Gillian Rivers

“I studied in classical conservatories with very strict teachers,” Rivers told me over drinks in the dapper lobby of the Bowery Hotel.

“It’s all very regimented in that world. It’s about making sure you can adhere to what the composer intended. But stepping into the rock world, I found I could do anything I wanted within the framework of a few chords. It was just incredible.”

To her, the transition was natural. Rivers says that artists in the rock culture want to hear less vibrato than classical conductors, sure, but otherwise the physical skills translate easily. It’s the attitude that’s hard for some classically-trained musicians to master.

“One of the biggest issues classical musicians face when they’re working with rock bands is personality. A lot of times rock artists feel intimidated by classical musicians. And if they don’t feel comfortable, you’re probably not getting called back.”

Bridging The Gap

When I met Rivers, she wore the kind of oversized plastic-rim glasses you’d expect to see on a record store clerk – not a concertmaster. She talked about crate-digging for stylishly unhip LPs, early tours with clinically unstable rock musicians, and dance parties at dive bars where she met future collaborators. These were inherently different from the droll stories of tooth-and-nail competition and the over-the-top intellectual posturing I’ve come to expect from classical musicians when they’re on a roll.

Some musicians can straddle both worlds, but not all of them are suited. There have been times when Rivers has invited players to a session only to find they fit about as well as meatloaf on a rice cake. Some of her peers find themselves a bit too “square” for the gig, she says. “Most classical musicians expect to come in and see sheet music and expect to be told what to play. They also expect to be done at a set time and – well, you know how it is in a session. You can’t start looking at your watch at 5 o’clock.”

“But I always liked that,” says Rivers. “I like not knowing what I was going to do when I walked in; and to keep on building and adding layers until the whole track starts to sound orchestral.”

The New Anatomy Of A String Section

Luckily, Gillian Rivers has found a small group of players who can work in both worlds. She calls them City Strings.

In rehearsal for Karen O's "Stop the Virgens" Opera. Left to right: Gillian Rivers, violin; Justin Kantor, cello; Yuiko Kamakari, viola.

“Sonically it just sounds so much better when you have three or more different players together. If you can afford to hire a trio or a quartet it’s always a good decision. Each player has a different way of attacking the note and a different vibrato so it sounds much bigger and more natural. It’s also much faster than having me play through the song again and again doing multiple parts.”

But with smaller budgets, sometimes Rivers does just that. Although she’ll always bring in a cellist when one is needed, she can play violin and viola, and often does. As for arrangements, they’re frequently written on the spot, sometimes taking inspiration from a sketch  sung or hummed  by a band member.

Sometimes however, the budget allows for more planning. “With Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ It’s Blitz I started by going into the studio and doing exactly what I most often do,” says Rivers, “which is searching for ideas by improvising over the track and getting ready to layer new parts. But in their case, I convinced them to let me take it home and write out more harmonies. It started out as improv, and ended up being something that I could spend some time with. It can be scary because you never know what’s going to happen when you’re going into it, but the outcome is always satisfying.”

More recently she’s taken that kind of collaboration to another level. When Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ guitarist Nick Zinner wrote “41 Strings,” a Steve Reich-inspired piece for orchestra, 3 drummers, 2 basses and 8 guitars, he called Rivers to help orchestrate the piece. She’s been helping him perform it live too, and she finds the audience response refreshing.

“[In a classical concert] it’s more about you and the composer and you have this need to somehow deliver something people have heard several times before, and to do it better than anyone one has ever done.

“With rock audiences, people are just incredibly excited to hear the element of strings at all. It’s almost like playing for virgin ears.”

For more on Gillian Rivers and to get in touch, visit www.gillianrivers.com.

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn recording engineer and studio journalist. He is a regular contributor to SonicScoop and edits the music blog Trust Me, I’m A Scientist.

Beware of Spotify... while benefitting from its magical powers.

While the economic implications of Spotify to artists are a topic certainly worth of debate, I have to say that the goblin-green platform has given me – and all of us – just such alchemic capabilities. As music professionals, Spotify may or may not be a threat, but as music lovers – which all of us started out as – it’s a blessing undisguised.

In light of my starry-eyed affectation, I recently devised a new game called “Stump the Spotify” and invited a couple of sonically-inclined friends to take part. The objective: sit down in front of a computer, free associate the song each of us want to hear next, then talk it over as the sweet sounds radiate from the speakers.

The rules for song selection? Look into your soul, let a song appear — and forget about what anyone else thinks! Bonus points for naming a song not yet in Spotify’s catalog, followed by a shot of scotch (optional) to dull the disappointing pain.

Not surprisingly, the entrancing NYC singer-songwriter Will Knox accepted the challenge, hot on the heels of his imaginatively-crafted EP release, Lexicon. So did FLUX Studios’ Account Manager Chris Sipes, who arranged for the inspiring Fabulous production/writing room to serve as our host venue for 60 minutes of Stump the Spotify!

Listening to a plethora of songs though Focal monitors in a beautiful mixing/mastering suite, the environment was an incubator for musical insights of all kinds. Here’s what went down (and feel free to pull up these songs yourself and listen along!):

Song 1:  David Weiss selects… “Blackest Eyes” by Porcupine Tree, from the 2002 album In Absentia

David: I really like the power of this song. This is one of those songs that I wish I had written.

Will: I haven’t heard this in a while.

David: The drummer is so good in this song, and it has an interesting song structure. The two choruses happen so fast, they’re so satisfying. Then they’re gone and the chorus don’t come back again.

Will: My roommate in college used to rock out to this all the time. He had long hair, and he used to be really into metal. He would just crank it and rock out to it. It’s such a strange song, because it starts out so hard. It could be Pantera. But when this soft vocal comes in, there’s a bit of a balance to it. It almost sounds like the guitarist came up with a riff, and the singer also had a song. They said, “We don’t know what to do with this, let’s put it together!” But it works.

Chris:I never heard this song before. I love it.

2Pac's "How Do You Want It"

Song 2:  Chris Sipes selects… “How Do You Want It” by 2pac, from the 1996 album All Eyes on Me

Chris: I like this song, because this is why I started listening to Tupac. I was in a hotel room as a child in Orlando, FL, and saw this video.

Will: I love this, I love Tupac. I’m a big fan of ‘90’s rap, don’t ask me why. It’s the opposite of what I write, so I can get some release from something that’s completely off the spectrum. This is what I listen to on the road. Absolutely, it’s stress release – it allows you to relax.

David: The deep funk and gospel groove of this song is crushing. I never heard it before! I really like it.

Will: Good choice, Chris!

Song 3:  Will Knox selects… “Pink Moon” by Nick Drake, from the 1972 album Pink Moon

Will: Nick Drake is from England. He died in the ‘70’s, this was his last record, released in 1972. He only released three records, and this was his last solo album.

Chris: He sounds like Bob Dylan…

Will: He was a different case – a tragic case really. He never saw success when he was alive, and he died of an overdose of sorts, passing away when he was very, very young – way before his time.

He’s a phenomenal writer that’s only been heard on the scale he deserves in the last 10 years or so. A song of his was used for a TV commercial, and people said, “Wow, who is this guy?” He still does have a cult following, like Elliot Smith. He’s wonderful. He’s probably my biggest influence.

David: Hey, I was born in 1972! This is from my year.

Will: The tape machine I bought the other night was made in 1972. A TEAC 1230 reel-to-reel, and the most amazing thing about it is that it still works. It came with a couple of reels of ¼” tape. It sounds beautiful, just so warm – just so not like Pro Tools, if that makes sense. It takes away something harsh, and makes everything sound sweeter.

Song 4:  David Weiss selects… “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson, from the 1979 album Off the Wall

The FLUX Fabulous room -- a decidedly swell suite to Stump the Spotify!

STUMPED! The song is not in Spotify.

Will: It’s not there? How can you have a party without it?!

Song 5:  David Weiss selects… “Road to Somewhere” by Goldfrapp, from the 2008 album Seventh Three

Chris: I’ve never heard this. It’s very emotional music. I’m usually less on the introspective side of music – I wouldn’t have heard this if you hadn’t pulled it up, but I like it.

Will: I never listened to Goldfrapp, but I got really into this song. You’ve got to be in the right mood for it. And right now, chilling out with nothing else on my mind but listening to music on a great sound system, drinking whiskey, this works absolutely perfectly. I suppose you listen to music for specific occasions, and right now, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.

But it’s definitely one of those things that, if you heard it in the wrong environment, you might not pay as much attention and give enough appreciation to it as you should. But that’s the same as with any music, isn’t it?

Song 6:  Chris Sipes selects… “Come as you Are” by Nirvana, from the 1991 album Nevermind

Will: I think I remember buying this on my 12th birthday…

Chris: I never liked the Foo Fighters, but I like Nirvana. This reminds me of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” off of the (1994) MTV Unplugged album, which is about him burning his ex-girlfriend and burying her. It’s a murderous song. You can hear he’s on the heroin in that song.

Song 7:  Will Knox selects… “Get In Line” by Ron Sexsmith, from the 2011 album Long Player Late Bloomer:

NYC artist contemplates songwriting 24/7.

Will: Do you guys know Ron Sexsmith? He’s one of the great songwriters of our generation.

David: I don’t know anything about Ron Sexsmith.

Will: No one knows anything about Ron Sexsmith! Which is the phenomenal thing about him. He works with some very famous songwriters, like Feist’s song “Brandy Alexander” (on her 2007 album The Reminder).

As a lyricist and melody writer, I just think he’s so solid. All of his songs are very catchy, and so well-crafted. His lyrics are so tasteful, so clever. I think he’s one of those writers that doesn’t get enough credit for what he does.

He’s got quite a cult following. If you say you’re a Ron Sexsmith fan, people will come out of the woodwork and say, “Oh, you like him too?” Hopefully he’ll get the recognition he deserves.

Song 8:  David Weiss selects… “Synchronicity 1” by The Police, from the 1983 album Synchronicity:

David: The Police were a band, that’s what I love about them.

Chris: That’s one of those amped-up songs – you put that in and it changes the room.

Will: You think, how would they produce that song now? Without that keyboard sound, for example – what would you replace? And would the Police be able to get listened to now?

David: Will, what do you think of the Police as songwriters?

Will: Well, I don’t know if you can really fault Sting for much that he’s done in his songwriting career. He’s a very solid songwriter. Even if you don’t like the Police, something’s gotta be said about the hits that they’ve written.

And Sting has had a lot of hits for a lot of reasons. His voice is so distinctive as well – he’s a high tenor, I guess? He wasn’t afraid to be experimental, which was interesting, because a lot of his songs are quite simple at heart. Lyrically and melodically, they’re basic themes.

Song 9:  Chris Sipes selects… “Born to Roll” by Masta Ace Incorporated, from the 1993 album SlaughtaHouse:

FLUX's Chris Sipes has the power to look deep into souls using Spotify.

Chris: I had this one tape-recorded off of a radio station. This is a unique song. Its got some classy beats – “Low Rider”-hypnotic and slamming! With really cool lyrics. Very Snoop-sounding.

Will: Its ‘90′s rap. You can’t go wrong!

Song 10:  Will Knox selects… “The Day We Caught the Train” by Ocean Colour Scene, from the 1996 album Moseley Shoals:

Will: I was excited to see if some of my favorite Britpop ‘90’s bands were here…Oh yeah, they’ve got it!

