Once your band has been together for a while, after you've worked up a bit of material, the next logical step is to put it all on record. But it's a big and kind of scary step. Even at relatively cheap studios, you're going to be throwing down a considerable amount of money - especially for a starving rock band. You need to be sure that the product that will result will be satisfactory (read: you need to be sure that you're not getting scammed).

I ventured down to Pacific Studios in downtown Tacoma to get the skinny on what one needs to look for in a recording studio.

"You need someone who has experience and knows what you're going for," says Mark Simmons, owner of Pacific Studios since its inception in 1998, in reference to the recording studio's personnel. "If they're producing, they need to know, and if they're engineering they should at least have a good quality-control kind of way of recording, like going for certain tones or whatever it is."

Simmons' studio, like most, will provide a producer at the artist's request. Simmons continues, "The room [that you record in] is really important-not so important if you're doing a hip-hop project, but if you're doing a rock project, you really want a good room for drums sounds, etcetera."

Another good bit of advice is that you need to be prepared. Recording your song will be a lot different than your experience performing it. "Be efficient at what you record," Simmons says. "If you have to learn how to record in the studio it really makes for a long session."

"I think that often people come in with a perception that however long their set is, that's how long it'll take to record," says Shane Lance, one of the engineers at Pacific Studios and lead-singer of Roman Holiday, a band born out of the recording studio. "It's such an elaborate process that that tends to be a naïve way to look at it. Know your songs, and be ready to put the time in to make it a product that you're proud of."

But that's not always so easy to do. Time is money - especially time in the studio. At a legitimate and professional recording studio, like Pacific Studios, the cost will be somewhere in the $500 range for a full day of recording. In their smaller room, it's $400. That's 10 hours of recording time, which, depending on your project, may be all you need. And at reputable studios, the engineers will generally put in a little extra time if necessary just make sure a project gets finished.

But that's still a lot of money, especially if you need more than a day.

I'm told by the people at Pacific Studios that, on a couple of cases, they've managed to work out a smaller payment plan for people who are really financially strapped.

What it comes down to is finding a recording studio that can really empathize with the artist. Sure these people may be running a business, but it never escapes them that they are facilitating the creation of art.

And when all is said and done, Mark Simmons sums it up best: "I mean, the song is the most important thing. If you don't have a good song, it doesn't matter where you record it."