Music studio owners, Matthew Taylor Bray of SosH Studios in Bushwick, and AJ Tissian of The Wave Lab, NYC in Williamsburg share their thoughts on the future of recorded music.
In his acceptance speech at the 2020 Grammy Awards, Finneas O’Connell, having just won Song of the Year for “Bad Guy” which he co-wrote and produced for his sister Billie Eilish said, “This is to all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re going to get one of these.” O’Connell’s promise demonstrated how far musicians have strayed from the image of a conventional recording session where engineers lean over a vast landscape of dials, buttons, and sliders, lights blinking like Morse code, indecipherable to the untrained observer.
A valid concern for the future of physical recording studios has been circulating within the music industry for at least 30 years. The advent of digital recording software in the early ’90s allowed anyone with access to a computer to make significant contributions to the canon of new music without ever setting foot inside a commercial studio.
This new trend of recording music at home poses a threat not only to brick-and-mortar recording facilities, but to the old method of recording music on analog tape and adjusting it through specially designed audio consoles. Digital music software such as Pro Tools has all but changed the minds of musicians who once swore that digital sound could never rival the warmth of analog recordings.
Fearing that my chance to discover the secrets contained behind the doors of New York’s own recording studios has come a day late and a dollar short, I nevertheless set out to learn what I could about the past, present, and future of music’s dedicated recording facilities. I asked two local Brooklyn studio owners to weigh in on the debate over bedroom vs. commercial studios and digital vs. analog recording methods.
AJ Tissian, a veteran of New York’s music scene, and Matthew Taylor Bray, the owner of a new studio in Bushwick, invited me into their studios and sat down for a deep dive on the legitimacy of the arguments being made. From our conversations, it’s clear that the case for physical studios and analog equipment over digital software is more complicated than a simple argument over sound quality.
Traveling Back in Time at The Wave Lab, NYC
Descending into Tissian’s studio feels like opening the hatch of a long lost submarine. On the other side of a heavy metal door is a single room lined with shelves of science fiction memorabilia and loose pieces of equipment including an original Macintosh computer from 1985. Two weatherworn skylights allow in filtered sunlight, conveying a vague idea of what time it is outside. The bare essentials of survival are laid out on a small cart against the wall – coffee maker, toaster, crockpot.
The Wave Lab, NYC is not a “destination” studio, unless the buzz of Williamsburg is the vibe you wish to capture in your session. Outside on Grand Street, small restaurants, local businesses, and pedestrians go about their day while a constant whisper of traffic drifts over from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at the end of the block.
Like the cockpit of a spaceship, Tissian’s analog mixing board dominates the middle of the room, flanked by stacks of compressors, speakers, and a tape deck. Its surface is cluttered with rows of knobs and buttons stretching back so far I’d have to stand to reach the farthest dial. Above the board stands a large monitor displaying a ProTools interface – the antithesis of analog recording. “As you can see,” he says, “in my world, I am a hybrid of both these existences.”
Tissian ushers me onto a dusty office chair, its seat cracked with age, and places a bass guitar in my hands. My fingers feel relieved to have something to occupy them while we chat.
Tissian started his career in audio engineering by going on tour as an audio tech many decades ago. He opened The Wave Lab, NYC in 1997 and through a job at Atlantic records amassed a list of clients including Tori Amos, Phil Collins, Philip Glass, Sir Rod Stewart, Stone Temple Pilots, L’il Kim, Rolling Stones, and Rush. He also worked at New York’s School of Audio Engineering (SAE) for eighteen years, teaching nearly every course offered.
A lifelong musician, Tissian once had “Beatle-esque” dreams of working daily in a recording studio. He soon realized it would be more cost-effective to buy the recording gear for his own studio rather than rack up the cost of renting one for rehearsals, recording, and post-production mixing and mastering. Twenty-four years later, his studio rivals Manhattan’s commercial recording facilities. “It’s so competitive now.” He says, “They’re competing with people like me – which they shouldn’t be because [those places] blow me out of the water – but the thing is *whispers* I got the same equipment they got.”
