Studio & Music

Ancient History

Mid-80s Upstate NY

Back then, my home studio near Binghamton, NY was known as Neo-Sync Labs. It revolved around a heavily modded Studiomaster console and a Tascam MS-16 1″ tape machine. Walk into the control room and the first thing you’d notice were the UREI 809 monitors powered by a McIntosh MC2200. We had two isolated tracking rooms, headphone distribution, and all the gear you’d expect from a serious studio. Always chasing the cutting edge, I picked up an early (and very limited) Pro Tools system — complete with a massive 1GB external hard drive that cost $1,200 at the time.

Entering the digital age, NSL upgraded from the MS-16 to three Fostex ADATs—suddenly, we had 24 tracks! (Though we still had that clunky early Pro Tools rig.)

A standout feature was mix automation. I built a system using three Steinberg Niche MIDI-controlled gain units wired into the Studiomaster console, all driven by my own custom software, Muse. When I wasn’t running sessions, I was coding Muse, convinced it would make me rich. Every now and then, I revisit the source code – it’s not so bad.

1998 Massachusets

In ’98, I relocated to the Boston Suburbs. The studio sat mostly dormant but slowly came to life over the next few years. Still based on the old ADATs and large Studiomaster console.

2000 Cakewalk

In early 2000, a colleague asked, “Why don’t you just work at Cakewalk?” I didn’t even know they were in Cambridge—I’d assumed California. I checked the careers page, applied, and soon landed my dream job.

At first, I’d hear footsteps down the cubicle aisle and think, look busy!—then remember writing music software was the job. It felt too good to be true… until it wasn’t.

My first project was Guitar Tracks, a scaled-down version of Pro Audio. Ironically, we spent more time disabling features than building new ones. After that, I joined the core team for what would become SONAR, working on it almost exclusively until I left in 2009—aside from a brief detour on the ill-fated Project 5.

2005 The Arlington Studio

In 2006, I moved to Arlington, MA (another Boston Suburb). This house had an awesome unfinished space on the third floor which made a beautiful large one-room Studio. 

By now, computers were definitely fast enough to handle large sessions and disk drives were cheap enough to store all that noise. This is where I decided to call the thing RockScience.

2015 Let’s Sell Everything and Go Sailing

In the background of all this, my partner and I were becoming avid sailors. She and I began talking about going on a serious adventure. Ultimately, we sold our 3000 sq ft house and moved onto our 300 sq foot Sailboat Argon. In September 2016, we left Boston and kept going south until we got the Caribbean where we spent that whole winter. I continued working part-time-ish during that.

On the way back home the next summer, we happened upon a very cool house in Newport, RI. Offer made and accepted and we had a land home again! And of course it has a beautiful studio space!

2018 – Newport, Rhode Island

So, here we are in the latest setup in Newport. The studio has been mostly packed up in storage for the last couple years while we lived on and sailed our sailboat all over the place.  The new place is great with high, peaked wooden ceilings and lots of light. I’ve got a main room with the gear plus access to other spaces in the house with incredible acoustics.

And here we are…

Music

Over the years, I’ve carved out time to make some music of my own — seemed like a good use of the recording studio! I release it under the name Robert’s Reason. If you dig around, you’ll find it on iTunes, Spotify, and whatever other streaming platforms the kids are into these days.

Here is my “first record” released on CD back in the early 90s. I remastered it and made it available on the streaming services.

My Artist Page on Spotify