LIVE in the Studio

THE VALLEY: Fonogenic Studios sits almost directly off of the 405, down Haskell just past where apartments and gas stations fade into warehouses and corporate parks. The studio itself is tucked away behind the Orly cosmetics buildings, like the rebel kid at the back of the class scribbling band logos over his math homework.

The studio door is open so I simply walk in and say hello, letting my voice reverberate down the long hallway, which is lined with keyboards, records and pictures.

Rami on the Fonogenic stage

To my right, a “showcase” live room outfitted for performances and live recording. To the left, the studio live room and control room.

Before long, Rami jumps out, a whirlwind of infectious energy. Giving me a big hug, he asks me to excuse the mess from a recent live show at the studio. Noticing little that could qualify as a mess, I follow him into the showcase live room, pausing by the stage where a full platform of gear sits at the ready in front of a giant projection of the “Fonogenic” logo.

Further adding to the grandeur are red velvet curtains hanging at measured distances across the length of the room.

An enviable guitar collection hangs on distressed wooden panels, light bulb adorned mirrors add pizzazz and glowing orbs of light hover over the span of the entire room.

Samon, the tech/engineer sits at the Trident T24, flanked by an Ampex MM1000, which between 1968 and 1980 recorded all the greats who passed through Columbia Studios in Nashville, including Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.

Besides the obvious question of why there’s a live showcase room in a recording studio, my first interest lies in how they ended up here in the first place – they being co-owners Rami Jaffee and Ran Pink. Besides being a collector of all things keys and some pretty sweet motorcycles, Rami is a producer, composer and keyboard guru for the likes of Foo Fighters and The Wallflowers. Ran is a composer, producer, and engineer.

When I ask Rami the history of this building, he laughs and calls for Ran, saying, “that’s a Ran question!”

Ran smiles, walking into the room.

“My family bought this building for our family business about 8 years ago,” Ran says.

“This was extra space that was originally a company called FonoVisa, a Latin American Television studio. When my dad came to see it he said, ‘Oh you gotta see this building, there’s a studio there.’”

“I came and looked at it, we worked out something and I took the operation out of my guest house and brought it here.”

(l-r): Ran Pink and Rami Jaffee. Photo by Jimmy Steinfeldt

At that point, Rami and Ran hadn’t even met yet. Interestingly enough, mutual friends kept pushing for the two to meet, which happened coincidentally on a street corner in New York City, where they excitedly compared their new first generation iPhones.

After this chance meeting, and about a year into tearing down and fixing up the shell of a studio, Rami gave Ran a call.

“He says ‘Look I’m about to go on tour with the Foo Fighters, my studio is a dump in Malibu, I wanna redo it,” Ran recounts.

“All my gear, put it to use,” Rami interjects. “I was just gonna throw it all in my parents garage
but if it’s somewhere where it can be of use, and I can come in, once a month and overdub on 20 records…,” Rami smiles and shrugs.

The deal made sense. Rami could get the bulk of his recording projects done quickly while he was momentarily in town and in the meantime Ran could make use of Rami’s sweet gear collection, including vintage mics, outboard gear and of course, keys.

Fonogenic musical gear

“So we combined gear. I had a tech come in and connect all of our racks and make it into one amazing set up.”

“We have so much compression and pre-amps, we have more pre-amps than you can imagine. We have the two Trident consoles (80B and T24) and the 8 channel Shadow Hills (Shadow Hills Golden Age 8 Channel Tube) and all the Chandler stuff (Ltd 1, TG Channel MKII, and Limited TG2).”

Among other things, they also have an Alan Smart C1, LA-2A, 1176 Blackface, and two 1176 Silverfaces. Their mic collection consists of a FET 47, Royer R-121S’s that Rami keeps as mainstays on his Leslies, more than a handful of Audio-Technica’s including a 4060, 4050s, a stereo pair of ATM450s and ATM350s, Shures, AKGs and Sennheisers.

On the digital side, the Apogee Symphony steers the studio with several Apogee quartets “floating around the studio.”

Couple of the Fonogenic gear racks. Click to enlarge.

Their list of keys is an obvious reflection of two keyboard playing gear-heads: 3 Hammonds (1962 B3 & Leslie 122, 1964 B3 & Leslie 142, and 1935 Model A & Leslie 122), a Young Chang Grand Piano, several Fender Rhodes, a Wurlitzer, Mellotron, Vintage Roland synths, a Clavinet D6, Nord, Yamaha, Korg, Casio, and well, you get the idea.