David: There’s a very “Day in the Life” feel to this song, at least at the start: A two-songs-in-one setup. Hey, it’s got real drums! Real jamming! Real emotion! And I like the fadeout.

Will: They put me in a time and a place that I remember being very happy. They’re one of those bands that comes from such a specific time in your life – Ocean Colour Scene was the soundtrack to everyone’s life in 1996.

Chris: It’s a nostalgic experience.

Will: Don’t you think that a lot of music is just nostalgia? I listen to a lot of songs now that I listened to at that time.

Song 11:  David Weiss selects… “Iris Art” by Echobelly, from the 1993 album Lustra:

STUMPED! The song is not in Spotify.

David: I’m bummed. I think that’s a powerful rock song, but also very beautiful at the same time.

Song 12:  David Weiss selects… “Babelonia” by School of Seven Bells, from the 2010 album Disconnect from Desire:

SonicScoop's David Weiss

Will: I like it, but there’s so much space in this song without lyrics. This is beautiful music — it’s blasting, I’m dancing, this is great – but I’m a little lost without lyrics. It’s a time-and-place thing again: I wouldn’t want to put my head in the headphones and listen to this. I’d want to dance to this.

Chris: I would watch this band perform. I’ll bet it would be very interesting – the value is in the performance.

David: I saw them live at Le Poisson Rouge.

Will: That’s the thing: So much music sounds better live, and when you buy the CD, the music transports you to that experience. If you hear a recording you wouldn’t understand it, but you see them live, and you want to convince your friends how good they are live.

Chris: Like you had to be there. But this is cool – it makes me want to go dancing with the people in the band.

Song 12:  Chris Sipes selects… “MotownPhilly” by Boyz II Men, from the 1991 album Cooleyhighharmony:

Chris: I needed to mix it up! When I got a Sony CD/tape player, this was one of five CDs I got at the same time. It was this, Genesis, Tanya Tucker, the Boomerang soundtrack, and I don’t remember what the other one was…Oh! Def Leppard — Adrenaline.

Will: I had Def Leppard’s (1996 album) Slang.

David: And I bought (1983’s) Pyromania!

Will: Isn’t it funny that between us we spent $30 on Def Leppard, but in this new streaming society with Spotify its free, or its $10 a month for Rdio? So for that, all three of us can listen to all the music we want.

Times have changed. If Silicon Valley explodes tomorrow, the next generation is in trouble. They won’t have access to a whole ton of music.

Chris: Yeah, not to mention the CD covers you hung on your wall.

Will: Can we talk about this album cover? Look at their coats! But I almost don’t have an opinion of this song. It just is what it is! (laughs) It’s so dated, that is just sounds like one of those songs you can have a good time to.

The ghost of Hendrix was a fitting end to Round 1 of STS!

Song 12:  Will Knox selects… “Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead” by Jimi Hendrix (featuring Jim Morrison), from the posthumous 1980 live album of the same name (originally recorded in 1968)

Will: I haven’t stumped Spotify, but I think I can: I have a vinyl collection with this live record by Jimi Hendrix, with Jim Morrison on it. The song is “Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead”. If Spotify has this, I won’t say anything else bad about it. I’ll tip my hat.

The Hendrix original is not there, but Spotify delivers a cover by the band The Bollocks Brothers, from their 1986 album 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse:

Will: What a name for a band! And this sounds just like “You Can’t Touch This”. They must have sampled it. In the original, Jim Morrison is so high, he’s screaming profanities throughout the entire thing. Not just regular curse words – he goes above and beyond.

This actually makes me feel better, that Spotify didn’t have the Hendrix version. Because it’s on vinyl, and its not on Spotify: It means you can collect vinyl, and you’ll have stuff that Spotify won’t.

– David Weiss

MANHATTAN

Due out March 26, 2012

Let’s first zoom in on Greenwich Village, where mixing sessions for Madonna’s upcoming album MDNA have been running out of Germano Studios with engineer/mixer Demo Castellon.

Jon Bon Jovi also hit Germano for writing and recording sessions with co-producer John Shanks and Dan Chase engineering. And singer/songwriter Marc Cohn – with producer/songwriter and Dobro master Jerry Douglas – recorded here in sessions produced by Russ Titelman and engineered by Kevin Porter.

Also at Germano…K’naan recorded with Nas and Chuck Harmony producing – Dave Rowland and Ryan West engineered the sessions; The-Dream recorded new material with Brian “B-Luv” Thomas engineering; Keri Hilson was working with The Phat Boiz and Ne-Yo producing, Kenta Yonesaka engineering; and songwriter/producer Sandy Vee was mixing for various projects.

Nearby at The Lodge, mastering engineers Emily Lazar, Joe LaPorta, Sarah Register and Heba Kadry have gotten off to a busy start in 2012. In recent sessions, The Lodge mastered…Garbage’s upcoming full-length Not Your Kind Of People – mixed by Butch Vig and Billy Bush; The Raveonettes’ new EP; Narada Michael Walden‘s new album “Thunder” – engineered and mixed by David Frazer and Jim Reitzel; two new singles by the Cold War Kids – mixed by Richard Swift – and Bear in Heaven’s anticipated new album I Love You, It’s Cool – produced and mixed by David Wrench.

The Lodge also handled remastering Indochine‘s “Paradize” album (Sony Music France) for a 10^th Anniversary re-release, and mastering St. Lucia’s debut EP for Neon Gold; Light Asylum’s new album for Mexican Summer, and Nymph’s new record mixed by David Tolomei for The Social Registry.

Down in the Lower East Side at EastSide Sound, recent sessions engineered by Marc Urselli include: vocals and drum tracking for Martha Wainwright’s new Yuka Honda-produced album; two new John Zorn albums, one a trio featuring Bill Frisell; Sean Lennon recording an album with Kemp & Eden; David Krakauer recording and mixing his new album for Tzadik Records, as well as a recording for a movie soundtrack; and Japanese french horn player Yuko Yamamura with Taiko player Ryota Kataoka for a duo record of Japanese traditional music.

The new Jets Overhead record was mixed over at Flux Studios in the East Village. Producer/mixer Emery Dobyns mixed the album out of Flux’s freshly-appointed Revolution Room. Also at Flux, producer/mixer Fab Dupont recently finished mixing a new album from jazz saxophonist Bob Reynolds – produced by Mat Pierson, and featuring John Mayer.

Singer/songwriter Cris Cab and producers 88 Keys, Wyclef and Sedeck Jean have been working up at StadiumRed in Harlem, making Cab’s debut album for Mercury Records, and the just-released Echo Boom mixtape, presented by Billionaire Boys Club. StadiumRed engineer Joseph Pedulla worked alongside Cab and co. on these two projects – writing and recording in StadiumRed’s A, B and C4 rooms, with assistant engineers Keith Parry, Mike Kuzoian and Phil Consorti. In-house mastering engineer Ricardo Gutierrez also mastered the first single off Echo Boom, “Put In Work”.

Click to watch some studio footage from these sessions…

StadiumRed also hosted Cee Lo Green while he was in town preparing for his Super Bowl performance. The session included vocal tracking and mixing for his upcoming single. Graham Marsh engineered these sessions, with assistance from Keith Parry.

Meanwhile in Midtown, Sesame Street was invading Sear Sound! As part of a video shoot for Pool Worldwide from The Netherlands, produced by Tim Carter, Bert & Ernie got acquainted with Studio C and its custom Avalon/Sear console as well as Sear’s chief engineer Chris Allen. Jazz saxophonist Ravi Coltrane also paid a visit to Studio C, tracking and mixing his new album with Allen engineering, and Joe Lovano producing, and contributing tenor sax and his specially designed double sax.

Lovano also tracked and mixed his own album in Studio A for Blue Note Records, with James Farber engineering, and Ted Tuthill and Owen Mullholland assisting. In other recent Sear Sessions: Imani Wind Ensemble recorded with Silas Brown engineering, and bassoonist Monica Ellis producing; NYC-based producer Andrew Wyatt (of Swedish indie-pop band Miike Snow) has been working on Xander Duell’s new album; and Philip Glass tracked the score for a new documentary, BESA, with Christian Rutledge producing, Dan Bora engineering, and Trevor Gureckis conducting.

Sesame Street also took over KMA Music in the Brill Building, recording “Elmo’s Elf-a bet Challenge” in Studio A, with engineer by Serge Nudel. R&B singer Chrisette Michelle recorded “Get thru the Night” and “Kiss Kiss” at KMA with Serge Nudel engineering. Nudel also engineered tracking sessions with Amanda Cole for the track “More Than I Can Handle”.

Mos Def tracked his remake of the Jay-Z/Kanye track at KMA Music.

In other recent KMA sessions… Yasiin Bey(Mos Def) has been tracking with Colin Norman engineering; Producer/engineer Emily Wright mixed an upcoming Owl City release; Roc Nation’s J. Cole tracked a new album with Mez Davis engineering; Mike Posner also did some tracking with engineer Mez Davis; Carole King cut vocals for her memoirs with Colin Norman engineering; and hit songwriter Claude Kelly and producer Chuck Harmony have working on new material with Ben Chang engineering.

In the midst of planning a large-scale renovation, Daddy’s House Recording Studios in Midtown has been busy tracking and mixing on records for Machine Gun Kelly – “Wild Boy”, mixed by Steve “Rockstar” Dickey; French Montana – “Shot Caller”, mixed by Matt Testa; and Red Café – “Let it Go” among other tracks, recorded and mixed by Steve “Rockstar” Dickey.

In addition Daddy’s House has reportedly hosted quite a bit of independent label work, and choir recording sessions. Once renovated, Daddy’s House will be re-launched as a commercial studio, but in the meantime this facility – with its SSL G-equipped and Neve VR 60-equipped studios, and writing room, is officially already open to the public.

Big film and television projects were underway at Avatar Studios – including songs recorded for the soundtrack of The Hunger Games for Lionsgate. Produced by T. Bone Burnett, and engineered by David Sinko – assisted by Bob Mallory – music for the film was tracked to tape in Studio A. Burnett has also been recording music for a new Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis at Avatar – co-produced by Burnett and the Coen’s, and engineered by Jason Wormer, with Mallory assisting.

Music for NBC's "Smash" has been recorded at Avatar and mastered at Masterdisk.

And music for NBC’s new show Smash was recorded with producer Mark Shaiman and engineer Todd Whitelock, assisted by Charlie Kramsky.

And, in time for Super Bowl XLVI (as we reported yesterday), NYC-based composer Joel Beckerman brought his new theme for NBC’s NFL Show in to record with an orchestra in Avatar’s Studio A, with engineer Dennis Wall.

In pure music sessions at Avatar…Herbie Hancock recorded a piano duet with Lang Lang in with producer David Lai and engineer Kirk Yano, assisted by Tim Marchiafava. Esperanza Spalding also recorded with Hancock for the same project. Placido Domingo recorded duets with Bobby McFerrin and producer / engineer Rafa Sardina, as well as with Harry Connick, Jr.  And Broadway cast albums for Bonnie & Clyde (producer David Lai, engineer Isaiah Abolin) and Once (producer Steven Epstein, engineer Richard King) were also recently recorded at Avatar.

Some of those singles mixed at Daddy’s House were mastered nearby at Masterdisk. Tony Dawsey (assisted by Tim Boyce) mastered Red Café’s “Let It Go” f. P Diddy, French Montana, Machine Gun Kelly’s “Wild Boy”, and French Montana “Shot Caller” f. P Diddy, Rick Ross – all for Bad Boy – as well as the Steve Sola-mixed single by DJ Absolut “Untouchable” f. Ace Hood, French Montana, Pusha T, Nathaniel, on Addicted For Life.

