About the studio

Deep Audio Level is an online music creation studio that writes, arranges and records custom songs to brief. We are based in Santa Monica, California, and we work with clients everywhere — the studio has no walk-in counter and no waiting room, only a message thread and a shared folder that fills with new versions of a song. That arrangement suits both sides: you keep control of the brief in writing, and we keep our attention on the music instead of on front-desk logistics.

What we do

The studio covers the full arc of making a song. Some clients arrive with a tune already in their head and need it arranged and recorded. Others arrive with nothing but a feeling and a deadline. In both cases the work is the same discipline: understand what the song is for, find the melody that carries it, build the arrangement around that melody, and record it cleanly enough to live anywhere. Where a song needs a voice we write the lyrics and bring in a vocalist, or we shape the melody around a voice the client already has.

We deliberately keep the service list short. A studio that claims to do everything is a studio that does nothing particularly well. We write and produce music; we do not run a label, we do not manage artists, and we do not sell anyone's catalogue. If your project needs something outside that line, we will tell you plainly and, when we can, point you to the right specialist.

How the studio works

Every commission begins with a written brief, because a brief is the only way both sides know what "finished" means. From the brief we produce a direction note — the tempo, the feel, the instruments, the shape of the sections — and only when that is agreed do we start writing. The song is then built in stages, and each stage is shared before the next begins. Clients see the melody before the arrangement, and the arrangement before the final mix. Feedback at each stage is cheap; feedback after the final master is not, which is why we front-load the sharing.

The studio is intentionally small. There is no roster of anonymous writers passing a track down a chain. The same hands that read your first message shape the melody, and the same ears that chose the instrumentation sit in front of the final balance. It is a slower way to run a studio and a faster way to arrive at a song that sounds like a decision rather than a compromise.

Who we work with

Our clients are individuals and small organisations rather than major labels. They include couples commissioning a wedding song, families assembling a gift, small businesses that want original theme music instead of a stock loop, podcasters and video makers who need a signature track, and writers who want a song to sit beside their work. What unites them is that they know what the song should do and want it made properly.

Editorial independence

This website also carries one page of technical reference material — a comparison of common audio editors by their engineering characteristics — and we want to be explicit about how that page is written. It is editorial. We are not affiliated with any of the products discussed, we receive nothing from the companies behind them, and we host no copies of any software on this site. The comparison exists to help a reader understand the landscape of tools, not to steer anyone toward one of them.

Get in touch

The studio replies to every brief. If you are unsure whether your idea fits, send it anyway and describe it as loosely as you like; a first reply that says "here is how we would approach this" costs you nothing. Use the commission request form, or write directly to [email protected]. For practical questions before you write, the questions page answers most of them.

Image credits

The photographs below illustrate this website. Each is reproduced from a public-domain or CC0 source on Wikimedia Commons; the table records where each file came from and who contributed it.

Postal address: Deep Audio Level Studio, 2201 Pacific Avenue, Suite 12, Santa Monica, CA 90405. Telephone: +1 (310) 555-0147.