Small Town Studio Syndrome

S

steppingonmars

Member
Wondering if any other small town studios have encountered this as it's turning into an epidemic where I live

First of all there is 2 studios in my town and I guess I'd consider mine a third as I record bands for money now. The first studio does old school recordings for country bands, church groups, fold etc. The second does mostly rock stuff. Both have reasonably high end gear with equipment in the $50000 + range. Both studios are in basements and my studio is in my garage. The other two charge $30 -$40 per hour. I charge $15. Here's the synopsis lately though especially in the second studio although it's happened once to me and I think it's going to happen again.

1) band comes in and records demo
2) band seems happy with the demo for a while when it gets played on myspace etc and draws some attention
3) band puts no effort whatsoever in promoting music, stays in small town and plays small clubs
4) interest wears off so band assumes it's due to the recording
5) band goes into large town and records exact same songs in a "legitimate studio" in larger town for 10 times the price, not including travel expenses. It must sound better if it's in a big room with a pool table in the waiting room right? Big studio puts in smokes in mirrors that this is the reason why things didn't work out the first time
6) big studio puts in some fancy fades, but for the most part the song sounds EXACTLY THE SAME as it did before.
7) Promotion is the same and Myspace plays are actually less than before
8) Band is broke
9) Band still doesn't realize that the reason why the song wasn't a hit is because the song wasn't all that good in the first place and they didnt' promote it, not because it was recorded in someones basement or garage.
10) repeat with next band

Now is this an issue with the band's perception of the studio or is the quality of the work not good enough. I had a band come in recently to record with me. Initially they had someone record them for free and they got what they came for. They came back and recorded some of the same songs, I was already leary of this, but did it anyways. They were going to do 6 songs, now they are only going to do 3, I have a feeling that they are going to follow the yellow brick road to the big city :)
 
Surely if what you say has happened to the band's music, a light might come on in one of the member's heads that their music just ain't makin' it.

Just because you don't have three million in equipment doesn't mean your recording was crappy.

Sometimes people are looking for anyone or anything to blame for their failures but themselves, and it's not only in the music business.
 
M1Fanatic said:
Surely if what you say has happened to the band's music, a light might come on in one of the member's heads that their music just ain't makin' it.

Just because you don't have three million in equipment doesn't mean your recording was crappy.

Sometimes people are looking for anyone or anything to blame for their failures but themselves, and it's not only in the music business.
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.^^^^ can't agree more with this. But sometimes looks are everything!
Does you garage studio on the inside look like a garage studio?
If so you need to add a wow factor with some decorations with say some tapestry, couches etc. you know what I'm getting at. Could make a world of difference.
BTW where are you located?



:cool:
 
The studio part of the garage looks like a studio for the most part, the rest of the garage looks like a garage. I don't have any aspirations of making this a career though, my real job pays me too much :) Also I didn't initially do this recording to make money at it, I just did it to record my own stuff. I then did some recording for family and since then I've had bands ask to record them. I feel for the other guy in town though as he want's to make a career of it. The minute I'm not having fun anymore I'll be out of it so I don't want to spend $$$ fixing up a garage, it's a bad investment. My rate is lower than the others because of this and I still make more money because I have no overhead

I think the other issue is just a matter of band's ego's. If one band does x then the rest have to follow suit to out do them.

I'm located in Manitoba, Canada and Winnipeg ( the big city) is 2.5 hours away.
 
Cool area.
Have fun ...you might want to take on an apprentice that way you don't get burnt out and even if it's no fun for you any more the apprentice can move forward with it till you come to you senses.



:cool:
 
I have a friend who eventually doesn't like his recordings and falls out with every engineer he's worked with. The recordings were fine.
Just the way he is, I suppose.
I've offered to record a couple of songs for him for free, for two reasons.
1) I want to learn.
2) I need the practise.
So I may as well choose someone who's going to be disappointed, no matter what.
Love Winnipeg, by the way. Never been in the town but have been held up at The Husky for 24 hours at a time.
(Waiting for the wind to die down)
 
I guess that's the bottom line, to have fun. I don't get too wrapped up in it, just feel bad for the bands and the other guy trying to make a living at it.

Truth be know I hate Winnipeg :) I love Brandon though, that's where I live. You know you live in the Canadian prairie when they have a permanent gate for road closures in the winter :)
 
Thanks for the responses.