Meanwhile, Vlado Meller was mastering songs for the pilot episode of NBC’s Smash produced by Marc Shaiman and Scott Riesett, and mixed by Lawrence Manchester at Avatar. Meller will reportedly continue mastering songs for upcoming episodes, which will get released on iTunes. Meller also recently mastered Say Anything’s upcoming album, Anarchy, My Dear, produced by Brooklyn-based Tim O’Heir.

And Scott Hull mastered So Brown’s Bryce Goggin-produced album (from tape). Masterdisk also recently installed several Antelope Audio Isochrone Trinity Master Clock and 10M Rubidium Atomic Clock units in its mastering suites – reportedly “to maintain stereo imaging and the overall sonic integrity of projects passing through its studios. Additionally, Masterdisk is installing multiple Antelope Audio Zodiac D/A converters at listening stations throughout the facility for quality control purposes.

BROOKLYN, QUEENS & BEYOND

Let’s get started out at a quintessentially awesome Brooklyn spot – The Motherbrain, in Gowanus, where owner/producer/engineer Brian Bender’s tracked and/or mixed a few noteworthy records in the last couple months. First up in our report is… Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds’ latest, Pound Of Dirt. Bender produced, recorded and mixed this album for NYC’s Modern Vintage Recordings, with assistance from Jon Anderson. Bender also recently finished mixing Langhorne Slim’s upcoming album The Way We Move, which was recorded up at Old Soul Studios in the Catskills by Kenny Siegal.

José James

And particularly notable is the latest by José James – No Beginning, No End. Produced by José James, Brian Bender and legendary bassist Pino Palladino, the album began with tracks recorded at The Magic Shop with Russ Elevado, and in London by songwriter/producer Fink, and continued with tracking at The Motherbrain, where Bender will also mix the record.

“We ended up doing the majority of the basics for the record here and Jose called in an amazing band: Grant Windsor, Richard Spaven, Pino Palladino, Emily King, Solomon Dorsey, Nate Smith, Kris Bowers and Nir Felder,” Bender described. “Pino was in town for D’Angelo rehearsals so he was splitting his days between this session and rehearsals uptown.

“The sessions were effortless. We were nearly two full days ahead of schedule the whole time. Also very exciting, this is the first record that I have been able to use the WSW to track with! Overheads and the suitcase Rhodes went through it. (Best rhodes sound ever!)”

Nearby at Bryce Goggin’s Trout Recording, David Sylvian and Joan As Policewoman’s Joan Wasser began work on a new record. Fred Cash and Parker Kindred were laying down the rhythms, with Bryce Goggin producing and Adam Sachs engineering. And Ches Smith & These Arches (Tim Berne, Tony Malaby, Andrea Parkins and Mary Halvorson) also began cutting a new album at Trout, with Shahzad Ismaily producing and Goggin engineering.

Another cool NYC percussion-based ensemble Loop 2.4.3. – founded by Clogs’ percussionist Thomas Kozumplik (The National, The Books) – has been tracking a new project at GödelString in Park Slope with engineer Joel Hamburger.

According to Hamburger, the Loop 2.4.3. album, called American Dreamland, came together via somewhat experimental sessions in the studio. “It was a bit of an unusual hybrid process for this type of avant-classical music. It allowed me to work with a mixture of in-the-box and outboard gear to sculpt the sound.”

Hamburger, who recorded and mixed the album, also noted: “What was extra exciting was the extremely wide variety of musicians/styles who came together to make an organic whole. This album expanded on territory the duo was exploring through their previous album, which I also mixed.”

The album will feature vocals by Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, and Scott Bearden, Jon Catler, of La Monte Young and Forever Bad Blues Band on electric guitar, and Todd Reynolds, of Bang on a Can All Stars and Ethel, on violin.

Over in DUMBO, Joe Lambert mastered the new Ben Allen-produced Reptar album, Body Faucet for Vagrant Records, due out this Spring. Lambert also mastered Reptar’s EP “Oblangle Fizz Y’all” last year. Frenchkiss artist Young Man also mastered his upcoming album, Volume One, at Joe Lambert Mastering.

Bowerbirds' "The Clearing" will be out on Dead Oceans March 6, 2012

Producer/engineer Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Deerhunter) will begin production on Young Man’s next LP this month out of his Rare Book Room Studio in Greenpoint.

Other recent sessions at the Rare Book Room include…Matthew Dear’s new EP Headcage and forthcoming LP for Ghostly International which Verhes is mixing; Bowerbirds’ next LP for Dead Oceans The Clearing, mixed by Vernhes (first single out via Pitchfork); Exitmusic’s upcoming LP, This Is Not A Dream for Secretly Canadian on which Vernhes mixed and lent additional production; and Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear’s solo EP Silent Hour/Golden Mile for Warp (first single “Saint Nothing” via Stereogum).

In Williamsburg…indie-pop songstress Ingrid Michaelson recorded a cover of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” at Grand Street Recording, with bandmate Chris Kuffner producing and mixing, and Bobby Mosier engineering the recording session. Kuffner also produced sessions at Grand Street with singer/songwriter Allison Weiss – recording for her new album with drummer Zach Jones.

In other Grand Street sessions news…Pop singer Charlene Kaye was finishing up her upcoming record, Animal Love, with producer Tomek Miernowski – including tracking a string quartet featuring Dave Eggar on cello, Whitney LaGrange on viola, and Coco Taguchi and Jonathan Dinklage on violin, with arrangements by Andrew Sherman. And indie-folk band The Hollows recorded basics for their upcoming  EP, with Miernowski engineering and Grahm Galatro producing.

Blocks away, Raekwon was at The Brewery putting final touches on some tracks for his mixtape Unexpected Victory, with engineer Andrew Krivonos. The Brewery hosted tracking and mixing sessions for this release in 2011 – Raekwon even named a song after the studio.

And hip-hop artist Rilgood made his debut JFK at The Brewery, with producers Woodro Skillson and RC Bankwell, with Krivonos engineering. The 11-track album, which Krivonos notes “is one of the most exciting hip-hop projects I’ve worked on in a while merging dance and pop elements,” is due out later in February.

Kyp Malone with engineer Alby Cohen at Rough Magic Studios

At the newly opened Greenpoint music complex, The End, Brooklyn-based trio Monogold has been recording a new album with Chris Boosahda. In other recent sessions at The End, Television Personalities tracked a new song, with James Richardson of MGMT, and Ron Johnson from the Warren Haynes Band was also at The End working on new projects.

Kyp Malone, of TV on the Radio, has been tracking a new solo project at Rough Magic Studios in Greenpoint, with engineer Alby Cohen, assisted by Chris Pummill.

Cohen has also been working with Talib Kweli, and recently started using a new mic on the Blacksmith recording artist, for his soon to be released LP, Prisoner of Conscience, on EMI. Two new songs have also been tracked with Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) on the new Blackstar collaboration. Yasiin reportedly brings his own Shure Super 55.

And Joe Moose Demby recorded the new Creative Arson project with Angie Pontani at Rough Magic. The Valentine’s Day released podcast will feature filmaker Suki Hawley, fashion designer Garo Sparo and comedian Murray Hill

Singer/songwriter DM Stith has been working on a new album at The Buddy Project in Astoria, with the new music ensemble Ymusic accompanying, and Kieran Kelly producing/engineering. Kelly has also been working with singer/songwriter Shawn Walsh on an upcoming release.

At Zeitgeist Sound in Long Island City, James Cruz mastered Mary Mary‘s song “Go Get It” to be released by Sony Music. The track was produced by Warryn Campbell and mixed by Bruce Buechner.

American Fangs are recording out at VuDu Studios in Port Jefferson.

Houston-born alt-rock band American Fangs migrated out east to Long Island where they’re recording a full-length album with producers Mike Watts and Steve Haigler at Vudu Studios. Located out in Port Jefferson, Vudu has two seriously equipped studios and a nice big live room, and is home base to Watts (As Tall As Lions, The Dear Hunter, Saliva) and Haigler (The Pixies’ Doolittle, Trompe Le Monde, etc., Brand New).

And not as far out east, there’s Cove City Sound Studios, where Dream Theater recorded their Grammy-nominated album A Dramatic Turn of Events. The album was produced by John Petrucci and engineered by Paul Northfield (assisted by Joe Maniscalero) for Roadrunner Records. Writing, recording, and rough mixing went down at Cove City.

And we know there’s so much more going on out there! If you’d like to be featured in “Session Buzz,” please submit your studio news to submissions@sonicscoop.com.

Britt Myers looked beyond the faders for his newest project.

Those enmeshed in Manhattan’s ultra-competitive mix-to-picture, sound design, and music production scene already know the name of Britt Myers quite well. His SSL Duality-endowed Great City Productions sports a Fran Manzella-designed studio, servicing post clients including HBO, Spike TV, and Comedy Central, as well as serious music artists such as Chairlift, Yeasayer, and Suzanne Vega (check out the SonicScoop 2009 feature on Britt Myers and Great City Productions here).

And although his rooms are constantly humming with activity, Myers refuses to take anything for granted. Hence, his hefty commitment in 2011 to stepping into a new arena and creating the all-iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) word game W.E.L.D.E.R. The addictive puzzler from Myers’ concern Highline Games plays out on your device like a combination of Bejeweled, Boggle and Scrabble — with a dose of Tetris thrown in for good measure — and has gotten its fair share of attention in the 500,000+ buffet of apps in the Store.

As evidence of its success consider these factoids: W.E.L.D.E.R. reached the #1 App on the iPad Paid App Store; gained over 250,000 users in its first 2 months; and earned “#1 iPad Game of 2011” accolades from Associated Press, Fox, Huffington Post, and more. In other words, the w.o.r.d. is out.

While it may seem like Myers wields a Midas touch, his forward motion stems from a sharp sense of business world realities. “Having all your eggs in one basket is something I work to avoid,” Myers says. “This is a very different business model from post. I wanted to make technology from a creative perspective, but also from a business perspective.

“Audio post is a contract-based business,” Myers continues. “I wanted to grow a business where I created a product, sold it and generated money over time. There are a lot of ups and downs you go through running your own business with a high overhead — things out of your control that can create big problems. So being able to control the content entirely is an exciting scenario.”

Although not a hardcore gamer, Myers had filled his fair share of minutes playing around with his iPhone on the subway.  Attracted to the iOS platform for its creative empowerment and fast distribution, Myers looked at games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and saw a market that he could put his own creative spin on.

Eyes on the prize: Gunning for an Angry Birds-sized achievement.

Beginning an iOS Game: Honing the Creative Concept

First, however, he would have to build W.E.L.D.E.R. — a process that, in retrospect, he compares to building a studio.

“It took twice the time and twice the money (as expected),” he explains. “Building our studio was a seemingly never-ending process that kept taking longer and longer, as the scope of the project expanded around the original plans to build what we called ‘a giant musical instrument.’

“The game was similar– what started as a simple project expanded in scope many times as we added more features and user enhancements.  We had very high standards for making a beautiful little piece of technology, and I found the studio construction very similar in this way.”

Next up for Myers and his colleagues at Highline Games was picking the style of game itself. While a driving adventure or shoot ‘em up may have had its appeal, top sellers in the word game category like Words with Friends, Scribblenauts, Jambalaya, and good ole’ Scrabble ultimately served as the inspiration. Genre identified, the next bit of heavy lifting would be to invent an entirely new word game that would actually be compelling enough to separate people from their $1.99.

