Recording Studios: Relational Spaces of Creativity in the City

Abstract

This article discusses recording studios as urban spaces that have intimate relationships with music. The various human actors involved in the recording of music (musicians, studio engineers, producers), and its consumption (broadcasters, audiences), in addition to numerous non-human actors (recording technologies, acoustic spaces, city landscapes) are all in some way connected through affective relations in recording studios. Changing recording technologies have challenged earlier meanings and uses of recording studios, and altered the format and terms of musical labour. In a digital era where home recording and cheaper mastering technologies are prevalent, studios have re-orientated themselves towards other non-music industries, or become transformed into tourist sites. The history of recording studios thus reveals much about how music, space and musicians interact: it is through a composite and always evolving way that recording studios come to be viewed as vital spaces of music in the city.