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"I would love to record my album in a million-dollar studio," said local musician and music producer Zaq Bell. "But why? I can do it at home in my underwear."

Regardless of what he's wearing, Bell is at the forefront of a growing group of Fort Worth musicians who have expanded their duties into the production realm and are turning laid-back spaces into full-fledged studios.

In the old days when only big studios and major labels had the bucks and technology to make records, musicians weren't expected to know how to do anything beyond writing songs and playing their instruments with talent and skill. But then the internet became a major purveyor of new music, record companies crashed, new technology put portable equipment and studio abilities at almost anyone's fingertips - and musicmaking became a community effort. Again.

Now, for musicians to make any money at all, they need to get tradeable, downloadable copies of their efforts somewhere, and musicians like Bell, Nick Choate, and Curtis Heath are answering the call. In the process, they're giving the more traditional recording studios in Fort Worth - like Fort Worth Sound and Eagle Audio - new competition.

"All the studios in the world could open up right here, and I'd still be doing what I'm doing," Choate said. "I make music because it makes me happy."

Along the way, Fort Worth's relative isolation from the larger music world, which keeps both the egos and the incomes of local bands modest, may have become an advantage. Bands in this town don't normally aim to write radio hits. With little financial incentive to go mainstream, they've kept their sound their own. The level of unique songwriting is set pretty high, so bands have to dive deep inside the music to sound different, special, or even on a par with what is happening here.

The best part about the Fort Worth music spectrum is its breadth and variety. Fort Worth Weekly's annual music awards ballot includes bands ranging from blue-eyed soul to heavy metal to country to experimental and more. The number and quality of potential nominees grow every year, but in the past, bands had to choose from among a small handful of studios for help in capturing their songs beyond live performances. Some drove to Dallas, Denton, and beyond to record their music. In the last few years, however, that trend has begun reversing, with the opening of several home and low-budget studios in the Fort.

A few guitarists-cum-producers in town have primed their knowledge, collected the gear, and posted 'Now Open' signs on their virtual front doors. With relatively low rates for studio time and with short drive times, more artists are choosing to stay home to record their music, leading to more quality releases now and even more in the near future. Add in all the bands that choose to do it by themselves at home, and the majority of Fort Worth music releases soon could be truly homegrown.

Like the music scene itself, the new school of producers varies both in approach and result. Some gravitate toward futuristic electronica, some focus on the songwriter, and others delve back into retro gear and focus on the analog space where music lived before computers. But every one of them is leaving his or her fingerprint, on pressed discs and downloadable mp3s. Thanks to them, Fort Worth is developing new, distinct sounds to separate itself from the mass equality and homogenization of much of the music world.

In the beginning of rock 'n' roll, popular bands gathered in expensive studios and played together. What they produced in the studio concert was released as the final product.

Over the years, advances in technology have greatly extended the possibilities of music-making. Computerized sounds, going far beyond the capabilities of natural acoustics, changed what audiences expected to hear on the radio. A little knowledge of popular recording software packages made almost anything possible: One click of the mouse, and a drummer plays in perfect time. One extra programming option, and every singer sings in some approximation of perfect pitch. Somewhere along the line, even as the industry was fragmenting, much of the music was beginning to sound the same.

Not everything was leading toward sameness, however. The social networking and music-listening site MySpace offers millions of tracks available for consumption. Many are reminders of the past - the well-known melodies and familiar refrains of a century of musical explosion - but more and more are creations flowing from bedrooms and home computers across the world.

Zaq Bell is the local model for turning a house into a full-fledged recording studio. He attended the MediaTech Institute at Dallas Sound Labs in Irving in 2002, learning the complicated ins and outs of recording logistics and software. After completing the year-long program, he worked at Sound Labs' in-house recording studio, then at Dallas' Luminous Studios before deciding to branch out on his own. In 2004, he was working at the TCU-area Moon Bar and slowly building a practice space for his band Exposing Janus - now The Shadow - and a modest recording studio in a rented house on University Drive.

"I learned everything in that period of time," Bell said. Before that, "All I knew was that I wanted to be a musician, and I wanted to skip the step of paying other people to record."

In 2005, Bell met Jarrett Vamvakidis, now a vice-president at Tile, Marble, and Granite Works of Fort Worth. Vamvakidis, a native of Greece who was living in downtown's residential Tower, helped provide funding and support so Bell could acquire more sophisticated recording equipment like microphones and mixing boards. Bell eventually moved into Vamvakidis' downtown apartment, and the duo worked together to start a record label and recording lab named Fusion Project Studios and Records.

Bell, a guitarist and singer, practiced with his band and started recording projects for friends in The Tower until the sheer volume of the noise became overwhelming. Vamvakidis eventually invested in a six-bedroom house in Saginaw.