Starting with a prototype called “Tumble Word”, Myers’ idea stemmed from combining the game mechanics of classic “match 3″ games with the spelling of words.  After bringing the idea to his game development partners Eli Weissman and Anthony Litton (both formerly of Rockstar Games), the team developed the concept into a prototype.

“We were intent on not having a ‘submit’ button to make a word — we wanted the board to detect any formed words and pull them out for you,” Myers explains of W.E.L.D.E.R.’s. game play. “We felt this would create a fun rhythm and flow that didn’t exist in other word games.  Of course, this created a few challenges — there are many words you have never heard of that are in the Scrabble tournament word lists!  Behind the scenes we spec’d a very elaborate word engine for our developer to build, and we also spec’d an extensive development kit for ourselves so we could spend hours — on the subway, standing in line… — tuning the game.”

As the development unfolded, a process that took place between February and September of 2011, Highline began to see the game as a “word laboratory” rather than a “word machine” – an important distinction, in the light of the fact that the diversion would need an original name to stand out in the hectic App store. “We had been through a number of more generic game names, and been frustrated with how every word game name was taken,” Myers recalls. “We felt we needed something truly original, and thus spawned the acronym: the ‘Word Examination Laboratory for Dynamic Extraction and Reassessment.’  We imagined the dystopian society where words were becoming extinct and you were entrusted to save the world with your word machine.

“We had some fun with it. Dan Powell, the showrunner for Comedy Central’s “Ugly Americans” that we do the sound for at Great City, offered to write and direct the trailer, which was a fun extension of the game.  We felt the storyline added another fun dimension to the game, and the trailer really helped extend that.”

Digging In: The Game Gets Built

With a distinctive concept clearly in hand, Highline rounded out their team with a graphic artist and a developer who handled the heavy lifting on the coding side. After spending most of his recent career on “need-it-yesterday” audio post mixes that are dispatched in a few hours, the eight-month initial development arc for W.E.L.D.E.R. came as a tedious surprise to Myers.

“We never imagined it would take that long!” he says. “The basic gameplay and level structure was built between March and May, and the game had basically been the same experience since June. But from July to September, the majority of the hours poured into the project was spent honing the user experience.  It’s a fairly complicated game– in fact, most casual games have much more depth than a player might notice at first glance — and we had the difficult task of boiling down all the elements into smaller compartmentalized user experiences.

“Honestly it was not unlike mixing a song with 100 tracks and 8 different parts,” continues Myers. “It has to be molded into easily digestible bits for any first time user — from my mom to a hardcore game player– to enjoy.  The art took a long time to get right — we had about 10 different versions of the game’s tiles and background.  Every little aspect of the user interface was reworked over and over again until we felt we had gotten it right. Once the game came out in early November we continued to develop and add new features as the market responded to it.  We continue to develop it today, and will spend the rest of this year adding new features and new ways to play.”

Audio Advantage: Making W.E.L.D.E.R.’s Prime Sound Design

Fortunately for Myers, this was where his background in music production and audio post served him very well. “Being an audio engineer is a very detail-oriented job,” he notes. “You have a myriad of issues to keep track of, from technical to creative, and I found that creating this game and managing the scope of this project requires many of the same skills and attention to detail.”

Of course, those skills came directly into play in creating the ultra-satisfying sound design elements for W.E.L.D.E.R. – a crucial aspect of any successful game. “We created videos of the gameplay, and then sound designed the game like we would a TV show or film,” says Myers. “From a creative audio perspective, your approach is flip-flopped though — instead of trying to make everything sound natural and organic, the sound for the game is a real part of the experience.  It triggers your emotional reaction to the game, whether it makes a moment more tense, or a reward more satisfying, it has a huge impact.

An SSL Duality will do the trick for overacheiving on the sound design.

“But where in an animated series or film we would try to make sound that was more natural, in the game, at least this game, the repetitive audio triggers were really important.  It’s sort of like game show sound effects– you want it to be the same sound triggered over and over, to trigger the same reactions in the player. We spent a lot of time on the reward triggers:  The word formation sound and the word reward sound both change depending on the type of word and the bonuses achieved.  There was a lot of calculation to it, but ultimately what worked was the sounds that ‘felt’ the best, the triggered the right gut reaction while playing.

“Once we had laid out the scope of FX for various scenarios in the game, we had them put into the code, and then it became a little bit of trial and error.  It had to feel right as you played it, and it had to sound right whether it was through the tiny compressed iPhone speaker, or the tiny but more open iPad speaker, or if a player was wearing giant cans.  Definitely was a tough balance to mix for!”

Getting Onto the App Store: Highline Picks a Publisher

Once W.E.L.D.E.R. was coded, mixed, and playing like a dream, it was straight to the App Store, right? Wrong! While Highline could have gone the DIY route to get online, they ultimately decided that help would be necessary.

”We had always imagined releasing this ourselves,” Myers says. “Apple has an amazing distribution platform that significantly cuts down on traditional costs of sales, marketing, and distribution… but not as much as people might think.

“Yeah, you hear stories of just dropping it into the App Store and making good money on it, but that isn’t really how it works.  The App Store is a cold ruthless place for developers.  With over 90,000 games in the store, and hundreds of very viable games being released every month, the environment is highly competitive.

“As a consumer, it’s amazing.  Never before has so much content been available for so cheap.  It’s incredible.  For a developer, you’re pushing a rock up a hill.”

This epiphany ultimately led Highline to Ayopa Games, which would provide a megaboost in terms of connections, distribution and marketing expertise. “A friend of mine at EA used to work at Ubisoft with this guy Johnny, who used to be at Chillingo and had worked on Angry Birds’ launch,” Meyers says of the social signal path.  “Johnny and his business partner Elliot were starting up Ayopa Games, a game publishing company, and they were looking for titles.  We sent them the game and they were ecstatic about it.

“They sent us a ton of ideas and notes before we even signed with them, and before and after release have served as a crucial and invaluable resource for getting feedback on what we are doing and thinking about W.E.L.D.E.R.  The worked really hard pushing their contacts at Apple and in press to get the game noticed at launch.  Nothing can be guaranteed with Apple — no one can tell you, ‘I know the person at Apple who can get you featured,’ because it just isn’t true.  Apple works very hard to push the games that they think their customers will be into, and games that use their technology in cool and interesting ways.

W.E.L.D.E.R. arrived on the App Store in a big way.

“I have no idea how things would have gone without Ayopa, but we definitely were being naïve with our initial approach to how things worked. Ayopa has become a crucial part of our team, and continues to work really hard to get new promotions for the game.”

Big Breaks: How Apple Approval Sparks Sales

Any cut that Ayopa was taking was immediately justified when Apple named W.E.L.D.E.R “Game of the Week” upon its debut. It’s a distinction that can help make or break a young company like Highline.

“With so much competition, unless you are a big developer like EA or Zynga, you have to get featured in some way by Apple or it will be a tough road,” Myers states. “We spent a lot of time and money to create what we felt was a fantastic customer experience.  Sure, there were some bumps along the road and we have come out with updates to address them, but the core of the gameplay experience we wanted to be really refined and great.  It took a lot longer to get right than we had expected, but at the end of the day I think these are things that Apple notices.

“We added a bunch of features that were part of the iOS5 launch this fall — single sign-in Twitter support, iCloud support — as well as traditional technology uses that Apple likes such as retina display, GameCenter, universal support — but it’s hard to say if any of these things pushed us over the edge– many other games have this stuff too.”

Beyond the protracted process of W.E.L.D.E.R.’s initial development, the next surprise for Myers has been the ongoing work required for the game after it was “finished.” As he’s found out firsthand, the fantasy of rolling a piece of content out the door and sitting back for the rest of your life while the checks roll in is just that – a fantasy. In actuality, W.E.L.D.E.R. continues to require nonstop care and feeding to sustain its sales.

“There was some stuff people requested that we knew we needed but just didn’t have time to get to — undos were a big request,” Myers says of the post-launch phase. “There were also some people experiencing crashes, because they would touch and interact with the game differently than we laid out in the tutorials, and the game would crash.  So we spent a lot of time listening to people’s requests on iTunes and in the support emails, tracking down these bugs, fixing them, and implementing new features.

“We knew we needed a big feature update before Christmas, and the hope was to get featured again during the one-week holiday break for the App Store, so that we would be featured for two weeks instead of one.  We piled on a huge amount of new features, including two bonus modes.  Ayopa went to work telling everyone they knew at Apple about everything we were doing, and Apple featured us again as ‘New and Noteworthy.’

“It really was amazing to get that kind of response from Apple.  Combined with a holiday sales, we went from then-chart-obscurity, having fallen far down after the Game of the Week ended, into the Top 50 again.”

No Rest for the Weary: Ongoing Product Development Required

With 250,000 paid users forming a healthy fan base, it’s easy to think that Myers and his crew are set. But before you look for them sailing on the good yacht W.E.L.D.E.R., the competitive nature of the App Store means they’re not at the finish line just yet.

“Sales have been good — without these features from Apple it would probably be a very different place,” admits Myers. “We have about 250,000 users right now, and we have become profitable to a degree, but continuing to provide updates costs quite a bit of money. We’ve invested a year of our lives in this, and even with all the promotion and press accolades, we’ve just achieved Step One.  We have primed an aggressive development slate for this year, with new features, new platforms, and new iterations of WELDER, and we are excited about what we can achieve.

Keeping a game company on top really is serious business.

“We’ve learned a lot about sustaining sales: We weren’t really thinking ‘scale.’  We were just thinking how to get our ideas and our game out into the market fastest.  Ultimately that has come to bite us, in that now we are trying to scale up, and having to go back and clean things up to allow the code to work with a larger team.

“A single app on the App Store, for most independent developers, is no lottery ticket.  We had a nice run, and now we’ve settled further back into the charts, and we have a lot of work to do to sustain this success — new modes of play, new iterations of the game, and developing for other platforms — all of which we are working hard on this year.”

If You Can Make The Game Here…Advice for iOS App Developers in NYC and Beyond

While New York City has its share of video game developers and composers, including the aforementioned SoHo-headquartered Rockstar Games (publisher of Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, and the Red Dead series, among others), it’s not necessarily known as a hub in this lucrative sector – either on the console or iOS app side. Still, Myers sees NYC as a good place to get video game visions going right now.

“From my limited investigation, there is a growing and thriving community of independent game developers, and we’re excited to be a part of that,” he observes. “New York has a ton of resources for pretty much every industry, and there is a lot here for developing games.  It’s been a great experience having everyone work and collaborate under one roof, and for me it’s the only way to really run these creative projects.”

For anyone who’s thinking of joining Britt Myers in the pursuit of iOS game app success – or competing with him on it – this young cross-platform entrepreneur offers up some valuable perspective.

“I’ve always had a real passion for great technology, and it has been a thrill to start building my own,” he reflects. “Working with music and audio post, it was always a thrill to see the work that I played a part in creating be seen and heard by thousands, if not millions, of people.  We’ve had some of that same thrill with W.E.L.D.E.R. with so much success right out of the gate.

“There were a number of bumps along the way as we figured out what we wanted to do and how we were going to go about doing it. Really, anyone starting out in this industry just needs to be prepared for that: Twice the time, twice the money — just like building a studio!”

– David Weiss

The Bunker Studio A.

