Can artificial intelligence infuse emotion into music? Can it write lyrics like Paul McCartney? Can it use the mere 12 notes of a musical scale and create lifelong memories?
Wil Freebody thinks not, and at the Lexington School for Recording Arts (LSRA), he trains musicians who someday could be the next Frank Sinatra or The Beatles—musicians who could be a force for good in the world.
“I’ve seen 70-year-old women with tears watching The Beatles, because they remember when they were 19 and in love and riding in the car with a surfboard on the back,” said Freebody, who hails from Long Island and moved to Lexington from Orlando in 1984. “It triggers memories. We all have that. What you like when you’re a kid, you still like.”
LSRA is under the umbrella of Freebody’s Long Island Recording Studios, which is based in an unassuming industrial area of Lexington. The region’s only licensed audio engineering school, the program features recording studios, record labels, artist development and talent management, a fascinating museum of sight and sound, and a new art gallery component.
Student Ryne Brashear was introduced to the school by a friend while he was a student at a community college. He wondered how he could convince his parents that a traditional college path wasn’t a good fit for him.
“I was doing some recording with a buddy who had a studio, and I didn’t know anything,” Brashear said. “But he was going to a school that taught all that stuff, and it was the Lexington School for Recording Arts. So, he took some of my stuff up there, and I was interested in their artist development program.”
This path isn’t atypical for students at the school, where 99.7 percent of those who attend graduate and work in the field they have studied. Graduates go on to work at places such as NBC and famous music venues around the country. The school’s target demographic is 18- to 30-year-olds, and many of those are students who either drop out of college or choose not to enter a traditional college program in the first place.
According to Forbes magazine, fewer than half of college students graduate on time, and even after six years, under 60 percent of students at four-year colleges earn a bachelor’s degree. For community colleges, fewer than 20 percent of students earn an associate’s degree or certificate.
Contrast those numbers with Lexington School for Recording Arts graduates. Freebody said many of these students—approximately one-third of them—go on to start their own production businesses. Many others work in entertainment—an average movie employs approximately 900 people.
“We train them for those jobs,” he said, “and the average sitcom has between 400 and 600 jobs.”
Students are trained in sound but also in video editing and all aspects of production and music marketing. These days, music is listened to and watched. Students come from across Kentucky and the United States for an education that Freebody said is much more affordable than the alternatives that saddle graduates with debt and without a guarantee for a job in their field.
“The school [you choose] should change your life,” he said. “And you shouldn’t have to pay for it most of your life. We’re the price of a used truck—25 grand to go to school for two years, 50 weeks out of the year, just like a job.”
Visual Arts
A multi-pronged company, Long Island relies on other revenue streams, such as record labels and commercial work, plus a new visual arts studio featuring the work of multiple local artists, including painter Samara Anjelae. Anjelae’s stunning acrylic-on-canvas pieces line the walls of the multiple studio spaces in the facility. Her commissioned work has appeared in the Bahamas, Australia and Dubai.
“I’m a fairly late bloomer getting into art, even though I’ve been very creative throughout the years,” Anjelae said. “After I made a trip to Egypt and had life-changing experiences there, I came back and was inspired to paint on large canvases.”
Anjelae’s work and that of other artists can be viewed in the gallery at the studio on the first Friday of every month throughout the summer. The monthly open houses enable guests to mix and mingle and see the inner workings of the Long Island Recording Studio complex, something that was more common at the space prior to the COVID-19 shutdowns. Freebody said finding unique ways to renew the space—including adding to its revenue stream—was critical to the company’s long-term success after the pandemic hurt business.
The recording artists who come in to use the space say the newly added artwork provides creative inspiration, Freebody said. “Musicians love it because it’s such a creative and easy-going place and so user friendly,” he said. “Plus, they’re surrounded by art. The creativity on the walls helps the music.”
