The Hideout
October 13, 2007
I spoke with Alan Chizmar, owner and operator of The Hideout Studio, earlier tonight.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have worked with Al before on recording projects. Most of the people I will write about in this blog were introduced to me in the course of my musical work. I hope this will serve to illustrate the importance of networking, and how it is done, but I will always let you, the reader, know about my connections to these people so you can make up your own mind about my objectivity.
The Hideout has been in operation for three years, since Al moved to Seattle from Arizona. His experience as a performer and sound engineer goes back more than 20 years.
“Something I learned about 10 or 15 years ago, sometimes I can apply that knowledge to a project we’ve got here,” he said.
“Money’s always a concern—it’s a struggling thing,” he said. Although the returns on recording projects are not usually great, Al said it’s “a passion for creating” that drives him. “I like sharing my knowledge,” he said.
Right now the studio is outfitted with an ADAT HD24 for the actual tracking, and the music is dumped into a computer running Adobe Audition for automated mixes.
“Everything is gated and compressed at the front end, which makes clean up easier,” Al added.
In addition, the studio just acquired a Tascam ATR-60 analog tape machine, which is used during the mastering phase to add what Al calls “presence and depth” to the computer mixes. Basically it gives the music a vintage ’70s or ’80s sound, he said.
The studio’s chief sound engineer, James Sullivan, has been “monumental,” Al said, both in terms of choosing equipment and knowing how to make the sounds work the way the musicians want them to.
Al will be judging a battle-of-the-bands contest this weekend as a way to help increase the exposure of the studio. “Basically what builds a great studio is reputation,” he said. Roy’s Rehearsal Studio is sponsoring the contest, and Roy is friends with James Byler, a local promoter who first introduced me to Al. I’ll probably write more about James later on.
