The Silent Studios

Few Harvard students frequent the Student Organization Center at Hilles, the multipurpose building that watches over the southwest corner of Radcliffe Quadrangle. Even fewer take the elevators to the penthouse, the ghostly top floor of the SOCH that greets visitors with unused study spaces, a barren lounge, and a once-functional café closed by the College in 2009 in the midst of $77 million in budget cuts. But the deserted penthouse boasts something that no place in the Yard can offer—deep in its hollows, unbeknownst to most students, is a recording studio.

Six years after its opening, the space has fallen into disuse. The student-run recording studio was equipped with modern technology and expensive software, and it initially created a buzz among the diverse group of musicians on campus. In a Crimson article published on the eve of its 2011 relaunch, co-founder John A. Ausick ’13 mentioned that he hoped to “develop a musical community centered around the recording studio.” Eventually, however, complaints began to outnumber the compliments as the studio gained a reputation for being messy and disorganized. Though efforts to unite campus musicians are underway, for now the musical community at Harvard is as incohesive as it was when the space first opened. What happened to the studio and the vision that inspired it?

OFF-AIR

The SOCH studio may bill itself on its website as “a perfect way for student musicians to learn more about recording techniques,” but students tell another story. Even among those who know of its existence, the SOCH’s studio is more of an afterthought than a popular destination. Of the countless musicians on campus, only 124 have undergone the training process necessary to get swipe access to the studio, and even fewer use it regularly. Calvin K. W. Chin ’14 is one of those few, and he found out that the SOCH had a recording studio not by word of mouth, but independently through the SOCH’s website. He explains that the recording studio is a convenient place to play music with his friends, but not user-friendly to students with little or no recording experience.

“I’ve not used it a single time to record anything,” Chin says. “I suppose it’s a good space for recording, but I haven’t recorded because I have no idea how to use the adjacent room.” The recording studio is divided into two spaces—one larger room for rehearsing and playing music, and one smaller room for mastering tracks. This smaller room contains a computer equipped with digital audio workstations and a pair of monitor speakers, from which musicians can record and mix the tracks played from the practice room. Students say the training process, in which students are granted access to the studio after demonstrating competence to the studio manager, is far from rigorous and leaves them with little comfort using the expensive and arcane equipment. Like Chin, some feel that the process of using the studio could run more smoothly.

For Taylor A. Cressler ’14, however, the studio is a valuable resource for making high quality recordings. As president of the Harvard College Voice Actors’ Guild, Cressler sometimes brings voice actors to the SOCH to record radio plays, poems, and short stories. Though Cressler does know how to use the equipment and needs only one microphone to record speech, he has still found the studio difficult to navigate.

“It’s very hard to find things,” Cressler says. “I did have one experience where I went to the SOCH to record something with a bunch of my actors, got there, and couldn’t get into the cabinet where all the microphones were.” To students like Cressler, such difficulties deter them from frequenting the SOCH’s recording studio, and they often find themselves disappointed with their experiences there. Cressler agrees that there are many drawbacks to working in the recording studio, such as the disarray in which its users often keep the practice room—by the end of the semester last year, the room was covered with cables, amplifiers, drumsticks, and boxes full of CDs and band t-shirts.

“I think the policy is ‘clean up after yourselves,’ but that doesn’t usually happen,” Cressler says. “Things go missing from there all the time. There are wires everywhere. And I’m also pretty sure that very few, if any, people actually know how to use the software that’s on the computer and the equipment.”

A SILENT COMMUNITY

The underuse of the recording studio is just one corner of a largely discouraging picture of the independent music scene at Harvard, which includes artists in every genre, from hip-hop to indie rock. In many cases, classes begin to take precedence over the arts, and outside of official extracurricular groups, it is difficult for many students to come up with a legitimate excuse to pursue their music. Rapper Zak T. Aossey ’14 has fortunately been able to balance his academic career with football and music. He speaks passionately about his experiences and the mixtape he plans to release this fall. When asked about Harvard’s attitude towards its musicians, however, his voice becomes noticeably sharper.

“There are not a lot of resources to the music-making community [at Harvard],” Aossey says. The House music rooms, he says, have little to offer. “When I want to go practice or write, I maybe go to one of the music rooms here, but it’s like this 300-year-old room with a piano in it. There’s no equipment, there’s no resources for us, so it’s really hard as a musician to make your material on campus and keep your college lifestyle.” A former frequenter of the recording studio in the SOCH, Aossey recently left the free on-campus resource in favor of a professional studio near Davis Square because at this point in his career, he felt that the difference in quality was worth both the distance and price. Despite his choice, Aossey emphasizes the importance of maintaining the SOCH’s recording studio.

“There are a lot of artists on campus…. People need a place to go record their music,” Aossey says. “It’s really expensive to go to studios and to have an engineer working with you—so if they gave us that outlet and if they gave us a quality place to record our music, we would be representing Harvard with our creativity, and at the same time, we would have a tangible music resume to show the world.”

To musicians like Aossey on campus, the disuse of the SOCH’s recording studio represents more than a facility not living up to its potential—it has become the unfortunate symbol of a silent community. Chin notes that Harvard may be missing much of its student body’s musical potential. “There’s a lot of untapped talent,” Chin says. “Other than the big student groups…there’s a whole lot of other people who dabble in music, but I would say that it’s mostly underground and no one really knows what happens.”

