imagine walking on to the stage at the Vector Arena, or crossing the white line on to Eden Park; spaces that have particular histories grow with the influence of its past events.

A recording studio is an environment in such a way. The gentle hum of the equipment, the delicacy of the acoustic treatment, and the way it makes everything sound slightly different; at once softer and more defined. You run your hand over the heads of the different guitars and wonder who played which one when, and what the hell all those buttons and knobs and lights on the desk could possibly mean.

Andrew Buckton runs studio 203, at the top of Symonds St in Auckland. Its unassuming front door leads you into a reddish room with posters and gold records of sessions past. It has a timelessness inside; you are literally and figuratively unaware of the outside world in a space like 203, with its soundproofing and no window to the outside world. It’s easy to forget about trivialities like time

When I arrive 10 minutes early, Buckton is swatting, reading our previous blog on home recording and Daniel McBride’s take on the process. While Buckton’s not against bedroom recording, he does have a few points to make.

"For some people/situations it is the right way to go but at the same time I think it runs the risk of being a little closed minded… to go on about artistic purity and not involving a producer because they’re this domineering personality that is going to stamp all over the purity of what you’re doing. Music has always been about people coming together, and a good producer should be able to take your vision and… offer something that might take it beyond your imagination."

Says Madeline Bradley, a Play it Strange graduate who recorded That Feeling, her song that won the Peace Song award at Studio 203, "Andrew brought a whole sense of structure and colour to the arranging of the song.  His engineering skills allowed him to know which samples would work, when to utilize them and hot to programme things like drum tracks and keyboards so that the whole song worked as a whole.  If I'd tried to record that song on my own I wouldn't have really known where I was going."

Buckton’s clearly passionate about the role of a studio in the process of making a record, but it’s a position that’s come under a lot of strain lately. With the music industry in a state of pivot and moving away from the old structure of recording music, studios are feeling the pinch.

"The industry has changed in the last 18 months, tenfold on the effect that downloading and the internet had, because of the Spotify effect. I’ve certainly noticed the budgets for people to record have been shrinking in the last couple of years, with Spotify. In NZ especially, it’s going to be harder to go into a professional environment. There is literally no money from record sales."

(Spotify released their payout system in December last year. Roughly speaking, they pay out between 0.006 and 0.0084 cents per play. If the median weekly wage in NZ between 2012-2013 for people in employment was $844, then it would take 100,467 plays a week to earn the median weekly wage, 435, 396 a month, or 5.2 million plays a year. For each member of a band earning royalties, the figure needs to double.)

For a young musician however, the question is really what sort of musician are you? Which style of recording suits you and your music better? As Buckton says, home recording certainly suits some musicians better than studio recording.

"The [home recordings] that are successful are the ones that are part of the composition. That is the way that there is an essence of the magic that gets captured. Everything you do gets captured, and that inspires you to do the next thing."

However, that doesn’t work for a lot of musicians, particularly those for whom the technology is not an inspiration but a distraction from the end result. With home recording, the musician is not only the band and the producer but the engineer too. As Buckton describes it, it’s like playing darts with your eyes closed: "If you know the dartboard’s over there, you’re going to get it somewhere on the board, but your chances of hitting the bulls-eye are reduced."

Like anything, learning as you go can produce unexpected and surprisingly good results that vary from what others are doing simply because you did them yourself. However, there is no denying it’s an inefficient method when someone with experience can know and understand how it works without needing the trial and error of learning the ropes yourself, on top of the composition and the producing of the music too. It’s a lot of hats to wear for a young musician.

Says Buckton, "there are technical things that most musicians won't know. It’s like, I drive a car, I know how to do a few things with it, but I’m not a mechanic. It’s the same with most musicians. They can get things to record on ProTools, they can point a mic at something. But they’re not an expert, and in a lot of ways that’s not something they should be thinking about."

Ultimately, a studio is, as Buckton puts it, an ‘environment.’ "It’s a place conducive to creativity. The tools needed to create that magic are readily available. The thing about the studio, because it’s an environment that’s professionally set up, it decreases the barriers between that moment where you have that spark of inspiration, and the moment you record it. It decreases all the little barriers to the creativity of the process."

For a young musician wondering looking to start recording, the most important thing to answer is which type of musician are you. Do you feel inspired by learning about the process of recording, or do you feel like your time would be better spent focusing on the music. Are they fluid in your mind, or separate? Are you a band, who can practice, rehearse, and get yourself to the point where a few hours in a studio is all you need, and recording drums in your lounge is more hassle than the neighbours wrath is worth? Or are you a solo musician who tinkers with their set up late into the night. Maybe you’ll get the drums done in a studio, and tinker with the guitars in your room for months.

Understanding yourself as a musician and what you want out of the recording is the first step in figuring out what type of recording is best for you.