Recording Studio

When you first walk into Lighthouse Studio you are greeted warmly to long corridor adorned with platinum, RIAA-issued records, surely spoils of a long and arduous crusade within the infamous music industry. These records hang proudly showcased like a professor’s long sought after doctorate or a soldier’s Purple Heart. Record after record praises the same name in a polished chrome luster: Ray Alexander. Yet as you continue your trek down into the control room, it becomes apparent that the best of these trophies are kept inside the control room itself. What Ray values most is not the formal display of industry recognition but rather the sentimental memories encased in an autographed Rolling Stones poster, an old backstage pass, or even greater, a single photograph of a far younger and more youthful Ray Alexander standing in a crowded hallway next to none other than John Lennon himself. I am sure that every morning Ray sits down he takes a very brief second to look up at these frozen memories and remember how far he has come.

Having said that, my short stay with Ray Alexander and Lighthouse Studio has led me to the conclusion that these achievements are not easily won and that it takes a certain type of person to be able to build such a prominent empire out of nothing. Ray has the privilege of having a much sought after job, whose industry faces extinction each and everyday by the Great Equalizer that is the Internet. The role of the music producer has been romanticized in today’s popular culture much like the role of the “rock star” has been. We associate this role with an image of a quiet genius teetering over a console of knobs and faders, green and red LEDs, turning something this way, sliding something that way, listening to some divinely-inspired muse trying to get “that sound.” You hear about the remarkable and innovative ideas of George Martin, The Beatles’ producer, and think of what fun it would be to have such a creative intensive job. I learned my very first day that everything I had come to believe was a fantasy. I suspect that if Ray were to actually spend 4 hours experimenting with a harmonium sound, he would be out of a job the next day. Not only that, but Ray already knows how to get that sound. That is essentially what people are paying him for.

The incredible rise in affordability of recording technology these days makes it possible for almost anybody to run the same software a professional recording facility uses on their Macbook Pro at home. I’ve witnessed quite a few clients come in with sessions that they had recorded themselves at home and brought in to be touched upon at the studio. While the studio does have a fully acoustically treated room, an impressively expensive collection of vintage microphones and amplifiers, the main asset that the studio has to offer is Ray’s experience. What separates Ray from the clients is that he knows exactly what combination of microphone, preamp, compressor, and software plug-in to use for any given situation. This is something that makes his job so extraordinarily unique. This is what makes the recording industry one of the hardest industries to get into. Read the rest of this entry »