When the dust settles, a cluster of next-level recording studios will have opened in Williamsburg, including the new version of The Bunker – just launched this past weekend.

Located in a 3,000-sq. ft. industrial space in South Williamsburg, The Bunker’s new-and-improved recording studios mark a new era in NYC music in which indie artists have access to affordable multi-room tracking.

Studio A at the new Bunker features an impressive “classic studio”-style main tracking space with 25’ vaulted ceiling, two smaller isolated recording rooms and an iso booth. Wide glass windows and doors provide great sightlines throughout the space, and moveable walls make for a uniquely modular floorplan.

For even just this one aspect of The Bunker, the room is a huge addition to the recording studio spread in New York City, and most definitely in Brooklyn where facilities for large ensemble acoustic and live rock recording are few and far between. In an even more meaningful sense, however, the new Bunker opens the door to a next-level recording experience for much of its clientele.

“There are a lot of people playing really great acoustic music who can’t afford to make an acoustic record,” says The Bunker co-owner and producer/engineer John Davis. “There are just no spaces to properly record that kind of music that they can afford.”

For the most part, the rooms that are outfitted with multiple acoustic recording spaces would have been built many years ago, when that’s what making an album required. The Bunker is bringing that classic layout to a new business of mostly self-funded projects.

“Being able to build this place from scratch meant that we could offer something like the great studios built in the 70s and 80s,” says Aaron Nevezie, producer/engineer and co-owner of The Bunker, “A big, acoustically-designed room purpose-built for live tracking. And we’d also be able to offer that with a more contemporary business model so that we can still be indie-friendly.”

In the time elapsed since a ground-up room like this was built, a huge portion of the acoustic, neo-classical and jazz community has settled in Brooklyn – not to mention the well-documented population of indie rockers who also appreciate a great tracking room. The Bunker provides a convenient, neighborhood option to this new generation of artists.

“There are so many great musicians who live in the neighborhood,” says Davis. “When our friends need to do string sessions, they have to call their musicians who all live in Williamsburg to get on the train and go to Midtown, just to cut a string quartet for three times the cost it will be here.”

The Bunker co-owners (l-r) Aaron Nevezie and John Davis in the new Studio A control room.

Cost, again, is a big factor for Davis and Nevezie, both of whom play in bands, and understand the independent artist’s business. That in mind, they carved out two studios in the new location – the main Studio A tracking rooms with large control room, priced at $750-a-day, and a nice-sized Studio B with its own tracking room, bookable for $450-a-day.

“The price-point was really important for us because we know people cannot afford much more than that,” says Davis. “It’s fun to do big records. It’s fun when there’s a budget. But most of the time, there isn’t. So we can split time between Studio A and Studio B accordingly…do a couple days in A and then a week in B, for example.”

Meanwhile clients that have been booking a day or two at one of the higher-priced rooms in Manhattan might opt to book a longer session at The Bunker. Either way, Davis and Nevezie see a demand.

“I think there’s a renaissance going on of people wanting to track live, and track to tape,” Nevezie asserts. “Bands that want to make it ‘real.’ So we can accommodate that. But also John and I both come from a jazz background as players. We got to do some cool jazz records in our previous space, but the new studio is the sort of place we can invite anybody we know of, at every level, and they’ll be super psyched to play in here.”

A Classic Room That Functions Like A Modern Room

While the Bunker’s build-out and migration has been about a year in the making, the decision to move and expand operations was apparently quite spontaneous, inspired by another exciting studio expansion across town at Studio G.

“We’d been wanting to move out of our previous space for awhile – we were just outgrowing it,” says Davis. “And talking to Joel [Hamilton] about what he was doing put the idea in our head to look around for our own new space.”

They found the new location faster than they could have imagined.

“We walked in here and couldn’t believe our eyes,” Nevezie recalls. “You just do not find this kind of space in New York… at least not two blocks from Grand Street in Williamsburg. We knew we had to jump on it. And then, we needed to find someone to help us build it.”

They consulted with Norwich, CT-based studio designer Rod Gervais on the acoustic designs, and hired a good lead carpenter for the framing, but ultimately did about 80% of the building themselves.

“We wanted it done right – high-end and pro – but we didn’t want to lose that community DIY-ness of it,” says Davis. “We wanted this to be ours, built by us.”

They based the design on rooms they’ve both loved working in, referencing Avatar Studios A and C, which also feature multiple acoustic spaces for a range of sounds.

“Another thing we were really set on was having a look that wasn’t too modern,” notes Davis. “You want it to feel like a classic room but function like a modern room.”

In Gervais, the guys found someone with a strong vision of how to best utilize the space.

“There are certain things that a studio designer, who is both an architect from a structural perspective and studio designer from an acoustics perspective, thinks about differently than we do as producers and engineers,” says Davis, “For example, originally we had envisioned the live room being even bigger and making the isolated rooms off the main room smaller, more like booths.

“As a result of Rod’s design, instead of having one live room with three booths, we have a live room with high ceilings, a live room that’s somewhat dead with medium ceilings, and another live room that’s bright with vaulted ceilings, and we have an iso booth. His thought was let’s get three unique sounding spaces and one booth so that you can really tailor the sounds. That way you’ll also have rooms that will work better for certain things, i.e. the drier 70s-like drum room, the brighter room that’s good for piano or strings, etc.”

Two of the isolated rooms off the Studio A main space

Studio A string room

Sightlines from string room

In October, the guys moved all their gear over from the previous space, and worked long days getting the rooms into working order. Initial tracking sessions in the new room began in November and sessions have been running ever since, so far most notably with the funk band Lettuce, and jazz-pop singer Sonya Kitchell.

The response to the new studios has been positive. And perhaps most importantly, the co-owners find the rooms elevating the sound of the recordings, and the potential sound, from an engineering/mixing perspective.

“The drum sound is super fat and super punchy but we’re also getting a clarity we were always searching for in our old space,” notes Nevezie. “And now it’s just about putting out the right mics and having great musicians play, because it’s just there in the room.”

“We’ve also noticed that the material we’ve tracked here has given us so much more flexibility in terms of what we want to have going on in the mix. If we want to just have a mono overhead and a kick drum and that’s the drum sound, it really works. Or you can have the stereo mics or the stereo overheads, or close mics only…you just bring up the fader, and that’s the sound.”

That sound is something unique to this new space – a quality Nevezie and Davis aspired to in continuing that classic studio legacy. The great rooms always grew to be associated with particular sounds based on records where the acoustic space played a role.

“I just did this jazz session and it was one of those sessions where we really opened up the room,” Nevezie shares. “We had a bass player slightly gobo’d off, piano and guitar and double saxophones, and it was just incredible to hear the beauty of the bleed into the other mics. Being able to use that as the sound of the group, where you just bring up the faders and everybody sounds like they’re in a space together…it was wonderful.”

Facts, Figures, Features

The Bunker’s main tracking room corresponds with a control room that’s quite sizable as well. The board is a 26-channel Auditronics console, and with outboard gear stacked across in-wall racks, and Studer A80 and A810 tape machines in the back corner, the room provides ample space for people to sit, listen, and participate in the session.

Meanwhile Studio B is a great room of its own. With 250 or so sq. ft of tracking room featuring custom-built diffusion panels, and space enough in the control room for group writing/production sessions, this is also a notable new addition to the Brooklyn scene. When packaged with Studio A, the pair of rooms functions as an affordable facility to make a record start to finish.

From a business perspective, Davis adds: “This is important – to not be pricing yourself out of a market you’ve been in for a long time.”

Both studios feature Pro Tools HD and a colorful collection of vintage and modern audio and musical gear. [Click for a full list of gear.]

The Bunker Studio B Control Room

The Bunker Studio B live room

Some of the classic rooms in Manhattan may be exceedingly equipped but may also feel sterile for lack of the personal touch of a private studio. That you’ll find here in the racks of uniquely sourced outboard gear and the rooms filled with instruments – organs, synths, pianos, amps, guitars and more.

The Bunker’s 1969 Steinway M grand piano can roll anywhere in Studio A, and each studio also has its own upright piano. And there’s plenty of space and mic cabinet to explore different setups and miking techniques. Additionally, the Bunker will have natural reverb options via two echo chambers fashioned out of an old boiler room and a long fire-escape/hallway that runs behind the studio wall.

The uniqueness and utility of these new acoustic spaces may be The Bunker’s greatest offering.

“People are so used to recording in non-designed, flawed spaces and making it work,” says Nevezie. “We did, and most of our friends did for years. But when you can actually hear instruments in a properly built space, it just makes everything so much easier. It’s just that aside from the people who get to record at the big commercial studios, most people haven’t been able to experience that.

“So hopefully, with our location and rates, a lot more people will be able to walk into a great room, sit down at a Steinway and play it, and feel like a million bucks.”

For more details and to get in touch, visit www.thebunkerstudio.com.

Step up to the mic. The talent's-eye view from Pomann Sound's Studio C.

Audio post houses throughout New York City amp up demand for their studios via world-class mixing and sound design, but most of them will admit that if they can’t record a top-quality voiceover (VO) – or 1,000,000 of them – they may as well close up shop tomorrow.

No question, post houses from the Bronx to Bensonhurst can cleanly capture a VO track for radio, TV, ADR, online media, or corporate video applications. The challenge  is finding facilities that think the act is interesting – many audio engineers have little to say about fulfilling this deceptively uncomplicated function.

Not so at Pomann Sound, the midtown audio post complex founded by Bob Pomann almost 30 years ago. In addition to thousands of radio, TV, and Web assignments, their VO/sound design/mixing portfolio includes countless commercials, documentaries, films, audio books, and video games – including over 800 animated episodes which include the Emmy Award-Winning Disney series Doug.

A brief glimpse of their client list includes Ogilvy & Mather, McCann Erickson, TBWA Chiat Day, McGarry Bowen, Kaplan Thaler, Y&R, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers Animation, Adult Swim, MTV, TV Land, Fisher Price, Random House, Hachette Book Group, Lucas Arts, and Lucas Film.

Now at the helm of a majority of Pomann’s projects are Sound Designer/Mixers Max Conklin and Justin Kaupp, a fast-moving tandem who get psyched when the topic is recording, editing and mixing VO. Not surprisingly, tackling the most complex of instruments — the human voice — requires attention to detail, from the moment Pomann wins the job until it’s approved by the client and ships out the door.

“Being able to make a good VO great is a rewarding feeling,” Conklin says. “On a technical level as well as from a performance aspect, there’s a lot that comes into play. A well-produced VO can get you to buy the latest phone service bundle in a radio or TV spot, or scare you half to death in a horror movie. These different situations can call for different editing and mixing techniques as well.

“There are certain objective questions you always have to ask yourself: ‘Do I de-breath this line or does it add to the performance?’ ‘Are the words and intention clear to a first time listener?’ and ‘Do the music and SFX support the VO rhythmically or is something clashing in the mix?’”

Conklin and Kaupp broke down their approach to a full-blown VO assignment, step by step. Read on to see a 360 degree view of how VO really goes down.

(l-r) Pomann's Max Conklin and Justin Kaupp know VO.

Stage 1: Getting Started

“At Pomann Sound we have a system of creating what we call ‘prebuilds.’ Which typically are scratch tracks of an entire spot—music, sound effects, and VO—that we can use when building the final spot, saving the client a lot of time in the end.

“We can cater our build to radio or TV and start plugging in select takes on the fly. With radio especially, this is essential to give the client an idea of how we would tell their story in 30 or 60 seconds.

