NYC Studio Tour: Central Brooklyn Part 2

CENTRAL BROOKLYN, NY: We New Yorkers are proud of our ability to squeeze into tight corners of this big city. But sometimes, even the most die-hard pack rats among us yearn for a little space to stretch their legs.

Come join us in exploring four Central Brooklyn studios that offer a refreshing amount of breathing room at an affordable rate in this latest installment of our NYC Studio Tour.

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VINEGAR HILL SOUND
Vinegar Hill/DUMBO
www.vinegarhillsound.com
Room Rates: $400/day; $500/day with engineer

Guitarist and studio owner Justin King has developed a minor fetish for Telefunken-Elektroakustik’s remakes of classic German condenser microphones, recently purchasing pairs of ELA M 251′s, 260′s, and AK-47s along with “a host of M80′s”.

Despite these boutique tastes, King says he’s priced Vinegar Hill Sound with up-and-coming indies in mind: “Considering the classic analog gear, the instruments/amps we offer, and the size of the main room (over 600 square feet with 16 foot ceilings) Vinegar Hill Sound has an unbeatable 10-hour lockout rate for a studio of its quality.”

King named his studio after the small slice of Brooklyn it occupies. Vinegar Hill is a concealed enclave of old brownstones, cobblestone streets and charming brick townhouses that stood in quiet resistance through the construction of the BQE in the mid 20th century, and the building boom of the early aughts that re-shaped much of the surrounding area.

“It’s a pleasure to work in the area,” says King of this small neighborhood, which sports a name that sounds unfamiliar even to many long-time New Yorkers. “It’s located a couple blocks off the water near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. There are great restaurants, bars, coffee shops, galleries and Fulton Ferry Park all within a three-block-radius of the studio.”

This owner/operator took pains to make the studio friendly to outside producer/engineers as well: A clearly-labeled patchbay system serves as a well-organized life-line between the 24-in/40-out Pro Tools HD system and a 32-channel Toft ATB console.

Interesting in-house instruments include an antique pump organ, vintage harpsichord and a “massive, Bonham-esque” Gretsch drum-kit.

“The studio is extremely well suited for recording strings, drums, vocals – anything acoustic really,” King continues. “I think we’re capable of elevating any kind of music. It’s a serious studio at a silly price.”

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GODELSTRING
Park Slope/Downtown Brooklyn
www.godelstring.com/
Room Rates: $450/day for Studio A, room only; $600/day for Studio A, with house engineer

GodelString Studio is an enterprise of many faces. After moving on from his prior studio, Brooklyn Broadcast, Joel Hamburger built a suite of three new, distinct rooms to cater to his team’s diverse clientele.

Studio regulars include producer/composers such as Jay Braun (Norah Jones, Jon Spencer, Cat Power), William Berlind (Burning Spear, Colin McGrath), and Sanford Livingston (Scores for Jesus Camp, and the award-winning “Underwear”) as well as Latin producer/engineer Rafael Lazaro.

“We’ve each got our own little niche, so there’s not a lot of stepping on toes,” says studio manager and engineer Dan Rosato, who plays guitar and sings in the rootsy, rollicking, indie-rock outfit Your 33 Black Angels.

Their studio is as central as Central Brooklyn gets: Built on a shady stretch of 5th Avenue near Atlantic, GodelString is sandwiched between the disparate worlds of quiet Park Slope and bustling Downtown Brooklyn. A flagship A-room hosts an Audient console that feeds a Pro Tools HD system, and features a large live room with three conjoined iso booths and a Steinway grand.

Ample B and C rooms serve as day-to-day production suites, while an expansive tech shop keeps the whole facility humming. It’s an impressive amount of space for the neighborhood, not to mention, the price-point.

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SEASIDE LOUNGE
Park Slope/Sunset Park
www.seasidelounge.com/
Room Rates: $500/day in Studio A (includes engineer); $400/day in Studio B (includes engineer)

A set of heavy drapes opens in Seaside Lounge’s deep hued, wood-floored live room to reveal a hidden wall of reflective cement. “We don’t have one set, static way of doing things,” says part-owner Josh Clark. “If it’s possible and not particularly dangerous, we’ll give it a shot.“

Operated by a handful of house engineers, both studios A and B feature Sony/MCI consoles, Pro Tools HD, and an assortment of vintage tape machines from 3M, Otari and Ampex. “We just want to capture music in the most realistic and honest way possible,” Clark continues, “So the clients we appeal to most are musicians who want to create an honest recording in a really relaxed, open environment. “

Like the other institutions that make up in today’s tour, Seaside offers a lot of space for the money. Clark tells us that as their studio grew from a single room to its current form, “we designed [the] rooms to be open and live-sounding to help reinforce [that way of working].”

And it’s paid off: A stream of distinctive and offbeat artists keeps the studio running, and keeps Seaside’s motto, “Vibe for days,” making plenty of sense.

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SHADY BEAR
Kensington
www.shadybear.com
Room Rates: $350/day; $450/day with house engineer

Nestled just south of Prospect Park in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood, we found Shady Bear, the personal studio of Anthony Robustelli.

Despite an enviable John Hardy-modified MCI console and matching tape deck, Robustelli’s clients aren’t coming with just gear in mind. More than just an engineer, Robustelli bills himself as the studio’s “creative director,” an in-house player and producer who’s comfortable working songwriters through new arrangements whether they’re recording jazz, pop, or electronic music.

