Today we’d like to introduce you to Owen Korzec.
Owen, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started music because I grew up in a musical family and all the instruments around the house fascinated me. I was already learning piano by ear on my own by age 5, so my family really supported my talent. A few years later I started learning more instruments like drums and guitar and taking lessons, so I developed into a proficient multi-instrumentalist very early on.
In my early teens, I began joining bands, usually as a drummer, but I also loved to get involved with the songwriting within original bands, as it worked my multi-instrumentalism juices more. I also started recording demos for those bands, which led to a new obsession with audio engineering and putting together my home recording studio under the name Double Rainbow Studio.
After being in several bands that disbanded after a few years, I decided to start a solo project that that I could commit to long term and really put all my skills to use – the multi-instrumentalism, the songwriting, and the recording. I worked hard to become a good singer and lyricist too, and as those skills were coming together I recorded my first album Glow, completely DIY from start to finish. That kicked off my original music project under my name Owen Korzec.
Coming off of that, I did some further training at Berklee College of Music and with some personal coaches, while working toward a professional music career, mostly doing freelance performing gigs. Currently, I’m really focusing back in on my true passions of writing original music as Owen Korzec and producing local bands and artists at Double Rainbow Studio.
Has it been a smooth road?
It was only smooth when I was a kid because there was no pressure for career success yet. But pursuing a music career has been a very rocky journey throughout. Due to developing a wide variety of musical talents, I’m incredibly prone to spreading myself too thin and losing my sense of priorities. Also, in the music industry, there are hardly any one-size-fits-all paths to success, so you have to improvise, and it is very tempting to sacrifice a sustainable lifestyle just to catch maximum opportunity in the moment. That tendency has definitely led me into periods of overworking, sleep deprivation, and emotional instability, due to getting involved in too many of the wrong projects at the wrong times. So in recent years I’ve found it incredibly important to introspect regularly on what I value most, and then adjust my career choices accordingly.
Also, one particularly defining struggle in my journey was learning how to sing well. I was very driven to add singing to my skillset because I knew it was so important, but I was super inept at it from the beginning. I started out going about the learning curve doing just about everything wrong. I was self-studying using whatever information I could find on the internet and only getting worse, then investing in vocal teachers who didn’t really know what they were doing, and then performing too intensely for my capability which wore out my voice every week and slowed down the training process. But in the end, I finally found a couple vocal teachers who helped me greatly in slowly undoing all my bad habits and rebuilding my foundation. Learning to sing well after all that struggle really taught me a lot of important concepts that apply in all areas of life like patience, intuition, and body awareness, to name a few.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Double Rainbow Studio is a recording studio in Braintree where I record, mix, and master local bands and musicians. It also doubles as a live venue, so lots of musicians come here to play shows too. Many of them decide to record their first serious debut here, so I specialize in making sure that the recording process puts their best foot forward and that the recordings meet their desired artistic vision but also have a professional yet authentic sound quality.
I also recently partnered with Together Records, a local record label, and they do a great job at helping new artists on a promotional level, while I help them out by providing Double Rainbow Studio’s recording services or live venue space if a new artist is looking for a place to start recording and performing.
One quality that definitely differentiates my studio is the space itself, with its open, woody live room that not only sounds great, but really tends to put everyone in a fun mood of good vibes. I also think the way I am a dedicated and multi-talented musician outside of a recording engineer provides a strong advantage, in that I can really empathize with the musicians coming through here, fully understand their artistic vision and make sure their recordings truly come out the way they want to. As an audio engineer, I definitely have a unique background too, where I learned how to record and mix well by practicing a lot on very limited low budget equipment. It challenged me to do a lot of detailed self-study and experimentation to figure out strategies to get the best sound possible with what little equipment I had at the time. That definitely gave me an extra layer of skill and finesse when it comes to recording and mixing technique, which I keep applying and improving further, even as I keep improving my equipment setup too.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Yes. Boston and the surrounding areas are a great place for anyone involved with music. The music scene here is big enough that you can keep finding new musicians and music lovers every week, but small enough that you’ll find yourself often bumping into familiar faces and having “small world” experiences all the time. So it’s just the right size for up and coming artists to build an engaged audience, and for small businesses and freelancers to build a loyal tight knit community to support themselves.
There’s sort of an implicit understanding throughout the Boston music and arts scene that if you’re going to be a local artist of any kind, you should be supporting local art too. The amount of giving back and collaboration going on in the Boston music community is something to be grateful for every day. There’s always plenty of people looking for good entertainment and services, and plenty of people making them and ready to support others too.
Pricing:
- My debut album Glow is available for $5 or more at owenkorzec.bandcamp.com
- A full day recording session at Double Rainbow Studio costs $150
Contact Info:
- Email: owenkorzec@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/owenkorzec
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doublerainbowstudio
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/user/owenkorzec
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