“The ground-up approach for building spots tends to give us a more authentic and unique sound. It’s easy to pull an ambiance effect for any given situation, but why not cater it to the specific needs of the story and record exactly what the script calls for?”

Stage 2: Casting

“Castings tend to take about a day and we can cover up to three or four scripts at a time. When an actor steps into the booth to read for the first time we get a feel for what they might do with the script that we may not have thought of yet. After a few takes our casting director can direct them into a place that will meet the clients’ criteria.

“Having a skeleton of the spot – the prebuild– ready during a casting session helps us direct the talent to do what the spot requires in a given amount of time. It allows us to go into a casting with timings; not just from start to finish, but where certain punch lines need to hit. When we know our limitations, we know how much the talent can play with the copy. On the other hand sometimes the actors go in a different direction and influence the way we make our prebuild.

“Besides the obvious qualities like having the right voice and being a good actor, it seems the actors who book the jobs are always the ones who most ‘get’ the script. They know how to direct themselves and how to deliver the message.”

Stage 3: Recording the VO

“During the mix process we want total control, which means we’re doing very little if anything to the signal during the actual record. This is especially the case when we work on a project that goes on for a long period of time.

“For example, we’ve recorded and edited over 50,000 lines of dialogue for the new Star Wars: The Old Republicvideo game. The dialogue has to sound consistent from start to finish; meaning what we recorded last month has to match the recordings from when we first started the casting process in 2006. The only way to ensure this happens is to make sure we all follow the same specs and don’t try to EQ anything too much before it’s put ‘to tape.’

Kiss it with the compressor -- Pomann's vocal outboard selection. (Click to enlarge)

“Most of the time, the only parts of the signal we filter out are the unnecessary frequencies below 60 Hz and above 20 kHz. We always keep a compressor in the signal chain too, but that’s just for safety—we don’t want to see the needle jump too much.

“It also depends on the actor and the project. Recording a deep growling voice for a movie trailer will require a different microphone, placement, and processing than, say, a quiet, heartfelt whisper about a new romance novel.

“Our go-to microphone is a Neumann TLM170, but we also like to use a Sennheiser shotgun or our Neumann U87 depending on what we want in the end. Sometimes it’s overkill but we’ll use multiple mics and pick and choose. It’s always different.”

Who’s On Board for the Record:

“Most of the time the people in the studio for the actual recording are the engineer, assistant engineer, talent — sometimes two or three at a time — writers, creative directors, producers, and the client or representatives of that particular brand. Other times it’s just us and the actor. In those situations, we can patch in the clients via phone and they can listen and comment.

“Our role as an engineer is very different from session to session. Sometimes the director looks to us to translate the clients’ needs to the talent, whereas other times we’re solely responsible for the quality of the recording and organization of materials. We tend to enjoy the situations where we get to be more hands-on because with the relationships we’ve developed, we have the experience to know what will or won’t work in the final product.”

Stage 4: Editing and Mixing

“Our job is to make sure that performance doesn’t suffer from the time constraints of the spot. Speech is musical by nature and when we’re required to fit a certain amount of copy in so many seconds we ensure cadence and inflections remain intact. This is something we have to be conscious of during the record as well as editing into the build.

“Mixing is always about balancing frequencies and the same is true for a VO. It needs to be clear and cut through a mix while at the same time allowing the listener to take in other elements such as music and sound effects. This can mean using an EQ to carve out a hole in the music for the VO to sit, or using chain compression on music and SFX.”

Stage 5: Revisions and Approval

“It’s a huge advantage time-wise to have the client in the room with us. If the client doesn’t want something to sound a certain way it can be dealt with on the fly. A lot of times that isn’t the case and we’ll post a file mid-day for review. The client then has to come back to us with their thoughts, which can range from immediate approval to last-minute copy changes.

“Also, when they’re in the studio with us, we can present the mix to them on multiple listening speaker sets; loud, quiet, stereo, mono, 5.1, etc… They can hear it every way possible as opposed to just their office computer.

“As far as revisions go, it’s easy for us to plug in different lines or tags even if time is tight. We have a good sense of what sounds too tight or has too many holes before the client hears it and we can deal with it in the editing process. There have been plenty of times we’ve had to use time compression on individual syllables or take out millisecond gaps between words to make it fit without sounding rushed. That’s when we turn to Avid X-Form and elastic audio. We like to think of the voice track as a malleable thing we can push and pull until it all makes sense to the ear.

“The hardest situation we encounter is when the client decides to add something that wasn’t included in the script and the talent has already been released. That’s the most in-depth editing we’re ever asked to do—splicing syllables together to form new words or phrases. Other times, for example, the client will want the music louder, which creates the challenge of getting the VO to cut. We can use harmonic exciters in this situation to give the VO added presence without actually raising the level.”

Kaupp on point from the pilot's seat.

Stage Six: Final Delivery

“File organization is one of the most important parts of what we do. We need to make sure spots are slated and titled with the proper codes. Often we’re building multiple versions of a spot in the same session and they can be identical except for different price points or URLs.

“A lot of time goes into creating the different versions and we always need to be labeling, taking careful notes, and triple checking files before we send them out. The different versions might also have some serious differences in timing and instead of just speeding up the VO, we’ll go in and make minor timing tweaks to everything so that each spot sounds relatively cohesive.

“Specs are important to consider as well. With the new CALM act, we have to be very careful of how we mix and monitor. It isn’t about making everything loud anymore; it’s about carefully making every sound mesh well and output at the right level. And in the end, regardless of what file format the client requires, we want to save high quality mixes and splits for ourselves.”

VO Science: What’s Next

“It’s becoming more about the speed in which you can turn an idea into something tangible. More and more we see directors and producers listening in over a connection like ISDN and Skype, as technology becomes cheaper and more accessible.

“Often during ADR records we’ll have multiple talents recording from various cities simultaneously. This forces us to consider many factors such as delay compensation, signal routing and, in the end, making all of the actors sound like they’re in the same place talking to each other.”

And if You Can Perfect That VO Here…

Global connections may make VO an international collaboration, but NYC remains an extra-intensive arena to perfect the craft. “In New York you get to work with people who are at the top of their profession,” Justin Kaupp notes. “From the actors to the agencies, people want to make something they’re proud of, not just race to the end of a project.

“It keeps you on your toes as an engineer though. If you can’t keep up or find quick and creative solutions to issues that may arise, another engineer no more than a few blocks away will.”

– David Weiss

Audio has a new adress on the East End: Welcome to MonkMusic. (click to enlarge)

What were the reasons for the acoustic insulation overload that was affecting Daniels, a GRAMMY-winning engineer/mixer/producer who has been recording sounds of every sort since 1984? Her condition stemmed from two causes:

1)  Nonstop demand for her talents, which span recording and mixing for Broadway, film, TV, and music clients of every stripe, and

2)  The almost total lack of an acceptable audio facility to work out of anywhere near her Hamptons home base

“I can’t tell you the amount of money I spent on foam, and trying to make records in a small space,” Daniels relates of her home studio days. “Sometimes I got good results. But there are many people who come here over the summer – or live here all year – who need a place to record. They’re used to a beautiful environment where they’re being taken care of, and they like finding it run by an engineer with the same years of experience in cities like Los Angeles and New York.”

That engineer would be Daniels, and the place they can now go to record anything from a quick VO to a full-on rock album is MonkMusic, a new 650-sq. ft. studio designed by the Walters-Storyk Design Group. As versatile as its owner, the three-room complex is built to welcome an East End jam band outfit one day, and an airtight ADR session for the likes of local residents like Sir Paul McCartney, Alec Baldwin, and Sarah Jessica Parker the next.

Perfect Placement

Like a lot of smart ventures, location location location was a massive part of the strategy for making MonkMusic – an aesthetically appealing wing attached to Daniels’ home – a reality.

“Having lived in the Hamptons for 15 years, and vaciatoned here for 15 years before that, I know there is nothing close to this – technically or sonically — for at least 70 miles,” Daniels explains, in her high-energy manner. “So I’m providing what I hope is a technical and aesthetic excellence that comes from my experience. Meanwhile, I try to keep my ears and mind open, because innovation and new means of expression are the name of the game.”

If anyone knows the game its Daniels, a Connecticut native attracted early on to the wonders of audio engineering, who then moved to NYC and managed to get her early training with no less than Phil Ramone at the landmark studio A&R Recording. Surrounded by the “Platinum Crew” of legends like Ramone, Elliot Scheiner, Ed Rak and Tom Jung, Daniels quietly became an A-list engineer in her own right, amassing a dizzyingly large list of clients since her first credited session in 1984.

Of her hundreds of credits — from Broadway to Carnegie Hall soloists and Lincoln Center opera, TV, film and spoken word — highlights include a 2002 GRAMMY Award for recording and mixing The Producers, a 2007 Emmy for composition and music supervision on the longest-running daytime series “Guiding Light“, and yet another GRAMMY in 2011 for her work on the Julie Andrews Collection CD.

Her music clients span the best of orchestral pop to big band jazz, including Chaka Khan, Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, Sandra Berhnard and Eartha Kitt. There’s literally far too much to list – a trip to her Website is highly recommended for the full picture.

Sporting a singularly spectacular place for her business, and 2.5 decades-plus of contacts to complement it, Daniels had a clear vision of what MonkMusic should be. Working closely with WSDG principal John Storyk and his team, she was able to map out a vision for a tailored facility where space – due to the Hamptons’ understandably specific zoning requirements – would be the only limitation.

Zen and the Art of Studio Design: “More Than a Mix Room”

For Daniels, the opportunity was not simply to have the best-sounding studio possible, but one molded exactly to her ears and workflow. “The goal was to get a room that I really understood,” she explains. “In terms of sound characteristics, predictable results and aesthetic appeal, it needed to deliver a consistent product in a place that had a great vibe.

MonkMusic makes the very most of its 650 sq. ft. (click to enlarge)

“I never imagined I would have my own John Storyk-designed room, and that’s a selling point for the studio. I think people like to know that, from the ground up, you’ve chosen the best for a project, to create a room that’s well-made for recording. The result here is the best money could buy, in this amount of space. I don’t think we cut any corners – what we cut was real estate.”

Although 650 sq. feet may sound small for a three-room recording/mixing complex, MonkMusic in fact feels expansive, and fittingly zen. Daniels’ priorities in the design were to make it “more than a mix room”, specifying clear lanes for visual contact between the compact live room and iso booth that flank the invitingly spacious control room. High ceilings of 11’ 2” allow the sounds from vocalists, guitar amps, drums, horns, strings, and/or a piano to breathe without being overly live.

At all turns, of course, total sound isolation between the rooms and especially to the outside world — where a permanent “Do Not Disturb” sign hangs on the high-priced homes in all directions – is essential. “This is a commercial-grade studio in a residential town,” says Daniels. “The soundproof double doors here are one of the most expensive parts of the facility.”

With magic carpets clean out of stock, Daniels chose a hybrid Avid C-24 console to fly the room, currently running Pro Tools 9 (an upgrade to 10 is imminent) with HD 3. A set of 5.1 Genelec 8240DSP monitors w/subwoofer were tuned for the room by Genelec and Mike Chafee of Michael Chafee Enterprises.

