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Easy-to-use software puts local teens in the music producer game

They're tracing black cords and wiring everywhere, trying to find the problem. Unplug the mic. Plug it back in. Turn up this dial on the mixing board. Now this one.  Maybe the headphones aren't working?  Clearly, there are some glitches at the studio this winter night. Joe Murphy is used to this sort of thing. These are the quirks that come with running a music production business out of your basement, especially when you're 17 and that basement belongs to your mom. "Is this plugged in?" the Rochester Hills teen asks his client, checking the microphone cord one more time. Murphy and the friends he produces are still in high school, but they're trying to become the next Timbaland, the next Kanye, the next My Chemical Romance. They hope someone important will discover the beats they're engineering, or music they're posting on MySpace, the social-networking site. With music production software becoming more accessible and affordable, teens and young adults everywhere are taking advantage. They're setting up in basements and bedrooms and making music on their own. Long gone are the days of sitting with your band mates, making a scratchy recording on a cassette tape, then sending it to a recording company, or selling it from the trunk of your LeBaron. "Everybody has a studio now" at home, said Martin (Tino) Gross, lead singer of the Howling Diablos and a producer in Royal Oak. "It's crazy." The big change, Gross said, is the ubiquity of production software programs and the rise of music stores with home recording departments. "I wish I had this when I was younger," laments Vince Mattias, 37, store manager of Roseville's Guitar Center, which sold more than 500 production software bundles over the holidays -- a 30% rise over the previous year. Most of the buyers were in their teens or 20s. Mattias said similar increases are being seen at Guitar Centers throughout metro Detroit. The prices range from about $60 for basic programs to the $450 Pro Tools starter package, on the high-end of budget software. It may not be as professional, but it's more economical, some say, than spending a few hours at a recording studio at $60 an hour. While the proliferation of home studios is difficult to quantify, producers around the country say the increase in teenage producers can be seen at Web sites like MySpace, where thousands have set up pages devoted to their craft. Sites like MySpace are "going to turn everything on its head," said David Farinella, a freelance music writer in Oakland, Calif., and author of "Producing Hit Records: Secrets from the Studio." "There's going to be so much product on the market." Five years ago, the admissions office at New York's Institute of Audio Research received about 500 inquiries a month. Now, the school gets more than 1,000 and most of the applicants are interested in music production. Michael Rosen, a San Francisco-area producer, said about half the calls he receives from musicians are requests to mix recordings they've already made at home.This trend, he said, is starting to take business away from big studios. Even Rosen produces from his basement because there are no overhead costs. He can charge $750 to $1,000 a day from home, a fee that would jump to $2,000 at a studio."Everybody who does what I do has had to scale back," because people don't like to pay thousands to record, Rosen said. Teens like Drew Parks of Troy use MySpace as a free way to promote music they've produced on a shoestring. "It's my life," said the 16-year-old, a.k.a. Drew32. "I come home from school, forgetting to do my homework, and do music." He has a small studio in his bedroom closet and made his first rap album at 14. Joe Murphy's MySpace page showcases musicians he's recorded through his business, Gem City Records. He made nearly $2,500 in 2007, thanks to a steady flow of clients -- many are classmates at Orchard Lake St. Mary's Preparatory School -- whom he charges $15 an hour. I like my music loud so I can get lost in it," said Justin Sanford, 18, Murphy's client one night last month. "Like I'm swimming in the beat." Standing behind a makeshift recording booth, made from discarded doors and foam padding, Sanford, of Farmington Hills, rapped over a remix Murphy crafted from Lupe Fiasco's "Superstar." Murphy listened through is headphones, bobbing his head. "When you produce, you always want the people you're producing to be successful," Murphy said. "If they're successful, you're successful." While his mom likes to remind people that her son is going into public relations or journalism, Murphy might have other plans. He sees himself someday working with the best hip-hop artists around. But fashioning a career isn't easy, said Terry Simaan, a 32-year-old from Bloomfield Hills who rose through professional studios and ran one in Canton for a few years. Now, as he develops local artists, including Drew32, he considers himself an executive producer. "You don't learn everything overnight," Simaan said. "You go back to the drawing board a lot in this business." Jared Atty, 19, of Warren, is looking for ways into the industry through his business, Famous Boy Entertainment, started about two years ago. Like his peers, Atty's songs can be found on MySpace. "I didn't think I'd do this," said Atty, a.k.a. J.Atty. "I thought I'd probably just go to college." And he could: Colleges with music production programs from San Francisco to Nashville have seen enrollment double in the past three years. "Technology has made it easier than ever before to capture something creative," said Dan Wujcik, program coordinator for the audio engineering technology program at Belmont University in Nashville. "No longer do we need to spend a tremendous amount of money to record audio." Parks, the Troy teen, uses Pro Tools. His dad tells him that 1990s technology wasn't near where it is today. All you have to do now, Parks said, "is know what you're doing and have a couple of bucks in your pocket." It's as simple as, well, recording a scratchy cassette.