- Culture
- 09 Apr 01
The Tunnel Recording Studio is celebrating its fifth birthday. Colm O’Hare investigates its unique charms and talks to the people who make it tick.
WHAT HAVE Engine Alley, Lir, Eleanor McEvoy and Dolores O’Riordan from the Cranberries got in common? Well, for one, they represent a broad span of successful Irish artists who have released records internationally to wide critical and commercial acclaim.
But more relevant here, they have all, at one time or another, utilised the services of Tunnel Studios – a sixteen track facility, based at Howth Junction on the northside of Dublin. Over the years, indeed, The Tunnel has offered scores of bands and musicians an opportunity to record excellent quality demos and fully-fledged commercial recordings at an affordable price, in a unique atmosphere and environment. The studio has evolved gradually in that time, improving and upgrading, adding more and better equipment and can now offer complete composing, arranging, recording and production facilities under one roof.
Brian Kenealy, guitarist and songwriter with Engine Alley is generous in his praise of the studio “We demoed a track called ‘Desperate Eyes’ in The Tunnel,” he says, “and were so impressed with how it sounded that we put that version on our album. It sounds as good, if not better, when played alongside other tracks recorded in very expensive, international studios with top producers.”
Praise indeed. Other artists who have used The Tunnel in the recent past include Beatbox/Coca Cola winners, The Unbelievable Children, The Coletranes, Keith Donald and many more.
This year, The Tunnel celebrates five successful years in operation and they have every reason to look forward to an even more prosperous future. With an expanded range of facilities, a fast growing reputation and more interest than ever from bands and musicians wishing to avail of their services, the studio is set to continue its upward climb.
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Paul Redmond, one of the four partners involved in running the studio sets out the ethos behind the operation “The Tunnel was built by musicians for musicians,” he says. “This basically means that our first priority is to help bands and musicians to get the best possible results from using our studio. Our policy is to give bands what they want and not to impose our own views on how we think they should sound. Some of the bands who come to us, tell us that certain studios can be a bit patronising towards inexperienced musicians. We’ll work with them and offer as much advice as we possibly can – and we won’t rip them off.
“We would be especially helpful with young bands,” he adds. “There’s a huge potential out there for them to be ripped off and we offer advice on how to get the most out of the money they are paying. We would even tell them to go home and rehearse for another week – if we felt they weren’t quite ready to go into the studio. The point is, when they leave us, they’ll have a demo they can put in the cassette player and play with pride.”
RIGHT ATTITUDE
In many ways, The Tunnel is unique. Its location, out in the suburbs, far from distraction and diversion would seem to provide the perfect environment for getting things done. But is the out-of-town location not a slight drawback when it comes to attracting bands who tend to favour being a little nearer the action?
“If anything, it’s probably more of an advantage,” says Redmond, “especially for bands on very tight budgets. They need to go into the studio and be productive straight away without wasting time. In the centre of town, there are too many distractions with pubs and night clubs etc. We are away from all that – so there is nothing else to do but get down to work. We don’t have a large recreation room or a canteen but we can give them a cup of tea or coffee!”
He also points out that despite being about seven miles from the centre of Dublin, The Tunnel is very easy to get to. “We’re just two minutes walk from Howth Junction Dart Station which is just a twenty minute ride out from town,” he says.
The other partners involved in The Tunnel are Fran Hegarty, Tim Boland and Colm Sexton (also of the Sound Training Centre). Redmond stresses that The Tunnel was originally set up for their own benefit as musicians and this is still their overriding concern.
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“Obviously we have to cover ourselves and operate on a business footing,” he says, “but our main aim is to improve the facilities we have on offer. So when bands spend money with us they are not lining someone’s pockets – they are helping future bands or themselves when they come back. Every penny we earn goes into new equipment or better facilities.”
In celebrating their fifth birthday, Redmond acknowledges that The Tunnel couldn’t have survived and developed over that period without a lot of help from various people within the industry. In particular, he mentions STS, Seadna Audio Productions, Daniel Kennedy (Accountants), Euro Risk Management (Insurance), Audio Engineering and CTI, as well as bands like Engine Alley who have spoken highly of The Tunnel. “We’ve had tremendous support from these people and we’d like to thank them for their continuing interest in the progress of the studio,” he says.
The future looks bright indeed for this studio, which from humble beginnings and the right attitude, has grown to the hive of activity it is today. Plans for the future include offering video facilities for bands. The Tunnel has already been used to record the soundtrack for a low-budget film that was shown on Channel 4 and Paul Redmond sees this as complementing their existing service to young bands. “A demo tape is normally not enough these days for a band to arouse interest from record companies,” he says. “Our idea would be to allow them to put together an inexpensive, good quality video, which would improve their chances in the competitive market out there.”
The range of facilities at The Tunnel encompasses: control room, vocal room, live room, TV/video and kitchen area.
Equipment includes: 16 track linked to 24 track midi sequencing; Fostex B16 Multitrack tape machine; Steinberg Pro-24 sequencing software; Allen & Heath SABER 40 input midi automated mixing console; Sony Dtc DAT + Revox B77 1/4” mastering; Monitoring – Yamaha NS-10’s powered by Quad 522.
Other equipment: Shure, Audio Technica, Ross, Ramsa, Sennheiser microphones and Tascam cassette machines
Recent additions to the studio: AKAI S1000 Sampler with a library of drum loops and sounds on disk & DAT; 3x AKG 461 condenser mic ideal for acoustic instruments; Alesis Quadraverb.
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Studio Rate: £16 per hour – includes engineer. All instruments, programming and engineering fees are included in the hourly rate.
In these days of dance-dominated charts and the popularity of dance in the clubs, The Tunnel have taken on board the need to cater for that potentially growing area. Philip Byrne, who along with Darren Corcoran, manages the day to day running of the studio, points out that they can now offer facilities like samplers, and drum machines. “The Tunnel is very much suited to dance music production,” he says. “We expect to see much more of that kind of work coming into the studio in the future.”
Both Philip and Darren have also set up a separate company called Perfect Music Productions, which is intended to act as a kind of a conduit between Irish bands and record companies. “The basic idea behind the venture is to establish some sort of quality control into the whole process of approaching record companies,” offers Byrne. “We feel we are in a position to assess tapes and offer advice on presentation to bands. We would then contact A&R departments or they would get in touch with the bands through us. The idea is to increase the odds of a band having their tape actually listened to and considered by the record companies.”