Our Story

The East Hall Philosophy

We are not unbiased. We do not believe that all recording methods are created equal, at least not for the records we want to make with you.

In the over-tuned, over-edited, over-perfected, paint-by-numbers landscape of modern music, something has been lost. Call it "soul", "the funk", "rock 'n roll", a lot of music has lost its humanity.

When the bands we work with listen back to their record a month, year, or decade from now, we want them to hear themselves, not us or some computer approximating what they do. We want them to sound like themselves on their best night. We want them to be proud of what we've accomplished together.

We do love analog tape, but this is not an analog vs. digital debate. They each do different things well. We believe in using all the tools at our disposal to make the best record we can make. However, we do NOT equate that with being "perfect".

Perfect is boring. Performance is everything. Practice up and bring your A-game. We're making a record.

About the Studio

"Comfortable." That's one of the first words people use to describe the studio when they arrive. East Hall began with a 4-track cassette recorder in a dorm room over 20 years ago. Since then, it has grown through a series of dorm rooms, bedrooms, and garages, and has been in the current custom built building for the last 12 years. But it has always kept the feel of a home studio. It's an atmosphere where you can let your guard down and be creative.

East Hall also has a huge collection of instruments, amps, and gear of all sorts. From the sound source to the mics to the tape and everything inbetween, everywhere you turn, you'll find the tools and toys you need to make your record.

PRESS

Recording studio awards free recording packages to 48 local artists

By Dustin Bartholomew

February 20, 2019

A local recording studio that pledged to give away 15 two-song recording packages as part of their 15th anniversary celebration has overdelivered on that promise.

After receiving nearly 200 submissions for the giveaway, owner/engineer Chris Moore of East Hall Recording today announced the studio will award the prize to 48 local artists.

“There’s so much incredible talent in this area,” Moore said. “We received over 180 submissions and quickly realized there was no way we were going to be able to narrow it down to just 15 artists. So we decided to get a little crazy and up the number of winners to 48. It was still difficult to narrow it down to that.”

Moore said the winners selected represent new artists, to more established acts in just about every type of genre. In addition to the 48 winners, Moore awarded a $100 gift certificate to every musician who entered the giveaway.

The sheer number of entries in the giveawya, and the difficulty in narrowing down the winners is a testament to the strength of the local scene, Moore said.

“There’s a lot of talk about our music scene right now,” Moore said. “Some people think that focus groups and large sums of money are going to flow down from on high to save our scene. But a music scene has to be built from the inside out by all of us working together. We’ll be busy with these sessions for the rest of this year, but we’re trying to build a foundation for the next fifteen years of Northwest Arkansas music.”

KUAF Arts Beat: Recording Studio Celebrates 15 Years with Local Band Giveaway

By KATY HENRIKSEN

DEC 29, 2018

Named after the dorm where the magic first began, East Hall Recording celebrates 15 years as a Fayetteville recording studio that lays down tracks for diverse sounds ranging from Witchsister to Arkansauce.

Founder Chris Moore stops by the studio to discuss origins, what draws him into the minutiae of laying down tracks for listeners to hear for years to come and a 1th anniversary giveaway that offers 15 bands a two song recording session each. The deadline to enter is December 31.

Keep up with all things KUAF Arts Beat with #ArtsBeatKUAF. Tune in Monday through Thursday at 8 p.m. to catch the latest conversation.

Born in a Dorm Room

Fayetteville's East Hall Recording has been a slow build.

by Arkansas Times Staff November 29, 2018

There’s a secret spot stashed off of a loping, scenic road on the edge of Fayetteville. An anemic gray wooden building that sits aside a wet dirt spur of road and behind a shaggy gate of hickory trees is mysterious enough to make you reckon it’s hiding something really cool, possibly magical, inside. It’s a regional hotspot for musicians of all stripes, and stepping into it can bring on a sensory assault of instruments and good vibes.

Inside, surrounded by 40-year old Ampeg bass cabs, Odyssey Arp synths and a newly restored 1970 Ludwig drum kit, the red-haired and squoosh-faced master of the studio dawdles, indifferent to spending another day in this arsenal of gear-head gold. But we’re not here to talk to Delia the cat; we’re here to talk to her human, Chris Moore, the owner/operator/head engineer at East Hall Recording.

“The studio started back in the early ’90s on that,” Moore said, pointing at a Tascam recorder, “in my door room at East Hall in Hendrix College.” The quarter-century history of East Hall Recording has steadily leveled up from dorm room to bedroom to garage to “half my house … but it’s always kept the vibe of a bedroom studio.” Here, a warm energy circulating in the studio does make it feel like a friend’s home, sure, but larger and more soulful, like the physical manifestation of an album produced by Jimmy Miller or Steve Cropper.

But enough about vibes; what about details? Moore tracks the band to tape through the definitive tape machine, a two-inch, 24-track MCI workhorse with “Perfect Is Boring” lettered onto its wooden faceplate. That business gets transferred into Pro Tools to splice and overdub before bouncing back to analog to mix and master. It’s an alchemy of tape compression and audio warming that’s instinctual and difficult to nail down in language. “It just glues everything together. There’s an intangible quality to it that just sounds right.

“I like the workflow. We’re not staring at a computer screen. It forces everyone to listen to what they’re recording instead of looking at it. When we’re on tape, we’re not going to do edits immediately. We’re not going to punch in in the middle of a guitar solo. We’re focusing on full takes of the full band playing together. It’s a better vibe that way.”

