“The Trend”
Guest Blog Post by: Jake Sharp
I’ve often been surprised at how conservative musicians can be. Not conservative in any political sense but in the resistant-to-change sense. One place where this is abundantly clear is in the digital recording domain. There is a hard line that separates the older recording musicians who could learn from the digital whiz kids and the younger ones who could really use the experience and wisdom of the older generation. Unfortunately, these voices seem to never be in the same room together.
This split is very apparent when the subject turns to “The Trend”. That is the ongoing trend that continues to lead away from commercial studios and toward home recording. It’s telling that this trend is almost 15 years old by now and no significant advances have been made toward fixing it. As a result commercial studios have closed and continue to do so. Obviously, there is work to be done on both sides of this issue.
The older generation of producers, mixers, engineers etc. have a very antagonistic view of this trend and rightly so as they have paid a very real price in hours billed. Many of the younger studio pros got their start using home recording software and, as a result, have a more relaxed attitude toward its use. It’s not always easy to see common ground between these two factions but it is there.
I recently gave a presentation on this subject and found myself host to quite a few different opinions after the event. It was a diverse crowd in terms of age and musical style and the content was well received in general. However, the age split was there to be seen and there were a few who had technical questions and concerns and a few who said my project shouldn’t exist at all! I wasn’t surprised at all to find a few long time studio pros who were upset at the notion that they should play nice with “those people”. The subject of the presentation was my Indiegogo project called Profound Studio and its goal is to bring home recorders together with the people they need to make better recordings…pros.
The typical home recording enthusiast will struggle for years to make sense out of the complex and powerful software that is available to them. Many of them are also working hard to learn to play an instrument and all this stress can be really detrimental to music making. In this process they’ve suffered more and wasted more time than is necessary and could have benefitted greatly from access to the knowledge and skill of pros.
The funny part of all this is that the solution is right there contained in the problem and I’ve come up with a little “formula” for explaining this problem:
The Knowledge still rests with the pro.
The Need for Knowledge still rests with the client.
The more people turn to home studios, the greater this “Knowledge Gap” becomes and the more pros are needed to fill the gap.
I’ve created Profound Studio to give home recorders a place to work with pros in a friendly environment without resentment over
“The Trend”.
About the author:
Jake Sharp is an Atlanta based jazz guitarist and composer and has been making music for 26 years. He has won recognition in the Bilboard world song contest. He has released a CD of original compositions called “Brilliant Shadows”. He is a luthier (guitar builder) and currently is working on Profound Studio; a website where home recorders come to hire independent pros to help them with their projects or take lessons and learn to do it all themselves. It launches June 11thon Indiegogo.
Please check out Profound Studio at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/profound-studio
https://www.facebook.com/profoundstudio?ref=hl
https://twitter.com/profoundstudio_