Inside the Boys & Girls Club on Canon Perdido is a space that feels like a sanctuary ​— ​a musical sanctuary. It’s the first of the studios created by Notes for Notes (N4N), a now widely renowned national music program for young people that started right here in Santa Barbara.

“The space sets the tone,” said Rod Hare, one of the three founders of N4N. “Your music is taken seriously; your freedom of expression is taken seriously. You are treated as a musician. … So whatever’s going on in your life out there, in here, you’re a musician.”

The three rooms are set up as a small recording studio. In the gigging area, teens can experiment on myriad instruments ​— ​guitars, drums, keyboards. In the engineering room, there is a multitrack mixing board, where they produce the songs they’ve recorded in the sound booth.