Taking the Music Studio From the Past to the Future, and All Points Between: A Discussion With Jeff Elmassian and Ben Roberts of ENDLESS NOISE
When a business with a storied legacy rises to meet new frontiers, it’s worthy of attention, and such is the case with Endless Noise, founder Jeff Elmassian’s ever-evolving music studio in Santa Monica. The multifaceted maestro’s extensive CV stretches back to playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra as a clarinet prodigy at age 12, to graduating from the University of Southern California’s prestigious School of Music, to international touring with the Viklarbo Chamber Ensemble, to teaching at both Loyola Marymount University and USC. Find me another chillax classically trained multi-instrumentalist studio techno-wizard with a Grammy win and countless other awards and credits including commercials, television, and many films ranging from Ghost to The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (for which he produced the soundtrack, composed the score, and wrote songs sung by Vanessa Williams and Tatyana Ali, respectively), and I’ll buy you a cup of joe— and hey, that part is easy, as his full-service studio Endless Noise has recently found bonus success as a popular vinyl record shop featuring robust Turkish coffee, just like Büyükanne used to make.
At Endless Noise with cool microphones suiting the wont of studio pros, I’m greeted by Mr. Elmassian and his associate and production partner Ben Roberts, affable gents who know more about music than you know about pizza. Our detailed and pleasingly circuitous conversation is observed by studio producer-coordinator Keana Brooks, and somewhere in the background are post-production creative director Sam Creager, and co-creative director Dave Chapman, plus stylin’ barista Aidan Walsh. Elmo himself is nowhere to be seen, but Messrs. Elmassian and Roberts, hereafter Jeff and Ben, immediately establish that Endless Noise is the polar opposite of Grouchland, cheerfully regaling me with their unique takes on the business, and the not-infrequent delights of making music.
Pleasantries established, Jeff commences the interview proper by delivering a condensed history of Endless Noise:
“What we think is most exciting, that’s going on right now, is very much related to the core belief system that was there at the beginning,” he reveals. “It’s technically our 30th anniversary. I started the company, and started my career, in the early 90s. At that time period, everything was still mostly analog. There was real specialization, when it came to music for film: you were a sound designer; you were a mixer; you were a musician; you wrote music. Everything was very siloed. I consider myself lucky that I came along at a time when I was able to embrace digital technology as it started.
“Music was on one side, and sound was a completely different thing. There were different people that dealt with them, and that just never made sense to me, as an artist. Once digital technology came in and took over, then it really didn’t make any sense to me, because then we could have the process of both of those mediums in the same place.
“When I started the company, we were doing a lot of commercial work, and the commercial advertising industry was much quicker to adapt to that change than film and television. The germination of Endless Noise was that I wanted the ethos to be: this is a place where you come and you get music and sound together. Because, for me, there was no real difference between the two of them.”
Reflecting on how the commercial industry most easily adapted to sampling and other emerging technologies while producing, essentially, little films, Jeff continues:
“It culminated in the early 2000s, when we did this Nike commercial called ‘Freestyle,’ with the basketball players juggling basketballs in time, and the music comes from the sound of the balls. It was that wonderful time, sometimes it happens in your career, where you not only get to work on a great project, but you get to do that thing that you love doing. It was a perfect launching point for me to be able to evangelize about music and sound, together integrated.
Jeff’s reflections on “Freestyle” are an article, or documentary, unto themselves, but here’s the best and most revelatory line: “It’s definitely music; but these aren’t instruments I’ve ever heard before.”
“Through the 2000s,” he expounds, “the company grew by leaps and bounds. In the late 2000s, going into the teens, I started feeling a desire to get back into film and television. It just seemed a natural sort of tendency for the company that, if we’re integrating music and sound, why are we not getting involved in post-production and mixing? Especially as digital technology grew.”
Jeff enthuses about the expansion of Endless Noise, including his massive record collection and the coffee shop (addressed below), as well as songwriting and events, put concisely: “We wanted to incorporate various cultural things, and our clients loved it as well.”
Just a few of many Endless Noise clients:
“But the one missing piece of the puzzle,” says Jeff, joining the dots, “was that it really started to come together about three years ago when I met Ben, with whom I had the good fortune of working on a show in Sweden called The Box: a police procedural produced by Nice Drama and Adi TV Studios. The showrunner and creator, Adi Hasak, wanted this sound-is-music/music-is-sound, ethereal sort of thing that I that I love doing. I needed a partner as composer on that, and Ben was available. We had a meeting of the minds creatively.
