IN THE WINGS

Jennifer K Mahal

A grin lights Nick Fainbarg’s face as he fades out all but the vocal

track on the soundboard. Fainbarg, owner of Costa Mesa Studios, plays

with the channels, adding just the drum beat.

The look on his face is more than bliss. It’s a little bit of triumph

too. This is a man who has made it to the edge of his dream.

The tricked-up board and digital recording technology he uses now is a

far cry from the Mackie 1202 mixer and his grandmother’s tape cassette

recorder.

It all started when Fainbarg was 12. He wanted to be a deejay.

“I went to a local music store and told them I wanted to be a deejay,

and they sold me a mixer -- not a deejay mixer, an audio mixer,” he said.

The Mackie 1202 he bought was a 12-channel mixer with input capability

for four microphones. It wasn’t what he wanted at the time.

But a friend of a friend was throwing a big party and needed a deejay.

They asked him. The party was also going to have a live band.

“My friend knew that I played drums and asked me to bring my drum set

because the band wasn’t able to bring theirs,” Fainbarg said. “Then the

drummer didn’t show.”

The Newport Beach native ended up playing with the band, Broken. The

band, “just a high school nothing band,” liked him enough to ask him to

join.

Soon Fainbarg, who went to both Corona del Mar and Foothill Ranch high

schools, was itching to record their jam sessions.

Borrowing his grandmother’s cassette recorder, he created a four-song

EP.

“My grandmother was very supportive of me,” Fainbarg said, adding that

now that he has a studio, his grandmother comes in almost daily.

The band started to sell the cassettes at concerts, and people began

asking Fainbarg how much it would cost them to make a recording at his

studio.

“I didn’t have a studio, but people thought I did because of the

record,” he said.

Having a studio became his dream. Fainbarg began collecting equipment

and subscribing to Mix Magazine.

“By the time I was 17, I was having bands in [my grandmother’s house]

every other week,” he said.

He worked two other jobs -- as a waiter at the Curtain Call dinner

theater and at his father’s equipment liquidating business.

One day, Fainbarg received a call from someone who had a recording

studio -- Encore Entertainment. He was invited to come and bring all his

gear, so he did.

Though he said the situation “went crooked” after a while, Fainbarg

learned a bit of the business before he cut his losses and left.

He took a job at Mars Music in Santa Ana.

“I had this idea that I wanted to open up a big, bad studio of my own

someday,” Fainbarg said.

His connections at Mars gave him the idea to go straight to the

manufacturers for the equipment to get it at a lower price. He had the

studio design in mind and placed his orders when a friend, Hank Quinn,

passed away.

Quinn owned a small video/recording studio in Costa Mesa. The space

was just what Fainbarg was looking for. He bought the studio.

“The first day I got in here after escrow, I looked around and sank to

the floor,” Fainbarg said.

He opened the studio in mid-July to a slow start. Now, Fainbarg said

clients are booking it three weeks to a month in advance.

Costa Mesa Studio’s clients include teenage jazz artist Denise

Gonzales (whose album was artistically directed by jazz legend Herb

Jeffries), session drummer George Shepherd, and local band Redline 5

(which will open for Wild Child today at the Coach House) .

Mixing audio is an art in its own right. The balance and shaping of

tones can influence, and sometimes even create, a sound.

“A lot of people don’t understand how all of the technology works,”

Fainbarg said.

He works with musicians to put together the sound they want.

Sometimes, to get a particular sound, he uses tricks. Like the time he

made Mika Greiner of Redline 5 do wind sprints in the parking lot at 2 or

3 in the morning.

“He wasn’t tracking the vocals for ‘Train Wreck’ or ‘Array,”’ Fainbarg

said. “I had him come in and do a line at a time.”

He also has been known to put the playback in a musician’s headset

while they’re playing, allowing the musician to hear mistakes.

Fainbarg has plans to open his own label -- CMS Records -- and hopes

to someday expand his studio to be four times the size it is now.

“If someone’s willing to pay me a hundred million a year not to do

what I’m doing, I wouldn’t take it,” Fainbarg said. “I absolutely love

what I do.”

* * *

Do you know a local artist, writer, painter, singer, filmmaker, etc.,

who deserves to get noticed? Send your nominee to In The Wings, Daily

Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627, by fax to (949) 646-4170 or

by e-mail to o7 jennifer.mahal@latimes.com.f7

* JENNIFER K MAHAL is features editor of the Daily Pilot.