Canada's $100-million a year studio sound recording industry is facing a seismic shift, says Gil Moore, owner of Mississauga, Ont.-based Metalworks Studio, recognized as the Canadian industry leader and 13-times named the Recording Studio of the Year by The Canadian Music Week (CMW) Music Industry Awards.
"I think we've reached the stage where technology is dramatically revolutionizing the studio industry," said Mr. Moore, who is also the drummer for Triumph, the legendary rock band of the 1970s and 1980s that released its Greatest Hits Remixed last year. "Because of the revolution in software and computers, you have the ability to record pretty much anything you want on a computer. It doesn't replace a recording studio by any means, but it still puts a lot of recording tools in the hands of an awful lot of individuals.
"The big studios that stay with exactly the same model will die. For the big studios, the challenge is to harness the technology and in order to do that, they're going to have to evolve."
Evolving has been a constant part of Metalworks in its more than three decades of existence — which is why it continues to succeed. In 2005, the company launched two new businesses, Metalworks Institute, an accredited private college, and Metalworks Production Group, which provides audio, video, lighting and staging systems for live events.
In fact, the studio began in 1977 as a tiny sound and light company to service Triumph, but it quickly grew into a semi-private studio, with requests from other musicians over the years. By 1988, when Triumph stopped touring, Mr. Moore took over full ownership of Metalworks and turned it into a studio that has attracted such top Canadian and international musical superstars as 'N Sync, Christina Aguilera, Tina Turner, David Bowie, Mick Fleetwood, The Spin Doctors, Anne Murray, DMX, Sisqo and The Cranberries.
Today, Metalworks has six studios with state-of-the-art equipment and has expanded into DVD authoring and video editing for such clients as Live 8, Rush, The Tea Party, Moist, Loreena McKennitt and Tom Cochrane as well as for some film and TV productions.
And all this through word-of-mouth and referrals.
"We don't do any advertising," said Mr. Moore. "It helps being around for a long time. The music world is not as big as people think it is. Now we have a new generation coming to us. For example, we had Drake here last week."
But many of Metalworks' clients are also musicians starting out who are simply seeking top-calibre recording that can only be achieved by professionals. It turns out recording isn't just technical, it's an art as well.
"In world class studios, you have a combination of high-tech digital equipment and almost antique analog equipment. No matter what's come along with digital technology, there are certain things you can't replace with certain parts of analog equipment. There's an awful lot of analog that goes into the recording and mixing of pretty much every song, although they all end up in the digital domain. And the best sound engineers are like the best chefs: they know the spices they need to use. Sometimes they use digital, sometimes analog."
Even successful studios such as Metalworks will have to adapt to the challenges the industry faces from new technologies, Mr. Moore said. Indeed, the Toronto native spends time every day researching technology shifts and how they affect his industry.
"I know we're looking at different alternatives to drive Metalworks as a technology brand in music and there are things we are incubating to try to stay ahead of the curve."
Studios are going to have to figure out how to interact with the new technologies, including the Internet, he said.
"I think musicians in the future are going to be collaborating across the world rather than across the city. And I think the synthesizer is going to be more popular than acoustic instruments. A lot of sound creation in the future will be electronic. And there's going to be more and more of a generation of people able to participate in the creation of music because of that, who may never sit in front of a piano or get piano lessons growing up," he said.
"I always joke when people ask me for my opinion about a new band. I always say, which guy is the IT guy? You have a drummer, singer, guitar player, but today you need an IT guy."
Another shift is coming from mobile technology.
"I think it's going to change the way people listen to music," Mr. Moore said. "It's changing it already, but I think we're only seeing the beginning of a wave that's likely to be a tsunami.
"You have to be cognizant of how something you create is distributed. So if you think about audio and video, the objective would be to get as much resolution as possible into the tiniest package and that's hard to do.
"You know, drummers are always counting things."
No comments:
Post a Comment