Draft:Tonzofia Recording Studios

Tonzofia Recording Studios is an active box-in-box music recording studio based in Leuven, Belgium. It was built and funded by Ivo Pittoors in 2015 with the original intention of private usage for his family. Only since 2023, the studio has opened up to the public. Apart from recording sessions, Tonzofia hosts a broad range of music projects.

= History (2015 - 2023) = Ivo Pittoors (former DJ, band manager, and radio host) had always been pushing his children into playing music from a young age. In 2014 his son Brian started to play drums in a band called Freaks and Nerds. They were rehearsing at Brian's parent's house in one of the old stables which had no electricity. ''"I remember us not being able to touch the ground with our hands or we would get electrocuted by our guitar amps." - Brian Jon Pittoors''

Some months later, Ivo started to like their sound and wanted to help them by giving them a safer place to rehearse and better instruments to use. After the start of 2015, the planning started to renovate the stable into a rehearsal room. Just before the execution mid 2015, Ivo decided not to build a rehearsal space but instead built a box-in-box recording studio. In his vision, the band could now progress and record their tunes without being on a tight schedule.

In 2017, Ivo Pittoors wrote a Christmas song and let it get performed by DC Snakebuster.  'Christmas Blues' became the first song to be recorded at Tonzofia and released by Ivo Pittoors together with his son Brian Jon Pittoors.

At the start of 2018, after recording some demos and experimenting with recording, Freaks and Nerds decided to put an end to the band. Only the members Bishesh Man Mali and Brian Jon Pittoors continued playing together under the name 'Melting Mallows'. In 2019, their first single Nowhere, the second song to be recorded and released by Tonzofia, got airplay on the national radio station Studio Brussel as they got chosen for 'De Nieuwe Lichting'.

Mid 2019, a friend of Brian, Wouter De Proost, who had a radio show on Radio Scorpio, came to Brian with the idea of recording acoustic live sessions at Tonzofia, and airing it on his radio program  'Infinite Content'. Brian agreed to his proposal and this would later turn out to become Scorpio Sessions.

At the end of corona in 2022, the band Melting Mallows decided to stop playing after releasing their full album Something Sweet. With the studio now becoming empty, Brian invited over many musicians and unintentionally began to create a small music hub around the studio Tonzofia. Brian started to help bands with their live performance, songwriting, recording, management, and gave some bands access to rehearse at the studio. Some of the artists are: Chimney, Nona Problemo, Je Suis m'Appelle, Stucker, Moene Peeters.

End April 2023, the  'Scorpio Sessions' came to an end. The last session was aired on the 2nd of May 2023 on Radio Scorpio.

On 10 May 2023, Brian Jon Pittoors opened up an official entity named 'Tonzofia' together with Britta Vandezande who has been taking photos for the studio since 2020.

= Current Activities (2023 - ... ) =

Artists in Residence
Tonzofia is currently supporting 1 artist, The Flemish Primitives, with management, recordings and promotion. Previous artists were Melting Mallows, Je Suis m'Appelle, and Stucker.

Recording Sessions
The recording studio is open to be rented for recordings, rehearsals, and mixing/mastering of tracks. Sound engineer and backline can be provided. Rehearsals can happen with or without headphone monitoring. Recording sessions are done at the studio or on location. If requested Tonzofia can provide multi-angle live videos synced with the proper audio recordings.

Live PA
Last year Tonzofia got hired to do the PA at 'Tuinrock' festival and some smaller indoor shows. PA, backline and engineer can be rented.

Musicians Meet and Connect (MMC)
A socialising event hosted by Tonzofia happening on 12 October 2024 at Stelplaats, Leuven. MMC is aspiring to give networking opportunities to musicians, people from the music scene and music enthousiasts. During MMC different NGO's will have a booth to inform you about what they do. The day will be filled with jam sessions, 5 live acts, and festival food and drinks. At 21.00h everyone will be gathered for the main socialising event.

Room acoustics
Over the years experiments have been done to optimise the sound of the studio. Tonzofia now believes that there is no 1 perfect room sound for all recordings and genres. To create the room sound for a specific song, they have made the studio fully adaptable to recreate stone, wood or dry room sounds. The room can also be divided into different compartments who all have their own specific room characteristic, all to create the desired sound.

= Scorpio Sessions (2019 - 2023) = Scorpio Sessions was an initiative of Wouter de Proost and Brian Jon Pittoors that aimed to record as many bands in an acoustic setting. The idea was to shine a spotlight on the Belgian music scene and to help out lesser known artists by giving them a free video and audio recording which would then be aired on the radio station Radio Scorpio, and get reviewed by the magazine Luminous Dash. The first sessions got released under the name 'Infinite Content', In January 2020, they changed the name to 'Scorpio Sessions'. In the 3,5 years that the program was active, they recorded over 100 artists and more than 250 songs. The Scorpio Sessions lasted from 2019 up until 2023.

Some of the now more known artists include: Kids with Buns, Emmy d'Arc, Eli Goffa, Caspar Auwerkerke, Stefan Dixon, and many more.

Scorpio Sessions 'Deluxe' was hosted twice and compiled of a full band who stopped by on their European tour to record a live session. Artists are: Yoo Doo Right (CA), Cassels (UK).

= List of Recordings (2015 - 2023) = List of all sound recordings done between 2015 and 2023 at Tonzofia. Recordings from 2024 will be added at the start of 2025.