Our History
The Early Days
Artec Sound started in Adelaide South Australia. It was here we started writing songs and music for advertising, working with major ad agencies and direct clients. Icy Iced confection was our first direct client. Our studio was also one of the go to studios for record companies like Greasy Pop and Dominator Records. This was the grunge era, we worked with the legendary Mark of Cain, Where’s the Pope, and Colored Stone among many others.
Studio 1: Windsor St and Studio 2: Moger Lane were both tape based using an Ampex MM1200, 16 track 2 inch. Eventually we upgraded to 24 track. We couldn’t sync to picture back then, that would come later.
Sean Timms (Pictured above with glasses) was our go to programmer and keyboard player back then. He still works in Adelaide writing music for TV and playing in his Prog Rock Band.
We moved to Sydney, NSW
Adelaide was a great place to start a business, but we needed more challenge and a higher profile client. Most of the larger companies used major city suppliers. So we packed up the studio and moved 1375 Km east to Sydney NSW.
There we wrote many more jingles, met some excellent collaborators, and wrote theme songs and underscore for major network television, including The Great Outdoors and Beyond Productions, as well as music for major ad agencies like Y&R, and DDB Needham.
There were 5 studios in Sydney and each of them was a unique and educational time, growing our knowledge base and abilities, working with top shelf clients and musicians.
Studio 3: Suburban Willoughby. The landing spot where we found our first clients. One Day Auto Paint and Effects Productions.
Studio 4: 166 Willoughby Rd, Crows Nest. Here is where we met John Maybe who would go on to be the producer of The Great Outdoors and Track Record.
The studio was housed in a Television Post House. We went digital and started working to picture using time code locked to tape and eventually Pro tools and installing the TS24 console.
We also started working with Mario Grigerov (Pictured above) as a composer programmer. He now works in London writing film scores.
Studio 5 : We moved to an old school just up the road in Naremburn so we could have more space. The rooms were 25 x 25 feet with offices and storage. We expanded our client base and started writing music and audio post for The Elegant Solution a 13 part series on engineering.
Studio 6: Eventually they sold the school for redevelopment, so it was back down to 166 Willoughby Rd, while we readied ourselves for the next big leap. the studio was in an ex video editing studio with no windows, but we did great work and employed our first employee there, Misty Kelly.
We built a multi room studio facility.
Artec Sound 168 Willoughby Rd Crows Nest
Studio 7: 168 Willoughby rd Crows Nest. A purpose build multi room facility in the heart of Crows Nest, the television production district of Australia’s largest market. We wrote, we worked we learnt.
We also produced our first TV show, Rampant a unique youth sports show dedicated to skate boarding. We worked with Alex Salter and Robert Moss during this time, continuing to write underscore and themes for the Great Outdoors and Blue Planet, weekly prime time television travel shows. We also worked with Beyond Productions on shows including one of our favorites, Backyard Science.
After many happy years there we watched the industry change. So like all good entrepreneurs we had to change too. That’s when we hatched another plan to move to the USA.
Nashville TN was calling.