Groove Tunes Studios Featured in International Recording Studio Trade Magazine "EQ"

The following is an excerpt from the July, 2006 issue of EQ Magazine, article entitled “Room With a VU” that featured Groove Tunes Studios.

Studio Notes:

“...Atlanta has numerous recording studios, but few are north of the Chattahoochee River,” says Groove Tunes figurehead Eric Tunison. “North Atlanta musicians had to drive great distances, sometimes into not-so-great parts of town, to record in a professional studio. We saw the need for a top-of-the-line studio in the north end. As a result we created what we feel is the finest and safest recording environment in North Atlanta...”

Read the entire article at EQ Magazine article "Room With a VU"

Groove Tunes Studio Featured In Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Northside Business
Musicians can create and relax

By ANDREW B. ADLER
For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/01/07

The company:

Groove Tunes Studios

What's inside:

Be prepared to get blown away once the doors are opened to Alpharetta-based Groove Tunes Studios, complete with theater, lounge, control room and recording studio. It's big sound plus big comfort.  Inside the lounge area, two sofas are placed parallel to one another, with one elevated slightly higher than the next, allowing recording artists the opportunity to watch a movie or catch a television show on the 106-inch screen. The audio is very distinguishable thanks to two 54-inch speakers. "Musicians can relax here until the studio becomes available," said Eric Tunison, Groove Tunes Studios' owner and founder. He built his recording studio 15 years ago, giving full attention to design, wiring and room dimensions. Musicians both seasoned and novice are eager to spend time blending their creative talents with Tunison's digital recording technology. The group Modern Logic, an up-and-coming '80s rock and roll band, spent hours recording several demo tracks. The band recently played at the Park Bench in Buckhead. Its next appearance is scheduled for Slapshots Sports Bar and Grill in Woodstock on March 10. Deborah Lanham spent months working with Tunison on a double CD set entitled "A Safe Way Home" that centers on children's abduction prevention.  The CD contains original children's songs and lessons. Lanham will perform "Aha," a Christian song produced by Tunison, at the Perimeter Church Women's Retreat at Callaway Gardens in early March.

About the owner:

Heavily influenced by The Beatles, Eric Tunison was happy to display one of their recordings, part of his wall-to-wall collection of record albums that represent all musical categories. Tunison was a 15-year-old high school student living with his parents in Whittier, Calif., when The Beatles first appeared upon the music scene. "I was playing rhythm guitar for a band called 'The Classics' at the time," he said. "We were a surf music group that soon transformed into a British-type surf rock band." Before the band broke up and its members became college-bound, a 17-year-old Tunison was the group's lead guitar player and sang lead vocals. He also received his introduction to musical production while "The Classics" were recording their own original music at a Los Angeles-based recording studio. "The songs were never published, but that proved to be the beginning of my recording career," Tunison said.  When Groove Tunes Studios' founder moved to Georgia because of a job offer, it was three decades later and 3,000 miles removed from his Washington state digs, where he earned an engineering degree and operated private analog recording studios. "I chose Alpharetta because there are many young, talented musicians living in north Fulton," he said.

Three years after constructing his studio within the framework of his house in Alpharetta, Tunison married his wife Kate. "She makes sure everybody knows that Groove Tunes Studios is located around back," he said. "She doesn't want clients coming through the front door."

What you can purchase:

Large amounts of studio time.

Location:

340 Rossiter Ridge, Alpharetta. 770-842-5511.
www.groovetunes.com.
eatunison@bellsouth.net.

Hours:

Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Groove Tunes Studios Featured in "Mix" Magazine May 2007 Issue

Eric Tunison's Groove Tunes

As this special edition of Mix focuses on health and well-being, it's worth noting that sometimes the best way to feel good inside your own skin is to use your musical/technical resources to help others.

Case in point: Eric Tunison is an engineer/producer/project studio owner of Groove Tunes, a facility he designed and built from the ground up to his own high standards when he moved from Seattle to Alpharetta, Ga., in the early '90s. Groove Tunes began as a part-time enterprise — a side interest — but a few years ago, Tunison decided he had made enough cash doing his day-job as a project manager to upgrade his studio from Tascam 8-track analog to Pro Tools 7.3/HD Accel and make the leap to full-time studio owner/operator. His facility also includes a balanced selection of mics from Neumann, Soundelux, Royer, AKG, Sennheiser, Shure and Beyerdynamic; preamps from Focusrite, PreSonus, Groove Tubes and others; a large collection of outboard gear and plug-ins; and JBL LSR 6328P powered main monitors — more than adequate tools to serve the musicians of his small community and beyond.

