A Quiet Creative Space

     Home recording studios were huge game changers when they first appeared in the 90's. It was due to the development of analog to digital conversion hardware becoming cheaper and more ubiquitous, along with processing software.

Pete

    Successful musicians had previously had recorded at home but they were the few who could afford it. As early as the 70s Pete Townsend of The Who was a notable first who made demo recordings of his songs and experimented with early synthesizers for their album "Tommy". He and others installed tape recorders in their homes in order to work on their music before going into a professional studio. Some bands also tried making their records this way, like Led Zeppelin who famously recorded at Hadley Grange mansion, using the cavernous foyer to record drums.

    Digital recording was invented in the 70s and by the 80s had begun to replace analog tape recorders, with digital music recorded on tape as a step along the way. The real breakthrough came when storage became more compact and affordable with the development of the hard drive. Hours of content could be created and stored in a compact format and easily worked with. One simple advancement was that the need to wait for a tape to rewind was eliminated, a huge time saver and aid to creativity.

    Software that could mimic the multi-track function came along about the same time and began a progression that has led to the ability to have a high quality recording system on a laptop for a fraction of the cost of a studio. The only drawback was monitoring. In order to listen on speakers it still is necessary to have an acoustically treated space; one that is "flat", that is, reproduces all frequencies equally. This still requires expensive construction and a larger space. As a result professionally built studios still have value, but they are less in use, sometimes just to provide a trusted reference for a project created elsewhere.

    I've had home studios in one form or another as soon as I could afford the equipment, and I've seen the professional studio lose its dominance over the last 25 years. I miss it though. There was something very special about entering a studio; the unnatural hush was like a sanctuary, the room dim, just lit with the lights on the equipment. This is something I've tried to reproduce with my own space. 

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Singer/Songwriter Rick Millward lived and worked on the West Coast until moving to Nashville in 2000. He was part of the Music City songwriter community, collaborating with other artists and producing projects in his boutique studio, including two EMMY nominated soundtracks. Now in Southern Oregon, Rick has discovered a vibrant local music scene centered around the many tasting rooms. 

His records: "Limited Edition", "Home for Good", and “Loveland” are available on Spotify and other streaming platforms. His new recordings, "Astronomy", will be released later this year.

LOVELAND ON SPOTIFY