I'm just starting out at this and never got into recording to make it a buisness, it just started happening. I recorded myself, then my father in law's band, then another and I'm doing 2 more. I'm doing the bands because they are good bands and I enjoy the music. The money aspect is more to justify what I'm doing so my wife doesn't get too mad at me for spending all this time in the garage :). I've been told that I don't charge enough, but the people telling me this aren't the bands.

I'm not a pro, nor do I have any aspirations of becoming one. I don't make false promises to the bands. I can do a decent demo, but the issue as stated before is that these studios in the larger cities IMO are doing nothing more than demo's for 10 times the price and that's what's ticking me off. They are getting sent to the cleaners while I'm trying to help them get a good start in the music buisness so to speak. If they were getting something better in the big city and it was progressing their career, I would be happy about this situation. The way it is now however is like giving a homeless man money to buy lunch and watch him walk off to the liqour store :)
 
Hah! Nice trend list. You nailed it pretty good.

I used to have a band which was promoted very successfully by my friend. But he never wanted to sit down and really work the music out (which is all I care about), he just wanted to play more gigs unprepared, and get sponsorships just for the name of it. (Becoming "Gibson Artists" was actually easy, but not at all That useful)

so Now I'm trying to build a small studio in my room while writing music. So I can have enough equipment to make demos in. Plus overall it's just tons of fun writing for me. And socializing with other musicians ^_^
 
I ran engineer for a while in DeKalb IL about 10 years ago. DeKalb is a small town with a HUGE college (like 25000 students or something) so my friend thought it would be a good idea to open a rec studio because there was none there and plenty of college rock bands. Now this buddy o' mine had no clue how to run a business, and a very kind heart and well intentioned optimism. He decided it would be a great boon for the rock music 'local' scene to not charge by the hour but by the track. $50 bucks a track.

I of course had to do all the actual engineering, and provide the Roland VS880 and CD burner and rack gear and mics and whatnot (this was several years ago when that stuff was cutting edge, long before DAW). He provided the office space, recording room, a pez dispenser and some beanbags to make the guests feel comfy. Now I just did this as a hobby at the time, my 'real' job was doing live sound at the nightclub 3 nights a week for $100 a night (when you live in college town housing prices that's a pretty easy living) so AT FIRST I didn't mind his ludicrous business sense of charging $50 per track.

He seemed to think the bands would come in, set up their gear, record as they play, and go home happy with a CD. Yeah in an ideal world, right?

Now here's the reality check:
The first band was a punk rock travesty whos drummer couldn't play in time and guitarists were sloppy, and had that whole 'punk' attitude like they don't even care and you are not cool for suggesting otherwise. They shelled out $50 a track for a full length CD, and then came back complaining that their album sounded like sh!t. To which my only rational response to this was "well that's because you guys sound like sh!t, get a different career goal".

The second contract was with a pair of rappers named, quite unorigionally "O.D." and "B" who came in with a $49.95 casio keyboard they used for backup beats as their only gear. Charmingly innocent, right? These guys were not bad rappers, but clearly had no 'musical' knowledge of how to put together a track, or write a bassline, or even make a beat by themselves. Baby steps guys, baby steps... So I now have to produce their background music, write and play parts for them, sit through hours of them scrutinizing the stuff I made for them on the fly as to what was "dope" or "not dope" and so on. All this for $50 bucks a track.

Come on people, try and be prepared if you want a good recording. I'm afraid I can't turn down the suck knob.

The last and final straw of this short-lived business was another rap crew, who were actually really cool guys but they were, and I mean it in every connotation of the word, "THUUGS!". They showed up hours late sometimes because they just got out of jail for beating some dude up with a soup-can-in-a-sock over some crappy shwag weed deal or something, just laughing about it. They were very talented rappers (all that time in county gives you plenty of time to practice) but had no idea what PRODUCER means. They were dirt poor hood people so I didn't even charge them. They ended up smoking a blunt in the office while I left for 5 minutes to go across the street to grab coffee, and when I got back they were messing around with the VS880 trying to figure out how it works and had somehow managed to get it to reformat the hard drive, losing all the work I had just done for them over the last couple of weeks, and all of my own private work I had been working on for months.

That was about the time I just threw in the towel and decided that a small town recording studio is just not going to work out for me. Nowadays my studio is MINE and MINE ALONE and only used for MY STUFF. Selfish, yeah I know, but when it comes down to it, a lot of potential customers are simply not very talented, totally ignorant of the recording process, and an endless hassle to deal with, and always dissatisfied with the final product, and it's hard to just come out and say it "your recording sounds bad because you really need to be doing something else with your life, sorry."
 