Available preamps include choices from Avalon, NPNG, Pacifica, Sytek, Millenia, and Focusrite, connecting to a treasure chest of classic and custom mics including a pair of DPA 4006-TL’s, a vintage AKG C-12 with original 6072 tube, Tab Funkenwerk UM 25 and UM 17 handbuilt by Oliver Archut with NOS Telefunken tubes, Neumann U87 and U89, AKG 414, Sennheiser 421S, and Royer R-122 Tube mic. Allesandro amps and cabinets, vintage guitars, a Yahama upright piano, and much more for the noisemakers are all on site.

Ready for the Pressure

While WSDG project manager Matt Ballos nailed down the studio’s acoustics (working closely with the local contractor who had never built acoustically-focused rooms before), Daniels worked with WSDG associate Judy Elliot-Brown of Rocket Science, and Mike Donahower on the wiring program and systems integration/installation. All the better to best handle what she identifies as the single-most daunting task on Monk Music’s menu of offerings.

“An ADR session can be extremely complex,” she points out. “It often requires you to send time code down the line, as you deliver the video into a part of the country with a different time zone. You are checking the synch, while you have pages and pages of lines close to each other, setting up leads in beeps, keeping track of the takes, which are moving fast because the artist needs to move fast. The director and three other people are in L.A., and another producer is over here. That, to me, is incredibly challenging in terms of focus and flow. I’m more relaxed recording a 60-piece orchestra on any given day!”

Sonic Sophistication Fit for the East End

But as it turns out, the difference in executing fast, painless ADR and VO for the mega-celebs that populate the Hamptons isn’t entirely about what she brings to the sessions – it’s also what they arrive with. “I’ve found that the more professional a person is, and the more experienced they are, the less they have to prove,” says Daniels. “What they really want is to do the job, so they can get out of here and go do what they want, without having to go all the way to Manhattan. No matter how famous the person is, your task is the same: You’re working with an artist, and your job is to make their job easier. As an engineer, you are facilitating – you are a facility.”

(L-R) Cynthia Daniels and Beth Walters of the Walters-Storyk Design Group. (click to enlarge)

While it may be easy to channel some reverse snobbery of sorts at the Hamptons, the fact is that this collection of villages and hamlets on Long Island’s South Fork is a vibrant cultural beacon all its own. The serene beauty of the ocean and land have long served as a muse for American artistic giants ranging from Jackson Pollack and John Steinbeck to Billy Joel, a setting inspirational to an active East End music scene that stays creative year-round.

Daniels does her part to shed light on that scene with her MonkMusic Radio broadcast, which happens twice a month on WPPB 88.3 FM. “I’ve produced and recorded a lot of local artists, put them on the air, and its blossomed into something bigger than I ever expected,” relates Daniels, whose recent guests have included Nancy Atlas, Joe Delia and Garland Jeffries (go here to check out the archived broadcasts). “I’m really active in the community, and I’ve created a facility for the local musicians to come to. And I realized that I’m in service of something – service is not a penance, and everything they said is true: The more I give, the more I get.”

What Cynthia Daniels and the Hamptons have both gotten is a much-deserved sonic sanctuary. Finally in a home away from foam, her new wing is a wonderland where an accomplished career is taking flight once again.

“I’m feeling an advance in my level of creativity,” she confirms. “There’s something about the feeling of this space…it’s an amazing environment where musicians want to come, play live, and record with each other. I can spend innumerable hours a day here, and want to come back for more.”

– David Weiss   

SYSTEMS TWO
Kensington, Brooklyn
Contact: systemstwo@gmail.com | (718) 851-1010
Call For Rates

Systems Two doesn’t have a website, and to be honest, it doesn’t really need one.

When I asked founder and engineer Joe Marciano about their curious lack of web presence, he said “We’ve been blessed, literally from the first day that we opened. We just haven’t had a second to even think about putting a website together.”

When Marciano started Systems Two 37 years ago, it was a small 8-track studio, and South Brooklyn was a very different place. From these humble beginnings, the studio expanded through two recessions to become what it is today: an enormous, three-room facility in Kensington, and arguably, one of the hottest spots for jazz recording in the United States.

But it’s not only that. In addition to hosting contemporary jazz luminaries like Cassandra Wilson, Trevor Dunn, Anthony Braxton, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Dave Holland, Tom Harrell, and Kenny Baron Systems Two has recorded pop, rock, classical and world artists for a variety of labels – even a string of iconic Brooklyn metal bands like Type O Negative, Life Of Agony, and Biohazard.

“Maybe half the people who call us want to see a website,” says Joe Marciano. But, according to him, System Two’s studio manager (his wife Nancy Marciano), is “very old school.” “She wants to get people down here: To smell this place, to see it, and to get into the vibe of it. That’s the big attraction point. As soon as we get them in here, that’s it,  they’ve found a home.”

“Then there’s the other half of people who say ‘Hey man, you don’t have a website? That’s so hip. I had to find you. I had to look at records and ask around’.”

Marciano laughs. “Well, I don’t know if it’s hip or not, but between repeat clients and our relationships with the labels, we’ve been so fortunate and so swamped that we just never needed to build one. I mean, I’m still working with people that I first worked with 35 years ago.”

When Marciano says these things, it’s with a refreshing level of self-assured humility. He’s casual, friendly, and frankly, hard not to like on first meeting. To his credit, Marciano’s pride in his studio comes off as tasteful rather than boastful. It doesn’t hurt that it’s probably well-deserved.

Systems Two Live Room

When it opened in the 70s, Systems Two was a small room in Sheepshead Bay, and the studio effects were “literally just stompboxes.” This year, when the legendary avant-jazz saxist Anthony Braxton came in to record his ambitious opera, he fit a whopping 54 musicians into studio A’s live room – and another 12 vocalists in its isolation booth.

“We’re one of the few studios that can accommodate 80 microphones all going down live. We can handle these huge groups, and so we get a lot of them. We have, you know, 40 or 50 stations of Private Q headphones mixes.”

Also on the list of unexpected-things-that-they-have are: John Coltrane’s personal RCA ribbon microphone; a 9’1” Steinway Grand from the stage at Carnegie Hall; the custom Hammond Organ used to record “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”; Peter Gabriel’s multitrack recorder from the sessions for So, and what’s become a truly silly amount of recording equipment.

But Marciano is careful not to oversell the gear too much. “From the beginning, we would take humble equipment and try to make it sound unbelievable. Even now, people put this up against $10-million dollar rooms and still choose us.”

“Some guys wouldn’t hesitate to build a million dollar room and lease a Neve console for who knows how much money before they even have the clients to back it up. We grew gradually, and I’m glad it happened that way. We always had to know how to make things sound great with what we had. Every year we have a few more clients, and we’ll maybe add a few more microphones.”

Their longevity is testament to the wisdom in this approach. The Marcianos refused to go into a deep hole of debt by chasing gear, but still managed to accumulate a museum’s worth of top-shelf equipment over the years. And when they needed to build a bigger, better set of rooms, they took the job on themselves. “Our blood and sweat is in this place,” Marciano says. “This is us.”

If studios like these are a dying breed, no one seems to have told Joe Marciano and Systems Two’s staff engineers: brother Mike Marciano, Max Ross, and Rich Lamb. They’ve found their niche, and seem to be staying booked the old fashioned way.

Systems Two Control Room

SECRET WEAPON
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
Contact: alanlabiner@gmail.com
Rates: $400/day (with engineer) $200/day (without engineer)

Alan Labiner was assisting and engineering at Manhattan studios like Threshold Recording when necessity forced him to devise his Secret Weapon.

“I never really intended to be a studio owner,” he says. “I was doing sessions and realized I needed a cheaper place to do overdubs.”

“There are just so many times when you don’t need a giant board and a big room, but you still need some of that level of gear. I figured that if I had a treated room and an HD system, with a really great mic, preamp and compressor for a couple channels of recording, it would allow me to do lot.”

In addition to using this South Brooklyn room for his own projects, Labiner has also opened up his Secret Weapon studio to outside producers and engineers. He says it’s geared toward anyone who needs access to a few channels of top-shelf equipment in a controlled environment for overdubs, editing and mixing.

The room is outfitted with a Pro Tools HD3 system, NS-10 monitors, a custom plate reverb and pair of Neve 1073s. Two racks are lined with a few key pieces from Pultec, API and Moog, and the booth comes equipped with a good handful of high-end mics including Neumann M149s, U87s and a vintage AKG C-414 with a brass CK12 capsule.

Although Bensonhurst may seem out of the way to musicians who aren’t used to working in South Brooklyn, Labiner has already managed to attract a few high-profile indie artists from outside the neighborhood, including Angelspit and Freelance Whales.

“It can be difficult to get people to come out here at first, but once they do, they find we’re right up the block from the D train station and a music store, and there’s plenty of good food around.” With an unusually low card rate for the quality of gear, and flexible project pricing, it might just be worth the trip.

NEWKIRK RECORDING STUDIOS
Ditmas Park
Get in touch via www.benriceproductions.com
$300/day or $35/hr (with owner/operator Ben Rice as engineer)

Ben Rice started working in studios as a teenager at Manhattan’s Clinton Recording. He went on to refine his chops while working on his own music with Williamsburg-based producers Gus Van Go and Werner F. Today, he records and produces indie artists from across genres – from rock groups like The Mooney Suzuki and The Wicked Tomorrow, to jazz trios and up-and-coming singer-songwriters.

Ben Rice in his Newkirk Studios. Photo credit: Brad Hamilton

South Brooklyn’s studio scene isn’t as saturated as elsewhere in the borough, but it’s growing. Rice’s Newkirk Studio is evidence of that. His room sits among the tree-lined streets and Victorian homes of Ditmas Park, and although it seems like an idyllic setting for making music now, as Rice tells it, it wasn’t always that way.

“Ditmas Park is amazing. I pretty much grew up here, and I’ve watched it change from a place where you’d hear gunshots to the kind of place where I’m comfortable walking home at four in the morning. It’s also gone from a neighborhood where you wouldn’t find many musicians to a place where you’ll see people walking around with guitar or violin cases every day.”

It’s a community that Rice says he’s tapped into. “I have a pretty close-knit group of musicians that I work with regularly. If a singer-songwriter needs a band for a recording, I can put together a group who are used to playing together and can capture the artist’s songs cohesively and organically.”

Rice has a musical ear and has delivered some promising sounds at an affordable rate. In a growing musical community, his Newkirk Studio could be the tip of the iceberg.

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn recording engineer and studio journalist. He is a regular contributor to SonicScoop and edits the music blog Trust Me, I’m A Scientist.

Awards are nice -- but Amber Music has its eyes on other prizes in today's chaotic commercial music world. (photo credit: Jennie Armon)

Commander-in-chief of the determined musical crew is Michelle Curran, an intense commercial music veteran who’s unafraid to attack any situation with both guns blazing. Gifted with the ability to attract top composing and sound design talent and direct it to cinematic heights for her advertising clients, Curran is challenged by a constantly contracting business environment where deadlines and budgets loom ever-tighter.

Even as the bullets fly, Amber Music stands as something to aspire to – and then some – in the ultra-competitive music realm. Operating out of a spacious, multi-studio complex downtown while working consistently with clients from California to Europe, Amber sports a reel bursting with top brands: Gatorade, Tropicana, Budweiser, and Motorola (the 2011 Super Bowl spot “Empower the People”), just to name a few.

Making the work happen is a choice list of composers and sound designers, including Andrew Brannon, Eugene Cho, Danny De Matos, Leo Sidran, and Mark Tewarson, among others. Many more have had Amber as their launch pad before setting up their own HQ’s.

