People assume that to make great music, you need a massive space filled with racks of hardware and blinking lights. But here in New Zealand, most musicians, composers, and studio producers are doing it differently. Sometimes our isolation forces us to think a little more “inside the box” — literally.

Living and composing music here in New Zealand, nearly at the bottom of the world, we have a unique perspective on dealing with isolation – we embrace it! Sure, there are still one or two large format studios left, dotted around the major cities, but by far in majority are the small home studios, perticually for composers and song writers.

New Zealanders – Kiwis’ – very much inherit this DIY attitude to making music from our parents, its almost in our DNA to ‘give it a crack’ and see what we can do ourselves. And while I’m lucky enough to have the choice to write at our larger Music Nation space, I always prefer my home studio for a number of important reasons.

Is Small The New Big?

There’s a simplicity to working in a smaller room for musicians. Every decision feels close and immediate. I know exactly how my monitors sound in here because I’ve heard them in every mood the room can give me: humid summer days, cold winter mornings, nights where the rain smothers everything.

It’s not that I’m averse to large, flashy environments – I’ve owned a few large format studios and worked in plenty more. But I’ve come to love my small studio. It’s not glamorous. It’s got large windows, average insulation, and cables that seem to multiply overnight. But it’s mine, and somehow, that’s where the best ideas happen.

I have a weird ‘Don’t care, mate’ attitude here. I know its not a world class facility, and I don’t care. I think this extends out to the production value I put into tracks, I tend to not sweat the small things anymore. I just don’t have interest in EQing snare drums for hours, or perfectly matching reverb convolutions to my project scale – I just chose something, slam it in, and get on with the song.

When I’m not pressured to make critical decisions my creative output doubles. Its that simple.

The imperfections have become part of my reference. I don’t fight the space anymore; I work with it.

Work With What You’ve Got

Sometimes I think smaller studios force you to be more honest. You can’t hide behind fancy acoustics or expensive gear – if the song isn’t working, you know it instantly. There’s no reverb tail to disguise a weak idea, it’s all right there in front of you.

I mix in some beautiful rooms for special projects – depending on the budget of course, there are some very nice project studios for hire in New Zealand. But when I come back here I remember what it’s like to rely on instinct again. A small room teaches you to listen differently.

One of the best parts about working in a modest setup is that expectations are manageable. You’re not surrounded by any kind of industry pressure, or the constant hum of competition. There’s room to make mistakes quietly, to take an idea too far, to mess around until something interesting happens.

That creative breathing room is underrated. No one’s watching, which means you can follow an impulse just to see where it goes. A lot of my favourite tracks came from experiments that were supposed to fail.

I wrote an interesting article on overproducing music that ties in with this, check this out after you’re done here ‘The Case For Leaving Imperfections In the Mix’

Relax and Unwind

There’s also the physical comfort of it. I can step outside, touch grass and see actual sky. I hear birds, not traffic. There’s space between things. In bigger cities overseas, music feels compressed by the noise around it. Here, you get contrast. You can unplug for ten minutes and stare at a tree and then go back inside and write something that feels human again.

I couldn’t trade that for a polished control room.

Another thing that happens when you’re limited by size is you start curating your workflow. Every piece of gear has to earn its place. If something doesn’t inspire me, it goes. That discipline makes you sharper. As a composer and recording engineer, I’ve learned more about EQ and gain staging in this small space than I ever did when I had too many tools. Less room means fewer distractions, and that’s a weird kind of blessing.

Dealing with Limitations As A Composer

Of course, it’s not perfect. I sometimes wish I had more space for instruments, or better soundproofing. The low end can be tricky. I have to check mixes in the car or on headphones to be sure. But that’s part of the ritual now. It keeps me grounded. But the imperfections remind me that music isn’t about precision, it’s about communication. If it feels right, it is right.

The funny thing is, clients and collaborators often comment that my mixes sound really good, even though I don’t ‘broadcast grade’ mix anything here. I think since I instinctively reduce the amount of instruments and limit the total track count in my composistion projects, it keeps the mix naturally well balanced.

That’s the irony of it. Constraints force you to overcompensate with creativity. You find clever ways to fake width, to create depth without relying on brute force. Maybe that’s what makes small studios special: they’re intimate but imaginative.

On a side note, lots of Kiwi producers and composers are actually ditching their DAW’s completly and opting for hardware based setups – check out my article The Hardware Renaissance right here

Outro

I think a lot of us Kiwi musicians work this way. We’re an isolated country of improvisers. We make do with what we’ve got, but we also make it sing. The scale of things here encourages a certain attitude – less flash, more feeling. That’s why I still love composing in my little studio. It’s not just a workspace. It’s a reminder that music doesn’t need to be massive to matter. It just needs to be real.

When I sit here late at night, lights low, session loaded, hot chocolate going cold, I still get that same thrill I did when I first started composing years ago. There’s something addictive about hearing an idea come alive in a space that’s too small for it. It fills the room and pushes back against the walls. That’s when I know I’m doing something right.

We are spoilt with many options for funding here, such as Creative New Zealand, NZ On Air and APRA/AMCOS to name a few, its also relativly easy to create a name for yourself as an artist or service, you can simply reach out through social media or industry contacts and in short time be fairly well known within the scene.

If you’re on the verge of building your own composing, producing or even recording studio – regardless where in the world you are – just do it. Even a modest little room with a setup that allows you to lock yourself away and become immersed in your music will pay off in spades. Also, and of course, no disrespect to any of our brothers and sisters working in amazing studio elsewhere in the world, but if your sights are on New Zealand as your base of operations sometime in the future, I would highly recommend the move.

Until next week – keep composing friends!

Big thanks to Techivation for the cool images!