Engineering music at Lane Tech’s Studio 2501
Tools at Lane Tech offer students pro recording studio experience
Asense of place is ingrained at Studio 2501 at Lane Tech High School, yet the feeling in the room is fluid.
Studio 2501 (named for the school address, 2501 W. Addison) is the only high school in the state to offer a sound engineering class. Future George Martins are learning industry-type recording software such as Pro Tools II. It’s Penny Lane Tech. Studio 2501 is in an open, hangarlike room where in the 1940s students built airplanes, one of which flew in World War II. The space later was an auto shop and has now been remodeled into an area that resembles a train station from the Crosby, Stills and Nash hit “Marrakesh Express” with clocks and train/class schedules. Studio 2501 had its ribbon-cutting Nov. 8.
The “studio” consists of four spaces: a live (recording) room, a control room with mixing board, a large instruction area for up to 40 students and a loft with computers and headphones where students mix recordings and program drums for hip-hop, etc. A camera connects the control room with the live recording room, 100 feet away.
Studio 2501 was built with school fundraisers and grants from the House of Blues, the school’s Century Foundation alumni group, a parent booster club and Donor’s Choose, a national nonprofit organization that helps people donate to public schools. Lane Tech would not disclose the building budget. Students painted 99 percent of the new studio. The school partners with Chicago Music Exchange and Guitar Center, which donates instruments.
Word jazz cat Ken Nordine and crooner Frankie Laine attended the school, and in the 1970s, 26 members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were Lane alumni. Current enrollment at Lane Tech is 4,200.
“Many kids have been turned down because it is such a popular class,” Vice Principal Damir Ara said after removing a Guns n’ Roses album from the small turntable in his office.
Principal Christopher Dignam green-lighted the studio after seeing growing interest in the school’s guitar program.
“We went from having one section of guitar seven years ago to eight sections (350 students) this school year,” said Dignam, a rock guitarist who is influenced by Jimmy Page. “We offer two sections of the sound engineering class. This studio is a nice blend of performance and engineering that has not been designed in many high schools across the country.”
Ara, a former bassist, added, “Students work in all the zones. One day they will learn how to mic a drum or they will go upstairs and try to program a drum. A lot of kids in the class have already taken guitar or orchestra, so they are experienced musicians.”
Nicholas Cameron is a senior keyboardist who plays in the school’s jazz combo and is taking the sound engineering class. “This room far exceeded my expectations,” said Cameron, whose father Chris is a Chicago studio musician and former rhythm and blues keyboardist for Big Twist & the Mellow Fellows and Mavis Staples. “It’s like a major-label studio. I’m learning how to use stuff at home. I have drums, bass, acoustic piano, guitar. I can have Pro Tools at my house and record all that stuff.”
Back in his father’s day, musicians gathered in one studio and