The central nervous system of the operation is Moore’s latest and largest addition to the ongoing East Hall Recordings project: a 1995 Jade Soundtracs console. Forty-eight channels, 96 inputs, all manner of dynamics, compressors and gates, and more knobs, buttons and sliders than anything I’ve ever seen on one piece of machine in my life.

“I decided a few years ago that this was the board that I wanted because it worked perfectly in the workflow I had going and the workflow I wanted to get to. So I watched for it. And in March, this thing showed up for sale in Houston. So, the next day I rented a U-Haul cargo van that was six inches longer than this board and drove down and picked it up. Every time it moved it took 10 or 12 people.”

After a few months of refurbishing and rehabilitating the board to its full power with direct guidance and dead stock parts from one of Jade’s designers in the U.K., it’s sitting large and in charge in Moore’s control room, where it captures some of the best music in Northwest Arkansas … when not being used as a warm nap spot for Delia the cat.

East Hall’s long tenure means that its audio hard drive doubles as a multi-decade archive of Arkansas bands. That’s why, in 2016, I was so excited when Chris Moore offered up what he called “the cream of a very large crop” — a five-volume retrospective of the studio’s recording sessions, available for free at easthallrecording.bandcamp.com. Each volume fits on a CD, if that’s your medium of choice, with tracks from Terminus, The Chads, Witchsister, Arkansauce, The Good Fear, Ten High and Shawn James & The Shapeshifters. In the digital liner notes, Moore sends the listener off thusly:

“While I’m immensely proud of the body of work we’ve put together, I also recognize that any claim I have to being good at my job is directly related to the skill and talent of the musicians that walk through these doors. Their support has made it possible for me to do what I love for over a decade, and I hope we can continue making music together for many years to come. … I hope you find some new favorite music that you don’t know how you’ve lived without, and seek out and support the artists you like.” — Stephanie Smittle

Local studio releases five-album compilation featuring 80 Arkansas artists

By Dustin Bartholomew

June 7, 2016

For nearly 12 years, in an unassuming little shack just north of Fayetteville, local engineer and producer Chris Moore has been capturing the sounds of the Arkansas music scene one track at a time.

His East Hall Recording studio has become a destination for artists from all over the region to come and document their music utilizing a combination of their own instruments and Moore’s eclectic collection of vintage guitars, amps, drums, and keyboards. The musicians also come for Moore’s seasoned ear as a producer, and his distinction as one of the few remaining studios in the digital age that still have the ability to record to tape.

Over that time, he says, he has recorded more than 400 different artists, several of them more than once, and amassed an enormous collection of local music that he’s helped capture and create over the years.

This week, he decided to share several albums worth of that music for free with the public.

Moore released a five-album compilation featuring the work of 86 area bands, most of which are from northwest Arkansas.

The recordings date back to a 2004 Thanks For Nothing album that was one of the first sessions at East Hall when it opened 12 years ago, and span more than a decade’s worth of recordings important to the local scene through the present day.

Moore said the compilation represents what he feels are some of the best songs recorded at his studio over that time.

“Really, all of them are songs that I still enjoy listening to,” he said. “They also bring back some great memories of some incredible sessions over the years.”

Of those, Moore mentioned a session featuring local garage rockers Taifas where they recorded an entire 12-song album using a total of 14 live takes in the studio. The entire record was finished in a matter of hours.

“That one definitely holds the record for the fastest recording,” he said. “I could spend all day telling the stories of the most memorable sessions of the years, though. All of them represent some pretty great memories for me.”

Moore also noted that nearly all the songs on the compilation were recorded based on a live, in-studio performance with minimal overdubs

“That just makes me even more impressed with the musicianship in the area,” he said.

The compilation includes a single track from artists ranging in genres from rock to country, reggae to bluegrass, metal to jazz. In all, it serves as a good representative of what the overall local music scene has sounded like for the past decade.

Moore, however, said he’s not finished showcasing the talents in the Fayetteville music scene.

“I’ve already started on Vol. 6,” he said. “In fact, as long as we’re recording music here, I’m going to try to keep making these compilations.”

Listen to all five volumes below, or download them yourself for free at East Hall’s Bandcamp page.

Anonymous donor pays recording costs for 12 local bands

By Dustin Bartholomew

June 29, 2012

About two months ago, local recording engineer Chris Moore announced that an anonymous donor had offered to pay the recording costs of 5-song EP for one local band at his East Hall Recording Studio.

“I’ve spent my entire adult life, plus some, in the Fayetteville music scene,” the donor told Moore. “It’s been an important part of my life, and I want to give something back.”

A contest was created to choose a winner, and Moore encouraged local musicians to submit their music for consideration for the project.

About 50 local bands applied, and when he announced the winner of the contest earlier this week, there was a bit of a surprise.

Instead of selecting one group to win the free recording session, the donor selected 12 local bands to receive studio time.

Those selected include The Chads, Matthew Cooper, Fauxnz, A Good Fight, The Inner Party, Shawn James, Keith Nicholson, Derek Shacklett, Sock Party, Swimming, Teenagers, and Jesse Wells.

“There were just so many good bands that applied and we thought, ‘Man, what if we could do twelve,” Moore said. “So we worked out a payment deal that worked for the donor, and now we’re going for it.”

The project will begin in July with locals The Chads, followed by The Inner Party. After that, Moore plans to record two of the winners each month for the next 6 months.

“We’re going to try and knock them out quickly,” he said. “Nobody wants to wait 11 months to record.”

He’s right. We can’t wait to hear the new local tunes, either. Thanks, anonymous person.