Located in the Village, Mercy Sound Recording Studios was built to give singers, musicians, songwriters and filmakers access to fluent engineers running the very best sounding equipment ever made, but for a fraction of the price of super studios. We help people produce projects from concept through recording and mastering. We have a large library of samples and sound effects for film and video work , voiceovers, and soundtrack scoring.

 

If you’re interested in finding out more about Mercy and what we offer, please don’t hesitate to contact us at 212-390-0305 or via our online web form here.  In the meantime, we’ve also prepared some of our most frequently asked questions below to help you get the most out of your studio experience.

What kind of music do you specialize in?

Everything!  From pop to rock, dance to hip-hop, jazz to reggae, we are an all inclusive studio musically, and each of our resident engineers has different specialties based on their background.  To read more about our engineers, click here.

What are the differences between the different Mercy studio rooms?

Studios A, B, and C are each separate from each other, and have a variety of different tools and equipment that allow them to be best utilized for different projects and applications based on client need.  Based on the size of the session and the type of music being worked on, whichever studio best fits the project can be determined with the assistance of our support staff by calling our main office at 212-390-0305.

What is the difference between recording, mixing, mastering, and production?

Glad you asked!  Studio jargon is often misused nowadays, and it’s important to know what exactly you’ll be needing in order to get your project done the way you want it.  Here are a couple of basic definitions below to help you find what you need:

 

Recording/Tracking: The act of recording a live instrument, person, electronic instrument, or any combination of the three at the same time.  When it comes to bands, singers, and any acts where the sound is produced live, recording is the basic foundation that studios are best known for.

Producing/Production: This term is often used very loosely, and can mean a variety of things, but most commonly, it involves the work of a producer for a client project.  The producer can be responsible for songwriting/composition, instrumentation, electronic/digital beat programming and sound design, project/record management, artist guidance and coaching, and many other details that go into creating music in the studio.  Depending on the level of involvement, a producer may be involved in only 1, several, or all of these facets, and more!

Mixing: This comprises the true legwork of any modern studio aside from recording, and it is what we specialize in best.  Mixing involves tweaking the sounds in songs so that every element, instrument, and feeling translates perfectly no matter who hears it.  This can involve lots of editing and revision of the recordings, as well as adding a “polish” to the overall sound of the track, so that it feels crisp, clean, and pristine in quality.

Mastering: This is is the final step in the song creation process!  After mixing is completed, mastering is a final touchup of the completed song, as well as calibrating it to commercial quality sound levels, and achieving the larger than life feel that the best recordings have.  Where mixing is often about editing, mastering is more about bolstering the final product and giving it the lasting spark that makes it stand out from the crowd.

Mercy sound studios specializes in all these steps of the song creation process, and is happy to help you determine what you need to achieve that larger than life sound.

What are your rates and policies?

RATES: Our rates at Mercy are among the best in the New York City area for professional commercial grade recording; however they vary depending on room, project size, and session duration.  Please contact us at 212-390-0305 to discuss your project, and we will help determine the studio cost that best fits your needs.

As far as policies go, we are a client-based studio that aims to provide the best in service to all who walk through our doors, but we do have a few guidelines:

BOOKING: Studio sessions should be booked at least 2 weeks in advance.  We are always happy to help accommodate emergencies if we can fit them in, but often times we are just booked up!  If you know you will need studio time, book as soon as possible to avoid any scheduling hassles, and we’re confident we’ll be able to accommodate you.

DATA PROTECTION AT MERCY SOUND: We take the safety of your files very seriously at Mercy Sound Recording Studios and we hope that you do as well. At Mercy Sound, we never purposefully throw anything out. That said, computer data is extremely fragile. Hard drives die and computer and human error occurs everyday, everywhere. There’s an old and frequently repeated computer adage that states, “If your data is not in three places, it doesn’t exist.”

-The engineer will usually keep one copy of his work on a hard drive that he has access to.
-Mercy clients should bring a hard drive or other storage device to your sessions to back up your music onto.
-When your project is finished at Mercy Sound, please make plans to remove your data files from our computer. Remember to back your data up onto multiple hard drives, USB drives or DVDs in multiple locations for the highest safety.
-For our clients, we have affordable hard drives and USB drives available for sale at Mercy Sound. Ask your engineer if interested.

DATA LIABILITY: Even though Mercy Sound goes far more out of our way than most studios to insure the safely of your data and makes a real effort to insure the safely of our client’s files, you are fully responsible for your own data and Mercy Sound cannot be held liable for any data loss on it’s hard drives, storage media purchased from the studio or in any other conditions. Remember, “If your data is not in three places, it doesn’t exist.”

DIGITAL MEDIA WAIVER: This information is intended to educate Mercy Sound Recording Studio’s clients about the nature of digital media and also to establish legal boundaries regarding their digital data. Make multiple backups of your data. Unless there are at least two copies of the data somewhere it is not safe. Three copies is preferred. This is YOUR responsibility! Backup copies of sessions in the digital realm should be made daily during the course of a project and taken home with the client after every session to be further backed-up at home. These post-session backups can be made onto internal hard drives of computers, onto external Firewire, Thunderbolt or USB hard drives, stored in an online data storage server (aka “The Cloud”) or burned to DVD-R or CD-R. There is no certainty that a CD-R or DVD-R will hold data for the long term or that a stored hard drive will play back after sitting for any amount of time so back up your data to newer media as time goes on.

LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES: 1)Mercy Sound Recording Studio is not responsible for storing your data or audio tapes during the course of a recording project. 2) Mercy Sound Recording Studio is not responsible for storing your data or audio tapes once the project is completed. 3) Mercy Sound Recording Studio is not responsible for data left on premises, either the dissemination of said data or loss thereof. 4) Mercy Sound Recording Studio is not responsible for educating or instructing any client on the care and safety of digital data. 5) Mercy Sound Recording Studio is not responsible for unrecoverable data, whether it be on analog tape, hard drive, USB drive, The Cloud, CD-R or DVD-R media, etc.

Mercy Sound is not legally or financially responsible for items brought into or left on the premises. It is recommended that clients obtain insurance to protect against possible damage expense or loss of article(s) of value left on the premises. This includes instruments, gear, clothing, personal effects or any digital media storage devices, etc. left at Mercy Sound before, during or after sessions.