West Long Branch, NJ – Most students at Monmouth know about Blue Hawk Records, the University’s music label, but often people mistake the Blue Hawk Studio recording club with the label.
The recording club, founded and run by Huascar Holguin, a senior music industry student debuted last Spring. Since the start, the club has more than doubled in size and already has a new recording studio in the making.
Blue Hawk Studio aims to run an active practice recording studio on campus to teach students the basics of audio recording. They use top of the line equipment and software and have been helping record Monmouth students for their portfolios, graduate school applications, or personal use. Holguin wanted to share his passion for music and give others the tools to create their own.
He said, “Monmouth University only offered a few classes that focused on music recording and a top of the line studio that went mostly unused.” The club welcomes anyone who is interested whether music is part of their major or not.
Currently Blue Hawk Studio is working on recording an audiobook for a fellow professor and Dean of the Humanitarian school at Monmouth, Dr. Kenneth Womack is a published author and hesought out help from the club to turn one of his published books called The Restaurant at the End of the World into an audiobook. “Our students have a long and fertile history of being entrepreneurial with new and old technologies alike,” he said. Womack has never recorded an audiobook before and will be learning right alongside the students.
The recording club has been progressing quickly with the audiobook project and just finished wrapping up the auditions for the voice actors.
The actors consist of members from the Monmouth University community, students and professors, and they will be credited for their work on the audiobook. They will begin to start the recording process with the Blue Hawk Studio club members in coming weeks.
The club members involved with the recording process will also be credited as producers for the audiobook. If this interests any other people, there are still ways to get involved.
You can send an email to the audiobook team at audiobookteam@live365.monmouth.edu to receive more information and see how you can get involved.
“This seems like a fantastic way to merge the two in a new project that could very result in publishing credentials for students associated with the Blue Hawk Studio,” Womack said. This is the first big project for the club and they are excited to be able to help and gain experience from doing so.
The club meets every first and third Wednesday of the month between 2:50-3:15 in Woods Theater room WT4. The meetings are open to anyone that would like to attend but aimed mostly at club members. The primary objective of these meetings is for general knowledge and updates for current members and anyone new that may be looking to join the crew. From the meetings, you can sign up for time in the booth to record.
They discuss current issues at hand such as how they are going to recruit more people and opportunities for the club.
One of the biggest projects on the club’s plate is the relocation of their current recording studio. The Dean of the Music Department, Joe Rapolla, told Holguin to see what concepts the members would think is best if they got a green light for renovation. “We already have a project studio in the building. Our plan is just to improve the space already allocated and the recording equipment,” Rapolla said.
Faculty advisor of the club, George Wurzbach, thinks the future is bright for the club. “Hopefully soon we’ll be in sync with Blue Hawk Records, we plan for Blue Hawk Studio to be the ‘scratchpad’ for artists and composers to work through preproduction on the road to full scale production in Lakehouse Studio,” Wurzbach said. Lakehouse studio is a professional recording studio in Asbury Park.
Photo Courtesy of Blue Hawk Studio