Pricey but Perfect: Cloning Peter Gabriel's 'Studio in a Shed'

Photo: Solid State Logic

Peter Gabriel unveils The Shed at the Audio Engineering Society Trade Show in New York.

Peter Gabriel believes where you make music can be just as important as what you use to make it. With The Shed, a pricey stand-alone recording studio inspired by the one he has in the garden of his London home, Gabriel hopes to help musicians on both fronts.
"Sometimes a creative environment affects what happens within it," said Gabriel, who unveiled the home studio this month at the Audio Engineering Society Trade Show in New York.

Though Gabriel acknowledges that, for most musicians, outfitting a recording studio is a personal, mix-and-match process, he thinks there is a market for the one-stop shop nature of The Shed, which will sell for around $250,000. Still, it's a rarified chunk of musical real estate in an era when anybody with a cheap PC and a copy of Pro Tools can get decent results with home recordings.

"If you don't have the time, but you have a lot of money, you can say, 'Do it to me' and the whole thing will arrive and off you go," said Gabriel, laughing off the idea that The Shed could be seen as the ultimate "get" for his fans.

The studio -- a 240-square-foot Summerwood structure outfitted with an $87,000 Solid State Logic analog workstation, assorted outboard gear, a digital audio workstation from Guitar Center, Auralex acoustic treatment and Argosy studio furniture -- is designed to give artists a sonically sound space in which to make music.

Windows on three walls and plenty of space to hang inspirational items help make The Shed a comfortable workplace. (The display model is personalized with artwork by Gabriel's friend, Evru, which, obviously, is not included.)

"I want it," said Phyllis Fast of New Jersey to her husband, Larry, as they walked past The Shed in the middle of The Javits Center. "It's such a great idea having it all in one place."

"Well," Larry Fast said, shaking his head, perhaps as he thought about the price, "we'll have to see."

Gabriel said the expensive studio clone is designed to give musicians a positive environment to get the creative juices flowing.
"Studios always seem to be in basements without natural light and with black everything," Gabriel said. "We went to the opposite direction. The Shed is the outdoor, organic approach to studios. As many an architect will tell you, human behavior changes according to the environment."

Sitting in The Shed as conference attendees peer in at him through the windows, Gabriel says the structure's design reminds him of his setup at home. Though it's not his main recording studio, it does serve as a creative center in his life, he said, especially for writing lyrics.

Fans will get to hear some of Gabriel's fondest memories from The Shed soon, as his Real World Records releases Big Blue Ball, a compilation of collaborations from the 1990s with world music acts including Karl Wallinger, Natacha Atlas and Papa Wemba, written in his garden studio.

Gabriel said the creativity fostered by The Shed is related to brain function. "I think there's an old instinctive response from when we were all running around in the forest, that when you're getting a lot of peripheral-vision stimulation that the brain is kicked into a higher gear," he said. "I noticed that on airplanes I don't feel very creative, but I get a lot of ideas in trains and cars."

Gabriel said train travel feeds the brain in an especially creative way. "I've talked to a lot of artists -- painters, writers, musicians -- many of whom have had great ideas on trains," he said. "The only explanation I have is all that stuff is coming at you while you're relaxed, so somehow it kicks you into hyperspace in terms of brain function."

Of course, this leads Gabriel, who became a major shareholder of Solid State Logic a few years ago, to a new idea for The Shed 2.0.

"Future versions of The Shed should definitely be on a railway carriage," he said. "We'll have to work that out."

By Glenn Gamboa /Wired