Doug Rogers & Nick Phoenix

In my own stubborn world of recording, sample libraries are slowly making inroads. Almost everything I work with involves real instruments recorded in a room, yet sampled strings, Mellotron and even percussion have found their way into my work as a producer. EASTWEST and Quantum Leap have some of the most popular sample libraries in the business, like the Fab Four "Beatles" set, [see Dana G's review on page 76] Pianos and Orchestra Platinum Bundle. They've even developed the PLAY software system for sample playback. These are not some cheap "free with GarageBand" samples — this stuff is serious and is priced accordingly; yet their healthy sales prove there's a demand for samples of this quality. To top it off, EASTWEST purchased the Cello/Western Recorders in 2006 as a workspace. Hey Doug, thanks for saving that studio from the wrecking ball...

People want to know what's up with EASTWEST Studios — the former Cello/Western Recorders. Is it open to the public yet?

D: We got held up for a long time with permits. We are more or less rebuilding the entire place. We haven't touched the studios because I'd be stoned to death if I did that. I didn't want to anyway because they sound so fantastic — but everything else got torn out of there. We got Philippe Starck to design the rest of the place. The cost will be ten million dollars when it's done. No studio owner could rationalize spending that kind of money based on today's market — it's only because of our software business that we can justify doing this. It'll be half for our use and half for outside clients.

Have you already had people express interest in getting in there?

D: Oh, absolutely. We've had calls from many top producers, some wanting to book their favorite room for up to eighteen months. Unfortunately I can't do that, because our primary reason for buying it was for recording our stuff in there. I put the studios together so that we can record in any control room and any studio combination — we can use all of the rooms if a particular sound works in a particular space.

How many sample libraries are there on EASTWEST/Quantum Leap right now?

D: We probably have fifty or sixty.

Nick, Were you working independently before joining forces with Doug?

N: I've always been a composer. I did one sample title, brought it to Doug and said, "Would you like to distribute this?" He said, "Yeah, great." It was Quantum Leap Guitar & Bass — that was over ten years ago and we've worked together ever since. I compose; the sounds I'm looking for that I need for compositions spark ideas for products, or Doug has ideas and we just go for it.

You guys work in different fields but collaborate as well. From my under-standing, you're coming from a slightly more electronic background.

N: Not really. I learned classical piano as a kid. I like electronic music as well but I'm more from the film score, classical. Doug is more the engineer, producer, entrepreneur.

How much actual work goes into creating a string library.

N: It's very tedious. It's interesting how different players respond to that. If you get very good players they actually get into it because they're so good with their instrument. It's very different when you've got to sample a violin rather than playing pieces of music. Quite a few years ago we found that getting the best players, the best equipment and the best room is worth it. It's not worth it to take short cuts.

Were there experiences before where you had a player that you realized wasn't up to par to what you were trying to accomplish?

N: Yeah it happens, and that gets thrown away or only a little bit of it gets used. With Symphonic Orchestra, we had to plan out so many different articulations and plan our time. You can't block a major concert hall out for a year, which is what you'd need if you want to do every possible, imaginable sample. You only have a certain amount of time so you have to be extremely efficient with your time. We managed to make a project in the tiny fraction of the time of what Vienna did with their [Vienna Symphonic Library]. It's more popular than Vienna's because we got the right sound and exactly captured the things that we needed. It's a lot of work — writing out scores to save time to keep everything organized.

D: It's still the only one that's been done in a concert hall, which blows my mind. Isn't that where most people listen to an orchestra? Around 2003 we decided that we were going to do an orchestral [sample library]. We tried to figure out how to do something that was different than what was already on the market. It seemed obvious to do 5.1 [surround] to start, because that's something that you can't do with the other productions. It's also the best way to capture the ambience of the hall and have it flexible, so if people don't want it wet or they want it wetter, they have control over that. The kind of dynamics [engineer] Keith Johnson would get on his [classical] recordings used to amaze me. He's got eleven Grammy nominations and he's won three times for classical recording. He just seemed like the guy to do it — we thought it was a long shot, calling him up and asking him, but he's kind of a techy. He was involved in the development of the compact disc and he invented HDCD [High Definition Compatible Digital] so he was intrigued coming at it from our point of view as well — from the technical challenge that it was going to be. It's really, really popular. I think there are over 25,000 registered users; which is pretty amazing for a collection that started off selling for three thousand dollars!

A collection like that, because of the time involved and the expense of making it, has to sell for a decent amount of money.

D: That's right. We've been in the market now for twenty years and we know it very well. From this experience, we've gotten pretty good at gauging what it's going to cost and how many we are roughly going to sell.

Speaking of hiring the right people and engineers, on the new "Beatles" set [Fab Four] you had engineer Ken Scott [ Tape Op #52 ] work on that with you.

D: Yeah, it was almost a mistake that he ended up working on that. When we bought the studio and I saw Studio One, it was so similar in size to Abbey Road Studio Two, and the bulb went off about doing it. We were working on the Quantum Leap Pianos library and had the idea of trying to re-create that big Bechstein "Supertramp" piano sound. I thought, "Why don't we get Ken Scott to come and do it? He recorded the original one."

Yeah, and he's down here in Los Angeles.

D: Exactly. I called him up and he said, "I have to come listen to the piano and see if it's something I can do." So, he came down and listened to the Bechstein that I'd just purchased and said, "Yeah, I can do this." A couple weeks after that we got him to do part of that library, which is the "Ken Scott close mic'ed big Bechstein sound". At the same time he was at the studio, he saw the collection of Beatles' stuff, like the [EMI] REDD desk. He said, "What are you doing with this?" I said, "I'm going to recreate some of the iconic Beatles sounds for a virtual instrument." He said, "I want to be involved in that. I was there! I was a second on three Beatles albums and engineered The White Album and Magical Mystery Tour." It was too good of an opportunity to pass up, having somebody who was actually there who knew how things were done at the time. I had done a lot of research on the whole thing, but you couldn't beat somebody who was actually there.

That wouldn't hurt.

D: Then we got even luckier because the musicians we got were Laurence [Juber] and Denny [Seiwell], both whom had played in Wings. Paul McCartney had taught them how to get all the sounds because they did Beatles' songs as part of their concerts. We had a lot of knowledge built into the sessions, which was responsible for pulling it off in the end.

Did you spend a lot of time going back to the records?

D: When we were working on the samples we had the record there. People said to me, "Why not go back to the bootlegs?" Sometimes on the bootlegs the instruments are a lot more exposed. I didn't want to do that because I think the sound that people identify with is the end record, so what was the point of creating something that sounded like something they didn't identify with?

We were listening to some 4-tracks of Sgt. Pepper that had leaked last night. When you solo them, it's different. They're not finished mixes.

D: When you solo those tracks, you realize they really had it down.

They sound good.

D: They rock out, man.

There's just enough room sound or reverb on a track.

D: How gutsy were those drums on the rhythm track? They have an insane amount of compression on them! Insane amount of reverb — much more than you ever imagined.

It's very true. I was listening to the song snippets that you made that are on your site — little song clips that you have using your Fab Four set. Having retro sounds like those can be such a great tool for people doing jingles for a commercial, film scoring or numbers of things. It seems like it opens up the door to a lot more creativity.

D: It's done well. It actually broke even the day we released it.

That's not bad.

D: I was pretty happy about that — whatever happens now is great. It's cream. I'm thinking of doing a volume two, and I might ask Geoff Emerick [ Tape Op #57 ] to work with me this time.

He's fantastic.

D: He's a genius. His sounds are different to Ken Scott's, so it'll simply flesh it out more. I don't know when. We have a lot of stuff we're thinking about doing.