So just how do you make that all-important move from impoverished home recordist to professional studio owner?

Once upon a time you dipped your toe in the water by getting an Akai 4000D, but then technology marched on and you fell off. Suddenly every kid in town is skateboarding round the streets with Portastudios in their wrist watches and you can record a 24-track album on the beach. Do you remember the days when you used to drive 140 miles to use a 4-track studio? Now a 4-track costs less than the petrol used in getting there.

Suddenly it's time to update my home facility. I'd come into some cash. I'm not telling you where from but it wasn't at the expense of a relative and it won't (I think) put me inside. A number of debts had to be paid, including coming to grips with the dreaded Inland Revenue who had been chasing me since I was in the third year at school.

My budget and my then girlfriend would allow me a Portastudio and a couple of FX pedals. My instincts told me to go for an 8-track on the basis that I would never have more than a fiver in pound coins at one time ever again. My musician friends had different ideas however and in a haze of alchohol I was led off to sign a paper and now I own a full blown 16-track studio. I was broke and hadn't even paid the rent let alone the taxes. Shell-shocked and hungover I left the gear in its boxes for three days while I analysed my future from inside the wardrobe. Having made the fateful decision I lurched blinking into the world of commercial demo studios utilising all the knowledge and experience I had gained as a divorce lawyer and occasional cab driver.

Some time later I found myself a studio owner, still broke and subjected to criticisms such as 'Get a real job, grow up and stop playing with toys.'

'Toys? — This is sophisticated machinery with which millions will be made to support you and the cat in the way that you would both like to become accustomed.'

'Toys', she retorts, and of course she's quite right; the studio is a dream machine. Some people ski, do athletics, read 2000 AD comics or sniff glue; I embark on adventures in modern reverb.

Reading a specialist magazine such as H&SR that is crammed with Japanese exotica and inhabited by dBs, LEDs, Hz and SSLs, it sometimes becomes necessary to remind oneself why one is involved in this wonderfully insane hobby.

If like me you are an engineer, producer and composer rather than an electronics whiz-kid, then the studio is a means to an end or ends. Those ends in my case are an income and indulgence; the time and facilities to produce my own projects. Frequently the studio can be a hated enemy, when for instance the record head falls into the ashtray during the one paid session you've had in a month, or when an expensive DDL won't exude the magical sound your lower brain insists exists. But hesitating before putting a felling axe through the JBLs, I recall that more often than not, my room is my single obsession. In it time passes in a blur for me. Ignoring food and drink, debt collectors and a long suffering wife, I strive to produce that perfect melody, in some kind of passionate hi-tech crusade. It's all reminiscent of artists starving in garrets, but without the amputated ears.

The Clientele

The studio, based on a B16 and an RSD16:16:2 desk, is also occasionally, if reluctantly available to paying customers. Many of them are, of course, melodically and lyrically illiterate. Mercifully however, some of them, sometimes, are really very good.

On the day one is wearing the producer's hat, at some time during the day a number of assessments of the punter are made; musicianship, professionalism, ability to pay, creative writing ability, degree of drunkenness and dare one say 'star quality'. If any talent is present then the engineer can't help but become more involved than if it isn't. Instead of staring at the wall wondering if the Samaritans do housecalls your foot starts tapping and before you know it you've started tweaking EQ here and there, demonstrating the charms of the beautiful Bel DDL sampler, being flash with triggered noise gates and perhaps even suggesting arrangements. You are by now the producer. Don't stop there.

Certainly in London, making a reasonable living from a 16-track studio is a little easier than becoming an astronaut. This is a result of the cheap availability of the constituent machinery, enabling tribes of rich kids to briefly play George Martin in the basement before getting real jobs in the Abbey National. It is also due to the high cost of borrowing, rent and rates. Therefore it's all the more necessary for the profit-motivated and impoverished studio manager to diversify into other areas; maybe cassette copying, massive VAT fraud or equipment dealing. For the music and profit motivated owner, as an alternative to working for a living, it may be viable to do something profitable with the studio rather than earning from renting. This could be a jingle production or forming record, publishing or production companies.

There is no doubt that running a cheap demo studio is perhaps the most effective way of unearthing talent at a very early stage; eliminating the onerous task of advertising for tapes or chasing round pubs on the off-chance of seeing a seminal Sting or Madonna.

Making the Break

The question then arises, what do you do with the talent when you find it? You will need some right of representation, a commitment from the artist to you, and perhaps a production deal. This could work on the basis that you provide some cheap or free recording time and in return get a chunk of any first years advance and a negotiated royalty rate. Depending on the standard of recording on offer, this could be of great interest to a record company who could be getting master quality material on a tape lease arrangement without having to hand out anything for recording. As a general principle, record companies would rather give an artist a higher royalty than advance cash and a royalty. As a general principle try and get as much cash as possible under whatever pretext, even if your recording standard is acceptable to them, since it makes their commitment to the artist greater. The more you owe them the harder they work to get it back.

All this is of course in the realms of advanced management dealing — the easy part. The hard bit is to get in the door.

Preparing a show reel of maybe six songs of various artists is a good way of covering all the bases, or if you have something really hot, get a cheap video of them during recording. Then follows the arduous task of making appointments with the record publishing A & R departments. As an individual artist or a band, getting an appointment alone is worthy of celebration. However, as the representative of a studio you have a certain low key cachet and may find the task of arranging a day's appointments slightly easier. Then follows the even more arduous task of trudging round to see the bastards. On a good day the guy will be polite, attentive and give you a vodka tonic, but don't take one from all of them on your list or you could lose sight of the objective. On a bad day he'll receive 5 calls from Los Angeles and pretend he's listening to your tape at the same time. Resist the temptation to pull the 'phone cord tight round his neck, just demonstrate the professionalism he lacks and refuse to discuss the music or the band, unless he listens again and gives you a vodka tonic.

If they like the tape, get a good lawyer, negotiate a good deal and put a deposit on a Fairlight and a modest family Ferrari. If they don't like it, put it down to their musical ineptitude and go buy yourself a vodka tonic.

There are compromises though. A friend was told by a substantial publisher that the songs on his tape were 'exquisitely recorded banality'. The studio quality and productions were superb and the songs 'awful', but could they send all their demo business his way. His hole in the wall 8-track operation has since blossomed into a luxurious fully loaded 16-track on the strength of it.

So it's worth having a crack isn't it? In the late 70s CBS signed scores of punk bands in an effort to find one or two long term acts: the throw it at the wall principle. Write it, record it, send it out — that's the equivalent principle in this game. Some of it may stick, and if you don't ask, you don't get do you?