On a cold and foggy October morning I took a day trip to visit Big Red Studio in Corbett. The studio opened in late 2000 as a labor of love by producer Billy Oskay. Before opening the studio and focusing his time on production, Oskay played violin in the Celtic folk band Nightnoise.

I first heard of the studio from their work on the recent album releases by Deena T. Grossman. I was simply curious about the studio, not knowing if there was a story here outside of a rudimentary profile of the space and its owner. The real story I found at Big Red Studio was the story of a dying art form and those who want to preserve it in spite of the financial and economic pressures weighing on recording studios. 

Going out to Big Red will be an adventure for most, though it’s not that far outside Portland. You go past Troutdale, driving past “falling rocks” signs, deer cautiously crossing the road, and anglers ankle-deep in the Sandy River. Turn off at a barely visible dirt road, and find the red barn on the other side of a large field. Following Oskay’s baroque instructions made Big Red Studio feel even more like a hidden gem, a musical oasis for those seeking refuge from the vagaries of urban life to focus on their craft.  

Meeting me in the studio that day were Billy Oskay himself, alongside his close friend and “microphone master” Klaus Heyne and assistant Nicholas Decker. We talked for nearly four hours about the intricacies of recording and mixing, alongside the broader issues facing such a space today. Hanging over this conversation was a sense of uncertainty about the future of the studio. Oskay’s self-confidence never wavered, though: He was proud of his work, and happy to share with me his recordings, his process, and even an old press release from December 2000 announcing the opening of the studio. 

The Studio

Big Red isn’t interested in playing the modern social media game: They haven’t uploaded to their Youtube channel in over ten years and only host two videos; they rarely post on Instagram. Despite this they boast an impressive client list of recognizable names, such as Stephen Malkmus from Pavement, Dame D.O.L.L.A (the rap moniker of former Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard), Ezra Bell, Julian Bream and Jacob Collier. Oskay’s experience recording and performing with Nightnoise brings a lot of folk and bluegrass musicians to Big Red, such as Cedar Teeth, Dan Crary, and Jackstraw. 

The whole studio was designed by the Russ Berger Design Group, an architectural design firm that focuses on acoustic spaces — concert halls, television and recording studios, churches, and radio stations. Big Red is far more modest than their designs for the NFL, Univision, WWE, or Sweetwater, but the ingenuity is still apparent. It may look modest, but there are details that show how much care went into designing the space. There are very few exact ninety-degree angles, minimizing standing waves, for instance. The bathroom doubles as a guitar amp room, with Decker’s vintage 1950s Fender Champ hanging out in the corner. 

I asked Oskay what he thought his biggest asset was as a producer. He said that beyond the decades of experience, it was his ability to bring out a musician’s vision, to guide their performance and create dialogue between instruments. I have heard as much from some of the artists who have worked with him. He knows how to guide artists and give suggestions for how they ought to perform in order to get their best performance. In rehearsal he may try taking the song at different tempos, asking certain band members to play louder or softer, play fewer notes, that sort of thing. Once the rehearsal is done, he then prefers to let the artists run through the song with the full band a few times without his guidance. 

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There are no true isolation booths in Big Red: there will always be a little bit of microphone bleed as the drum mics pick up some bass, the vocal mics pick up some sax, and so on. Some engineers see this as a massive problem, since it gives them less control over each instrument. But that subtle microphone bleed gives the recording the “live” feel of all the instruments being in a room together–because they were. 

There is a desire among many musicians to seek out ever better sounds. A lot of great music has been made with subpar instruments and bare-minimum recording setups, as the artists’ creativity, passion and emotion shines through the limitations of their medium. A lot of great music has also been made by people with extensive resources, using much time and care to realize their vision. For the latter, “good enough” won’t cut it. What both groups have in common is that they make the most of what they have to work with. For the latter, a space like Big Red Studio boasts the extensive collection of microphones and rackmount gear one is looking for. And for the former, a studio like Big Red can add a degree of refinement that takes the music to a new level.

