Checking In: How Brooklyn’s Degraw Sound Reached the Five Year Mark

Milestones matter. And when a studio hits the five-year mark in Brooklyn’s highly competitive audio landscape, that’s worth noting.

What’s won the 1100 sq. ft. Park Slope/Gowanus facility Degraw Sound the chance to keep on recording and mixing for another five years? The vintage Trident 24 series console is a nice centerpiece, but for founder Ben Rice and his crew the gear is just one part of it. Beyond the buttons, it’s the opportunity to grow as engineers within the space and make it do more for their clients that accentuates the adventure.

Degraw Sound is stepping out of the studio on Saturday, June 3^rd, to celebrate their turquoise anniversary in style. Yes, the bands they track play live, and they’ll be doing it all day at Littlefield. Before that, however, Rice provides insights here on how a studio like Degraw Sound makes it to the five-year mark — and what they’re looking forward to learning next.

In control at Degraw Sound with a Trident 24.

What are the ways that Degraw Sound has been upgraded modified since you opened in 2012?

Well, one big change was adding a third member to the team. When I opened Degraw Sound in 2012, it was just me and one other producer, my friend Gian. Early in 2013, the studio started to get really busy and I decided to bring on an assistant, Harper. After a year of on-the-job learning, he started engineering and producing his own sessions out of the studio, so we dubbed him Harper 2.0, and the Degraw Sound team was born.

Getting on the Mellotron paid off.

Looking back at the original article that you guys wrote about the studio when we first opened the racks of gear do look a bit bare! But it’s funny because at the time it seemed like such a luxury to have even few choice pieces of outboard gear at my disposal. I’ve always been of the mindset that you let the type of projects you’re doing dictate the gear that you buy. For example, last fall I bought a Mellotron because I thought it would be perfect for a record I was producing for this artist Luiz from Brazil. He’s got this delightfully quirky, 1960’s avant-garde folk meets The Beatles thing going on, and the Mellotron played a huge part crafting the sound of his record.

As a result of doing so many different types of projects here, we’ve filled out the outboard gear racks with some cool toys—a couple Neve 1073s, a pair of Pultec EQs, an SSL G Comp and a Spectrasonics 610, which is my favorite guitar compressor. I love our LA2 and our five 1176s — you really can never have enough of those! At this point, I can do a mix with only outboard if that’s the vibe.

We also beefed up the mic-locker with a bunch of mics from our friend Pip Biancamano who has built some really beautiful sounding microphones as well as some old classics.

Masterful mics include classics and custom models.

How have you seen Gowanus change in that time, as well as the overall Brooklyn/NYC recording/mixing landscape?

Gowanus has definitely changed a lot since we moved to the neighborhood five years ago. When we opened in 2012 we had a clear view of the F Train looping around from Smith and 9th down to Carroll Street from our lounge… now we can watch it pop in and out behind all the luxury condos that are being built up along the skyline. The view’s still great, it’s just a different Brooklyn.

The area is gentrifying pretty quickly. Having grown up in Brooklyn, I know how complicated that issue can be, but I have to admit, at the moment we’re reaping the benefits of having a bunch of amazing bars and restaurants open up around us. Third Avenue has turned into restaurant row over here — we’ve got a great brewery and amazing coffee shop around the corner… seriously the best coffee anywhere in New York City… so we’ve got the fuel at our finger tips to keep us going through those long days in the studio, and food and drinks around the corner for post-session hang outs. Basically, it’s a fun time to be in Gowanus.

It’s hard to say how the studio landscape has changed since we’ve been here, because most of the time I’m working at Degraw. I haven’t really had time to work out of a lot of other studios.

What are some highlight credits that have taken place since 2012?

Last year I produced and mixed a record for The Candles called Matter + Spirit which has done quite well. These guys are incredible people and some of the most talented musicians I’ve worked with. I often hire them to play on other records I’m producing, so I was super pumped that Josh brought me on board to work with them on their album.

“Matter + Spirit” by The Candles was a memorable record done at Degraw.

I’ve also been working with a young band called Queue from Philadelphia/D.C. They make shoegaze-y, dreamy, indie rock. Olivia has a hypnotically beautiful voice, and Aida’s guitar work compliments it perfectly. It’s rare to find a band with that kind of musical compatibility —they’re amazing young women and super talented.