Nobody knows this better than Evan B. Weiner ’15, who became the SOCH’s recording studio coordinator in April. Weiner, a bassoonist and drummer, has experienced both the organized arts and the underground music scene at Harvard. According to Weiner, it is a very specific but large fraction of the music scene that goes unnoticed at Harvard. “I play bassoon and I’ve done a lot of orchestras on campus, and that’s a fantastic community that exists and is thriving. I’ve got a lot of friends doing a capella—that’s another area of musicianship that’s great to get involved with,” Weiner says. “I think the options for people who don’t do music in those areas are more difficult to find.”

Weiner acknowledges the negative reputation the SOCH’s studio has gained of late, but he is enthusiastic about the potential growth of the music community as the SOCH begins to hold more events and live shows that feature student-made music. His vision is to address the disuse of the studio by creating a student-led community focused around collaborative events. The recording studio, according to Weiner, “doesn’t exist without the other dimensions of a live music community.”

However, some students think that a bigger push from the administration would be necessary for the music scene to genuinely take off. James E. Dickerson ’14 has used the studio as a practice space since his freshman year. Former Musicians’ Representative for the Kuumba Singers (who rehearse in the penthouse of the SOCH), Dickerson believes that the community won’t grow without official recognition.

“My sense is that to have continuity beyond four years, it’s going to take an actual effort from the administration or from OSL,” Dickerson says. “There are many ways that could take shape, but I think that would definitely be a good goal moving forward to concretize the community.” Dickerson cites songwriting classes, workshops, and an official leader of the community as examples of steps that the administration could take to foster the school’s independent music scene. But to even ask the College for help first requires more organization than this extremely eclectic community currently has.

COLLABORATIVE TRACKS

Fortunately for Harvard’s musicians, Weiner and the SOCH are not alone in the quest to bring together the independent musicians of Harvard. Besides the countless musicians who would benefit from it, the studio has a powerful ally in Quad Sound Studios, a student group that runs another on-campus recording studio in the basement of Pforzheimer House. Unlike the SOCH’s studio, QSS offers sound engineering training to teach students how to produce musical recordings. Musicians interested in using their studio then get matched with one of these trained engineers. Around since the ’80s, QSS launched a major renewal effort in 2012 under the leadership of Matthew P. Sheets ’15. The president of QSS has bright ideas for the two studios’ futures.

Collaboration seems to be the cornerstone of the two groups’ efforts, which is reflected in the relationship between the studios. Instead of being a competitor to the SOCH recording studio, QSS looks to serve the same community in a different way. “Different use cases, but one community,” Sheets says, explaining that the two groups serve slightly different purposes. Whereas the SOCH’s studio is a more flexible creative space in which musicians can record, write, and rehearse music, QSS is a more traditional studio, allowing students to reserve the room and setting them up with students who have been trained in sound engineering. Both QSS and the SOCH’s recording studio will turn towards addressing the needs of the musicians on campus. “We really view the studios as a means towards supporting and helping build upon and create this community,” Sheets says.

“The cool thing about a recording studio is that it’s genre-less,” Sheets adds. “Every genre records, so it creates an opportunity for everybody to mingle together in the same place.” According to Sheets, uniting Harvard’s musical community will act as positive feedback for the musicians and encourage musical partnership. “When you do recordings, you get collaboration between different genres, which is the ultimate goal.”

Both Sheets and Weiner envision this growth of an independent musical scene at Harvard, fueled by cooperation and encouragement from fellow musicians. In this light, the SOCH recording studio may act as something tangible around which to organize. To supplement this, Sheets and Weiner have created an online musical community where Harvard students can find future bandmates or look for collaborators.

“It’s called Quad Sound Connect, and it has existed, but basically isn’t populated,” Weiner explains. “What we’re hoping [for] that to be is a database open to anyone at Harvard College, and you’ll be able to put up biographical information as well as information about what you play and what kind of genres you’re interested in.” Sheets explains that Quad Sound Connect is currently being redesigned. In the meantime, he is focusing on the reopening of QSS’s studio, which he hopes will occur in the fall.

COME TOGETHER

A recording studio on campus is a valuable resource for every Harvard musician. But even more importantly, the College’s community of independent musicians seems to be at a crucial tipping point: many students have found themselves wishing that they were part of a more organized and recognized group. Dickerson has many ideas for expediting the process. “I could envision house-wide songwriting collaboratives, or even Harvard-wide things like that,” he says enthusiastically. “I think those would provide better opportunity for people to meet each other, especially to form bands or collaborate on songs. I definitely say there’s room for growth as far as cultivating the community of original songwriters and performers at Harvard.” The collaboration between the SOCH’s studio and QSS is the first step towards this goal’s realization.

“I think [the studio is] very much a single part in a much broader picture,” Weiner says. For many in the music community, this broader picture must incorporate some way of encouraging collaborative music efforts. Harvard’s independent musicians recognize the importance of Weiner’s vision of a united, invigorated music scene. As Chin puts it, “You have to make friends before you make music.”

—Staff writer Se-Ho B. Kim can be reached at sehokim@thecrimson.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: Oct. 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a recording studio opened in 2011 in the Student Organization Center at Hilles. In fact, while the studio was relaunched in 2011, its grand opening was in 2007.