One notable set of mics the studio has are a pair of Neumann U87 microphones, considered some of the best on the market. But these aren’t just any old U87s: they are vintage microphones that have been “fixed” by Heyne. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to give your four-thousand dollar microphones to someone who says he can make them sound better by tearing them apart! He explained his process to me: there’s a lot of extra stuff inside a U87, relics from its origins as a microphone designed for German radio broadcasts. By taking some of those wires and components out or swapping them out, they can become even better at recording vocals. This expertise has landed Heyne some jobs working with an impressive cast of musicians, including Neil Young and Mariah Carey. 

Billy Oskay and his crew take the perspective of getting things right at the source when recording. He revealed to me some of his techniques for miking up instruments, running effects through the massive Trident console and all sorts of classic compressors, reverbs and EQ units. Additionally, Oskay takes pride in directing performances, coaxing out the best each musician has to offer. Looking through his ProTools files I saw very little post-processing: few overdubs and edits, almost no digital plug-ins or effects. This approach leads to a more intimate sound. Compare it to photographers who focus on getting the lighting, lens and setting correct from the start, saving hours of headaches in Photoshop. It’s not correct to say that it’s a more “organic” sound–all recorded music contains some degree of artifice–but it does result in a clean sound that is lively and exciting. 

Many studios today use a hybrid approach, utilizing the best from analog and digital technologies. Oskay says he prefers to record digitally for the ease of editing together perfect takes. It seems to him that the “perfect” take doesn’t mean without any mistakes, but one that has the best energy and feel. Prior to the proliferation of DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), musicians recorded directly to magnetic tape. Stitching together multiple takes — to correct mistakes, to take the best from multiple takes, or to stitch together a multi-part suite a la “Good Vibrations” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” — is a pain with magnetic tape, requiring you to make millisecond-precise cuts with a razorblade before taping it back together. It’s like editing a film by piecing together miles of 35mm film, except you don’t have discrete frames to tell you where to cut.

Working with multiple takes in a DAW, by comparison, is a breeze. After piecing together the perfect performance, Oskay then runs the output back through the studio’s Trident TSM mixing console, an EMT-140 plate reverb unit hidden away in a room filled with tape canisters and tape machines, and mountains of outboard gear to add the finishing touches to the sound.

At the very least, his records don’t sound overproduced, which can be a problem with a lot of contemporary musicians who are looking for a “radio-friendly” sound. In pursuit of this sound, producers can end up editing away all the dynamics, mistakes, and tempo fluctuations that can make music feel alive. It’s hard to beat the sound of a group of musicians making music together in a room, playing off each other and bringing out the best performance possible. This also makes the engineer’s life easier by minimizing the need for overdubs, repeated takes, fader-riding and post-processing. 

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This approach has yielded some great performances. He played me a few records that were recorded there. The first was “Moonlight Waltz” by Cedar Teeth, which is a beautiful ballad with bright and clean production that made space for all the instruments in the mix. He also played for us a selection of recordings from bassist Aaron Immanuel Wright’s album Eleven Daughters. Oskay lamented his choice to leave in a few out-of-tune notes near the beginning, but he decided that he could live with them to preserve the integrity of the overall performance. Music production requires one to vacillate between “not good enough” and “good enough,” in the pursuit of sonic perfection. Fixing one mistake will end up creating even more problems, but at some point you’ve gotta let things go. No album — not even Aja — sounds perfect, though we can get pretty close. 

Being far outside the city means certain conveniences of working at an urban studio are not there. One cannot simply go down the street for coffee, sandwiches, weed, or anything else musicians need to get their work done. (That doesn’t stop some people: They told me about a fairly well-known artist who came through the studio for a few days with a huge entourage and a former NFL player as a bodyguard. The artist’s crew made plenty of trips back to the city to buy weed during their stay. I asked them, “you let artists smoke in the studio?” Decker responded, “depends on how much they’re paying.”) 

