RECORDING November 2022 - 54

L Session
og
W
by Marc Urselli
ESS mid 2000es control room with Harrison console and Augspurgers speakers
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
EASTSIDE
SOUND
ith this month's focus on studio
ergonomics (room design, treatment,
layout, monitors, how gear is
setup and so on), I figured this would be a
great opportunity to give you a virtual tour
and a bit of history of one of the oldest
recording studios in New York City. It also
happens to be one of my favorite recording
studios in the whole world: EastSide Sound.
Photos by Lou Holtzman,
Roland Muenger,
William Semeraro
and Marc Urselli
IF THESE WALLS
COULD TALK
Control room with wood slats and wall details
Control room back wall with wood slats to break up sound
MOVIN' ON UP TO THE EASTSIDE
EastSide was opened in 1972 by 23-yearold
drummer, jazz fan and self-taught recording
enthusiast Lou Holtzman. Lou still engineers sessions
at EastSide Sound to this day and was its
main proprietor up until this year. 2022 marks
the 50-year anniversary of the studio, making it
the longest independently-owned recording studio
in the city and the second-longest running
recording studio in all of New York (second
only to Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios).
EastSide has seen it all and has especially been
a mecca for jazz musicians since the early 70s.
54 RECORDING November 2022
The original location was at 98 Allen
Street, on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan-right next to the famous
Chinese restaurant Congee Village.
It featured 3 studios: the main studio
consisted of a sizable live room with
2 large iso booths and a control room
equipped with a vintage Neve console
(serial no. 13) with Flying Faders
and 10 custom tube modules by Manley
Labs. Allegedly, Led Zeppelin's
Physical Graffiti was cut on this
board, but I cannot confirm.
The upstairs mix room featured a
fully-automated, digitally-controlled
and fully-analog Harrison Series
10B console that allowed for total
recall of a mix in 5-10 seconds flat,
with all the routing, EQ, dynamics,
channel names fully recallable and
saved on a Macintosh IIfx-the first
console to run on a Mac in fact! This
console was EastSide's pride and
glory in the later years as session
recalls became more important in
people's workflow. It went from being
luxurious to indispensable!
EASTSIDE STORY
Although I had built, owned and
operated a small studio in Italy before
moving to New York, I (re)started as
an intern at EastSide, making coffee
and cleaning up. I can still remember
the first time I was allowed to sit in on
a session watching Lou operate the
Harrison. I was hooked!
I've now been the Chief Audio
Engineer at EastSide for more than
a decade, but back then, Lou took
me under his wing and showed me
how to run that monster board.
After the combined events of 9/11
and changes in the recording industry,
EastSide was forced to downsize
its operation to avoid closing (while
many other studios did close). We
moved just a few blocks away to
150 Forsyth Street and designed a
future-proof room centered around
having as much isolation as possible.
We saw where the industry was going
with DAWs, editing, tuning and more,
and realized that people were gravitating
away from big live rooms and
towards having clean isolated sources
to edit at will. So, we built a new
beautiful live room surrounded by six
isolation booths-the most iso booths
in New York and possibly the world!
Each booth was designed to
offer a line of sight to the live room
and to each other (for the most
part). This unique setup allows
us to record seven musicians in
complete isolation, but still able
to visually communicate with each
other-critical for maintaining a
live feel, and critical in jazz and
improvisation.
RECORDING November 2022

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