SosH Studios and the “Third Space” of American Culture
“Watch your head…and your feet at the same time…I think you can handle it.” Bray says as he leads me up a short flight of concrete steps and through a metal hatch that opens onto the pavement in the back of his building, “This is the most Bushwick thing you’ve ever seen.” He says proudly. We’re in a modest backyard nestled between the brick walls of two apartment buildings. A basketball hoop without a net is attached to one wall, and a solitary barbeque grill languishes nearby. At the back is a small shelter with a picnic table, chairs, and potted plants.
Bray says he built SosH Studios out of nothing. Surrounded by industrial buildings and graffitied murals, Bushwick is the domain of young artists who’ve been priced out of Williamsburg. SosH Studios grew out of an informal artist collective known as the Social House Collective. “The idea is that a community space is tied to the recording studio.” Bray explains, “It’s the third space of American culture, like Starbucks. It’s not home, it’s not work, it’s the community meeting space.” Before the pandemic, the studio hosted songwriting sessions, monthly concerts, and weekly Sunday potlucks. Due to their all-too-familiar side hustles in restaurants and bars, many of the musicians are also excellent cooks.
Inside the studio, three basement rooms function as an isolation booth, a mixing station, and a lounge area. Shelves and racks display a collection of instruments from guitars and basses to an accordion and banjo.
Bray started out playing lead guitar in a number of different bands. After finishing high school, he moved from Kansas to Nashville, TN, where he attended Belmont college. He formed a blues rock band called Delta Saints but left the band to move to New York. He has played for Wicked on Broadway, takes gigs as a session musician, and is now completing a master’s in songwriting at New York University.
Bray’s ultimate goal is to encourage musicians who come to SosH to get into the zone and experiment or write something new and unplanned. “The recording studio functions like a temple of creativity,” he says, “It’s like a sacred space, more than just having the minimal functional thing you need to get the job done.”
Bray is confident that there will still be a need for his studio, regardless of any technological advancements. “There’s certain things that are not obsolete, like having a creative space, and a sanctuary for community.” And perhaps it’s because of the increase in technology that creative spaces like his continue to be coveted. “New York is such a loud city,” he explains, “a recording studio is the only silent place.” Bray says that musicians value silence more than anyone he knows.
Analog vs. Digital: A Debate Over Sound Quality
The argument for analog over digital recording requires an understanding of physics. Luckily, I have two intelligent pros to walk me through the details. Tissian describes natural (analog) sound like what is captured on a vinyl record or a cassette as a wave form flowing between the two of us. When that wave is transferred to a digital format, he says, it becomes a series of dots. The dots are so fast that like a rapidly blinking light, our ears like our eyes register it as one steady stream:
“So, I’m speaking to you and this wave travels through the air, and that wave is infinite in its variables. There’s no breaks in it unless I stop talking; it just continues on its way. If I play a sine wave, “boooo….” It would be an infinite continuous wave; but, as soon as we digitize that it turns into a series of pulses . . . “brrrrrrr.” They play so quickly that you can’t hear the spaces, but the spaces exist and you wind up with holes.”
Analog and digital recording methods are not mutually exclusive, meaning that an analog recording can be transferred to a digital file, and a digital sound file can be run through an analog mixing board to allow for hands-on work during the mixing and mastering process.
Bray describes mixing as the process of adjusting the volume of each instrument you record and combining them into one product. Compression, equalization, and reverb all imply an adjustment to the volume. “So, you have sixteen different instruments,” says Bray, “you balance that all down to one audio file, and anything you do to that [final mix] is mastering.”
The Digital Advantage – Convenient and Cost Effective
Despite their appreciation for analog’s higher quality sound, Tissian and Bray sing the praises of digital technology. The ability to receive digital files provided them with work during the Covid-19 pandemic which prevented them from opening their doors to the public. The opportunity for remote work also allows their studios to have international reach. Bray has a client in China and Tissian regularly works for a music producer in Thailand who found him via his website.
Digital equipment is also cheaper to purchase and maintain than its analog counterpart. “I personally mix and master digitally because I don’t have consistent access to hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of analog gear.” Explains Bray. Analog equipment is a $100,000-$200,000 investment, while a digital interface like the one Tissian uses cost him less than $20,000.
Bray says the value of analog gear is often reduced to a novelty item used for impressing clients. “I’ve spoken to a lot of engineers who have $200,000 of analog gear in their studio and they say they only use it about 5% of the time.”
