Today we’d like to introduce you to Ellie Cope
Hi Ellie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The story of the studio starts the day I met the owner, Bob Berman. He had been working out of the unit, running a few rehearsals and sessions here and there for some friends, but was looking for help scaling the business and opening to the public. I walked in after seeing a craigslist ad, and presented a business plan to him. On that business plan in 2021, I mentioned hosting open mic nights, starting an education program, offering a wide range of recording options that can cater to corporate clients and young musicians on a budget, and hiring a small but mighty team of artists who are down to pour their life and passion into this place. It’s incredible looking back to that time, because essentially all of those notes on that initial proposal to Bob came true.
So I am the Operations Director here, essentially the studio manager. We’ve been open for 3 years (our official open date was January 1st 2022) and it’s been one of the most incredible experiences of my life watching Amplified grow into what it’s become. I remember our first open mic in fall of 2021 there were maybe 3 people there with a staff of just 3 people total (Bob, myself, and an audio engineer friend of Bob’s). We just hosted an open mic last night and the room was overflowing with artists, which is normal for us now.
The education program has totally taken off within the last year especially. We have a contract with multiple high schools to offer audio engineering and music industry courses. The program depends on the school for sure, but it ranges from single day field trips where the kids come to our studio and record for a day, to full on curriculum for a semester of learning how to record, mix, master, and self-promote your own music. This is thanks to Madi Coe, our education director, who is also the frontperson for local band Rain on Fridays.
In terms of audio and recording, Marc Polit came on in the first year as an audio engineer and has been at the core of our business from the start. Basically, everyone loves Marc. I don’t know what it is about the guy, but once someone records with him they almost always come back and continue working with him for all of their recordings. Marc is also a professional drummer who has toured the world in multiple bands, and is currently in The Band Cope with me.
And then Alora joined a couple of years ago and started an artist development program, which is a mentorship program that focuses on vocal training and professional development for musicians. That program included shooting EPKs for musicians, which is essentially a video/photo press kit to send to venues, and weekly mentorship meetings. That program did so well that last year, she started Amplified Studios Agency, which is a content creation and social media mentorship program that is open to any individual or small business looking to reach more people – not just artists.
I’m getting off track here, but essentially Bob and I have been working closely as a think tank, hiring people that are completely dedicated and passionate about music and community, and always (and I mean ALWAYS) starting new programs to try and reach more people and meet the existing needs of the community we’ve been so lucky to be a part of.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’m laughing right now reading that question. It has absolutely not been a smooth road! The learning curve for this industry and learning how to manage and run a business is steep and comes with a lot of failures and borderline humiliating failures at that. One funny failure was a couple of years ago, we were playing around with the idea of producing a large catalog of beats to sell to hip hop artists using the staffed engineers and a few contracted producers we knew. I actually still like this idea in theory, but the reality of it was that we were going to need hundreds of beats created with a small team, plus a website to host them, with just a handful of existing clients. We went all in though – started mapping out a potential website, the engineers started compiling existing beats and brainstorming types of beats that might sell well. We go all in with every idea – we are a very ambitious team, that lives and dies by the “spaghetti on the wall” theory. Almost immediately after starting on this track, we realized that there were tons of websites already doing this, with prices for beats that we couldn’t even try to compete with.
We have probably dozens of programs that get started like this and die fast in our short but mighty history, and it’s one of my favorite things about my job. Rejection and failure and time spent on something that doesn’t end up working is now a part of my life in a way it never has been, and it’s softened me the rejection and failure all humans face in personal life. I think it’s also really bonded the staff – we often break into laughter plotting and scheming the next idea, or reminiscing on the failed event or program from a few months or a few years ago. What it really is, is showing up to work ready to be wrong, ready to learn a new random skill, and ready to be creative.
In terms of struggles, I’d say the biggest struggle for everyone that works here is a work/life balance. It’s strange working at a place I am excited to go to everyday, that requires me to use all of my brain. Some weeks, it feels like many of us live here – working long, hard, 12 hour days for even just 3 days in a row is an intense lifestyle. That’s definitely been my struggle, you can ask my girlfriend – it really is such a huge part of my life, and that’s true for the whole team.
In terms of business struggles, the struggle is felt throughout our entire industry. The recording industry is hot and cold and ever-changing. More and more people are able to record themselves, which as a community focused space is really exciting, but as a business is a challenge. We meet this challenge by working hard to create recording plans with artists that focuses only on what they need to record – we call it “hybrid recording” where musicians can record only some parts with us, the rest at home.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Outside of managing the studio, I am a singer songwriter and frontperson for a local band called The Band Cope. That band is my primary creative outlet, but it’s also the total joy of my life. I would say the band is known for our energy in live shows and the musicianship of the other members – I do alright as the singer and writer, but the other players are hands down the best musicians I’ve ever worked with, and in my opinion some of the best musicians in the city (shout out Marc Polit, Bill Santana, and Harry Thomas, love you guys). It’s a huge benefit being a musician and working at a studio as well – actually everyone that works at the studio is a musician and we all get to use the space for our personal projects. That’s the number one perk for sure!!
In the band and at the studio, am most proud of seeing things through. I’m in my late twenties now, and I spent a lot of my teenaged years and young adulthood trying things out for a bit, and quitting either before or during a rough patch. I don’t regret quitting when I did for those other jobs and projects, but I see now that I’m just in a different place now. I get a lot of joy out of diving deeply into projects that are more longterm, and not running when things get hard. The hard things are always hard, but commitment and creating history with my bandmates and coworkers brings me peace of mind and makes my heart feel like it’ll explode – I don’t know, it’s just different now.
I’m not sure that much sets me apart from other musicians to be honest – I haven’t had a “big break” or hugely successful record or anything like that, and I could name 10 local bands that are just as thoughtful and pro and talented as my band, if not more so. I think most musicians at the level I’m at are pretty similar in that we live and die by pouring everything we’ve got into something that most people won’t hear or appreciate on any big scale. The music community is tight knit in San Diego, and I’d say most shows I play for audiences of mostly other musicians and artists showing up to support each other. It’s really beautiful, it’s brought me to tears many times just feeling so much appreciation and gratitude at a show in a small room with 50 people. I’m really not different in any serious way haha.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
The biggest lesson I learned at the studio from Covid-19 was that people will continue to make art and experience art together no matter what. It’s like that question of will people make art at the end of the world – That’s dramatic, but I feel like the pandemic solidified that yes, we will. It was super hard in terms of business – we opened after 2020 but there were still times in 2021 and 2022 where it seemed that Covid was very much slowing down the music industry at large. Despite all of that though, people still came to record their songs, and people still reached out wanting to connect and play music together. There were many open mics in 2021/2022 where most of the room wore masks, and we had to distance the audience more, and those were some of my favorite open mics because being in community and playing music is not a luxury (even though I feel it is sometimes seen that way). It’s a real need, that many people have.
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