The audience would be the artist and their life would be art — Glenn Gould

Recording...reinvented

Music gives voice to the composer, the instrument gives voice to the artist, and the concert hall provides a space in which music and artistry can be experienced: a moment of the sublime. The Main Studio at Manifold Recording is designed to honor music and artistry, but also to employ such technology that moments of the sublime can be captured, imagination can become reality, and intention can be expressed beyond the limits of a single space, a single audience, a single moment in time. The architectural, acoustic, and technical design of the facility are thus all designed to support the artist, producer, and engineer in their goal to translate, and ultimately transform, singular performances into universal and enduring truths that transcend the arbitrary boundaries of time and space. Such has always been the highest aspiration of any recording project.

But such aspirations are not without their own self-made challenges. As Glenn Gould wrote in his essay The Prospects of Recording "Recordings deal with concepts through which the past is re-evaluated, and they concern notions about the future which will ultiumately question even the validity of evaluation." Gould suggest that the solution to this problem lies not with the composers, performers, or engineers per se, but with the listeners themselves:

At the center of the technological debate, then, is a new kind of listener—a listener more participant in the musical experience. The emergence of this mid-twentieth-century phenomenon is the greatest achievement of the record industry. For this listener is no longer passively analytical; he is an associate whose tastes, preferences, and inclinations even now alter peripherally the experiences to which he gives his attention, and upon whose fuller participation the future of the art of music waits.

He is also, of course, a threat, a potential usurper of power, an uninvited guest at the banquet of the arts, one whose presence threatens the familiar hierarchical setting of the musical establishment. Is it not, then, inopportune to venture that this participant public could emerge untutored from that servile posture with which it paid homage to the status structure of the concert world and, overnight, assume decision-making capacities which were specialists’ concerns heretofore?

Enter The Miraverse...

The Miraverse® is the place where such "uninvited guests" are welcome, and expected. It is a place where the participant listener is treated as an equal to the artist, engineer, and producer in the recording process, for indeed they may variously become artist, engineer, producer, individually or in combination!

This new recording process (which we refer to as co-production) can begin at the beginning, with a tracking session in the Music Room (or other acoustic environment at the Manifold Recording studios). It can be built up over time through a series of creative overdub sessions. It can be informed by the witness of one or more mixing sessions in the Control Room or the Studio Annex. It can be remixed, with all the creativity and controversy that that entails. Whatever the starting point, and whatever your ultimate goal or vision, The Miraverse can help you realize a more perfect sound—yours.

Be bold, and undertake this task fully untutored as Gould proposes! Or, take advantage of our education programs to first learn the rules you intend to change. Either way you can become the change you want to see in the world, at least with respect to your musical ambitions. For more information, check out our Programs page.