Day in the Life: Recording Studio Owner Eric Sills

For Eric Sills, going to work every day is like having a front row seat to a concert. As the owner of Stone Soup Recording Studios in Maumee, Ohio, the 58-year-old engineer has worked with local and national recording artists, including Grammy-winning music producer Jameil Aossey. 

Music has always been a big part of Sills’ life. “My sisters and I were band kids growing up,” he says. “I played French horn. My senior year in high school, I discovered drums and joined a band. Our name was Rampage. We played a lot of Judas Priest covers.”  

After high school, Sills attended the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University and majored in electronic technology. He was working as an electrical engineer in 2003 when he sustained a T8 spinal cord injury in a car accident. 

He stopped playing drums, but didn’t lose his love for music, passing it down to his two children. His son inspired him to start his own recording studio. “My son wanted to attend a recording camp but was too young to apply, so I suggested why don’t we set up a few computers in the basement and start recording on our own,” he says. “All of a sudden all those recording techniques I studied in college came back to me, and it turned into something we really enjoyed doing.” 

Soon other bands started coming to their makeshift basement recording studio. With his wife’s encouragement, he bought a building in 2010 and started his own company. “In my former life as an electrical engineer, I felt like I was just another cog in the wheel,” he says, “whereas my job now, it’s creative, and every day is different and exciting.” 

Here’s a glimpse into a day in Sills’ world. 

11 a.m. 

I’m not really a morning person. And I don’t have a regular sleep cycle. I’m usually out of bed between 10 a.m. and noon. Most of my clients have day jobs so they are recording late at night. I have an additional computer I use for editing at home, so I’ll work on some projects in between doing laundry or other household chores. Being able to work from home sometimes helps balance my work and home life. If it’s a slow morning, I’ll watch a movie. I’m a huge movie buff.  

1 p.m. 

My phone rings a lot during the day. I’m booking recording sessions or lining up musicians to play background instruments. The studio is really busy. Luckily, we’ve never had to do any real marketing; our business is pretty much word-of-mouth generated. I really don’t have any other employees besides myself, but that might be changing.  

2:30 p.m. 

Time to head to the studio to prepare for tonight’s recording session. Luckily, the studio is a 10-minute roll from my house. The building was originally a gas station in 1957, but it had high ceilings and brick walls, which made soundproofing it easier. We ended up gutting the interior and hiring a nationally recognized sound designer to lay out the space. The only accessible modification we made was adding a ramp at the entrance, which is also helpful for musicians loading in their own instruments. We added on to the building during COVID, and today we have a control room, two vocal booths and two live rooms. The live room is the room that has all the sound happening in it, from acoustical instruments to vocalists.  

4 p.m. 

I’ve got a jazz band coming in tonight to record some songs. While I wait, I get a jump on editing an audiobook we recorded the other day. We record all kinds of things at the studio, but we’re predominately known for working with jazz artists. I love jazz music … no disrespect to other music styles, but I just really like recording live musicians playing live instruments. Jazz is different every time; it’s not boring. The ability to improvise and make something up on the spot fascinates me. I was never a great improviser on the instruments I played, so I admire that a lot.  

5:30 p.m. 

With jazz, visual communication is very important, so I want to make sure the room is set up where they can see each other, in addition to hearing each other through headphones. Tonight’s group includes drums, upright bass, piano and a couple of horns. On the drum set alone, we’ll place 12 microphones plus room mics. That is a lot of mics to set up on each instrument, so I have a couple people coming in to assist me, plus when we’ve got a full house and mics everywhere, there are a lot of cables on the floor, so it’s easier for an assistant to move something if we have to. Once everything is in place, I’ll have the band do a couple practice songs so I can check the levels and make sure everything sounds good. 

7:30 p.m. 

Time to start tracking [recording]. I love tracking because I love hearing the song come together. I try to stay out of their way and just let them create. During tracking, I’m in the control room adjusting the volume of each individual microphone, adding effects, or recording different instruments or vocal parts separately. Depending on the artist’s experience, I’ve done as few as a couple takes to 10 or more. In between takes, the band comes into the control room to make sure they are happy with it.  

9:30 p.m. 

While the band takes a break to get a bite to eat, I stay behind to clean up some of the takes. I love working on musicians’ original material and putting all the sounds together and mixing it. There is no better feeling for me than being able to bring a musician’s concept to life. It’s like delivering somebody’s baby. 

10:30 p.m. 

I haven’t eaten all day so I head into the studio kitchen and warm up a plate of lasagna my wife made the night before. She makes a mean lasagna. I eat while I work and start preparing for the rest of the songs when the band returns. 

12 a.m. 

That’s a wrap. The artists are usually very eager to get their recordings, but I like to edit, mix and master the files a day or two later because I have been sitting there hours listening to what they’ve been doing, and I may have an idea in my head about fixing something, but when I come back it may have been something kind of cool that I want to keep. It’s exciting when the final product gets released nationally and you hear it and know you had a part in it. 

1 a.m. 

I arrive home. After a long day I like to unwind a bit before I hit the bed. My son and I are big gamers. My favorite game right now is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. I’ll play for an hour before I go to bed and call it a night (well, actually a morning).