Talismans and gatekeepers

Big Red Studio is a space with lots of fantastic gear and decades of experience behind the board. It seems like a studio like this would be in high demand — but it isn’t. Oskay said that back in the early 2000s, the studio would be booked for weeks or even months on end. Now he’s lucky to book out even half the month. What caused this shift? Through our conversation we touched on a lot of different possibilities, and I suspect there are a couple of major reasons. The first is that musicians have less of a need or desire to seek out studios like Big Red to make music. The second is that the music-listening public has generally sacrificed audio quality for convenience, meaning that the expertise and equipment present at studios matter less than they used to. Both of these shifts are also prompted by changes to the American economy and the decline of profits in the music industry. 

Musicians have an odd relationship with gear, especially old vintage stuff. Old pieces of equipment are talismans, imbued with a special magic that made possible some of our favorite records. But this attitude seems to be less prevalent among younger people. Maybe this is because gear is more easily accessible than ever. Home recording has become far cheaper and easier. High-quality emulations of classic analog studio gear, guitar amps, and samples of acoustic instruments come stock in any DAW. For those who want an upgrade, companies like Universal Audio Devices, Waves Audio, Native Instruments and others can get you even better digital replications of classic gear for far cheaper than the real thing. Studio time can be expensive, and budgets for recording albums are smaller than ever, coming straight out of the artist’s pocket. 

A lightweight approach to music-making may seem paltry in comparison to what is offered by true recording studios, but you can’t argue with the results. It’s not uncommon for big-name pop stars and rock bands to record at home, only going into the studio for mixing and mastering. A lot of young artists rightfully say, “if Migos can record their hit mixtapes Y.R.N. and No Label II in a soundproofed closet in their basement, why can’t I?”

Everything isn’t all so glum: Limitation does breed creativity, after all. Artists can lean into the specific sounds of so-called “bad” audio quality, so much so that digital compression, artifacts and muted instruments lacking polish become part of the music. Death Grips, Brazilian Funk and lo-fi bedroom pop are testaments to this. Part of the appeal is that it sounds unfinished, off-the-cuff, giving this music a raw, visceral appeal. The artists have something to say, and they don’t need to go through the established channels and gatekeepers to get their music out there.

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Another issue is the way that we listen to music. Many people, young and old, are listening to music through laptop speakers, cheap headphones and heavily compressed mp3s and streaming services. When we are listening like this, most of us can’t even tell the difference between an honest-to-god vintage tube amp and an amp simulation. Under such conditions, it’s no wonder that many artists choose to sacrifice audio quality for the convenience of recording at home. 

On the other hand, there has also been a resurgence of interest in cassettes and vinyl by younger artists, intrigued by collectibility in the face of an effuse, transigent musical market. Vinyl and cassettes force you to sit down and listen, to look at the album art, and not simply passively accept whatever the algorithm pushes into our faces. This may provide hope for places like Big Red, as a niche but substantial audience forms who are willing to pay to hear music that is well-recorded, mixed and mastered.

The other dirty secret here is the consolidation of the record industry. The process began decades ago — such is the American economy — but it really accelerated in the last few decades. Album sales reached their peak in the early 2000s, and then started to decline. The American economy got squeezed after the late Bush administration recession, which accelerated the decline. People stopped buying records in favor of a cheaper and easier subscription-streaming model, or the very cheap but pain-in-the-ass method of piracy. Spending the money on CDs, merch and concert tickets are a luxury compared to keeping up with rising rent, food, education, and gas prices. The decline in profits for major labels squeezes the money available to artists, and it all flows downstream from there. 

All the dozens of great labels around from the ’50s have been swallowed up by the three major labels left: Sony, Universal, and Warner. Any smaller label you’ve heard of that still exists is most likely a subsidiary of, or is distributed by, one of those three. There was a time when labels were willing to take a risk on an out-there artist in the hopes that something would stick. They would then give (really, lend) the artist the money to spend on quality studio time. 

