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.

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Asthmatic Kitty


Sounds Are Active
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Haunted House Soundtrack

hauntedhouse2009.jpg
All the way back in 2005, my good friend Orlando Greenhill and I were asked to record the soundtrack for a haunted house at Martin Luther King Jr. park in Long Beach. We were given an auditorium to record in and enlisted two teenagers from the neighborhood. As usual, we recorded under the Create (!) banner and the teenagers chose the name Chaos Theory. What we ended up with sounds equally hilarious and frightening: demonic screams (by Orlando), free jazz drums (by yours truly), plenty of doors and windows slammed shut and all manner of feedback and acoustic piano abuse. We tried to include as many scary/Halloween sounds as we could with the meager equipment at our disposal.

In the last few years, the recording was featured on Boing Boing and downloaded thousands of times. I recently went back to the original recordings, added some EQ, a little reverb and generally remastered the whole affair. The original recording was only 7 minutes long but I have looped it and crossfaded it into a 33 minute beast that begs for many Halloween listens. Enjoy!

Orlando Greenhill- voice, electronics, electric bass, percussion
Chris Schlarb- drums, piano, percussion, electronics, voice
Chaos Theory- electric guitar, voice, percussion

Produced and Recorded by Chris Schlarb

Oct 30, 2009 | recordings, thoughts