Starting out as a simple recording studio in 2006, the original owners wanted to create a space for music production but over the last 17 years it has grown into multiple studios, rehearsal rooms and event spaces. Eiger now has its own community, supporting many creatives on their journey.
If you're in a band you must be mad. Yeah. Like this is the thing. Everyone in bands is mad and that's just what we are. Like you know you must be mad to like spend all this time …working on these songs and these projects and like getting loads of people together and like that's just the crazy thing to do. It's like a little mini family you’ve created for yourself that you can argue with.
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
How did you start the studio?
Dom: We started in 2006 as a recording space. Actually the room we’re in now is the first space that was built. The owner at the time just wanted to build a recording studio and obviously that happens and lots of people come in. And they go, maybe we could rehearse here so then he started to build rehearsal rooms and essentially over the last 17 years it's evolved to kinda ten rehearsal rooms, two studios, a venue. So we have rehearsals, recordings, and events. And essentially, we just create a space for people to make great music. It’s a space for art and culture. That's essentially why it started and I came in about eight years ago to work on the recording side and Matt came in very recently a couple years ago, now manages the place and works a lot with the rehearsal bands.
I mostly do recording nowadays…that was the thing that kinda brought me over… We produced a lot of stuff and we’ve got some really cool engineers. We've worked with Gordon Raphael, the Strokes… the Cribs, the Pigeon Detectives. We’ve got a roster of people we work with … that's where it started which has growin’ each year.
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
What is everyday life like at Eiger Studios?
Dom: The idea was to be a premium space because we all know we go to rehearsal rooms and it’s a dark, dingy room that smells a little bit, the gear's not really great. So our ethos was always to have big open windows, lots of light in, wooden floors and really great gear for people to use. The idea was to make it a really comfortable space. Making it affordable for people to use and we hope we're achieving that every year. We’re adding to the place, refurbing, building new spaces. And I think that works really because when people start to see that's what you want for the community, people buy into it a bit more.
Growing each year. Adding things. Been really lucky got us like a decent coffee machine now. Nice coffee, nice beer. It's like I always think that's a really important thing in a rehearsal space like there's not many I went to that’s like I can get… a great barista coffee. That was like top of the list of things to do for years, you know. And beer as well. It's like having a beer on tap and a studio lager that's quite cheap.
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
What’s your relationship with your customers like?
Dom: Monday to Thursday evening it's impossible to get in, you have to book quite far in advance. But again lots of people, they want to be here so regularly that they go, we'll have a block booking and we'll just have that forever and if we need to cancel, we'll still pay it and that situation for business that's great. We get a lot of people wanting to be part of the community or like a communal space or the venue to be able to have meetings or have coffee or whatever. So, then you end up people renting rooms permanently. We got quite a few bands that do that. It's just ever evolving. I think if you get the customer service right. And you really let people know that you really care about the project. Like we still care about our project and what we do, that's what we want to do every day. I think if you’re like that then people want to be around it. And we've tried to achieve that over the last few years.
What musicians do you typically work with? Do you have any students here since you are based in an area with lots of students?
Matt: We work with every sort of artist there is. We've got people playing in a band for the first time then it goes right up to bigger artists, like English Teacher and Far Capsian. We work with everything in between whether it's a band that just comes on a night that plays to have a bit of fun or student bands, because we've got such a big music student community in Leeds. Having the start of the band to the bands that are actually doing it, we got it all. It's really nice to see the progression we’ve seen some people make.
What do you think the biggest obstacles are in entering the music industry?
Dom: It's really hard, the costs of everything goes up including rehearsal, recording everything just keeps rising. Bands aren’t particularly making much more from their music with the advancement of streaming. They’re having to gig a lot more, which is great for us because we get more bands rehearsing, but it seems to be that that's one of the only true ways that they can make decent money unless they go viral. There's lots of bands around here that have record deals and they still have other jobs and that's just the reality of it nowadays. We try to make it as affordable as possible for those people. I think what we can do is help at the bottom, the grassroots level and then it kind of goes back to you. But I think it's difficult for young bands.
