Rad Hazard Studios is run by me, Tom McCaffrey, in Brooklyn NY. I started because I wanted to record my own band's records, and since I couldn't afford booking hours of expensive studio time at big NY studios I decided, over the last 10 years, to slowly build my own. That way, I could spend all night writing, recording, mixing, and tweaking until it was perfect.
Throughout doing those projects I discovered what a passion I had for helping others make the records that they really wanted to make too. I know how vulnerable it can feel to enter a studio for the first time with your own music, and my goal has been to make Rad Hazard a place where people can feel comfortable enough expressing their musical identity and ideas that it truly translates through recordings. Often times, it creates something better than any of us expected. Everyone is different, everyone likes a different approach, and I want to make the record that you want to make!
I've got a ton of experience with every step of the recording process, from intitial songwriting to arranging and orchestrating, to writing parts for and recording any instrument and having it sound totally pro (except bassoon, and maybe trumpet. Honestly upright bass is really hard), to engineering and producing, to final mixing and mastering. I can help you do whatever it is you need, and maybe more importantly, NOT do everything you DON'T need. Here are some wildly contrasting examples:
1. We can write an entire song together. Maybe you have lyrics and a melody and need some chords. Maybe you've got the chords and lyrics but you'd like me to help you uncover what you're hearing in your head and produce the track. We can do that.
2. You have an 8 piece band with drums, bass, 2 guitars, a singer, a keyboardist, synth dude, and trumpet, and you want to record fully live with reasonable separation. Everyone wants their own stereo headphone mix. You want me to focus on engineering, but you also like some producing input from time to time and want to feel engagement. You want this track to be to a click and one section is slightly faster than another, and you want me to set that up. You also want to walk in there with everything set up and ready to record and walk out of there with at least a nice rough mix. We can do that!
3. You're coming in solo and have everything mapped in your head the way you want the track to go. You want to play every instrument, one at a time, and build your track until it sounds exactly right. You'd like me to loop some sections so you can play the hard guitar riff as many times as you need, making sure to record every loop, and compile together all the best parts afterwards. You'd like to have full access to all the gear here, but you don't need much input from me - you'd like me to roll the recording, have everything set up, and be a good vibe. We can DEFINITELY do that.
4. You have a whole track recorded already, but you need to lay some final things down. You fly in your tracks from your friend in Switzerland and want me to load them up so you can record vocals stacks, and then you either want me to mix it or for me to zip up all the files and send them over to your amazing mix engineer. At the end you ask me to play banjo. I'm SO DOWN!
5. You come in with as unique of a mix of all the above as your song and artistic vision is. We are gonna DO THAT!
Everything is the same affordable hourly rate. You can pay me like a plumber and whatever track we come up with is yours to own. I don't have my rates on the website, but please send me a DM and we'll talk about it!
Rad Hazard is a 24 channel analog and digital recording studio running Pro Tools 2024, Logic Pro 11, and Ableton 12. A full list of the current gear can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IrZd-cMTtwkdA1BKjdTgg0PKoMepwCbZegxVJEnobPk/edit?tab=t.0
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