{"id":21092,"date":"2021-06-05T05:30:11","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T09:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21092"},"modified":"2021-06-06T10:24:04","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T14:24:04","slug":"industry-profile-andy-bishops-giraffe-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/05\/industry-profile-andy-bishops-giraffe-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry Profile: Andy Bishop’s Giraffe Studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a pandemic-era interview with the head of one of Western North Carolina’s best recording studios. — bk<\/span><\/p>\n

By definition, musicians are a creative lot. So no matter what the style or genre, one is likely to find musicians seeking \u2013 and finding \u2013 ways to express themselves creatively, even during during a pandemic when live performance isn\u2019t an option. One newer way to do that is live streaming concerts.<\/p>\n

But an even more tried-and-true method is recording. While audio recording technology came into being as early as 1857 (thanks to Parisian inventor \u00c9douard-L\u00e9on Scott de Martinville), it wasn\u2019t until Thomas Edison patented the phonograph cylinder in 1878 that practical audio recording was available. In the century-plus that followed, the process was refined again and again, making it possible to capture music and other sounds in a manner so realistic that they can barely be discerned from the original sounds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Further advances in technology put quality sound recording into the hands of amateurs and hobbyists; low-cost equipment yielded high quality results. Meanwhile, while recording studios had once been the domain of musicians of wealth (and\/or on a record label\u2019s expense account), similar technological leaps made smaller studios a cost-effective option that could still provide excellent recordings.<\/p>\n

Today, Western North Carolina is home to around 20 professional recording studios; that figure doesn\u2019t even count the home setups that many musicians maintain. And remarkably, many of those studios continue to thrive in the face of a worldwide pandemic. That success comes back around to the indefatigable creative spirit at the heart of our region\u2019s musicians: if they can\u2019t get onstage in front of their fans just now, many are choosing instead to book time in a recording studio, cutting new musical tracks.<\/p>\n

Andy Bishop of Giraffe Studio in Hendersonville says that he\u2019s as busy as ever. \u201cI have not seen a dip in business,\u201d he emphasizes. While noting that 2019 was his busiest year ever, he says that Giraffe Studio, which opened its doors in 2002, is still booking recording sessions months in advance. Bishop is so busy, he says, that if he wants or needs a break to give his ears a rest, he has to schedule a day off. \u201cI never get a free day just because somebody didn\u2019t book it,\u201d he says with a chuckle.<\/p>\n

All of that isn\u2019t to suggest that some things haven\u2019t changed in the era of Covid-19. \u201cI\u2019m seeing smaller projects,\u201d Bishop explains. \u201cAnd they\u2019re shorter.\u201d<\/p>\n

A typical recording session at Giraffe Studio in 2020 is likely to involve acoustic musicians or hip hop artists. \u201cWith a talented musician, you can get a number of tracks [songs] done in a relatively small amount of time,\u201d Bishop explains. And hip hop is similar in that respect. He says that many artists arrive at the studio with pre-produced backing tracks, meaning that the session consists of little more than synchronizing a vocal track \u2013 often \u201cfreestyling,\u201d Bishop says \u2013 to those musical backing parts.<\/p>\n

In Bishop\u2019s experience \u2013 and he has worked the recording console for many hip hop artists \u2013 \u201cthat\u2019s the way rap works 90 percent of time,\u201d he says. A rapper is likely to arrive with \u201ca beat that they\u2019ve purchased, and then we\u2019re just mixing the vocals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when the process moves quickly, and even when the beats and\/or musical backing parts are pre-made \u2013 there\u2019s a strong element of creativity happening in the recording booth. Freestyling is a form of extemporaneous rapping that relies almost completely upon improvisation. That means that getting the recording details just right is more important than ever, because no two freestyling performances are likely to be identical. It\u2019s often a case of \u201ccapture it or it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Bishop is adept at capturing those impromptu vocal performances, leading to a steady stream of work for Giraffe Studio, even in a severe economic downturn. \u201cFreestyling is very hip this year. Everybody wants to come in and do it,\u201d he says. Moreover, the solo nature of freestyling means that social distancing precautions are easily put into place. Typically, the vocal artist is in a soundproof recording booth, while Bishop is seated at the recording console in the adjacent control room, the two divided\/connected by a sealed plate glass window.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly \u2013 especially when considering the often reportorial nature of hip hop lyrics \u2013 Bishop says that he hasn’t noticed the pandemic figuring into the subject matter of his clients\u2019 music. \u201cI think that will come,\u201d he says. \u201cI just don\u2019t think those songs are here quite yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a pandemic-era interview with the head of one of Western North Carolina’s best recording studios. — bk By definition, musicians are a creative lot. So no matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,3668],"tags":[3685,3684],"class_list":["post-21092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-music-business","tag-andy-bishop","tag-giraffe-studio","cat-41-id","cat-3668-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21094,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21092\/revisions\/21094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}