Looking around his new studio in Long Beach, Chris Schlarb sees all studios that weren’t his. The ones he rented out, the ones created from scratch by lugging gear to someone’s apartment, the ones in which he was merely a guest. With the opening of BIG EGO, those days are over.
His journey represents one common to many people in the Reverb community: start small with a love of what you do, build your network and reputation, and build upon the gigs you get and the gear you use as you go.
Chris's Audient 4816 console
Schlarb has been particularly successful at this, all while wearing multiple hats in the world of music-making.
As a composer, Chris wrote original scores for the games NightSky and Dropsy, earning the Independent Games Festival’s Seamus McNally Grand Prize and redefining what video game soundtracks could be.
As a performer, his work with I Heart Lung and Psychic Temple built a dedicated fan base and earned critical respect over the last fifteen years, including NPR naming his album Interoceans one of the Top 5 Jazz Albums of 2008.
But it is his work helping others record that afforded him the opportunity to stand where he is now, looking at his own Audient 4816 console (bought on Reverb) in his own studio, thinking about how Terry Reid - Jimmy Page's first choice as vocalist for Led Zeppelin - was standing in front of his RCA 77D (also bought on Reverb) just days ago at the studio's grand opening.
The Journey Home
Chris traces it all back to 2005, when his project I Heart Lung began doing shows and touring with Ray Raposa’s project Castanets (both on the Asthmatic Kitty label at the time). After coming back from tour, they started talking about how Chris could help record Ray’s next album.
Chris didn’t have an established reputation or a stocked studio. In his words, “I had very little equipment. Just nothing. A couple SM57s probably.”
They simply shared a common philosophy of making music and a trust in each other - something that would emerge as recurring theme of Chris’s work over the next decade.
Lacking a space of his own, he rented Matt Wignall’s back house studio in Long Beach - affectionately named Tackyland - for $100 a day. Some of those sessions made it onto the Castanets LP First Light’s Freeze, leading other Asthmatic Kitty artists to approach Schlarb about recording for them.
The way I like to work, even back then, is having all the musicians in a room together, working out an arrangement, and pressing record."
As his name started appearing on more records, budgets increased from $500 to $1,000 and beyond. Along the way, he started to develop his own approach and pick up production tricks.
“The way I like to work, even back then, is having all the musicians in a room together, working out an arrangement, and pressing record.”
At the same time, he was still making his own music at home. Each gig meant tearing down his setup, moving it, and setting it up again. Or working in a makeshift studio without his own gear.
“I remember being flown across the country to make a record for a band in their basement and having them tell me it sounded better than what they got from the expensive studio across town.”
He was doing something right but was still learning with each session. Little by little, he refined his skills and upgraded his gear.
Eventually, he became a partner at All Welcome Records near Los Angeles where he made 20 records over the course of a year. In early 2016, Chris and his wife Adriana found their own place in Long Beach, signed a lease, and started building it out. $50,000 later, BIG EGO studio is now fully operational.
I recently caught up with Chris so he could share with others what it took to start as the friend who would record you at your house and end up as a producer with his own studio and carefully curated set of gear.
Honest Music, The Power of Limits, and the $1,000 Mic Locker
Did you ever have any formal training around making records?
I never had a traditional internship. I was never an assistant engineer. [From the start] I was the driving force, the engineer, the producer, the mixer, everything. I made a lot of terrible sounding records. But I kept at it. It was this insatiable need to get better.
The difficult thing about having an engineering or assistant position in a regular studio is that whatever comes through, you have to work on. There are very specific things I want out of music. If those things don't come across, it kills my creative spirit.
There’s been a shift over the last 30 years in music toward perfection. The problem is that musicians aren’t necessarily getting any better. But they use technology to bridge the gap. Imperfection is what makes music wonderful."
I’ve turned down projects pitched by one-man bands, where one artist wants to track everything. I’m just not the guy to do that. [To me] it sounds like building a spreadsheet. That’s not why I do music.
I do it because I love everyone in a room together with a good piece of music, when everyone starts playing and an arrangement takes shape. Let’s have the piano take this and the guitar just does a rhythmic part or the melody. I want to be involved in that.
There’s been a shift over the last 30 years in music toward perfection. The problem is that musicians aren’t necessarily getting any better. But they use technology to bridge the gap. Imperfection is what makes music wonderful.
Absolutely. If you look at albums made before the 1980s, it's amazing how many recorded solos and parts have "mistakes" in them. At this point, they've just become part of the song, something memorable that gives the recording as much character as the intentional parts. I've even seen musicians imitate recorded mistakes, earnestly and ironically, when covering certain songs.
There’s a Wurlitzer breakdown on Neil Young's “See the Sky About To Rain,” (On The Beach, 1974) and it’s just a disaster. There’s a clanger in there. It's honest, though. I love that he kept it in there. I'm drawn towards honest music.
For a long time, I was just seeking out people who were aligned with that philosophy. And I still do. I want to work with people who want to try new things, who are trying to articulate something sincere and will roll with me.