They’re also inspired by Freebody’s expansive personal collection of photographs and memorabilia that line the studio hallways. The collection is from a long and storied career in the music industry. Freebody feels that many of the artists coming out of the school will end up on the walls—and many already have. Students from LSRA have taken their shows on the road, and some have ended up on Netflix, The Voice and American Idol.
No Plan B
Brashear is busy writing his own music in the country music genre. He’s had a hit with “My Old Man,” a tribute to his parents, wife, young son and upbringing on the family’s Hardin County farm.
It’s a far cry from 10 years ago, when he entered LSRA.
“My parents weren’t too thrilled with the idea of me dropping out of college when I was 20 and doing an artist development program and then going on the road playing music,” he said, adding that he often ended up skipping class while in community college to go play music with his buddies.
Brashear went through the comprehensive two-year audio production program and then followed it up with LSRA’s artist development program, which Freebody likened to a “master’s degree for musicians.” Brashear now works in the industry and takes his act on the road, with an upcoming show in Las Vegas.
“I never felt any pressure; I just knew I had to convince my parents this was what I was going to do, and I was bound and determined … I knew I loved it,” he recalled of his days starting out at the school. “I finally felt at home just being constantly surrounded by music all week.”
He said his hardworking farm upbringing served him well, and failure was not an option.
“I never have had a plan B,” Brashear said. “If you have a plan B, then it’s a lot easier to fall into that safety net. If you walk a highwire without a safety net, you’re less likely to fall.”
As a child, Brashear played baseball year-round and worked on the sixth-generation family farm. He also sang in church and listened to his family—his parents, aunts and grandparents—who all were musically inclined. Still, Brashear was afraid to sing in public, and it wasn’t until high school that he got deep into singing and playing his guitar.
“The first time I ever sang in front of people was me and my dad with ‘Mercy Walked In’ by Gordon Mote in church,” Brashear recalled. “I was terrified.”
Thanks to LSRA, Brashear gained more confidence in his singing and in the production side of music, providing a “solid foundation to get started,” he said. He knew how to run his own show. It helped him build a connection of music and production colleagues, some of whom he still works with today on gigs all across the country in places like Broadway in Nashville.
“You can tell the ones who know their stuff,” Brashear said. “They don’t know why it doesn’t sound good if there is a problem … but [those with an LSRA education] have that foundation and can have a head start on everyone else. Otherwise, it’s just hard lessons learned on the road.”
A Life-Changing Experience
Carolyn Austin utilizes her music psychology background to help artists deal with these lessons and the pressures of performance. She also serves as president of LSRA. Freebody is president emeritus and delayed retirement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Austin has been at LSRA for almost 25 years and works daily with the students.
“It’s very rewarding to see the students change from when they start here,” she said. “They’re usually the traditional college student that goes to college, they give it a try, and they drop out.”
Parents marvel at the change in their students upon graduation from LSRA, Austin said. They find their calling. They find their people, thanks in part to the small class sizes (about 30 students per year) and the hands-on education from real-life music and production industry professionals.
But it also comes down to basic human instinct and the primary factor that is music.
“It’s part of our fabric, and there’re very few people—there are some, but very few—who are not affected by music,” Austin said. “And there is research that traces [music] back to cavemen. It’s just part of us.”
And it’s in nature, Freebody said. Music theory, he said, is about learning how it affects people—that it’s “not just the dots and stems on the page.”
“Music is innate,” he said. “Minor keys instantly make you feel sadness. That’s music theory. Or the cop in a movie—you already know there’s a bad guy around the corner because of the music.”
We may laugh 20 years from now that artificial intelligence ended up being nothing, he said, “or it could become the Terminator.”
But none of it can replicate music and its impact on the human experience.
“I just don’t believe that a song can ever be written by a computer as well as The Beatles wrote it,” Freebody said. “That’s everybody’s benchmark. There’s never been a group like them. There are 17-year-olds who come in here today with Beatles shirts on … This is why AI can never beat it. It’s the emotion you put into those 12 notes that makes the songs different.”