Beckview Studios

Beckview Studios

CHRIS JONES AND KRISTINA JONES

By the sea

Based in Scalby Village, Scarborough, Beckview Studios is one of North Yorkshire’s largest, one-stop recording studios in the area. Since its opening in May 2023, its independent, state-of-the-art rooms have offered an impressive space for musicians, singers, songwriters, actors, authors, creatives and performers to work. Managed and co-owned by Chris Jones and Kristina Jones, the couple has acquired over two decades of extensive experience in music production and recorded sound.

As Chief Resident Engineer, Mixer and Producer, Chris works collaboratively with musicians and artists, and brings his extensive technical knowledge of sound recording to every session. Whatever the task may be, Chris prides himself in getting the best possible recording for all clients. To do so, he often leans on a variety of plug-ins from NUGEN Audio, including the brand’s Aligner and Stereoizer plug-ins, among others.

“I began incorporating other NUGEN solutions into my workflow, and they have all become staples for me. Now, specifically Aligner, is used on just about everything I work on — it’s my favorite.”

New tools

“The NUGEN Audio plug-in that initially caught my eye was Aligner,” says Chris. “It really is such a useful tool and saves me so much time. From that point on, I began incorporating other NUGEN solutions into my workflow, and they have all become staples for me. Now, specifically Aligner, is used on just about everything I work on — it’s my favorite.”

Chris adds that one of his main applications for Aligner is when he is working with bass or acoustic guitar. “It comes in handy, especially if I’m running a dual signal and I have a mic signal on the amp. It saves me all that time I would normally spend nudging it around,” he explains. “It’s also great because you can line it up at the start, and then if you’re punching in or doing any overdubs, you’re not trying to manually line up different clips on the grid to attempt to compensate for the difference in phase between the various parts.”

“Some of the other plug-ins I’ve used in the past would give a really nice wide image, but when you sum it to mono, you lose a lot of information, whereas with Stereoizer, that’s not the case.”

Creating space and depth

Similarly, Chris says he has also used Stereoizer on nearly every project in the studio. “I use Stereoizer to make stereo sources even bigger and give mono sources a bit more width, but what I particularly like about it is that it collapses to mono very well,” he says. “Some of the other plug-ins I’ve used in the past would give a really nice wide image, but when you sum it to mono, you lose a lot of information, whereas with Stereoizer, that’s not the case.”

In addition to Aligner and Stereoizer, other NUGEN plug-ins included in Chris’ arsenal at Beckview Studios are ISL and Paragon. “What I like to do with the ISL limiter is have it on my master bus, where I can switch it into compact mode,” he explains. “It’s especially nice from a screen real estate view; you can leave it up, see what’s going on, but not have a bunch of unnecessary information that isn’t needed in that moment. As for Paragon, I really like the width function and the fact that you can adjust the crosstalk between the left and right channels. You can almost make it into two mono reverbs and play around with that, which is nice and something I haven’t found in other reverbs. Also, the fact that you can manipulate the parameters and not have the artifacts that come with changing the size, is really valuable.”

“As for Paragon, I really like the width function and the fact that you can adjust the crosstalk between the left and right channels.”

“What I like to do with the ISL limiter is have it on my master bus, where I can switch it into compact mode.”

Roots along the East coast

While his roots are in South Shields, Chris Jones studied music technology at the University of Hull, where he earned an MRes (Master in Research) in Electronic Composition. With a lifelong passion and talent for recording and production, he worked as a live sound engineer following university, for an extensive range of bands, including Razorlight, Biffy Clyro and Ginger Wildheart, among others. In addition, Chris has worked as a technician and instructor, teaching music production and live sound for a creative music technology course at the University of Hull. More recently, he has seamlessly combined his work at the studio with teaching as visiting Associate Lecturer for master’s and undergraduate degree courses at the University of York.

As Studio Manager, Kristina handles bookings, marketing and promotional work. With a talent for organization, Kristina previously worked in the arts and tourism sectors, undertaking marketing and events roles. She worked for Scarborough Borough Council (now North Yorkshire Council) in its busy tourism department and at the town’s entertainment venue — the Scarborough Spa. Other venues for which Kristina has worked include the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Woodend Creative Workspace and Scarborough Castle. She also held an arts festival director role in the nearby resort of Filey.