As soon as Parker and Susan got halfway to the door, the door opened and Pete welcomed them into the building with a smile. "Here, let me get that for you," he said, taking her keyboard from her.

"Thanks. I need to go back and get the stand."

Pete held the door as Parker ran back to the trunk of her car, got the stand and her music out, closed the trunk and walked back to the building. Susan was already standing in the hallway.

As you first walked into the building, there was a small reception area with a desk, a filing cabinet, and 4 chairs for clients to sit in while they waited. The receptionist's desk held a computer, printer, scanner and a telephone. The desk was fairly small, so there wasn't room for much else.

They walked down the hallway and Pete pointed out the features of the studio. He pointed to the first room on the right. "This is my office." It was fairly small, but about twice the size of the reception area.

The second door they came to was also on the right. "This is the room where all of the engineers have their offices."

Parker looked into the room briefly as they passed. She could see 3 desks scattered about and one desk at the far end of the room. That desk held a computer, printer, and scanner.

"We have our own website and all of us have e-mail addresses to go along with it," Pete said, somewhat explaining why there was a computer in that room.

The next door they came to was on the left. "This is where we will be recording," Pete told them. "The engineers that are helping should be in their already or ont heir way. That door caddy corner to us, here, is the 'green room'. That is teh room where the artists can go to get drinks, food or just cool off. We always have cookies, doughnuts, and fruit in there, along wtih soda, coffee and water. There is also a pot with hot water, so you can have tea. If you girls let me know what kind of soda you like, I'll make sure to have some on hand."

"Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper," both of the girls said in unison, laughing.

Pete lead the girls into the control room of the studio that they would be using and put down the keyboard. He pushed a button on the console, "Rose, can you run down the street and get a case of Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper for Parker and Susan?"

"Sure, Pete. I'll be back in a jiffy," came the reply.
"Thanks. Just buzz me when you get back."

"O.K."

Pete turned to look at the girls, "Also in that room, you will find bathrooms. There is one for the men and one for the woman. Rose has taken it as her personal duty to make the womans restroom look...well...womany." Pete laughed at his own humor.

Parker looked around her. Parallel to the door was the biggest sound board she had ever seen. There were two huge computers and attached to the sound board was a 48 track recorder. Parker's eys about bugged out of her head. This was the biggest studio she had ever seen. She noticed that to the left of the mixer board and multi-track recorder was a door that lead into the sound proof booth.

"This is one of the smaller studios," Pete said, noticing Parker's shock. "The bigger ones are more for bands."

"Wow!" Parker and Susan exclaimed in unison.

Pete opened the door to the booth and carried Parker's keyboard in. "Let's get this set up and wired so that we can get started."

Parker was giong to do all of the music herself. She had programmed it all into her keyboard, so it was just waiting for her fingers to coax it out.

The first thing to do, was get the stand set up so they would have something to put the keyboard on. As soon as that was done, Parker lovingly unzipped teh black keyboard case. The instument was heavy, so Parker had Pete lift it onto the stand for her. Almost the moment the keyboard touched teh stand, the door opened and in walked a tall blond-haired man. He fished chords out of the keyboard case and began to wire the instrument into their sound system.

"This is Jordan. He is going to be helping with the engineering. He is the best engineer we have, so he'll make this the best album possible. He also is a singer and musician, so if you want to add other instruments and vocals, he can help with that too. He plays the drums, piano and every type of guitar that there is."

Jordan turned to face Parker. "Hi," he said extending his hand to her. "Nice to meet you, ummm."

"Parker," Parker said, returning the hand shake. "Nice to meet you too."

"I've heard a lot about you and I have really been looking forward to working with you. Well, I'm done here. Let's do a sound check, so I can chekc the levels. Why don't you go ahead and begin to play the song that you are going to work on today. Just keep playing and I'll adjust the levels. I'll let you know when everything is set.

"O.K., sounds great," Parker replied, beginning to get butterflies as the reality of recording her first album go closer.

She began playing the chords to the first song. She punched in the number to retrieve the programmed background music and played along with that. At first, she could hardly hear the music at all, then all of a sudden the music got really loud. Finally, it settled down to a nice volume.

"How's that sound?"

"Great!" Parker exclaimed.

"Let's get the headphones hooked up and we'll be all set."

"O.K."

"Have you ever done this before?" Jordan asked.

"No, not really," Parker confessed.

"Well, the first thing we'll do, is to record the music. Once that is done, we'll start on the vocals. We'll record the lead vocals first and when those are just perfect, we'll record background vocals. Like Pete said, if you would like help with that or any of the instrumentation, just let me know. I'm glad to help in any way I can."

"O.K., I may use your help. I think it would add a lot to have maybe some guitar solos and male backups."

"Whatever you need. Just let me know," Jordan answered her with a huge grin.

Jordan was really nice, Parker decided. She knew she would like working with him. "He looks vaguely familiar," she thought to herself. I don't know when I have seen him before, though. Oh, well, maybe it will come to me."