STUDIO STORY
The Story of Monastic Chambers
Greetings! I'm Jon Gillespie, otherwise known as Brother Jon, the Head Monk at Monastic Chambers. I studied music composition at Wheaton Conservatory of Music at Wheaton, Illinois and audio production at Wheaton Graduate School, then moved to the Fort Wayne, Indiana area in 1989 with a Christian rock band called Júso.
In my first month of living in Fort Wayne, Chuck Surak, owner of Sweetwater Sound, interviewed me and told me that if my resume had arrived one day earlier, I would have been his first employee. Little did I know what a big boat I'd just missed. That one-man-starting-in-his-home-studio was to quickly become one of the world's largest retailers of professional audio equipment serving anybody who is anybody in the music industry, plus everyone else. Though I would have enjoyed working with Chuck and, at the time, bemoaned that one day, I suppose it was a mixed blessing.
I worked at WLAB 88.3 FM my first year in Fort Wayne instead and because of my experience around Minnesota farms in my childhood, became a full-time zookeeper at the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.
Eventually, my band broke up and I decided it was time to put my education to use and pursue a long time dream -- set up a studio. I found part-time jobs and worked about seventy hours a week, living in the cheapest apartment I could find, and slowly started to buy the equipment I would need (from Sweetwater of course).
I began the studio in my apartment, with vocalists stuffed into a clothes closet for isolation. Because I did nothing but work and only spent time in my "studio apartment," my friends and I dubbed the studio my "Monastic Chambers," hence the studio's name.
My very first client was an eclectic musician named Mark Turney. After he finished his first album, I helped him put together a band, Einstein Savage, eclectic in its own right, to play his music live. Eventually I joined the band and now have my wife's guest room stacked with boxes of 2 albums for sale. I don't join every band that comes into the studio -- my wife won't let me.
Eventually, I bought a small house in New Haven just outside Fort Wayne. Back then, it suited the needs of my small, still part-time, studio well, since one wing was separated from our actual living area. The part my wife didn't like was having only one bathroom to share with all these folk coming in and out. She also wouldn't let me stuff people into her closets, so I converted the attached garage for my recording booth.
I worked in the evenings and weekends with studio clients, while keeping my full- and part-time jobs. Eventually, as the business grew, I had to drop all the other jobs and devote full-time plus to serving the studio clients.
In July 2000, I moved the studio into the Dahling Building, did lots of remodeling, and now share the building with two other music businesses (Burford Music Studio, run by a husband and wife team who have taught piano in the same building since 1955, and New Haven Music, teaching guitar, bass, and drum lessons, which opened its doors in October 2000). The studio now has plenty of room, extra recording booths, and my wife finally gets her own bathroom. It's a beautiful brick building in downtown New Haven built by a Dr. Dahling in 1937 to set up his practice. We still get the occasional visitor who pokes their head in the door and reminesces about a broken arm treated in this room or a sprained ankle treated in that room.
Originally, I built the studio reputation recording solely for well known bands in the local music scene. My first actual record label client was a company called Phat Sound Records (with offices in Jackson, Mississippi, Columbus, Ohio, and now Fort Wayne). I began doing a monthly radio show for them, which they loved, so they then started to give me other small projects. Now they are having me produce full albums for them for artists they fly in from all over the country.
Since the move into the new building, demand for Monastic Chambers as a custom soundtrack and jingle production studio has also increased, so I've contracted with several talented musicians in the area who collaborate with me on jingle production.
In the Summer of 2001, we were so busy that we began construction of "Studio B" across the hall from our original studio in the Dahling building. Studio B is custom-designed for live acoustic material and is excellent for singer/songwriters, acoustic guitar performers, and solo string players. It is also well suited to small acoustic groups such as string quartets, acoustic duos, and jazz groups. But after Sept. 11, 2001, the downturn in the economy slowed business considerably, and eventually, Studio B became a strangely equipped "green room" Something had to change, and my wife had a GREAT idea! "Why don't you just cut a hole in the wall between the two studios and use them together?" she said. Now why hadn't I thought of that? So We did the second major renovation, combining the two studios into one with enough room to stretch out. We used the main room from Studio A as the drum room, and the control room from Studio B is now central command. The control room from Studio A is now an auxiliary recording booth for live band sessions, and we can theoretically have musicians recording in Ten rooms simultaneously Six of those rooms sharing line of sight. It's really hard to describe without a picture, so here it is... no rulers.. all freehand... AMAZING!
I believe a strong work ethic behind everything makes Monastic Chambers special. I demand the highest quality performances out of a musician and I demand the highest possible quality that the equipment can provide to complement my skills as an engineer, arranger, producer, and musician. Each project, even short commercial jingles, is treated like an album slated for national release. Beyond technology, people will appreciate my experience. A mediocre engineer can make all the technology in the world sound like a hack garage studio. Recording is an art. It's not about the technology used; it's about the performance and skill.
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The Story of Monastic Chambers
Monastic Chambers Recorded Media
P.O. Box 234
New Haven, IN 46774-0234
1.260.749.1981
monk@BrotherJon.com
