Bigger is better. Well, it is if you're talking King-sized chocolate bars, million dollar contracts, and the total annihilation of earth with nuclear weapons. But I have an iPod that's tiny. 1000 songs, in my pocket. That's nice. What's more important than being big is being the right size.

At Red Flame, we like working with emerging artists, so we decided to be the correct size to accommodate that. We don't have a 96 channel console with amaze-o-verb technology. Nor do we have a $350,000 lease on said console, and a high pressure salesman trying to book our studio into the next millennium. Because we don't do HUGE projects, we don't have to deal with huge budgets and literally hundreds of people all trying to make their album. Albums are not made by committee. Music is about expression, not compromise.

Being a mid sized studio also gives us one huge advantage - we don't have to charge $100 an hour for recording time. We think that making music should not be limited to people signed to major labels. We're the right size to work with you.

People work better when they're comfortable. It's pretty much that easy. No big deal here. But wait - in a lot of studios, it IS a big deal.

Where does your band practice? Where does it write? In the basement, jamming. In the kitchen, over pop and chips (or sushi and sake). You like hanging out with your band. You're friends. The place where you work best is the place where you feel best.

Alright. Now step into the recording studio. Big. Imposing. Put on the headphones. Get it right on the first take. You'd better - the clock's ticking. Wait for the tracks to be armed. Alright, NOW. Play the best you ever have! Now go take a break. Does that sound alien to you? It does to us.

You can't force music to appear as if by magic. You have to work with musicians. Your job is to know your music - our job is to make the process of recording it as easy and comfortable as possible. When you're more comfortable, you play better. When you play better, you spend less time. When you spend less time, you spend less money.

The comfort level extends to the people you'll be working with. All our staff are musicians. They've all been in the studio before, most many times. They know what it's like, and we've tried to tailor our studio to be the easiest way to record music that we, as musicians, know of.

This seems rather obvious, doesn't it? It would make sense that a studio should work for the musicians recording there. But wait...

If you're working with a major label, the label is paying for you to be in the studio. That means that the studio works with the label first and the band second. The studio's primary concern is getting the label to come back and pay money, so they try to make what the label thinks is going to be a hit, or how they want the band to sound.

At Red Flame, we work with bands. The bands pay us. We work for you. We want to make music the way you want to hear it. We want to give you a great mix that conveys the musical ideas you're trying to get across, not something that tries to make you sound like the next N'Sync. We're musicians trying to help other musicians, not hit-makers trying to force you into a mould.