Spring Break
Fort Collins artists record themselves
Local musicians make their own studios, jam out
Tim Maddocks
Issue date: 2/28/08 Section: Verve
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Early last fall, the founders of the newly formed Fort Collins Music Association gathered at a local coffee shop.
Armed with coffee, laptops and MySpace, they searched for a definitive number of Fort Collins bands and after hours of searching they discovered too many bands to count.
Greta Cornet, FCMA co-founder, said that they found between 2,000 and 3,000 bands or solo musicians in Fort Collins alone.
They found that about 1,500 of those MySpace pages had posted songs for fans to hear, proving that the art of home recording has become a definite trend.
What's more; many bands are doing a pretty damn good job.
Cornet, who has played in the band 12 Cents for Marvin for the last 11 years, is familiar with the evolution of the continually changing Fort Collins music scene.
"When MySpace started booming, it seemed like people were able to go back to more do-it-yourself type stuff," Cornet said.
"Because you can post your own music on there, because Pro-tools is so user friendly. You can start promoting your band or if you're not even quite a band yet you can promote yourself and start recruiting a band. It's a virtual online press kit."
ANYONE CAN DO IT
As to whether the popularity of MySpace or the technological advances in recording came first, Cornet said it's akin to "the chicken and the egg."
"All that kind of technology came out at the same time," she said.
"It used to be analog and reel-to-reel. It was complicated to get it going, splicing your tapes doing all those types of things. And now you know with the digital age it's really user friendly. If I can do it, anyone can do it."
While a number of professional-grade studios exist in Fort Collins, it costs a good deal of money for bands to cut a record. Rates usually range from $40 to $50 an hour.
"In the studio if you're paying by the hour and you crack a note or you miss a note or something it's like, 'crap I just cost us $40.'" Cornet said.
Home recording equipment can be costly but in the long run it's cheaper.
Cornet's band, 12 Cents for Marvin, recorded their last three albums at their own home-studio when they discovered it would save money.
Options for recording vary, but for a band to get a song on MySpace, it doesn't take much money or experience.
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