Home is Where the Tone is: The Emergence of Professional Home Recording Studios

In this thesis, I explore the recent emergence and acceptance of professional home recording studios in the music industry landscape. Additionally, I investigate why these unique spaces are a viable option for creating professional and top-quality commercial music and why some artists and engineers prefer to work in them over or in tandem with commercial alternatives. I propose an answer to “how” and “why” these spaces have not only come into existence, but also why more engineers and artists are choosing to work in them. In regards to “how”, I explore the historical lineage of recording technology which has allowed for these spaces to be created. And in regards to “why”, I highlight attributes of the home environment that I have found in my career to be paramount in creating an optimal environment to create music in. I will be drawing from my own experiences during my career as both a commercially and home-based audio engineer by presenting autoethnographic vignettes from recording sessions performed in my own professional home recording studio. Additionally, I use themes from three adapted social theories to unpack these vignettes. In so doing, I highlight how particular attributes of the home environment positively impacts the music production process, and ultimately influencing why artists choose to work in these spaces as viable commercial options