My portfolio includes scoring, arrangement and composition work for video games, feature film and television. As a musician and producer I have released over forty albums of jazz, folk, electronic, punk and modern classical music. I am currently accepting new commissions.
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Why Chris Schlarb?
The world is full of musicians, composers and producers. The hard part is matching the right person with the project they are best suited for.

Here is a quick example: if you want to approximate an orchestra of instruments with a single keyboard, I am probably not the right one for the job. My best work utilizes any number of unique, real world instruments including tabla, euphonium, mandolin, marimba and upright double bass. I thoroughly enjoy working with real instruments, in real spaces, with real musicians.

If your film, video game or album requires texture and atmospheric depth, unique or unusual live instrumentation, and thoughtful arrangement, I would love to hear from you. For the last decade I have explored the ambient, jazz, folk, electronic and modern classical genres as a member of both the American Composers Forum and ASCAP.

I specialize in taking small and medium sized budgets and turning them into expensive sounding recordings. I operate my own mobile recording studio and engineer most sessions, saving time and cost.

My work can be heard on this site and read about in the New York Times, All About Jazz, Time Out New York, Chicago Reader and Pitchfork.

Record Labels


Asthmatic Kitty


Sounds Are Active
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Friends in Other Dimensions

I haven’t gotten much sleep this past week. I spent four days recording a plethora of L.A. bands for a new Sean Carnage film, Friends in Other Dimensions and one night talking to a small but enthusiastic music business class at West L.A. College.

Last Tuesday I was summoned to Pehrspace to record four-piece, thud-screamers, HEALTH, who were leaving on a US tour the following day. On Thursday night I spoke for almost three hours at the bequest of teacher and musicologist Nathan Bush. Clearly passionate and determined to educate themselves, I enjoyed sharing my experiences and opinions with the students in attendance. It felt good to put some of this information to good use. People ask me about running Sounds Are Active all the time, maybe one of these days I’ll write a book. I’d better hurry up though, the music business may be ending soon.

Without much time to catch my breath I was an emergency hire to engineer three more days of recording at Pehrspace. Excluding HEALTH, I ended up recording all of the bands or artists in 72 hours: Bad Dudes, Foot Village, 14 Year Old Girls, the Munchers, Bark Bark Bark, Ty Segal of Epsilons, Whitman, Anavan, Laco$te, Weekend Warrior, Kyle H. Mabson, Robin Williams on Fire, Tik/Tik, IE, Holi Buffaglow, Abe Vigoda, Team Andrew, Bon Voyage, Juiceboxxx and The Mae Shi. Each were set up with a full studio quality mic rig and recorded in full 8-channel audio. The bands paraded by essentially in rotating fashion: noise, punk, metal, pop, rock, electronic, faux-hop, dance, folk, no wave… sounds like a Sean Carnage film doesn’t it?

Sleep might be for suckers but my headache is coming back.

Oct 01, 2007 | recordings