Pat McMakin

Studio: Ocean Way Nashville, Clientele: 3 Doors Down, Beck, Dolly Parton, Web: oceanwaynashville.com

Nashville native, Pat McMakin got his start in studio management as an undergraduate at Belmont University in the late ‘70s. While there, he oversaw the student studio and in 1982 moved on to Tree Publishing. Ocean Way Nashville––now owned by Belmont University––was opened by Allen Sides and Gary Belz in 1996 as something of an extension of Los Angeles’ storied Ocean Way. As an engineer, McMakin worked on Vern Gosdin’s Chiseled in Stone as well as with Ray Charles, Tammy Wynette, and Steve Martin on his 2009 bluegrass record The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo.

Our amazing staff and our service-oriented attitude. We make it familiar and friendly. I give as much care and attention to a newbie who’s never recorded as I do to Bob Seger. The biggest differentiation for us is the room. Our A room is in a beautiful, 120-year-old church sanctuary with 30-foot ceilings. We do orchestras there and can seat 80 people. We also do a lot of scoring for film and video games there including Call of Duty and Fortnite. The video game industry is so rich right now and they can easily add $200,000 [for music] to a project.

Home studios. The technology has gotten so good that you can record pretty credibly anywhere now. That’s been tough to compete with. There was a time when the cost of entry was quite high. Now it’s not. A lot of people mix in private studios. That’s why about 10 years ago I started to look at orchestras––something we could do better than everybody else.

Incidentally, Waves Audio contacted us recently about doing a plug-in. So now, there’s an Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin that’s a model of our control room. When you mix at home, it gives you all the spatial information that you’d have if you were sitting in our room. It even has a head-tracker. As you turn your heard, the perspective of the speaker changes, just as if you were sitting in front of a pair of speakers. People who mix on headphones love it. There’s an Abbey Road equivalent and I believe we’re outselling it. easier to get into. But if you can give a two-month advance notice, the odds of you finding a band and a studio that you like that all line up are much greater. As you start carving down from two months, people and studios start to get booked.

One day we had Joe Bonamassa in one studio, Keb’ Mo’ in another and a third client in B who was using Pino Palladino on bass. I made a point of getting them all in the same room and just sat back and watched as these guys hugged and laughed and generally had fun.

The first thing that happened was that Belmont [University] called on March 15th and told me to shut down the studio. We had sessions booked for that night. They allowed those, but then we had to cancel a lot of stuff, which annoyed several people. They kept us closed for three months. But we used that time; our tech crew never took a day off. They worked straight through and did repairs.

We reopened in June. Violin players wore masks until last week but with brass, that was an issue. But I did some research and learned that brass instruments don’t spew any aerosol. We bought a UVC light so that we could disinfect the studios each night. A month later, we learned that surface-born [infection] wasn’t a huge issue. We’ll still use the UVCs during cold and flu season just because it’s good health. Companies like Netflix and Apple with all those shows ready to go needed scores. We could have picked up a ton of clients during that period. But we had to be closed for the time that we had to be closed. Once we reopened, we picked up some clients.

Yes. Chris Lennertz, a composer who does the music for Lost in Space, can’t fly out to us, so he connects with Audiomovers. Sometime in the two years prior to the pandemic we’d invested in a pretty extensive video installation for this purpose. We have a four-camera feed with the conductor, two shots of the orchestra and a timecode bar. That’s transformational for a busi ness like ours, because it takes a scoring facility that’s in the flyover part of the country and makes it a global business. I’ve done remote sessions for producers in London, L.A. and Tokyo.

If anything, the pandemic has solidified what recording is: something that’s done as much in a private facility as in a commercial one. An area I like to talk about is to know when you need which. I love the idea that I can sit in a studio and not worry about a clock and it’s comfortable. I get those advantages. But there’s a moment when it’s easier to rehearse your band, rent a studio and a good engineer and knock out five songs. Then if you want to take a month and finish those songs at your producer’s studio, that’s great. You’ll get a better result if you do and will thank yourself for it. Track in a commercial studio. If you don’t, the social and human aspect is stripped away a bit.

Pre-production. When I produce, that’s a place where I really spend the time. Make sure you’ve got the material, that you’ve got it charted and you know all of your transitions from verse to chorus. That makes it go fast, because the band isn’t working on the arrangement as much.

It’s always financial. Since streaming is what it is, a lot of the money goes to the label and not the artist, so the money they’d allocate to a recording budget will be tight. Budgets are lower, costs of doing business have increased, but the effective studio rates haven’t changed in about four years. Keeping a balance to what you can charge versus your cost structure is an age-old business equation.

I fear that it will continue to be whittled down to a few in the city. But there will always be a class of people who will want pro studios. It’s a proven model that has value. If I were in the equipment business, I’d be looking forward to the time coming up [because] recording is becoming more ubiquitous. There’s a rapper who records everything on his iPhone.

The bottom line is that breaking even is about all you’re going to do. You might have years that are profitable, but you’ll end up reinvesting that money. We need to have people who are willing to invest the money and the studio will have value to them beyond the rental income. We see a lot of studios that are sitting on real estate plays. There’s a little one in town and where it sits is zoned for 24 stories. It’ll sell when the right developer comes along.