Since making the change, Tunison has recorded some full-rate clients, such as CNN International writer Gustavo Gonzales, who has been making his first Latin CD at Groove Tunes, but he's also offered discounted rates to younger, local bands and charitable organizations that need studio time. For example, Tunison is affiliated with Music for Charities, where he gives highly discounted studio rates to members who donate portions of their musical downloads to charities of their choice.

“My affiliation with Open Mic Atlanta offers discounted studio rates to Open Mic performers, including some studio time give-aways to winners of Open Mic contests,” Tunison explains. “I have a similar affiliation with Gary Steffins of Gary Goodstuff, a local promoter of youth bands, by giving away studio time to Battle of the Bands contest winners and discounted studio rates to all participants.”

Recently, Tunison collaborated (again, for a fraction of his day rate) with independent artist Deborah Lanham on a CD project for a group called Kidini. “They approached me to produce a child-abduction-prevention safety-awareness album,” Tunison says. “They conduct seminars where they teach courses live to children and their parents — visiting Cub Scout meetings and things like that — and they have these cardboard cutouts they show to the children with cartoon-type characters, but they were feeling like the children needed something to take home to remember the lessons. The idea was to create a CD of original music that would not only make the lesson plans more real for the kids, but would be fun enough so that parents wouldn't mind listening to it.”

Lanham and Tunison — both multi-instrumentalists — played most of the musical parts themselves (guitars, synths, horns, percussion), though they had some help with the vocals: “Deborah sang all the lead parts, but we also had 30 children from the Christian Youth Theater of Alpharetta — aged anywhere from 5 to 15 — come into the studio to sing backup vocals on four or five of the songs. I have a very large lounge, and some generous parents came to mind the children. I could fit 10 at a time in the studio proper. I fit them all with headphones, stood them all in a row. Deborah would be in the studio with them and she'd mouth the words and hold up cue cards, and it took several takes for the kids to get the hang of it, but I comped the best takes and they sounded pretty decent.

“You just have to do what you can,” Tunison reasons. “Not everybody can afford to record in a recording studio. My rate is very low as compared to the big-time Atlanta studios, but for a lot of people, what I charge is a lot of money. I can't do these things for nothing because this is my livelihood, but at the same time, I understand there are young musicians who just can't afford it. And then, with people who are doing charitable events, I want to give them a deal, too, so they can keep doing something good. All I care about is making enough to keep paying my bills and doing work that the musicians and I can be proud of.”

Groove Tunes Studios Featured In Review And News Business Post

Catering to serious musicians
Music makers book blocks of recording time

"...Musicians who are serious about recording get down to business at a recording studio – something Eric Tunison encourages with his business model.
Don't ask for hourly rates if you want to tackle this kind of project. Tunison offers block rates that are much cheaper than the rates charged at downtown recording studios. With 50 percent down, the musician essentially books the studio in advance. Even his maximum hourly rates are no worse than the lowest rates at the high-end Atlanta studios. And compared to some of the dungy, ill-equipped basement studios he's seen, Tunison said his rates are very reasonable.
His business model is for clients to pre-purchase at a block rate.
"That tells me they're serious," he said. "I block my time for them and I don't book anyone else. I like it because it makes them commit." .."

Groove Tunes Studios Featured In Alpharetta Review And News

Quiet street home to recording studio
Lifelong hobby becomes career

"...Eric Tunison's basement has ceilings taller than most vaulted ceilings in North Fulton luxury homes, but his builder didn't make a mistake. That's the home of Groove Tunes Studios, his recording studio business.
Tunison has been recording music since his parents bought him his first tape recorder while he was in high school. Until two years ago, it was a hobby in which he invested as much time and money as many professional studios.
He worked as a project manager, which took him all over the country on different contracts. When a project that kept him in Savannah most days over a two-year period ended, he looked for something to do close to home without all the travel.
That's when it occurred to him, why not finally make his lifelong hobby into a career..."