Category: Local Businesses || By

McKeesport holds a secret, even from many local residents.

Located on West Fifth Avenue is a state-of-the-art, full-service recording facility that has served local, national and international recording artists for more than 16 years. Soundscape Studios bills itself as "Pittsburgh's Premiere Recording Facility."

Opened in the early 1980s in an old car dealership, Soundscape was purchased in 1996 by current owner and engineer Doug Kasper, a Pittsburgh native who resides in Allison Park and saw a chance to revive the studio.

"I had an opportunity to start a business," he says. "[Soundscape] came to mind first off because of the design, the studio, and the way they constructed it."

"The walls are 22 inches thick, there are floating floors, no straight walls and they are all curved for sound," Kasper says. "There are separate slabs so there is no vibration, and isolation rooms for isolation on the instruments, so the microphone only picks up one instrument. We get good recordings because all of the elements are working in our favor."

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Soundscape has a live room, which is where the music is recorded, and separate isolation booths made for the recording of singular instruments, such as drums or guitar.

"An important factor of our studio is the isolation that we have," says Bryan Cole, a producer and engineer at Soundscape, and also a country recording artist. "There are separate booths for everything,"

Soundscape is not a place for low-quality demos to be made, he says. "Our studio is a place to come when you're ready to get serious. It's when you are ready to make a real record."

"Soundscape stands out from a lot of other studios in the area due to its construction," says Dave Watson, a former intern and engineer at Soundscape. "You can have great gear, but if the room you are tracking, and/or mixing in is subpar and fighting against you, all of that great gear won't do you much good. The room plays a larger role in the sound of an instrument than most people realize."

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The building is also equipped with a private and fully covered parking area, for the musicians to unload their instruments and equipment and walk right onto the studio floor from the parking area. It's one of the many little features that set Soundscape apart from the rest, Kasper says.

"I love it," says Buddy Hoebler, drummer for local band My Cardboard Spaceship Adventure. "Soundscape has probably been some of the best experiences I've had recording live drums. The atmosphere and staff made it a great place to be creative."

Since Soundscape is rarely advertised, it takes a good amount of word of mouth through the interlacing of different musicians to know about the studio.

"It takes a while to build your reputation at first, and to have people come through," Kasper says. "Most of our business comes through referrals. It took time to build a clientele."

The buildup of clients for the studio came about due to the fact that the individuals can test out the studio to see how they like it, and they can judge for themselves without being truly invested in the facilities.

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Kasper says business is booming, with more than 120 clients and more than 6,000 complete recording sessions.

"People that we have worked with before have come back to make 10 or 12 albums with us and they're very happy with how we do business with them," he says.

No one client or session is made the same; all of the individuals who come to Soundscape record different genres of music, Kasper and Cole say.

"We do all different genres of music, jazz to heavy metal, to country to pop and rap," Cole says. "It keeps us on our toes. We're all musicians so we're very open-minded. We don't turn away any style or genre of music."

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Soundscape engineer David Blaney recently moved to Pittsburgh from Ireland to work as an engineer for Soundscape.

"To work as an engineer, you have to be up to speed with different microphones and complicated devices used to manipulate sound, to basically make music sound good," says Blaney. "You use your ear and need be able to listen. Fundamentally, the most important thing is to understand the music."

The technical aspect is only half of what helps make good sound, he says; a musician or band needs someone behind them to understand their goals for a project, and that's where producers come in.

"As far as producing, you either have it or you don't," Cole says. "Being a producer is like being a psychiatrist, you need to understand your clients' goals. You're also like a trainer. That's what a producer does, they know what buttons to press and when."

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Cole learned the ropes from producers at Avatar Studios in New York City; the studio hosted big names from Paul McCartney to Lady Gaga. And before coming to Soundscape, he lived in Nashville, Tenn., for for years to work with a sound engineer.

"I learned from the best producers and engineers in the industry," Cole says.

"You use your ears and your heart. They create an emotion, that's the job. To inflict that emotion on the artist so when the listener hears it they feel that emotion."

Being a recording artist isn't just about making a CD, it's also about the sound an artist creates and the emotion that goes into every recording project that makes each artist and musician unique. Every staff member at Soundscape Studio understands that you need to be there with the individual or the band every step of the way.

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"You have to be able to do the technical part well and also be their friend and help them through the process," Kasper, the owner, says.

Kasper, as well as many of the staff members at Soundscape, are themselves musicians, and this gives them a firsthand understanding of the process, and the emotion that goes into recording.

"People are pouring their heart and soul to you and you just have to make them feel comfortable and try to get the best performance out of them," says Kasper. "The better the performance, the better the recording, the better the sound."

But the music industry is a serious business, and despite the fun and joy of creating music with passionate individuals, having a serious focus on projects and using top-notch quality equipment is the only right way to do it, he and others say.

"There's a reason we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on high quality equipment --- because of the demand of high quality," Cole says. "It's the only way to take it seriously in this business. It's the presentation. You're only taken as seriously as you look; we do it the right way."

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Jacqueline Dell is a journalism student at Penn State Greater Allegheny, president of the Student Government Association and managing editor of the Penn State Greater Allegheny Collegian. This is her second byline at Tube City Almanac.