As the home recording revolution continues to pickup speed, the need arises for musicians and composers to have access to quality multi-purpose professional studios. Thus we connected and visited Electrokitty Recording to capture a segment for the Road to Record documentary film. This really hip commercial facility is located just north of downtown Seattle west of the U of W in the Wallingford area.
Studio manager Garrett Reynolds and owner Gary Reynolds were great hosts and had lots of interesting comments about the studio, recording and music. I have to say that filming at Electrokitty was the one of two on location content capture sessions that brought back some memories from long ago. Memories of the Quad 8 Westar, recording with audio engineer Tom Hall and The Avenue song by my old progessive rock band EQ. Tom came along with us and played back some 2” multitrack tape tracks that he had transferred to ProTools, along with a track for the film by artist Chris Newberry (chrisnewberry.com).
The history behind the console dates back to the days of Triad Studios in Redmond, WA. When the Clapp family first bought the studio from the pilots who owned Triad in the late 1980s, the search was on for a new console for studio A.
I had been doing research for consoles and connected with Michael May at Mitsubishi. He made a trip to Seattle to see what we were about, and then Tom Hall actually made a trip to Los Angeles to test out some consoles. He spent some time with Michael running around and finally got to test out the Westar. Then after this the Clapps’, Lars Nefzger and myself journeyed to NAB Show in Las Vegas to purchase the console. {Yes, that’s me pictured here handing Michael the check – Circa 1989}
You could say that filming at Electrokitty Recording really got me jazzed about getting back into the studio to work on sweetening music, dialog and sound effects for upcoming projects.
To find out more about vintage recording consoles, check out this earlier post – Vintage Consoles. And watch for new updates here about the film and book – stay tuned as we continue the journey on the Road to Record.
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