Mad Muse Studio Tour

Located in downtown Los Angeles, Mad Muse Studios is a studio run by In Flight Music Group (IFMG)—a full-scale musical ecosystem with a mission to provide artists with the space and resources to write, record, release, perform, and monetize their music.

In Flight Music Group is managed by Matt Salazar (CEO), Zulma Tercero (COO), and Lucas Flood (CMO). Formed in early 2017, the group started leasing a space in the Arts District of Los Angeles and built out a modest 1,000 square-foot production room. It stood alone as the only studio in the area to feature a large format SSL console as its centerpiece.

Looking for a way into the grassroots community of musicians currently playing the Hollywood/Silver Lake music scene, CMO Lucas Flood started a songwriter night called Writer’s Block. After a few venue changes, the event found its stride and became a permanent fixture of Tuesday nights at the world-famous Hotel Cafe (where over 400 songwriters from around the world perform the event each year). It has gained major label/publisher/agency recognition and has expanded to New York (Rockwood Music Hall) and Nashville (Mercy Lounge).

Out of Writer’s Block grew another business opportunity for IFMG—filming. In 2018, IFMG invited a few artists who had performed on the Writer’s Block stage back to the studio for a single-camera video shoot of their set. People enjoyed the videos so much that they began requesting that their sets at Hotel Cafe be shot as well, and before they knew it, they were filming five to 10 sets a night.

At the end of 2018, they were told they couldn’t renew their lease and had to tear down everything they’d just built. It was catastrophic. From November 2018 to April 2019, they had no space for the studio, no way to work on projects for their catalog, and no recording income, just bills.

Eventually, they found a 4,500 square-foot warehouse a few blocks from the old studio. It was just one large open space, but they saw the potential to do something unique with it.

Matt took notice of the open layouts that Paul Epworth had done with The Church Studios in the UK, as well as Jay Joyce with his personal Nashville space, and the idea here was to have an incredible acoustic space that could facilitate tracking sessions of any size while still allowing everyone to feel connected and involved.