Sebastopol Sound History

Hi, I'm Scott, and Sebastopol Sound is my most recent recording facility. It continues a tradition of recording and sound services started several decades ago when I started recording various rock bands that I was involved in, with one music project followed by another.

Early on I played in a band, "The Galaxies", with Richard Chamberlin, son of "Chamberlin" organ inventor Harry Chamberlin (whose instrument, along with the somewhat later British "Melotron", helped bring in the entire "electronic" music scene). It was fun to talk to Harry ("Mr. Chamberlin" to us, we being high school students) about his revolutionary invention. One time he asked if I could borrow an upright bass from my school, which I did (being student president of the Chaffee High School 60-piece orchestra that year had it's advantages). Harry had me bow a few notes in his Upland, California, house's studio (a converted bedroom) so he could record it for test purposes. The payback for me was seeing how he set up his iso' booth, what mic he used, the tape recorder itself, etc.

The band "Laughing Gravy" was a hoot to play with, and when it looked like Dean Torrence (of "Jan and Dean") was going to produce us, I learned a few lessons about the recording industry from Dean, although the recording project itself didn't fully materialize.

Playing with the band "Gypsy Band" at venues such as "Gazzari's" on the Sunset Strip (as an opening act for "Question Mark and the Mysterians") provided still more insight into the entire professional music scene, as did, surprisingly, getting drafted into the U.S. Army and winding up in the 28th Army Band.

We didn't have a recording facility in the Army Band (in Monterey, California) but I did get to meet a number of studio musicians (cats who had been playing, when drafted, with Wayne Newton, Cal Tjader, Buddy Rich, etc.) who also taught me a lot. (I mostly played tenor sax and oboe in the Army Band, though my very first gig with them was playing concert bass drum!)

Immediately after my two years in the Army Band, I wrote and recorded music for a TV cartoon, featuring Walt Kelly's Pogo in "We Have Met the Enemy", using a rented Ampex AG-440. Our "studio" was an apartment in Hollywood, CA.

I joined the band "Fresh Air", where we did some recording for a feature film at a nice studio in Hollywood, Sunset Sound, which was a fairly lackluster looking facility, but had a great "vintage" mixing console and other fantastic gear. This inspired me to upgrade my own "studio" and the race was on; every "last mic I'll ever need" and "best pair of speakers I'll ever own" was eventually replaced by another still better sounding mic, set of speakers, preamp, mixing console, etc. Fresh Air toured up to a club in Santa Barbara, California, where we became house band and opening act for the likes of Bill Medley of the "Righteous Brothers" and others, again gaining valuable knowledge from some of the mainstays of the recording world.

Our band broke up, with lead singer Marc Piscitelli going to a recording school which lead to his career as an engineer in many major studios around the world, and being the sound engineer for the Sony and Cher TV show. I'll never forget Marc letting me watch a large recording session with Olivia Newton John (what a voice!) at Laribee Studios in Hollywood. In addition to Olivia in the vocal booth, they had a full stage band in a large room, and a string section in another room, all connected with video cameras and monitors so they could all see the conductor. There was little or no mixing board automation in those days, so it took three engineers to man the 56 or so channels on the board.

The other thing that Marc taught me, after he attended the recording school, was that no matter how good a studio you record in, you have to tune drums (and other instruments) to get them to sound good. What a concept; "Garbage in, garbage out."

I enrolled at U.C. Santa Barbara as a music major. In addition to learning my piano scales, and how to arrange for French horn and bag pipes, I studied audio recording. We were mainly using Ampex and Scully reel-to-reel recorders, along with a razor and tape block, and I enjoyed using the music department's large fully featured Moog modular synthesizer (one of the first schools in the U.S. to have one).

In 1976, with a BA in Music Composition in hand, I went on to write and record music for educational and documentary films produced by Motorola, Crown and other film distributors, as well as music work on two Hollywood feature films. I also entered the world of location film sound, and still cherish and use my Sennheiser shotgun mics and Nagra, Stellavox and Uher location sound tape recorders.

Along the way I entered the world of computers and eventually programmed in C++ for several multimedia firms, including at The Software Toolworks for the "Miracle Piano Teaching System" project, promoted by jazz legend Herbie Hancock. When the creators of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" started their own multimedia firm, I joined as a programmer, but also talked them into building a recording suite for tracking, mixdown and mastering for CD-ROM distribution.

We used the very first ProTools (Sound Designer) software and worked with voice talent like actor Jonathan Winters. Most of the music produced there was MIDI based, though I was sneaking bands into the facility at night to record CDs. A few years later the recording suite itself was torn out, double walls and all, at the "request" of the local building department, when they discovered it had been built without a permit. (Where was their sense of humor? Where was their sense of history!)

The studio that started in the Hollywood apartment, now lives in it's own purpose built building here in Northern California (built WITH a permit). The mics, preamps, console and other gear have been replaced several times over (although the 1960's ribbon mics still work magic and we still compare mixes on the 1970's vintage Tannoy Gold monitors).

I've also been blessed to work front of house sound over the years, and most recently at a private club in San Francisco where we produce live events with every kind of musical group, large and small, from classical to jazz to country to rock, including large scale Broadway style productions with dance and song. The people and gear I get to work with are the best. It's been exciting, and has continued my life long quest to learn about and work with sound and music and the great people behind it all.