Business Description
After four years engineering sessions in large recording studios, I felt disconnected from many musicians. What good are my skills and ideas if they’re only available to artists with big budgets? In January, I gave up my studio resources for the sake of reconnecting with my community. I began working independently, with very little gear, no physical space and an unflappable determination to keep making records. This fall, I’ll begin to build a studio of my own.
Accessible Recording will be a recording studio and creative learning space. My biggest goals for this business are to create quality recordings with artists of all genres and increase the number of youth and women working in live and recorded sound through hands-on education and internship programming.
This name reflects the environment I’m working to promote. I want my services to be financially accessible. Maintaining a small space keeps my costs lower and allows me to implement rates that are more feasible for independent and low-income artists. Sliding scale pricing and payment plans will be available. I want to facilitate accessible learning opportunities, particularly for youth, women and beginners. In addition to recording and mixing services, I will host a monthly all-ages skill share where participants may ask questions and experiment. And to be more accessible to parents, childcare will be available to all artists at no additional cost.
In November, Accessible Recording will find its home at 460 Melwood Avenue.
What is the purpose of this loan?
Building a recording studio requires significant upfront costs. This loan will help my business grow in two crucial ways.
$6,500 will be spent on recording equipment. This includes preamps, converters, a patch bay, monitors, microphones and cables. Professional audio gear falls within an extremely wide price range. I’ve made some albums using $1,000 of gear and others with $1 million of gear. I firmly believe you don’t need the most expensive tools to make a great recording but this loan will cover a chunk of the start up costs to purchase necessary gear that I don’t already own. Having this equipment enables me to run recording sessions and generate revenue.
$1,500 will be spent on materials for soundproofing. I have designed and will build a small isolation booth, removable wall paneling and an elevated floor. This entails wood, Owens Corning 703 fiberglass board, acoustic fabric, plexiglass, Auralex U-Boat floor floaters and countless screws and staples. This benefits both the quality of my recordings and my neighbors within the building who won’t have to hear and feel music rumbling through the walls and floor.
Financing this project through Kiva, rather than through a traditional loan, is important to me because it duplicates the kind of community that I hope to create at Accessible Recording. This money will help me build a strong, supportive community of inclusive musicians here in Pittsburgh.