I’m gearing up for a new project with one of my favorite bands from Brooklyn called Elliot & the Ghost. We did a series of singles that got them a bit of buzz and they’ve become good friends, so I’m super psyched to dig in on the new tunes with them. We went upstate to do pre-production for the record and they’ve got some great things in the works.

A couple other notable ones to mention would be a record I did for Silya & the Sailors that went to #1 on iTunes in Norway, and Harper has a project with his brother Abner called Eighty Ninety. They put out a track called “Three Thirty” and people went bonkers for it, which has been cool to watch.

DEGRAW SOUND PLAYLIST —

Five years ago, SonicScoop’s Justin Colletti wrote that you were “taking the plunge” to open a bigger space. Now in 2017, how do you feel about the risk you took to open Degraw Sound?

Honestly, I feel really good about it. Thinking back to when we had just opened, the words “taking the plunge” seem to capture the stress and anxiety that goes into building a recording studio and getting a business off the ground.

When money seems to be leaking out everywhere and you have to finish construction so you can start making records life can take on an ominous aquatic quality. In hindsight, it’s all just part of the process. There are certain things that I think you need to go through to be able to understand and appreciate what it is to be able to make records for a living in New York City.

How would you say you’ve grown along with the space on an audio engineering basis – how has tracking and mixing in a bigger studio changed you as an engineer?

For me the biggest thing about working at Degraw Sound is that I’m not limited to any one specific approach to making records and I don’t have to compromise the projects I’m working on due to a lack of space or resources. What I mean by that is when I was working out of a project studio there were certain approaches to making records that you had to take out necessity because it was the only way to get something to sound good.

Degraw is a really beautiful sounding room, it’s very warm and balanced while still having interesting nooks and crannies to put mics up in and capture unique sounds. It’s large enough to comfortably set up a full band to track live in, but it’s not so big that you feel silly having it sit there while you cut overdubs, so I have a lot of flexibility with approaching each record.

I’ve also accumulated a good amount of gear, and that has really helped my workflow and creative process. When you can dial in the sounds on the way in and have your first playback already sounding a bit like a record, you’re in a good place.

The live room has given Degraw’s crew space to stretch out.

Likewise, how have you changed as businessman/entrepreneur in that time, managing a larger facility and staff?

I basically had no business background when I opened Degraw, so it’s something that I’ve had to learn as I go. As with most things, the more you do it, the more comfortable you become. I care deeply about my studio, but when it comes down to it, I’m a producer first and businessman second. I just try to be as efficient as possible when dealing with the business side of things so I can focus my time and energy on being creative and going all in with the artists that I produce.

Lounge in the light.

Gian and Harper have been a huge part of growing the studio and making it what it is today. I wouldn’t say that I manage a staff, these are my best friends and the fact that we all have found a way to make lives for ourselves and produce records out of this studio, both individually and collectively is just the coolest thing to me. Gian is based out of LA currently, so Harper and I do most of the day to day, but Gian is back and forth to NYC and we work together all the time, both in person and remotely.

I think that our approach here is representative of where the studio business is headed. It’s becoming less viable to run a large commercial facility and staff, but it is viable to have a mid-size studio built around a tight-knit team of hardworking producers and engineers who love music and love making records.

Last question: If you could go back in time five years, what do you know now that you would tell yourself then, to save time/money/stress?

I think I would tell myself don’t sweat the little things, make music that you believe in, enjoy every minute of it and trust your gut. On a certain level I think the stressful parts of the job can actually help create a context for the rest of it. If it was all fun and games I don’t think you’d have the same appreciation for how incredible it is to be able to produce records. There will always be growing pains and running a business in New York City is expensive. There’s no way around it.

Ben Rice looks for passionate people to keep growing Degraw.

I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by really good people, Gian and Harper, Dave Ellis who built the place, the artist’s who have made records with us and also the people who taught me how to make records — Gus Van Go, Werner F, Eddie Kramer. Looking, back, it’s these connections that I’ve made through my work in the studio that make it all worthwhile.

I try to work with people who share my values and are passionate about their craft, I feel like that’s how you keep growing. I’ve always been the kind of person who learns from doing things, I like to be hands on. The more records that I’ve made, the more that I’ve come to trust in experience over the things I read, watch or hear second hand.

The mistakes that I’ve made over the years were when I didn’t trust my gut. You can accumulate all this esoteric knowledge about how to make records or how to run a business—and some of it can be helpful or fun to explore—but it’s meaningless without the experience of doing it, so I feel like you just have dive in, do it, take the plunge and make it happen.

• David Weiss

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