Peter Frampton, jazz great Chick Corea, Greg Hawkes of The Cars. These are just a few of the famous names that have worked with recording studios in the Granite State. Yep, you read that correctly.
While NH is hardly top of mind when you think recording industry, (New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Atlanta are the Meccas) there are dozens of boutique studios here. And some of these have established national and international reputations, competing with studios in New York and Boston for business. Despite being in an industry challenged by online music sharing and pirating, several NH studios have been growing.
Label This
This year PARMA Recordings in North Hampton recorded its 150th album. The company has hundreds of musicians on three labels: Big Round Records, Navona and Ravello. It focuses on orchestral and chamber music, as well as jazz, and recording large ensembles. What's unusual is that instead of clients coming to them, they go to the clients.
CEO Bob Lord, a bass player in the band Dreadnaught, says PARMA intentionally does not have an in-house recording studio as musicians play best in their own halls. They are used to the way the room feels and sounds. It is much more effective for us to capture the sound there in their natural environment, Lord says. His recording clients include the Chicago Arts Orchestra and the Bogot Philharmonic Orchestra in Colombia. PARMA produced records for Chick Corea and Peter Townsend of The Who.
PARMA works with clients around the world, as well as in New York, Philadelphia and Colorado. Lord and his staff of 15 offer musicians a unique combination of services that include recording, mastering, producing and placements in the media. He recently placed a classical track on C-SPAN as the theme song of a program on first ladies.
We do this for a lot of different networks and it's an important part of the sustainability of music today, says Lord. He has placed clients' music as theme songs, background music and even in the Olympics. In general, synchronized placement and use of music in film, television and online media is crucial because record sales in recent years have been down, so obviously it's a very difficult environment and it has become harder for a lot of acts to connect with audiences.
PARMA employs music producers, audio engineers, graphic designers, publicity and marketing people, and licensing experts. Lord says music can be digitally produced and distributed from a basement studio, but making a big group sound big and being able to provide it on a moment's notice -sometimes as short as right now for TV programs or movies-is a key advantage. He says revenue has grown significantly over the years, with a substantial portion coming from the licensing of music, where he says the future lies.
Rocking YouTube
While MTV may no longer play many music videos, music remains a visual experience thanks to the popularity of YouTube and streaming videos. Studio Metronome in Brookline understands that and has made a name for itself traveling the world recording video performances of big name bands. The studio is often hired by music promoters and music festival directors, and has recorded hundreds of concerts for hot musical acts such as the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Neko Case and The Black Eyed Peas.
They also do live audio recordings. During 2011 and 2012, owner Bennett Chandler and four of his mobile production staff followed Peter Frampton to 130 cities in the U.S., Canada and Europe to record live audio that was available for sale right after the concert.
Providing such services is expensive. Chandler has invested more than $1 million in mobile audio equipment, and he and his staff are on the road all the time. They hire local stringers to help, as video recordings require a team of 20.
But it's a labor of love. Music plays an important role in Chandler's life. I'm a musician, he says, having played percussion in bands. I loved what I did in my early 20s. I got to work with a lot of great artists. My dreams as a kid came true, and I wanted to do it again.
He started Studio Metronome 10 years ago, building a recording studio on a hilltop next to his house. Early on he invested in mobile video equipment-a move that saved his business. While studio recordings and mobile audio plummeted in 2008, mobile video services have
been solid.
Chandler says studio rentals cost less now than they did in 2003, and mobile video has also seen some rollbacks, but the profit margin in video is significantly higher, and that has allowed the business to remain in the black. I feel for those guys who just have fixed audio facilities, he says. It's been our diversity that has kept us alive and allowed us to get revenue.
A Musical Retreat
While PARMA and Studio Metronome do all or most of their recording work on the road, other Granite State recording studios take advantage of the state's rural setting to create a musical oasis. Rocking Horse Studio in Pittsfield looks like an 18th century farmhouse surrounded by open fields, orchards and berry bushes, but within those walls are state-of-the-art recording equipment and a house band to back up solo musicians looking to record an album. The studio opened in 2006 and was named to Mix Magazine's Class of feature in 2009, which recognizes the best new recording studios around the world.
What we do best is work with songwriters who don't have a band. They come in and I serve as producer and put a band together and record their songs, says Brian Coombs, founder of the studio and a bass player in the band. Coombs was part of the progressive rock band Tristan Park and toured in the '80s and '90s. The house band can also include guitar, bass, drums, fiddle and woodwinds. It just started organically that we started working with people who had songs and didn't have a band, he says.
Coombs keeps his rates flexible. He sometimes offers lower rates in return for a percentage of royalties. His recording studios were designed by a Cambridge, Mass. studio designer to be top-of-the line and he has since worked with thousands of musicians. They include Greg Hawkes of The Cars, Garth Hudson (former keyboard player of The Band) and the Adam Ezra Group. Coombs just finished mixing a recording for an Iranian progressive rock band.
I'm very pleased that to date we have increased our revenue every year since we started doing business in Pittsfield, Coombs says.
Gerry Putnam is also keeping himself as busy as he would like in North Sutton at Cedarhouse Sound & Mastering. He's been in business 33 years on a 45-acre parcel sandwiched between conservation land. Few of the musicians he works with are big names, but they appreciate his rates, about $1,200 for a couple of days and access to a recording studio equipped with a Hammond B3 organ, a Steinway grand piano and a large collection of keyboards. Putnam invested more than $1 million in his equipment.
Putnam says the margins in his business are small-he compares them to the restaurant business. One way he differentiates his studio is he offers a place for artists to stay while they work on their recordings. Putnam works on about 20 projects a month. He has worked with classical, Celtic, and R&B musicians. He also records soundtracks for film and video, and works on a story preservation initiative recording people's life stories.
The music world is a tiny world. Someone can walk into a studio in Los Angelos and run into somebody that knows me, says Putnam. People come up from New York who want to get out of the rat race, concentrate and make music. I have as much work as I want.