Fortunately I'm only recording bands I like, are good or have potential. If they suck or have bad attitudes, I don't record them, I don't to record that badly


Well I'm getting more bands asking me to record, so my rates went up. Seems like I might as well do this as it seem like they're more likely to come if I charge more money. Maybe it feels like to them they're getting a pro job. Go figure
 
Moresound raises a couple good points - even putting drapes or tapestries up on the walls or something could make it look more intimate and "serious" on the cheap or something.

But, here's what I guess is throwing me for a loop - what's the problem here? You're still getting bands, you're still getting paid, even if they're wasting their money. Is it just that you feel there's an implicit "you're not good enough" message here that they want to pay someone else to do what you already did?

Also, is the problem that the songs aren't any good to begin with, or that they don't take the time to promote? You mention both, but those are two very different problems, especially if you only track bands you think have potential.
 
The songs are good, the bands are good. The problem is that they don't promote and I'm assuming that the reason that they think that they are not getting noticed is that the recordings aren't good enough because they didn't spend $$$ in the larger city.

My studio looks fine for what it is. It's clean, has nice pictures, all cables etc are in cable races etc. Maybe it's not a million dollar studio, but isn't your basic garage. Yeah I'm getting work and getting paid so I guess I won't worry too much about it.
 
steppingonmars said:
The songs are good, the bands are good. The problem is that they don't promote and I'm assuming that the reason that they think that they are not getting noticed is that the recordings aren't good enough because they didn't spend $$$ in the larger city.

My studio looks fine for what it is. It's clean, has nice pictures, all cables etc are in cable races etc. Maybe it's not a million dollar studio, but isn't your basic garage. Yeah I'm getting work and getting paid so I guess I won't worry too much about it.
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Just thinking out loud, maybe it wouldn't hurt to casually bring up the subject between takes - "So, how are you guys planning on promoting this? Have you thought through your marketing campaign?"

You know, just get the ball rolling, make sure they're thinking about it.
 
What I have read time and time again is that successful promotion is entirely dependent on a live fan base. Building word-of-mouth rep from playing good live gigs.

In a perfect world we could put our best tunes out on web sites, tell a few people, and the bandwagon would fill up. But it doesn't happen that way.

The bands you're recording should understand that what they are recording is the primary component of a marketing package, a package that will get them into clubs to play. If they're not willing to put the effort into some intelligent self-promotion and playing lots of gigs in front of a wider audience, they'll always be stuck in a small town. And they're going to burn out that small town fan base, because how many times do you want to listen to the same band playing the same stuff?
 
If your $15 per hour studio sounds as good as the $30 - $40 an hour studios, charge more (like $45 an hour)!!


* If anyone asks you why you're more expensive, tell them it's because you actually listen to their music.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
If your $15 per hour studio sounds as good as the $30 - $40 an hour studios, charge more (like $45 an hour)!!


* If anyone asks you why you're more expensive, tell them it's because you actually listen to their music.
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Harvey I believe this will work! Not only that but I'd bet you would also end up with artist that are the cream of the crop.



:cool:
 
Years ago I read an article about a studio owner that was working 70 hours a week and never taking a break, he suddenly had a medical emergency due to overwork and no rest. After he recovered he analysed his life, he was charging $30 and hour, was fully booked and could not figure how to make a living (after paying overheads, rent etc) and work less. One of his friends said, "Why don't you put up the price?" So he did, to $70 per hour. Sure some of the clients did not come back but the ones that liked working with him did come back and some new clients that realised that if he is charging a larger fee he must be good. Now he works less for the same money, he does not get bothered by crap bands wanting to record an album in 4 hours and he has days off and goes fishing.

I read the article, put my prices up by 40%, I work less, still make at least the same amount of turnover and work with better bands. I also have a rule that I do not work when my football team has a home game, I go to the game, that is my break from music and it keeps me fresh.

There is always a studio down the road the will charge a stupid hourly rate to get work in, but they still have overheads, they wear out the gear that will need fixing and replacing at some stage, they have to work everyday of the week to get by, and eventually they burn out and close.

Cheers
Alan.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
If your $15 per hour studio sounds as good as the $30 - $40 an hour studios, charge more (like $45 an hour)!!
* If anyone asks you why you're more expensive, tell them it's because you actually listen to their music.
Click to expand...

+1

most people sell themselves too cheap

when they add in taxes, insurance, wear and tear on gear, benefits, education, yada yada
they are actually working for less than minimum wage
 
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