It may sound like an NYC success story, but all is not rosy in Amber-land. Overall economic embattlement forced the 2010 closing of her original London office (founded in 1993), along with the L.A. offices. Uncommonly plain-spoken about the trials and travails that original music houses – in NYC and elsewhere – face today, the energetic Curran first takes on the obstacles by understanding what Amber Music isn’t.

Make Songs, Not Jingles

“We don’t do jingles,” says Curran, “’Trust Sleepy’s for the rest of your life!’ That’s a jingle. It’s a little ditty song that goes along with an ad. I’m not saying that jingles aren’t right in the right place. If I said, ‘Think of an ad from your childhood,’ you’d recall a piece that stuck in your head. It becomes an earworm.

“To us, advertising music is like creating music for film. We make songs, and we make music, but we don’t do jingles here. There are places that do that really, really well. But that’s not us. I’m not a jingles producer. I’m a person that creates music for film, and I try to understand my role as a creative director, or interpreter of people’s ideas. People know why they want to work with me, or don’t want to work with me.”

A sweet suite: Inside composer Eugene Cho's creative space. (photo credit: Jennie Armon)

Feisty and unapologetically opinionated, the UK-native kicked off her career in the ‘80’s, moving from dancer to assistant art buyer (quite handy for storyboarding later on), to running the jingle house for London-based ATV Music. Decca Records was next, which led to a head-of-promotions post at Island Records, where producing music videos for artists from U2 to Grace Jones and Bob Marley helped lock sound-to-picture in her head.

For the independently-inclined Curran, her own shop was a logical next step, resulting in the 1993 launch of Amber Music. “It was just going to be a little London office,” she recalls, “but then it seemed not-very-gracious to not have an American composer. So then I had to build a studio in NYC, and it kind of grew from there. In 2000, we opened up in LA. But then the whole world turned upside down, and technology ramped up. Now we haven’t got the budgets for three offices anymore. There were big budgets and big jobs, but now budgets have been shrink shrink shrink.”

Survival Tactics in a Tight Market

So how has Amber not only survived, but emerged as one of the benchmarks for original ad music, sound design and music supervision in an era of not only shrinking budgets, but also complete readiness by creative directors and artists alike to license tracks? To Curran, it boils down to ensuring that the best is still available, and managed by someone with experience who can provide serious guidance to the client and her roster.

“If you go to Amber, or one of the other ‘really good’ quality music companies, you’re paying for the best talent, hopefully,” she says, “but also for someone like myself to get on the phone and give you ideas for your spot.”

For Curran, one key aspect of achieving and maintaining a distinctive level of quality is to use freelance composers as seldom as possible. Instead, the vast majority of her composers are in-house, focused on Amber’s commercial projects while also having the OK to use their studios for independent album work and other creative projects.

“The people coming to Amber know that — with the exception of one or two people who work with me on a freelance basis — they’ll only get these people if they work for Amber,” Curran explains. “That makes it a little bit special.”

The Pitch Game

But sometimes Curran finds herself feeling a little less special, like when she finds herself in the now all-too-common situation of pitching against dozens of competitors on a project, hampered by little or no communication with the agency’s harried decision-maker.

Another reason the music is for real -- the kit gets captured in-house. (photo credit: Jennie Armon)

“Sometimes I don’t even get to speak to the creatives, because they don’t have time to speak to me,” says Curran, “which I think is bizarre because this is a commercial that’s going to be pictures and music. If people don’t think you’re important enough to talk to you about that, well…

“It’s not about giving people 8 million demos,” she continues. “It’s about bringing it back down to a much more realistic thing. It should be the creative who has enough foresight to say, ‘I’ll go to three different companies, and I’ll get three or four tracks.’ Music is the only part of the industry where people give you very little time, and definitely very little respect. They don’t go to an editor’s place and say, ‘I don’t like the edit, so I’m going off somewhere else.’ But that’s what they do in this sector.”

While it would be easy for Curran to blame unnamed Madison Avenue cads as the cause, she instead urges her fellow original music purveyors to take a look into the mirror. “We’ve done this to ourselves as an industry,” she points out. “For example, we agree to not use our demos for six months, in case they want to hold onto them. Nobody wants to say ‘no,’ nobody wants to bite the bullet and say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not giving me enough money for this.’ No one wants to lose it. Ad agencies say, ‘We don’t care about you, because there’s a million other companies.’ ‘Oh really? Thank you!’

“There used to be a time back in the day, where you’d evolve music along with the creatives and the director to make something special. I can look back at music from the ‘80s and ‘90s and say, ‘That still works now.’ Today, we have to fight for our industry — fight for the life of our industry. Because otherwise in a few years, what are all the composers going to do? You can’t make money off of records anymore, unless you have some hits.”

The Keys to Keeping on Top of Music Quality

Fortunately for the composers and sound designers that work with Amber, they’ve got a field general with the confidence to keep it together, even in the heat of battle. As one example of the Amber ethos check out the emotional motion of the Motorola Super Bowl spot, which depends hugely on the powerfully graceful score from Icelandic composer Biggi Hilmars – it’s a cinematic, yet often subtle musical work that helps keep the viewer fully engaged with the onscreen action.

The common thread between this and other high-profile campaigns that Amber handles? “Me,” Curran states simply. “I’m really Amber. I always say to my composers, it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. You don’t have to write 800 tracks. You just have to write one really well.

“When I’m looking at composers I want to bring in, they have to have a finesse to them. Amber is a brand, and the things that come out from here have to be a part of that brand. If it’s quick, horrible, cheap and nasty, I don’t want to be a part of it. That’s not who we are. Some people think my sound is overly produced, but that’s what I espouse to people.

“When I was in charge of doing promos at Island, I’d go, ‘I want a director for the video to be able to stand up outside the music.’ In the other way around, I want the music to be able to stand up if you’re not watching the picture. It should be solid — the craft is a well-executed piece of music. What someone said we do here is intelligent music. The way we look at things is in an intelligent manner.”

Apparently the downside to a smart outlook can be a polarizing image – but this is a drawback she and her staff are willing to live with. “Some people find me too opinionated,” she concedes. “Too strong and outspoken. Some people don’t want that. Some people want you to just do as you’re told. But if I think someone’s not giving us a good idea, and I think there’s a better idea, I’ll say that.”

Multi-instrumentalist Mark Tewarson is on the Amber Music roster. (photo credit: Jennie Armon)

Surveying the current advertising industry landscape, whether uptown at Madison Avenue or globally, Curran finds the same pressures in the industry as from decades past – just severely amplified. In response to the increased heat, she sees one true option.

“Has it changed very much? No it hasn’t,” she says. “As music companies who specialize in doing music for TV commercials, we are against much stronger competition from EMI, and everyone else who wants to do it. You have to make your standards better. When people are yapping at your ankles, you have to produce a better quality product, and I think because of that the standards of music have gotten better.

“And also because now that commercial music is deemed not such a dirty word, people like a Zach Shipps (guitarist for indie rock outfit Electric Six) are quite happy to supplement their income, plus their creativity, on doing a composition which is a breakaway from producing an album track or a band. Paul McCartney said in article in NME that writing a :30 piece of music was the hardest thing he ever had to do, because he had to make a beginning, middle and end in thirty seconds. There is an art to that.

“What I think is very undervalued is how talented the composers have to in order to pull a song or tune to picture out of their asses inside of 24 hours, that fits to what everybody wants. Bang bang bang you’ve got to come up with an idea! It’s not that easy for people to do. People should respect the composers within the industry in which we work, with higher regard than they do most of the time.”

Composing is a Battlefield — Keep Battling On

Having loved – and left – L.A., Curran sees NYC as the ideal home base for anyone in the commercial world. And while she clearly likes the place, it’s the time that’s just as right for her. “It’s very centrally based time-wise,” she notes. “At the moment its ten-past 9:00 in L.A., in London its ten-past 4:00, in Israel its ten past six, and in Auckland it’s ten past 5:00 tomorrow morning. But I think L.A. is the last time zone before you slip off the planet, isn’t it?”

Kickin' it old skool -- Amber Music has some hard-won TriBeCa turf to protect. (photo credit: Jennie Armon)

With the 20th anniversary of Amber Music on the horizon, Curran is ready, willing, and able to look past the headaches of decades past and stay connected to the most rewarding moments of the business. “When we’ve done a great piece of music, we look at it on TV, and we know we’ve done a great job,” says Curran. “You’ve managed to do something where people say, ‘You did that?’ It’s pride.

“I love the job that I do. There are days where working at the sweet counter at Woolworths would be better, but I love working to picture. And however all these things come to me, I love being able to look at something, come up with an idea and make something better. A great piece of music will elevate an average commercial, whereas an average piece of music can destroy a spot.”

But all emotion aside, what really seems to keep Michelle Curran and her Amberites moving is her tribal mentality, working in a sonic war zone where aesthetics and artillery have become necessarily intermingled.

“It’s about survival now,” she says. “Unfortunately, it’s a never-ending battle — you have to do twice as much work for half as much money now. But as you can see, I care about my industry a lot. I don’t want to see our craft die. And the only way to keep this art form alive is to fight.”

– David Weiss

Thompson Studio A. Photo by Cheryl Fleming.

This handsome commercial facility – located on Thompson Street, naturally – comprises an SSL 4000G-equipped A Room, Neve 8108-based B room, and a savvy production suite. All are tied to a substantial live room and iso booths, with access to a full kitchen and lounge. Click for the virtual 360° tour of each room in this facility, created by Cheryl Fleming and Patrick St. Clair.

Based on the equipment list and images we’ve seen, the facility seems quite equipped to accommodate full band and vocal recording sessions, writing, mixing and audio post-production.

Along with the SSL 4000G Series console – fitted with Automation and Total Recall, and recapped and restored by 81series.com – Thompson Studio A has been equipped with Pro Tools HD3, Studer 827 24-track tape machine, and Boxer T5 Main Monitors, coupled by two Genelec 1094 subs, Yamaha NS-10′s, Genelec 1031′s and Auratone Speakers. An iso booth and robust array of analog outboard gear and keyboards, synthesizers, instruments and microphones, flesh out the room for production, tracking, mixing, overdubbing, film scoring and composition.

In Studio B, the Neve 8108 (also restored by 81series.com) is complemented by a choice of DAWs – Pro Tools HD3/ Logic/ Cubase – Barefoot MM27 and NS10 monitors, and its own vocal booth. Studio C is a comfortable writing/production room equipped with Pro Tools, Logic and Final Cut Pro and ties to the main live room and both iso booths.

Benedetti had apparently been searching for a space for two years before he landed at 54 Thompson. Following the completion of an initial buildout, the Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG) provided extensive design recommendations. WSDG architect/acoustician John Storyk and project manager Joshua Morris oversaw substantial improvements that achieved complete acoustic isolation and extremely accurate sound translation throughout the complex.

Thompson Studios is a welcome addition to a neighborhood that’s historically been populated by artists but short on world-class recording/mixing options. It will be interesting to see if Benedetti proves successful in attracting a loyal clientele from NYC and beyond.

Check out some photos of the space below, by Cheryl Fleming Photography. And visit www.thompsonstudiosnyc.com, email music@thompsonstudiosnyc.com or call 212-925-4400 for more info and to book time at Thompson Studios.

Thompson's main live room

Live Room, alternate view

Studio A

Studio B

Studio B, alternate view

Studio C

Benedetti at the SSL