When Marc Golde walks in the door and turns on the lights at Rock Garden Studios, he is entering a creative world he has spent the last decade building.
It’s a space that he not only inhabits but that he can control and adapt to meet the needs of clients that range from “broke musicians” to multinational corporations. The flexibility of the recording studio, located in the Edison Center beneath Appleton’s Oneida Street Bridge, reflects the creativity and practicality of Golde himself.
“I started recording when I was a little kid,” Golde says.
He started playing music at age 5, and a neighbor gave him a reel-to-reel recorder when he was about 9. His parents supported his creative endeavors, even helping him book music gigs when he was far too young to book himself into bars.
“The experience was so invaluable to me,” Golde says of playing in bars. “Not only that, if you’re 10 years old and you see an adult intoxicated person, that’s the last person you want to be.”
Golde, who grew up in Merrill, recalls an early experience seeing live music in Appleton that convinced him there were musical opportunities he wanted to pursue in the community.
By 2002, after working a few years in another studio, he decided to strike out on his own.
“The idea of Rock Garden was going to be a personal studio for me to record my own music that would pay for itself by recording the music of others,” Golde says. He admits that has not worked according to plan, as he has become more involved in recording and producing music and videos for clients.
When Golde started Rock Garden, digital prosumer recording equipment had just come onto the market, making the venture more affordable. But he discovered a problem.
“At some point, I hit a brick wall. I’m like, ‘I can’t make these sound like my favorite records; I must be stupid,’” Golde says. “What I didn’t realize is the equipment I was recording with, versus the big dogs, were two completely different categories.”
It led to Golde pursuing the Aengus/API custom 30-channel recording console that is the centerpiece of Rock Garden. After a year-long restoration, he quite literally built the studio around the console — it would take removing a wall to get it out of the building.
While it may not sound practical to invest heavily into an analog recording process, Golde says, “I want to enjoy my work and this is how I enjoy my work — getting the sound that I’m looking for.”
Other studio equipment helps clients get the sounds they want, including multiple guitars, drums, microphones, new and vintage amps, synthesizers and a baby grand piano.
He also realized that it would take more than recording music to make the studio successful. Golde started producing videos for musicians around 2011, but he also took on clients such as Tundraland, Stone Arch and Kimberly-Clark.
Video work makes up about half of the studio’s revenue, and Golde sees an opportunity in producing 360-degree videos for new construction projects.
Rock Garden Studios is exactly the space Golde envisioned, but he says it’s still hard work with terrible hours.
“You hang around some pretty cool people and it can be a lot of fun at times, but it’s still a business and you have to look at it like that,” he says.
And he admits, “I’d much rather be playing guitar than recording guitar.”