One important feature of digital software is the ability to record and save infinite takes. Tissian, who expects a band to come in with material ready to record, both appreciates and snubs the practice of multitracking. “There’s a lot of time saving elements to working in the digital domain.” He says, “I don’t have to worry if the singer wants to sing that thing fifty-three times. Okay, maybe you wanna practice a little more before you get here, but if that’s what you gotta do…”
Digital “fixes” such as pitch correction also run the risk of de-humanizing a piece of music by making it too perfect. Tissian relates this musical airbrushing to an episode of Star Trek where Data the android plays violin. “It’s a flawless performance, but at the end, [the] audience reaction is kinda… *slow claps* …and they’re like, well yeah, technically it was perfect, but it had no soul.”
The Analog Advantage – Sound Quality and a Tactile Experience
“Analog gear will never go obsolete.” Tissian declares. However, consistent with the short lifespan of new technology, digital gear “goes obsolete all the time.”
As the name of his studio indicates, Tissian deals in analog. “For people [who] really care, they still have a place to go, and they will get a sound that you can’t get out of this.” he says, gesturing toward his computer screen.
Bray admits that some things do sound better coming out of analog gear and reveals that the same engineers he spoke to often plug digital files into their analog gear simply for the tactile workflow.
Tissian helped a young engineer discover this physical connection firsthand when he let someone come to his studio who was interested in buying the same mixing board:
“He had no experience with an analog mixing board, everything he’d always done was inside of the computer. I was sitting on the sofa reading a magazine while he was just dicking around. . . . all of a sudden, I hear him . . . “Oh my fucking God!” and I looked up and was like, “What?” and he’s like, “This is fucking unbelievable! . . . I turned this equalizer and I could feel it in my arm when I was tuned in!” And I was like, “Well, yeah…it’s kinda how it works.”
Tissian says that digital sound files are adequate for commercials, TV, or audio books, but he prefers to record music on tape due to the wave/dot difference. His senses are heightened enough to recognize the effect that sound quality has on him, “I find psychologically that digital music tires me out faster than if I listen to analog formats.” he says, “If I’m in a car and someone’s playing mp3s, in fifteen minutes I’m ready for it to be over . . . it’s like a ball-peen hammer banging on [my] ear and brain.”
I relate this story to Bray who offers a challenge, “That’s what he says, but if you gave him a blind test, I don’t know if he would be able to tell the difference.” I’ll admit that’s a competition I’d love to watch.
In Conclusion: The Debate is Far From Over
Valid reasons to choose digital or analog methods can be found in every argument and counter argument. Cost, availability, and infinite corrections are all reasons to choose a digital system, but the human connection to analog recordings and hands-on equipment can never be replicated.
Tissian offers a final angle to consider. “There are people making number one hits on multi-million dollar analog systems, and there are people making number one hits on [their computer] with GarageBand.” Tissian says. At the end of the day, the quality of the recording depends on the quality of the artist. “None of it matters if the performance is bad.” he says, “We can have an amazing recording of a shitty song, and it’s still a shitty song – it doesn’t get better – but you can have a terrible recording of a great song, and you will listen to it over and over and over again simply because the song is so good.” He uses Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” as an example, “I’m not saying it’s a bad recording, but it’s a dated recording and it sounds that way. There’s imbalances in the instrumentation . . . ‘cause it was all done live . . . but every time it comes on the radio, you’re like, “Whoop! What you want!” and you don’t think about any of the flaws.”
As for the role of the recording studio and the producers and engineers who work in them, I asked Bray and Tissian if they fear that the rise of bedroom studios will one day cost them their livelihoods.
Tissian refers back to hearing Billie Eilish’s claim that they create everything in her brother’s bedroom. What O’Connell failed to mention in his acceptance speech is that the digital recording they made of “Bad Guy” was sent out and professionally mixed by Rob Kinelski, an experienced engineer whose clients include LL Cool J, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, and Big Sean.
I let that sink in as I consider all that I’ve learned from Tissian and Bray about sound in the digital age. I love that recording music feels accessible to young artists, but I often feel like the world of new technology is spinning at a velocity I might never catch up with. As a musician, I fall squarely on the side of analog sound and gear, so I’m grateful to report that at least for now there is still a use for physical recording studios to inspire artists to create their work and provide them with engineers who have the skill it takes to capture their sound at its finest.
Alternative Music Blog 
An interesting and very well-written article Holly.
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Thanks!
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