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"We used to have a wall of 80 cassette players all in record and pause," Romero said. "You'd hit your master, and you'd go through and you'd have to make sure that you unpaused all 80. The last one would have the shortest gap before the song."

Today, his biggest problem as an armchair producer is sorting through dozens of takes and breaks and effects and filters, all manipulated by a click of a computer mouse, to decide when a song is finally "finished."

Rock Alaska, www.rockalaskarecords.com, founded by members of Peabody's Monster and Contra Public, began building the studio in the summer of 2001. The cooperative has expanded into two practice/recording spaces, armed with an arsenal of patchcords, microphones and the latest audio interfaces.

Now the studio is trying to open to more bands.

"We built the studio itself, but all our friends sort of collaborated a piece of what they know," Romero said. "The thing is, the gear is here and we can keep building on top of it. People come in and do their part and make something and get a little out of it."

Contra Public - www.contrapublic.com - formed in January 2003 and recently released its debut full-length compact disc, "False Feeling of Freedom." The group spent nine months, September 2003 through May 2004, recording, experimenting and mastering.

"We know our limitations, and we know how we can do it better when we do this again," said Bud Curtis, bass player of Contra Public.

"We tried to get something that not only sounds good on your car and home stereo, but also when you pop it into a boom box," he said. "When you pop the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers into a boom box, you're still going to hear Flea. We didn't want something where the only way you could listen to it was on a stereo."

The band, Romero on drums, Curtis and guitarists Cole Chitty and Dakota Max, wrote 40 to 50 songs in preparation for its 2,800-mile tour of the Interior last July. The band was playing four sets a night, 45-50 minutes each.

When it came time to begin to record, the band pared that down to 20.

They started by recording each song live, then laying down a click track (a series of clicks that taps out a rhythm) to build a template of each track's tempo.

"Then we had Dakota and Cole come in and play scratch (a rough preliminary version) guitar, and I went through and laid scratch bass with mistakes in that," Curtis said. "Once we had vocals, there was enough for Alex to come in with the drums and know where all the changes were."

Once Romero had recorded the drums, the band went back and re-recorded guitars and vocals.

The process sounds simple, but with the songs still developing, new gear coming in all the time and an unlimited amount of effects and filters, it stretched for months.

Curtis hoped to lay all his bass tracks by January, when the Legislature convened and his job with the state resumed. January arrived, and he was half done.

"Drums have changed, guitars have changed, we have more gear and then more effects," Curtis said. "Some songs that we had started in September, didn't have the same bass effects as the songs we eventually finishes. There are (eight) songs that we started in November and December that didn't even make the final cut."

"There were a lot of studio moments," Chitty said. "Some things happen when you're sitting there playing your guitar and all of a sudden you want the song to end a certain way. We have songs that end in a totally different crescendo from how we know to play them live."

After one final push, a weekend in which the band invited in friends and added lap steel, violin, harmonica and extra bass and guitar to near-complete tracks, they approved the final version on May 28. A friend, Dave Prichard, added a bonus multi-media interview to the CD-ROM before the group sent the disc away to be pressed.

"Playing live is way more fun than recording," Curtis said.

"It was such a learning process with the drums and how we mic things and all the experimentation and how we got the right sound," he said. "To think that we started from scratch to a product that's all printed up, designed with multi-media on it and multi-tracks and mastering by us. Whether we send it down to L.A. and they tear it apart or whatever, I'm pretty proud that we did everything ourselves."

"We don't care how it sounds now," Romero said. "It's not this one that's going to be making it. It's the 80th one. Once we've traveled that road, we can make something."

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.