An Inspirational Place

I love my studio. It’s small, but mighty. It is the place on earth where I exist at my best. It is my safe haven, my jumping off point into the world of creativity.

I owned a major studio here in NYC for 22 years. Westrax Recording Studios had three recording rooms including my own lead lined isolated midi room where I did most of my work. Even Superman couldn’t see in. We served a diverse public of working artists and I had a strong staff that took care of business so that I could hide in my room and work. Eventually, I decided to close it down and concentrate on my own music without the constant interruptions of an outside public. It was the best decision I ever made.

My son had gone off to college and his bedroom sat unused and virtually empty. It was my wife’s inspired idea to turn this bedroom into a studio. At first I scoffed at her, but she was right. She had the vision and she was dead on. We built a terrific little isolation booth into 2/5 of the room (fits 5 people + various mics) and I took the best of the equipment from Westrax and built Link Recording Studios.

I designed it, built it, and wired it myself. I knew I would not have a technical staff as in years past and that I would have to be Chief Engineer and Mr. Fix-it, so I’d better know every inch of the place backwards and forwards. I spent two solid weeks on my back wiring it and by the time I got done, it actually worked. I did have an expert carpenter build the vocal booth. That baby was a bit beyond me.

I’ve run and maintained LRS for 4 years now and am happy as a clam working there. The commute is great – 7 steps down the hall from my bedroom. I waste no time getting to work.

The room is now driven by 3 Mac Pro computers – one, a dual quad 3.2 intel with 16GB of ram and stacks and stacks of other recording gear too numerous to mention. For years I would save all my pennies and twenties and buy my one piece of dream gear – always the best on the market, never the best bargain. And slowly, after 20 years of buying, I had put together a remarkable assortment of great preamps, outboard processors, mics, speakers and ancillary equipment.

I also put a small fortune into the best of the sample libraries out there. By buying only the best, I assured myself state-of-the-art sound for my recordings. The sampling technology has grown into a virtual art form today. Now virtually every instrument in the world has been meticulously recorded note by note, timber by timber, bowing by bowing, etc., and is sold in amazing, well organized libraries.

So in this little space I can record a full orchestra with the full range of Asian, South American and African instruments to boot. If it’s 2:00 in the morning and I need a staccato tuba played classically or the same played funky with an oom-pah band, I got ‘em – right there in one of my computers. If I need a Chineese erhu, I have a choice of several to choose from. It’s a wonderful world. By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with the sampling technology, this is not synthesis (the emulation of real instruments), this is the actual recording of the real instrument itself.

I keep the room meticulously clean (dust being the enemy of electronic equipment) with everything in its right place. I’ve learned to have everything well organized and at my fingertips so that in the middle of creativity I do not have to lose focus while I stop and look for something. I’m a highly organized being to begin with. It is my salvation. Without it, I could not function. No one can produce great music without being highly organized.

In the morning I walk into the room, hit 4 ‘on’ buttons and the place springs to life. I grab my cup of tea while it’s all warming up and within 5 minutes I can be orchestrating a passage that I was working on the day before. My recording consoles and Logic software all have automated mixing and so every adjustment in the mix that I’ve made previously is remembered and re-established immediately for my today’s session. I work with 12 hard drives that feed me samples and sounds from all over the world and when I need great singers or musicians, I have the amazing talent of New York City to choose from – simply the best in the world. I’m a lucky man.

I live in this dream environment. I’ve spent 25 years putting it together so that it’s a technically astute and highly ergonomic workspace. Even the chair I sit in is a marvel of technical achievement. The space is designed and built for creativity. Enter at night with all its blinking lights and high tech instruments and it feels like you’re entering a spaceship. It’s one sweet room.

So yes, this is a most inspirational place. I’ve set it up that way. I’ve made a commitment to being inspired in this room every day for the rest of my life. I’ve organized it so that it serves this function. And it works. I walk into this room and the juices just start flowing immediately. I don’t even have to warm up. The past 25 years has been my warm-up. In this space I simply continue – continue immediately the previous creative experience.

Out of this room, life is life – the usual joys, the usual hassle. In this room, life is good.

A most inspirational place.

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.