You really have to know what you want to do in music and be quite committed to the fact that it might take you 10 years to get there
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
Matt: What I see with the industry at the moment, is that everyone's kind of having to do a bit of everything at the moment. You can't just say, l just play guitar if you want a career in the music industry, now you have to be thinking about what other skills can I have? Like, producing on the side, there's people I know that like playing one band that's the thing they really enjoy but then they'll play as a wedding band as well that gets paid some more money and it's a shame that the wedding bands get paid quite a lot of money but people see that and are always trying to find the different sort of avenues to make a revenue in this industry. The prices of everything are going up and up and up and what people are getting paid for is not changing at all, which is a problem.
Dom: We find a lot of musicians have several income streams, from teaching or playing in cover bands or wedding bands. The original stuff tends to not make them as much money. But you can sustain living in it if you got several things going but it's not easy. But people are making films, there's more things on Netflix. There's loads of platforms like that. There's lots of things to get your music on and sync pays good money. The more things that are created, they need music, so your band can get on to all that. You've just gotta be quite savvy about it. And just work hard really. It’s not an overnight thing. Eiger Studios has been here for 17 years, it’s our 18th year now. It’s taken us this long to establish it and it's the same with musicians and projects; it's like you’ve got to be in it for the long haul, you’ve got to really love it as a passion.
You’ve gotta love it. You’ve got to because if you don’t love it … you wouldn’t be able to do the grind…I used to think to myself… I'd record people for the rest of my life because I love it…And I think if you just have that mentality all the time eventually the work comes and people talk about it …You gotta love it gotta be passionate
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
Any tips or advice for entering the music industry?
It is knowing that it does take time and… there's nothing you can do about that side of it. It takes time like this didn't just become a rehearsal space, an event space, and a recording space like because somebody one day … decided it to… it sort of started as bit of rehearsals and then it was like…maybe we can a bit of like the studio work
Matt
Eiger Studios
Dom: In general, from the recording side it's very difficult to explain to people that the way it's evolved, there aren't really jobs. There are a few big studios that employ people and you get thousands of applicants. But I think, as a young producer, if you're starting a studio, or you're buying into a studio, or you want to start a studio with your friends, if you’ve got a client list of people that you work with even if it’s like two three four people you just keep doing lots of outreach, cold outreach, going to concerts, going to gigs, build your network around you and then that becomes your job, which happened with me.
And you've gotta be really good at what you do in the first place. I think that's gotta be like an autopilot thing. You've gotta, you've gotta do your 10,000 hours before you start.
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
So I think my advice for young people would be, reach out to loads of people. And the key thing for all of it is to think is how do you add value. One of the things we always think at Eiger is we offer recording space and rehearsal space. Where's the value other than that? Lots of places are doing that. But value is like saying, I can sort you out a drummer, we can mix and master it as well, help getting stuff onto Spotify. I feel like if you're always just adding that little bit of value, then it kind of snowballs and people start respecting it as a business or an organisation.
We’ve added lockers…people have their permanent rooms now. Yeah, at the minute we’ve got a lot of educational stuff going on… it's just finding like all the little things you can do really
Dom Richmond
Eiger Studios
They talked about how people skills are just as important as technical skills
Dom: People come with a laptop without the fundamental skills of what it actually takes to be an engineer, which is dealing with people, people skills. Can you be in a room with a band for 6 days in a row without you all tearing each other's hair out?
Matt: You can know how to EQ everything perfectly but if you can't actually deal with the people in the band or learn to get on with people or get the best out of people, like that is probably most of the job of being a producer.
Dom: If you can be with people in a room, win them over and make them feel comfortable, you get the best out of people. If someone's coming to do a vocal and is nervous. If you're really strict they won’t want to come back. If you can make someone feel comfortable that they feel like it’s an extension of home. That's the best space to create music I think. And that's kind of the ethos across the whole place really. Whether it's an event, rehearsals or recording.
The most important thing for myself, at least, and, and to be honest, the rest of my band…it's been how comfortable we are in that space, it's not being like, who's got the best mics.
Matt
Eiger Studios