Tell us about the space 

Island City Studios is a multi-room facility with The Press (Studio A) being our largest Control Room and Recording Room.

The Bay (Studio B) is our smaller studio with a Control Room and a medium sized Dubbing Room.

Madfingers is our rehearsal space which is perfect for ensembles of upto 10 people.

I also wanted a good space for musicians to just come and hang and interact and the perfect spots for that are both the balconies and the Cafeteria.

Take us through the process of setting it up

Setting up a studio starts with defining what kind of audio work the team will be doing. For us it was almost anything related to audio. Hence location became the next important factor. It was important for us to be accessible to all Musicians and Production Houses. Also the space itself needed to tick a lot of checkboxes in terms suitability for a Recording Studio. Which is why I hired SoundWizard to make sure that all isolation and acoustic treatment was done with extreme care and precision. Simultaneously, one needs to really consider what equipment will work best for a wide variety of workflows since you never know what to expect in a commercial where you might have a new client everyday. Finally we needed to pick a team for the execution of the project and hence we called on SETHNA Contructions and Kyrus Sethna for interior finishing.

What are some of the studio essentials you would recommend?

Coffee, chilling area, a wide variety of instruments readily available. A good team of engineers and assistants that know the space and gear well. Well maintained and carefully selected recording equipment. And most of all a good acoustically clean Control Room.

What equipment do you use?

I’ll attach a list. But the A room we have a fully loaded API 1608 with Quested q212 as the main speakers.

Pieces of gear you cannot live without

This is a hard question to answer purely because everything that we have right upto the headphone system has bought and used for at least 60/70% of our sessions. So almost everything have, we need to have and hence cannot live without it. But if I had to choose, I would say the API console and Questeds in A.

Describe your work day

Impossible. Since no 2 clients are the same it’s different everyday.

Philosophy or reasoning behind gear choices

I have bought stuff that I know I will use and I that I feel like will give people the right amount of choices to explore their sonic palate.

What’s your next buy for the studio?

Amps, synths, mics. Oh no I’m gonna be broke!!!

Tips to aspiring owners of studios

Make sure that you plan every aspect of your new studio and really think of why you want to set it up before hand so that you make the right choices in the beginning because the setup is so intensive that it’s hard to make big changes later on.

Make sure you understand that takes a while

To break even on the overall cost.