With a determined posture and a set look on her face, Kim Seaborn takes a deep breath to begin another take.
After singing a few lines, she stops, looking satisfied.
“I think we got it,” says Keagan Kellogg, sound engineer for Studio916.
Seaborn relaxes her shoulders and smiles before stepping away from the microphone to celebrate with the rest of the team. Her full-length album: officially a wrap.
Seaborn worked for weeks alongside Kellogg and Studio916 producer TerryJosiah Sharpe to record her second full-length album without incurring any expenses, inside a facility of Pikes Peak Library District.
“Here, I got to work with professionals,” Seaborn says. “I found the team here was so easy to work with and just really let me be myself, and they helped me flourish creatively.”
Seaborn started performing in front of her church’s congregation when she was just a sixth grader, and remembers the intensely overwhelming feeling of impacting the crowd.
“I saw people crying,” Seaborn remembers. “Seeing that emotion from the crowd… that was something I liked. If I can get a person to be transformed with my singing, that’s what makes it worthwhile to me.”
But standing up in front of large groups wasn’t something that came naturally to her.
“I’m a very shy person,” Seaborn says. “When I was growing up, I tried to do things that would take me out of that shyness. I felt singing was one of the things I could do to get me out of my shell.”
Her first album, His Glory, was completed in 2014. She was ready to record another one soon after but wanted to break away from the traditional feel of her first full-length album.
Plus, the sheer cost of recording an album was another hurdle.
“These hours in the recording studio can cost thousands of dollars,” Seaborn remembers.
But then she learned of a studio she could use at no cost at Sand Creek Library: Studio916. She attended a studio orientation to learn more about using the space. Then, she checked every day for open studio sessions because they were so frequently booked.
As she got into the studio more and more, Seaborn found that she had a team of experts at her disposal in Kellogg and Sharpe. “It helped me break out of my shell,” she remembers. “When you have people who know what they’re doing, it just gels.”
Now, Seaborn has a vision for her future as a musician, hoping to record more music as well as further market herself as a singer/songwriter and get her music out into the world.
She hopes other aspiring artists in the Pikes Peak region will take advantage of Studio916.
“To these young people with a dream, I say go for it,” Seaborn says. “If music is something that is a part of your purpose and you’re willing to put in some work, do it. It is thousands of dollars to do elsewhere what you can do at the Library for free.”