Studio Bell – Calgary, Alberta

We travel and write about music across North America. In Canada, no single spot better tells the story of music covering the width and breadth of our country than Studio Bell, the nation’s musical museum in Alberta.

Located in the heart of downtown Calgary, Studio Bell has five spacious floors of exhibits spread across nine interlocking towers. It’s the first national cultural institution dedicated to recognizing the musical history and heritage of Canadian music in all its forms. Music lovers will find a place to listen to songs, watch large and small performances on screens, get close looks at vintage and new instruments, and follow the biographies of Canadians who have shaped the country’s sound. From folk to country, rock and roll to hip-hop, Studio Bell showcases it all in one spot.

Studio Bell is divided into two musical parts: The National Music Centre—the main museum of exhibits, biographies, and artifacts as well as three studios with operating, historic analog recording consoles and access to hundreds of musical instruments spanning 450 years of music technology. For serious musicians, high points in the recording studios are a 400-year-old harpsichord and the massive, multitimbral polyphonic analog TONTO synthesizer with which Stevie Wonder recorded his hit song “Superstition.” For the average visitor interested in the music of Canada, the main museum will be the focus.

Right across the street, the historic King Eddy Hotel is a separate arm of Studio Bell that boasts a long stretch as a celebrated blues venue.

Start across the street at the King Eddy Hotel, a separate arm of Studio Bell that boasts a long stretch as a celebrated blues venue. Over the decades, top acts have taken the stage at the King Eddy, including Buddy Guy, Jeff Healey, Otis Rush, and Pinetop Perkins. Built in 1904, it was condemned, dismantled, and reassembled, and in 2001, it became a historic cornerstone of Studio Bell.

Still cranking out the tunes as a live music venue, the King Eddy is also the home base for a unique exhibit—the famed Rolling Stones Mobile Studio (accessible through timed Backstage Pass guided tours or through a window sightline next to the King Eddy’s entrance). Built in 1968, it was the world’s first professional mobile recording studio, a facility used by the Stones, Deep Purple, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Marley and the Wailers, and numerous others. Listen to “Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple—the true story of how the band was on the shoreline of Lake Geneva in Switzerland “to make records with a mobile” when the nearby casino burned to the ground.

IT’S A “FREE-FLOWING FESTIVAL” EXPERIENCE

There’s a plan driving the open design of The National Music Centre space—no doors between sections encourage a sense of meandering, replicating the experience of a free-flowing music festival. Each of the five floors takes a deep dive into themes exploring the power of music, how music is made, iconic venues, and the best of Canadian music, as well as four Canadian Halls of Fame. The galleries for each section are filled with interactive exhibits and big-screen videos, QR codes for additional information, vintage and iconic instruments, and moments and pieces of music history that both teach something new and awaken memories from the past.

As you wander from one gallery to the next, there is an ever-present soundtrack of beloved Canadian songs in the background; think “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot or “Northwest Passage” by Stan Rogers, recorded just two years before he died, and one CBC listeners chose as an unofficial “second anthem” for Canada.

On the 2nd floor, the Made in Canada gallery has a timeline of historic moments in Canadian music from 1617 to the present day.

Most of the galleries weave in the stories of Canadian music trailblazers and icons who have left their mark here and abroad. There are video interviews and touchscreen experiences, to artwork and text biographies for artists like pianist and composer Oscar Peterson, Randy Bachman, k.d. lang, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Ian Tyson, Céline Dion, Michael Bublé, the moving baritone of Indigenous singer and activist Tom Jackson, Anne Murray, Terri Clark, and dozens of others.

FOUR MUSIC HALLS OF FAME UNDER ONE ROOF

The Canadian Music Hall of Fame showcases a large number of items, including k.d. lang’s black-and-white striped “Constant Craving” shirt.

Part of what makes Studio Bell unique is that it takes the music from across a vast country and tells the stories under one roof. There are four Halls of Fame with new inductees added every year:

• • • The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (look for David Foster’s Yamaha grand piano, Stompin’ Tom’s autographed wooden stomping board, and an interactive touchscreen that dives deep into the bios, influences, and collaborations of some of Canada’s greatest).
    • The ADISQ Hall of Fame with exclusive photographs and video clips of some of Quebec’s most celebrated artists.
    • The Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame (highlights include the handwritten lyrics to “Four Strong Winds,” Anne Murray’s custom acoustic guitar, and Sylvia Tyson’s autoharp).
    • The Canadian Music Hall of Fame features a large number of items, including k.d. lang’s black-and-white striped “Constant Craving” shirt, Neil Young’s 1937 Martin F-7 acoustic guitar, and Jann Arden’s handwritten lyric books.

OTHER MUST-SEE ITEMS AND DISPLAYS

The list is long, but there are a few highlights that every fan of Canadian music should seek out.

The century-old Kimball theatre organ (3rd floor) takes up an entire room. The 10-metre-long “instrument” creates a mix of sounds—horns, bass, castanets, xylophone, car horns, glockenspiel, bells, and even birdsong—made entirely by air pumped through an assembly of pipes, valves, and cables. The air-powered instrument is played by a single person at a console using a keyboard and foot pedals, and it is a sight to behold. The Kimball was popular during the silent movie era, creating a one-person orchestra capable of reproducing percussion, string and wind instruments, and a hundred other sounds. Be sure to ask about demonstration times.

In the gallery on the 4th floor is the unassuming, white upright piano Elton John used to compose songs for his first two albums. It is inscribed with a message from his collaborator Bernie Taupin: “Within this piano lays the ghosts of a hundred songs. Take care of them . . .”

There are several opportunities to pick up a guitar, sit at drums or a piano and take a video lesson on chord progressions, pattern sequences, and choruses. The Canadian Music Hall of Fame section has a touchscreen Master Class with Randy Bachman, founding member of the Guess Who, where you learn some of the group’s most iconic songs (choose a skill level that best suits) followed by a video jam session. Bachman started out strumming a simple guitar from the Sears catalogue but rose to become one of Canada’s most prolific guitarists and guitar collectors (rumoured to be in the hundreds).

The 4th-floor gallery Unplugged is filled with Yamaha guitars, pianos, and drum sets that can be picked up and plucked, strummed, or tapped. Interactive touchscreens and headphones take visitors through video lessons—from basic to advanced—for chord progressions, picking pattern sequences, and chorus.

In the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, an interactive touchscreen of inductees is like a rabbit hole that begins with biographies and then dives into influences on the artists, collaborators, their essential catalogue, and a link to audio clips of songs and performances. Artists include folk-rock icon Gordon Lightfoot, Hank Snow, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Robbie Robertson, and Stan Rogers. Indulge in the experience of songwriting as the sharing of our human experience—and don’t rush this one.

On the 2nd floor, the Made in Canada gallery has a timeline from 1617 to the modern day of historic moments in Canadian music. Artifacts include the CKUA microphone, circa 1930s, the vintage Robb Wave Organ (1937 and one of 16 units ever made), which was one of the first instruments to produce sound via electronic means, and the Jack Richardson Recording Console (1974) on which were recorded on hits like “Night Moves” by American Bob Seger and the Guess Who’s “These Eyes.”

Our best advice? Take your time, relish the experience, and do as the designers intended—wander through one music-inspired experience to the next.

www.studiobell.ca