Keyboard solo artist Jeffrey Scott Lawrence, JSL, has been writing and performing music since the 1980’s. Like many others, he has gone through a series of changes in his quest for recording quality music which he can edit and create on his own.

Many musical artists have their own in-home music studio, all taking an approach that will differ from artist to artist, but the end goal is the same. To have near-total control of the entire music making process. Lawrence’s latest album, Love Songs, is no different.

The Evolution of the Home Music Studio

I recently got together with Jeffrey, talking about the creation of Love Songs. Here’s what he said. “Back in the 80’s my home studio setup was a couple of keyboards and an amplifier. I would play the songs I had written through the amp and record it on a boombox.”

Jeffrey continues, “As technology got better I acquired keyboards with built-in sequencers, allowing me to write songs with many different sounds. This was great, however, I was still recording on cassette tapes in my boombox placed in front of the amp.

Cassette tapes were king back then and I accumulated a large tape library. This music was not just my own but also from other artists who I was listening to at that time. That tape library would later serve as inspiration for me in the creation of new music.”

New Music from Older Cassette Tape Recordings

“After years of recording my music the old way and later in recording studios of other musicians, I finally came out of the stone ages and built my own home studio. It was a liberating experience. Now I am able to use software to edit and mix my own music.

I still had that vast cassette tape library of my music from back in the early two keyboard years. I even had recordings of my works that were not fully developed. It was time to utilize them and turn my old music recordings and ideas into something new and fresh.

This is how Love Songs got its start. I began digitizing all of my important music off those cassettes from back in the day. Then one day I decided to go through these musical ideas to see if there were any I could update and or redo into new recordings.

Many of these songs were about Love in some form or fashion. All of them fit perfectly into this category and I was able to come up with roughly 30 different songs. That was a lot, so I had an idea of recording a two-part album called, Love Songs.

Love Songs became an album of old songs from back in the day that would be re-imaged using the latest sounds and technology, but without losing the basic integrity of the music.” It has been a long time in the making and now you can purchase it here.