With these combined resources, Fonogenic was raised to a whole new level that neither Ran nor Rami had anticipated.

“It took a couple of years to organize it all, and for Rami to have a break; Wallflowers, Foo Fighters, Wallflowers, Foo Fighters.

“But recently, we’ve been doing a lot of writing and producing together. We’ve had a lot of good successes here and we work really well together.”

Rami echoes this sentiment saying that what began as a storage space and random day of studio time trade turned into a great working relationship.

STUDIO WITH A STAGE

Fast forward five years, and the studio continues to be a creative collaboration, now with another pair to fill out the space.  Samon Rajabnik, who Jakob Dylan (Wallflowers) stumbled upon working at an Apple store genius bar, became one of Rami’s new favorite people after doing a quick fix on his Leslie backstage.

Samon’s friend, Joshua Stuebe, followed soon thereafter, bringing the MM1000 to its new home.

Samon at the Trident, MM1000 in the foreground

With the whole crew in place and Rami spending more time in LA, Fonogenic began to morph into something other than just a recording studio.

“I had such a huge amount of time in LA, which is so unusual and that’s what got me thinking, let’s start this showcase series, let’s really put this studio to use… we love live music so we built a stage,” he says, motioning towards the grandly lit, fully packed stage.

And while live music is obviously a very current part of Rami’s professional life, it harkens back to the early 90s when he began putting on rock shows at the Kibbitz Room at Canter’s Deli in Hollywood.

Ran, too, did his part to bolster the live music scene in LA. In the late 90s, early 2000’s, Ran and his brother used to rent out a venue in Hollywood called Cinespace to put on shows once a week.

With Fonogenic, they’ve refined the idea to offer something a little different. They partnered up with StageIt, an online venue for live, interactive concerts – a bit like Ustream for artists and their fans.
They began holding events once every two weeks, complete with a 4-camera film crew, bar and a considerable crowd.

(I can personally attest to these events being more than just your average studio party. Upwards of 150 people moving through the space, not to mention the succession of bands, including Chris Shiflett’s (guitarist in Foo Fighters) country band. There was even a face painter and live canvas painter at the event I attended.)

And it’s likely to be an evolving concept; Ran and Rami want to test other iterations of this “live from the studio” idea.

Perspective from the keyboards on stage

“We’re still experimenting with the process,” says Ran.

“Are we gonna do it every two weeks, every month? Do we need to have a huge party every time we do it? Maybe sometimes it could just be a band jamming around the studio, set up like a living room, kind of like Daryl Hall’s where it’s just band and crew. We haven’t even tried to do that yet.”

“We’re still dabbling, and so far everything looks great, feels great,” Ran says, smiling. “We’re doing something right. Everyone loves it here. We just need to keep going at it and honing and get people who see the content on YouTube and think ‘Oh yeah, I’d totally play there, I’d go for that.’”

Rami adds that although the shows are definitely something they plan on pursuing, the versatility of the showcase room opens them up to other possibilities, too.

He smirks as he recounts times when he’s brought bands he’s working with to rehearse here, instead of Center Staging or “some other airplane hangar.” With the Cerwin Vega P Series PA blasting throughout the room, it’ll likely be the one of the louder rehearsal spots you can find, not to mention there’s no disgruntled studio worker who’d rather be at home playing video games than setting up your monitor mix.”

Apart from rehearsals… live recordings, video shoots and release parties have taken to the Fonogenic stage as well. And that’s exactly what Rami and Ran want: a place to create and support artistic endeavors without having to deal with the shortcomings of other venues.

“I’ve been all over, I’ve played everywhere in LA. I’m from LA,” Rami says, throwing his hands up into the air.

“I don’t want to go set up my crap at the Viper Room. Sorry, I just don’t. I don’t wanna go to Hotel Cafe and have everyone ‘shhh’ me and I don’t wanna go to Cafe Largo where you can’t even check your fucking iPhone. It’s not what I want to be part of.”

“But a lot of times because of what’s available and what people know about, they’ll just end up at those places. So, that’s how StageIt came about. We have a venue, let’s do stuff here.”

Both Rami and Ran have more than a handful of ideas on how to keep this idea growing and evolving. From eclectic variety shows to low key, living room sets, expect to see a lot more coming from the Fonogenic stage and studio.

Fonogenic Studio Live Room

Studio Control Room with Trident 80B console

Showcase room from behind the kit

Showcase/Live Control Room with its Trident T24

Living room vibe in the showcase room

Fonogenic Hallway

Samon and Ran in the control room

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