What is Coach House Sound?
Coach House Sound is a low-cost yet well-built recording studio and community hub in Parkdale, Toronto. The studio aims to reinvent the mid-range studio, offering an affordable alternative to high-end big budget studios, while still offering professional services and resources.
When completed, the studio will function on a sustainable model, where operation costs will be subsidized by the space’s flexibility to be used as a rehearsal space and event venue. Coach House Sound also aims to offer low cost workshops teaching the basics of recording to interested students of all ages. Through this versatility, Coach House Sound will be able to keep its prices low and create something accessible, affordable, and responsible.
The entire construction process and project upstart is being documented through an upcoming web series entitled Building Sound. The web series will offer viewers insight into the stages and challenges of renovating and operating a small recording studio, along with the candid documentation of a universal coming-of-age story, where four young individuals struggle to turn their studies into careers and their dreams into realities.
In an attempt to parallel the community-oriented nature of the studio itself, Building Sound will be accompanied by an in-depth open-source website featuring full details of each stage of construction and operation, accompanied by commentary, links to valuable educational resources, and expense breakdowns.
Why build it?
Coach House Sound hopes to be part of paving the way toward alternative recording practices. We live in a world plagued by the devaluation of music, where record sales have declined dramatically and musicians find it next to impossible to make a decent living off of their craft. This shift has made most professional recording studios all but inaccessible to the vast majority of musicians.
By subsidizing our rent through multi-purpose use of the space outside of recording sessions, our goal is to eliminate the cost of studio time and only charge for engineer time, while still offering access to professional services and tools. Multi-purpose use also means Coach House Sound can offer a resource to people beyond the recording artist community! We’re open to offering rehearsal space to touring artists, hosting film screenings, gallery-style visual art exhibits, small concerts, and educational workshops.
Coach House Sound isn't about undercutting other studios or devaluing a craft. We're young, aspiring engineers willing to work long hours for little pay in order to offer a service and a resource to those who need it. We've worked with so many great artists in our city who haven't been able to access professional recording studios yet, and for that reason we believe there's a market to fill and a community to serve.
Ultimately, we want to build something that will become a sharable, accessible resource and community hub.
Why we need your support
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We’ve managed to generate almost half of our estimated budget through personal investments so far, and are aiming to fund another quarter of the total budget through local fundraising events and other small scale fundraising endeavours. The reason we need another $6000 is to take this project to the next level, truly offering a professional environment to the artists who need it most. The reason we’re asking you is because we don’t want to go through private investors. When investors start handing out cash, they expect to see some sort of return, and the last thing we want to do is introduce a profit-incentive to this project. We want this space to feel shared, accessible, and all about creativity - not money. We’re doing everything we can to keep our costs down and expect little in return for our time spent operating the space. If we can generate the remainder of our startup costs through Indiegogo, we can make this half-completed dream a reality - and you can share it with us.