HoneyBrandy at BIG EGO Studio
Do you think the gear used in a recording affects the level of honesty in the music?
I can say this: I have a specific way I like to make records. I don't like using keyboards with synthesized sound. At our studio we have a Yamaha G3 grand piano, a Wurlitzer 200, a Moog Sub 37, and a ‘60s Slingerland jazz kit for drums. I bought this beautiful old swampy tube amp, a nice mid-’60s Gibson Falcon, off of Reverb.
How much does a studio's available gear impact the work that gets done there?
At All Welcome, where I was a partner, they had almost nothing in the way of instruments. They had a drum set. So I brought in a Yamaha CP70 electric grand piano, a Hammond organ, and a Wurlitzer. Just from those three keyboards, you can do so many things that will sound honest and interesting.
Artists need limitations to do great work. This is the problem with modern music: you have an unlimited number of things you could do, so you do none of them."
With a plugin or software, you won’t get that. I know because that's how I started. I was buying all the UA plugins. I still remember one called that was called “Lounge Lizard” that was a Wurlitzer/Rhodes kind of thing.
If you’re making records the way I like to make them, you need real people touching real things, playing in real time in a room. And there is no substitute. Of any sort.
Is the need for real, tactile gear on the production side just as important for you?
The kind of music I like to work on requires a certain type of acoustics in a room, certain types of instruments, and a certain recording process.
I use an Audient 4816 console and a RADAR system to record on - digital tape. That has a sound. And there’s no screen to look at. That’s a whole different process.
With that set-up, you’re forced out of your comfort zone. Artists need limitations to do great work. This is the problem with modern music: you have an unlimited number of things you could do, so you do none of them.
How did you start building your arsenal of recording equipment?
Working with live bands, I started out with a MOTU 8Pre firewire interface, which is not particularly great sounding, but it had 8 preamps on it. It will convert 8 ¼” cables into 8 tracks on my computer, and that’s all I gave a shit about.
From there I needed 8 XLR cables and then 8 microphones. The great thing about Reverb is that you can put together a great mic locker for probably $1,000.
All that takes is a couple of jobs, and you’re going to get paid back that money. And you’re going to use those mics for years, maybe decades.
How do you know when it's time to upgrade a piece of recording gear?
Some things you don’t need to upgrade. Some things you should, like monitors. You probably don’t want to buy a $3,000 set of monitors when you’re starting out. Get a $200 - $300 pair. Maybe the next time get at $1,500 pair.
That’s what I did. I had a pair of KRK Rokit 6s. I had those for years. They made it difficult to judge my mixes. Then I bought a pair of Neumann KH 120s, and they sound amazing. They cost $2,000 [at the time]. And then I bought the subwoofer that goes with them, which cost $1,500 by itself.
Terry Reid with RCA77D
That makes sense to upgrade. If you buy a [Shure] SM57, you’ll never have to update that microphone. It’s going to be amazing forever. It’s going to cost you $70 used.
You buy an Electro-Voice RE20. That’s a $300 microphone that you’re going to have for the rest of your life. It works on everything. There’s not an instrument or a sound that will not sound good on it.
Then you start to diversify your stuff. You pick up a ribbon mic, or a large diaphragm condenser, maybe a figure-eight mic, or an AKG 414 that has multiple polarity patterns on it. Then you have all these options and choices.
Is there a minimum number of mics that people at home should aim for in order to capture a professional quality recording with a full band?
In the beginning, you want at least as many mics as you need to record drums. You could do that with one mic. Last week (BIG EGO house engineer) Devin O'Brien and I recorded a double quartet with two drummers and used a total of three mics: two overheads and a Royer 121 between the kick drums. Personally, I really never need more than four mics for a drum set.
As long as you have that, you can start recording and get good, impressive sounds. With the mics I mentioned, you won't need to upgrade them. You’ll get additional pieces to augment what you already have, to get some different colors and flavors. If you make the right purchases, you’ll have these mics forever.
I just bought the new Audient console and the RADAR system, a AEA R88 stereo ribbon mic, and a Pearlman tube mic through Reverb. Those are new, but they’re just adding to things I already had from ten years ago that I’ve never had to get rid of.
Is it as important to you to upgrade and diversify the instruments you have on hand in the studio?
At a certain point, you have to ask yourself: what are you trying to accomplish? Some people proudly claim, “I’ve got this tone.” In service of what? Have you written a great piece of music?
A great piece of music can forgive any recording quality or technical facility. A song or great performance will trump all of those things."
A great piece of music can forgive any recording quality or technical facility. A song or great performance will trump all of those things.
I’ve taken a wait-and-see approach with stuff like that. When people talk my ear off about tones and sounds, I ask them to stop talking and play me a song. What is this supposed to be for? It can’t be an end in itself. It has to serve something else.
To learn more about recording at BIG EGO, you can visit their website here or their Instagram here. To learn more about Chris Schlarb's work as a musician and hear it for yourself, you can find him on Bandcamp here.
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Photos by Devin O'Brien.