Whether he’s asked to play all the instruments on a session or hire top session players at friendly rates, Robustelli adds only $250 per song to the bill.

In addition to his production chops, Robustelli is proud of this Brooklyn facility’s sister studio, Shady Bear North, where he entertains artists eager to escape the city for de-compressed sessions on a quiet 30-acre plot in the Catskills mountains.

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based producer/engineer who works with uncommon artists, and a journalist who writes about music and how we make it. Visit him at www.justincolletti.com.

Summer At Seaside Lounge: Beirut, Takka Takka, Rick Rizzo & Tara Key

Ah…summer in the studio. Seaside Lounge, the Park Slope studio collective, has been hosting plenty of summertime recording and mixing sessions with artists like Beirut, PG Six and Takka Takka.

Beirut has been in and out of Seaside, tracking new songs for their next album with producer Griffin Rodriguez (aka Blue Hawaii of Bablicon and Icy Demons) and engineer Josh Clark.

Indie-folk artist P.G. Six recently finished mixing a new album in Seaside’s Studio B, recorded to the 2″ 16-track machine. Studio B also now features Pro Tools HD.

Rick Rizzo (of Eleventh Dream Day) and Tara Key (of Antietam) also just finished mixing a record, their second collaboration, which will be released on Thrill Jockey Records.

And Takka Takka are working on their third album at Seaside Lounge, with producer/engineer Sean Greenhalgh of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Visit Seaside Lounge at www.seasidelounge.com.

Josh Clark’s Indie Recording Tips: DIY Tracking Basics

By Josh Clark

So you’re a band or musician that needs to record. Cheaply. You have a rehearsal space with a reasonable level of isolation and some basic recording gear. It can be done, but as easily as it could sound great, it could also come out sounding terrible.

It’s hard to know what you’ll get when you’re embarking on these projects in your cramped rehearsal space for the two-hour slot you get each week while waiting for your neighbors, Head X-Plosion to finish playing their 10 minute metal opera.  There are a lot of variables and in this case the most important is experience, the one thing you’re most likely lacking.

I’ll assume you’ve already got a digital setup like Pro Tools or Cubase and know enough to get in trouble.  Most of you can get this far with few problems and have successfully recorded and combined some tracks to form a completed recording but you’re wondering why it doesn’t sound cool.

My premise is basically “if you can’t do it professionally, make it interesting and unique.”  Here’s some advice on how to do that.

Keeeeep it cheap and simple.

If you are looking for mics to buy, the best bet is to buy older, used dynamic mics as they are plentiful on Ebay or Craigslist, cheap and are usually in great working order since they need little maintenance. Old EVs are great and really anything under $100 is going to be worth it somehow.

A weird sounding dynamic is probably going to be a lot more useful than a new $200 overly bright, harsh condenser made in China. Condensers also need phantom power.  Maybe you knew that, maybe not. Now that you’ve got four “new” mics for $150, add a couple SM57s and you’ve got the important stuff.  Feel happy that you didn’t buy a $300 mic that you couldn’t sell for $150 when you realize that another works best for you.

Find a good sounding space or modify the space you’re in.

There’s so much advice on acoustic treatment and I’d guess that 50% is bull and the other 50% probably won’t apply to you.

If you’re like most of us, your space is small and covered in drywall.  If the walls are bare, spread everything out in the room so every wall has something in front of it. Grab some heavy curtains and cover a wall or get some office cubicle walls — they’re on the street in the city or on Craigslist all the time. You basically either want to absorb the sound with heavy fabric or fiberglass insulation covered in fabric, or diffuse it with items spread around the space.

Another easy and cheap treatment is regular R-11 insulation hung from the ceiling with fabric draped over it for a billowy “cloud.” Hopefully your room is a bit more manageable for recording now.

The SM57 is your best friend.

You can use it on anything and it can sound perfect. Be aware that anything closer than 6″ or so will have an increased bass boost so if you’re singing, you are best off to stand about a foot away depending on what you’re going for.

For drums, two [Shure] SM-57s about the height of a kick drum and maybe 2-4 feet in front of a simple kit in an X-Y pattern can get a really balanced sound.  Experiment. Adding two overheads for 4 in total — one over the hats/snare and one over the floor tom can really make for a great sound. You might be surprised.

Now try some of the other cheap mics you bought and see what they do.  You’re best bet with any tracking if you don’t have good monitoring (you’re probably using headphones) is to keep some distance from your source.  Really close mics can get a drastically different sound than what is being produced in the room so it’s better to start further away, like a foot or two and move in.

Skip any compression before going into the recorder.

Most people don’t have enough experience with compression, most pro-sumer compressors are junk and most home recordings I’ve worked on that used compression (going into a digital audio workstation) were quite compromised.  Play with plug-in compressors after you’ve recorded. You’re not going to need a hardware compressor for a long time.

Hopefully this is enough to help you lay some tracks down in a way that represents what you and your band want to show the world.  I always tell people to either buy cheap or buy expensive. You’ll quickly outgrow the middle of the road gear and won’t be able to resell it easily.

That’s all for now — next time I might let on why your bass tracks sound horrible and impossible to hear in the mix.

Long live tape and fun!

Josh Clark is a Brooklyn-based musician/producer/engineer and co-owner of Seaside Lounge Recording in Park Slope. Clark has recorded and/or mixed for Antietam, Federale, Beirut, The National, The New Pornographers and his own psychedelic roots-rock band, Rope. Rope’s “Montagne” is available on 7″ via www.allhandselectric.com.