Beeld & Geluid | Studio RE:VIVE has been open for a year. Here’s some musings.

I’ve been working in creative reuse of cultural heritage for 11 years. I’ve seen many trends come and go. The fact that RE:VIVE is in its 9th year and has had its best year ever makes me so happy. I’m honestly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s weird for things to be going SO well. I owe a lot of this to my managers and Beeld & Geluid for allowing me to keep experimenting. I always like to say that RE:VIVE was born out of an R&D department - we did research, we tested, we evaluated, we tested again, we pivoted, so on and so forth.?

With RE:VIVE my intention was to create something that was a part of the Dutch music community. Everyone was using words like “engage” and “attract” when it came to working with artistic communities and creative reuse. It always rubbed me the wrong way. That’s a one way street. If we wanted to do this long-term and meaningfully, we had to become a part of the community. That means being present, being open, listening, empathy and offering something back.?

The legendary Steve Albini who just passed away had an anecdote about how in the Chicago DIY scene if one band had a PA system, every band had a PA system, if one guy worked at a print shop, everyone had flyers, if someone had a van, everyone had a van.?

We never really reached that point. The gaps between projects were too big, there was never enough budget, never enough time, not everyone wants to work with digitized heritage materials. Copyright was always an issue.?

By year 7 of RE:VIVE, a year into the pandemic, a music world in shambles, everyone scrambling to find ways to generate content virtually, I was toast. Took a year off to recover. Came back saying I was done with RE:VIVE, I just wanted to do normal work, was told that I couldn’t stop, it had too much value to abandon. So I said let’s do it differently. Was told OK - come up with a plan.

Enter the studio:?

Once it was on paper, the studio solved all our issues. I took inspiration from our friends at Willem Twee Studios and the old Red Light Radio. Offer something unique, be open for anyone, get musicians through the door, see their face, work with them, talk to them, help them, teach them something and learn something from them. Aside: At the end of every studio session I always think about what I learned that day and will always thank a musician if they teach me something new - because if they teach me something, then I can teach that to the next session and so and so forth. We all learn and grow together. Not to mention the endless knowledge I’ve garnered from colleagues and collaborators.?

OK - enough of that: professional stuff

Money / Sustainability

• I don’t know if I can say how much we’ve invested over 2 years in outfitting the studio. The cost of a used Prius from 2017 or so.?
• Buying and repairing equipment is our only expense. And once we have the equipment, we have it forever. Unless it breaks, then we repair it. It’s a win win. We expand the Beeld & Geluid collection and we invest in keeping physical Dutch musical heritage alive while making it available for anyone to use. We support local makers / repair people. If and when the studio closes and there’s things that don’t fit in the collection we can resell them. I’d say 80% of the studio can be sold with marginal loses. A vintage analog mixing console isn’t a laptop or VR goggles- it will hold its value for waaaaaaaay longer. Also it’ll work for way longer and always be backwards / forwards compatible. Sound goes in, sound goes out. ?
• So every year we will invest in more gear and have to pay for maintenance but eventually, we have enough gear (ok never enough) but you only need so many mics and mixers and tape machines…then we won't have to buy more equipment, only maintin.
• We even made a bit of money this year. Genuine income. A first.?

Community:?

• This was probably the biggest risk. If we build it, will they come? I honestly wasn’t sure. So we started small and quiet. Inviting people from our network, then friends of friends then those friends told friends. Slowly, solely through word of mouth and personal outreach, we have more bookings than we can handle. Our marketing and communication budget remains €0.?
• It’s actually a problem that we got so popular so fast because the staffing isn’t there yet. It’s just me (3/4 time) and a volunteer once a week. We never want to turn someone away, but we also don’t love saying “OK we can book you a session 4 months from now”. We’re so stacked for the rest of the year that if I get sick and we have to reschedule, the wait time for those musicians could be 6 months. That’s not OK. We could honestly be open 7 days a week. Have to solve this luxury problem.
• The other things is that we have a home. We used to hop from venue to venue, partner to partner. For the first few years people didn’t know I actually worked for B&G, they thought I was some freelancer running a project with B&G. Now everyone knows this is a B&G project because it's located at B&G.

Simplicity

• Sometimes, when a cultural heritage organization runs a project, the concepts are so complex that it’s really not clear what they’re trying to accomplish. We had that with RE:VIVE, shoehorning a concept into a very simple project that we spent more time explaining what we did than actually doing it.?
• With the studio, we’ve trimmed all the fat. It’s lean, it’s mean. We run a music studio, all the equipment is Dutch and you can come make music for free. It’s actually so simple, I have to explain it still to people because they’re waiting for a catch. No catch, no gimmick.
• There's a misconception that innovation needs to be complex or technical. It can also be dirt simple.

Keeping it green

• The music world has an environmental problem. Bands have to tour to make money. That means driving and flying. And new gear, especially with the rise of AI, all requires energy and natural resources that are limited and not always ethically mined or made. And their life-span is short. You will always have to buy new things to be able to keep up with software updates or technical trends.
• 98% of the studio is second hand. That other 2% is our audio interface (which we could’ve bought 2nd hand), our DI-boxes which we could just build ourselves and cables which we could also make ourselves. Our oldest pieces of gear are from the 1950s and they work incredibly well. Anything else “new” we buy we buy from local DIY makers.?
• We only work with local artists, most of whom come by train. So we’re not spending money on flights which would eat up our budget and have a larger carbon footprint. Also because all our equipment comes from nearby, the carbon footprint of transport / shipping is negligible compared to things being made thousands of miles away.

A space for everyone

• It goes without saying that our biggest community is the Dutch experimental / independent music community. Mostly between 18-45 years of age. Leaning more towards men but shifting towards a 50/50 split. They’re the “users” of the studio.
• But behind the scenes, we’re a huge mix. Our equipment comes from all over NL. Just normal people. And a lot of the gear has a story. Someone’s parent died and they had a collection of equipment, a guitar bought for a child who never picked it up, an organ grandma used to play in church etc. It doesn’t matter to them who uses the equipment or what they look like, they’re just happy it will continue to live on and that their life gets to have a little corner in the archive.
• So much of the expertise we’ve gathered also comes from all over. Mostly older / middle-aged men who worked in music or engineering in the past and want to share their knowledge and passion. They might not like the music being made in the studio - but they’re stoked that people are curious and appreciate this old equipment and keep it alive.
• That’s kinda the nice thing about having “gear” as the thing we can all rally around. No one hates gear. You might have preferences, but a guitar is a guitar. You can play it 100 different ways, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a guitar. A piece of wood, with some magnets, some metal and a few wires.?

Copyright

• Not an issue - at all. Blessed.

I think those are all my general musings after a year of running this studio. Back to that Albini anecdote. We have a Dutch music studio, now everyone has a Dutch music studio.?

I can’t see it running out of steam any time soon but maybe after another year the novelty will have worn off…I dunno. I don’t think so. My biggest worry is that we won’t be able to keep up with demand and then it’ll trickle away because no one wants to be wait-listed. We’ll see!?

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