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The overflowing ashtrays. The sticky layer of beer residue. The humid funk of unwashed bandmates and hot vacuum tubes. If you're a musician toiling in the city's ever-more-vigorous indie rock and hip-hop scenes, you may be familiar with the interior of the average local recording studio. These are functional spaces, typically: industrial-flavored rooms carved out of basements or warehouses, bristling with black racks of gear and populated by musicians with an eye on the clock, not the decor. Creature comforts strictly optional.

But when Takoma Park residents Mat and Emily Leffler Schulman decided to open their own recording facility, they wanted something a little more inviting, a studio where they could record bands and artists in living-room-like surrounds. "We wanted a place we could feel comfortable in," says Emily, a Baltimore native who does website and graphic design.

Plan A: Open a bucolic rural recording enclave somewhere in the Maryland countryside. The couple passed on a rundown 19th-century general store in Montgomery County (too decrepit) and gave up on constructing their own home studio out past Hagerstown (too far from the city). Plan B: Relocate to Baltimore. In 2006 they sold their house, moved to Butcher's Hill, and embarked on an ambitious renovation of a lower Charles Village rowhouse owned by Emily's father, Bob Leffler, whose advertising and marketing firm is housed next door. The 1890s Victorian—a onetime methadone clinic—had seen better days, but after sixteen months of rehab, it's been reborn as a sunny, state-of-the-art sound lab called Mobtown Studios.





Mat, a trained sound engineer who plays drums with the brainy guitar-pop band the Seldon Plan, led the technical end of the renovation, with some assistant from his construction-savvy father and acoustical engineer Julien Robilliard, who masterminded the conversion of the house's living room into a sealed 19-by-11-foot studio—a "box within a box," Mat says. To outwit runaway echoes, each corner angle is offset by several degrees, which helps deflect sound waves bouncing back and forth between parallel walls.

The floor floats several inches above the home's original hardwood on vibration-dampening acoustic "hockey pucks"; double walls and ceiling further isolate (or "decouple," in recording lingo) the interior from the surrounding house—not to mention the buses rumbling by a few yards away on North Charles Street.


Big noise-sucking acoustical panels mounted on ceiling rails can be adjusted to further tune the room's sound. Stand inside the cheery space (or tootle on the Farfisa organ along one wall) and the room seems to swallow every decibel; you can record a heavy metal band in here and never disturb the neighbors.

While Mat handled the technical end of the retrofit, Emily guided the aesthetic touches—bright, modern colors; funky fiberglass light fixtures; and an ever-changing selection of original artwork for sale on the walls. (On exhibit until the end of this month: portraits by artist Michael Owen.) The look fits well with the home's vintage details, such as the original tin ceiling in a rear office, the former kitchen. "We've always loved old houses and bright colors," says Emily, who chose the same lemon-yellow shade of paint that they used for their apartment. "This is definitely an extension of our living space at home."


Even the control room, which houses the studio's big Tascom console and the racks of recording equipment, is softened by homey touches—custom-made wood cabinets hide the miles of cables and tech gear, and a big late-60s red couch gives musicians a place to lounge while Mat mixes and masters. The overall effect is as much urban coffeehouse as professional studio: It's a pleasant place to spend $60 an hour making music.

Early Mobtown clients have ranged from hip-hop artist MC Top to local jangle-rockers the Honest Mistakes. Before opening in April, the couple toured several other recording facilities nationwide, including the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, where Elvis Presley walked in off the street to record his first tracks. Acoustically, Mobtown's a far more sophisticated space, but Mat says that he tried to borrow some of the populist mojo from Sam Phillips' old joint. "We liked the idea of a storefront studio—there's that feedback, that connection to the street," Mat says. "There's a little Sun in here."

—David Dudley is Urbanite's editor-in-chief.




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