22 November, 2005
I'm Mike Schmidt, the owner of obSession Studio, and this is a page of random ramblings on how the studio came to be, why I like it, and stuff like that. This may go on for a while, so be prepared.
It began when I was very young. Three main things: Don't laugh, but those three things were a Wollensak tape recorder that my dad owned, a box of 3M recording tape, and the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" show on Saturday mornings. No, really!
When I was first starting to speak, my dad always had the microphone in my face. Listening back now, it's actually kind of cute, and very cool to hear.
The box? I'll try to describe it. I'll scan it later (it's been scanned) and get it in here, but for now, here goes. It was a 7" reel of tape, so the box was a hair over 7 inches square. Besides the labeling, there's this black and white picture of a bunch of guys in white shirts and ties, in a recording studio with big booms hanging over them. Then, the whole picture is tinted red, so it's black and white and red all over. I thought that was so cool. I still have a few laying around. I intend to find the one that's in the best condition, and I think I'm going to frame it and hang it up in the control room.
Finally, Alvin. Well, for those of you old enough to remember, "The Alvin Show" (which ran on Saturday mornings between 1962 and 1965) was a cartoon featuring one human and his three companion rodents; Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. Well, for rodents, they were fairly talented in the area of singing; particularly 3-part harmony. Their human, Dave (David Seville) seemed to be their manager or owner or something. BUT!!! In almost every episode, someone would have a musical epiphany, and they'd all run to the recording studio they had right there in the house. How cool would that be, huh? Also, I figured out that if you played one of their albums at 16rpm (old turntables could do that), you could hear Seville's real voice singing their parts. As a result, some of my earliest understanding of part singing came from The Chipmunks. Pathetic, I know, but whatever works, right? But I digress.
The seeds are planted.
In 5th grade, I got my first tape recorder; a little Panasonic 3" reel-to-reel. I used it to death, literally! I played with it constantly. By high school, I'd worked my way up to a 5" reel-to-reel, and for a high school graduation present, my parents got me a Pioneer RT-1020L, 10.5" reel-to-reel. I was ecstatic!! I would have preferred the 1020H, but my dad overrode that decision. The difference was that the "L" was the Low speed model (3.75 and 7.5 ips) and the "H" was the High speed model (7.5 and 15 ips). His rationale was economy; mine was sound quality. Oh well, I was thrilled, nevertheless (alwaysthemore?). That led to some microphones (cheap, gold-colored, hi impedance Herald mics purchased at Team Electronics in Sheboygan, WI).
About the same time (August of 1975), I took up the banjo. And in the Spring of 1976, I took a recording course at Dave Kennedy Recording Studio in Milwaukee, WI, and went on to work there part time for a few months.
In August of 1976, I went away to the University of Miami to pursue a degree in Music Engineering, transferred to the University of Wisconsin, formed a Bluegrass band, bought more equipment over the years, etc., etc., etc. The band recorded in various studios over the years, and I always loved it. Never could get enough!
I worked at Gilmour Bros. Musick[sic] in Appleton, WI, from 1978 to 1987 and eventually became manager of their recording department. That was great. I got to learn every piece of equipment thoroughly before buying my own stuff... which I did... every chance I got - with an employee discount to boot.
In 1987, I moved to Nashville... along with all my recording equipment and my banjo. About the first thing I did when I got there was to buy a Fostex Model 80, 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, to go with the Fostex 450 mixer I already owned. I started recording songwriters I'd met at the music store I worked in (Music City Music). Then I got a job at Harrison, Inc., a builder of high-class studio mixing consoles. I was a technical writer. That led to a part-time job as a recording engineer at Vanderbilt University, some session work as a musician, and more contacts for my own recording projects.
In July of '88 I moved to a new apartment, right next to this singer who started helping me on my recording projects. One thing led to another, and, eventually she became my wife. We kept recording ourselves and a few others over the years, particularly in Nashville, but later in Memphis, too. It was a blast.
I'll skip a few chapters here. If I haven't already lost your attention, the details I'm skipping would certainly put you to sleep. Suffice to say, a few years, a few jobs, one baby, and a few moves later, we wound up back in Wisconsin. Built one house with a small studio, then a second house with what is now obSession Studio.
And it is truly an obsession. Lately, it's all I can think about. All I want to do is go downstairs and do stuff. If there's no stuff to do, I'm happy just dubbing old tapes to CDs or remixing old tapes for the umpteenth time.
So that's pretty much it. I may update this from time to time, but I'd have to say this is the bulk of information regarding my interest in, and obSession with, recording.