Gone are the days when labels would sign and promote groundbreaking weirdos outside mainstream sensibilities. They want artists who are already proven to provide returns. Think about what music would be like if labels had never taken a risk on Laurie Anderson (signed to Warner Music), The Velvet Underground and the Mothers of Invention (both signed to Verve, a subsidiary of MGM and now owned by Universal), or The Beatles (signed to Parlophone, a subsidiary of EMI, now owned by Universal). I can’t imagine a major label taking a chance on an equally groundbreaking artist today. 

The weird, experimental and ground-breaking work of today is not usually done by people who have major label support. The labels only want to sign artists that already have buzz — but then again, if an artist already has an audience they built on their own, they have little incentive to sign to a label that will do nothing for them and take half or more of their money. 

The money, the lifeblood of industry, isn’t there like it used to be. The problem isn’t always that there isn’t enough money in it: Sometimes, there’s too much money. There is a glut of what the Big Red Studio crew called “vanity studios” in places like San Francisco: studios started by new-money millionaires who can spend and spend to get the best gear, the best design, and the best talent into the studio. But you can’t buy institutional memory or culture. 

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We also suspected that the faster pace of music in the social media age plays a role. The mindset among younger artists, especially in genres like hip-hop and electronic dance music, is to flood the audience with new stuff every day. Why would you spend the time to craft the perfect song, when you could record a hundred songs, let the algorithm serve it to your audience, and get paid for all of it? The earnings may be meager per stream, but they add up when you have so much material for people to add to their playlists. And why pay to get your record professionally mastered when no one buys albums anymore? Artists can learn the ins and outs of recording, mixing and mastering from Youtube tutorials of mixed quality from people who may be overselling their expertise, and not from real experts like Billy Oskay and his crew. But it gets results more quickly.

This model has also allowed for a generation of artists to circumvent the gatekeepers of the music industry and get their music into the ears of fans eager for something new. As much as we may hate TikTok, Youtube and Instagram, it has also allowed young audiences to rediscover lost gems in the refuse of our cultural past. Young audiences can be exposed to everything from indie pop like TV Girl, ‘80s city pop from Japan like Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love,” and thousands more fantastic songs that are impossible to keep track of. 

On the edge of a cliff

Given all this, it seems like a younger generation of musicians (of which I am a part) would see no need to make the trip to Big Red. Intern Nicholas Decker had some choice wisdom for what might draw a younger crowd into a studio like Big Red. “I wouldn’t want to paint in a dark room, but on the edge of a cliff,” he said. He wants to create while he’s “trapped on work island.” Big Red is far enough away to feel like a totally separate creative environment. Things felt slow. There is definitely an appeal to a fast-paced, hustle-and-bustle studio downtown, but out here one might see an elk walk by while working. It’s dreadfully quiet outside, calming the mind and allowing one to focus. And this inviting atmosphere is part of why the aforementioned artists made the trip out to Big Red. 

Unfortunately, this culture around artists seeking out specific studios to record is going away. There are still places like this, of course: EastWest and Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles, or Electric Lady Studios in New York City, and the many spots along Music Row in Nashville. But those are in the big cities established in the national music industry, along with Miami, where many Latin artists record. The people with the money and backing of major labels have their eyes set on those four cities, and not on places like Portland. 

Studios such as Big Red may become a relic of a past era. They aren’t the only ones keeping the craftsmanship of old gear and recording alive, however. Portland-based amp manufacturer Benson still makes hand-wired guitar amps, and there are tons of small pedal, instrument and microphone manufacturers in town. There is a vast community of people whose praises remain mostly unsung who have made it their life’s mission to preserve pieces of our musical past. Oskay and his crew are among them. 

Culture rarely develops in one way: Our society changes through actions, reactions, and reactions to those reactions, on and on. Each generation fears that what they love is going away. But rarely does anything we consider valuable truly disappear. More often, it transforms into something that can continue to survive in the face of a turbulent present. Maybe in a state such as Oregon, places like Big Red Studio can survive, kept alive through momentum, passion, and the compulsion to preserve what’s important to us, money be damned.