“The thing that was really transformative, and what led me to ask him to come on as a partner, was something we both identified separately from one another: what we saw as a problem in the process of doing post-production music. As we started talking about it, our answers were also very similar. We decided, okay, we need to become partners here, and try to figure out a way to bring this aspect into the company. That has to do with our library.”
Ben elaborates: “One other thing about when Jeff and I first met: we had a connection because we were both independently working on different kids’ shows. He was doing If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, [Amazon, etc.], and I was doing Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures [Netflix, etc.]. Kids’ shows are very hard to do, because usually it’s a lot of music, and all of the music is very high energy, or at least very on-the-nose, in terms of what it’s trying to achieve in terms of mood. And in that way, all of the writing is pretty intense as a composer. We were talking about how hard kids’ shows were, and later Jeff was going on to this European show, and we decided to partner on it, basically based on the shell shock of the kids’ arena.
“That’s where we discovered that there’s really a similarity across all media in this way, which is this set of conditions that happens in any creative relationship, where you’re not the only creative, or piece of art that’s being made in the process. For instance, if we’re making music for media, we’re all trying to get to the same thing. But there’s often a couple of different outcomes that can come from that relationship, right? Like you write a piece of music for their project, you think it’s great, but they might think a couple of different things. They might think it’s absolutely perfect, which is what we’d love to hear, right? They might think, ‘I don’t like it at all,’ which is obviously the hardest thing to deal with.
“And then there’s the problem that that you wouldn’t think is that hard to deal with, but it is time-consuming. Across the industry it’s a problem, which is: ‘I absolutely love it, it’s so great, but I need to extend this five seconds,’ or: ‘It’s so great, but I hate trombone.’ Or: ‘It’s so great, but it’s not fast.’
“The problem with that,” Ben continues, “is coming back and editing the piece of music that you’ve put so much time into can be really hard. In those little ways that might seem like a little note, but it’s actually kind of a reconstruction of what was going on before. So when we were working on The Box, we noticed that this kept coming up: We have to come back and completely reconstruct the cue from scratch.
“With that, we decided: Why can’t we design music, that can be — for lack of a better term — messed with in an easier way, where it’s not that hard to modify it later? And so that’s when we came up with this idea of: Let’s write all these different styles that we’re always being asked for, but let’s figure out the way to export and design the cues so that they can be more modular. That’s how we came up with our library. And there’s a little bit of tech involved in it, there’s a lot of curating involved in it. But after having worked for Universal Music Group and their library for the APNs of the world for basically everybody in town, I can say our method is the most robust method for our curation. We have the most modular library on the market. So those kinds of big problems, we’re able to kind of fix things in like five minutes.”
The library and music background form the nucleus of Endless Noise, and post-production creative director Sam Creager leads the company’s integration of all aspects of post: from sound design, recording, mixing, etc. He comments: “Both the music and post sides of the company are feeding each other, which has been awesome. With that we’re able to approach projects in a truly holistic way, bringing every element together to look at the big picture or zooming in to dissect each element and refine, including music.”
Currently, Endless Noise is scoring Penn & Teller: Fool Us, wherein their process delivers constant aural slight of hand. As a neophyte to their system, I ask about collating all their different genres of music, and making each piece of music flexible.
“I can’t get too into the nitty-gritty because some of this is proprietary to us,” Ben explains. “What I can say is that for the genres aspect, we are highly curated, we have over 130 genres and counting. And essentially, we have a method of categorizing and splitting things up by both mood and traditional music genre that is based off of the feedback that we get from our clients.
“In terms of the editing, the most I can say is that we basically have the music split out in a way that nobody has thought of before. That’s as far as I can go without giving too much information on it.”
Jeff adds: “This is a big differentiator for us. Endless Noise, we’ve been doing this for 30 years. We are a music library that is inside of a company that is owned by composers, run by composers and musicians. It requires that musical understanding and know-how to be able to turn those edits around, or make the changes that need to be made really quickly.”
Noting that for many people, music is a mystery, I ask how Jeff and Ben communicate with a director who’s not a composer.
“For me, the way that I like to handle communicating in general is I like to listen and just hear what they’re saying,” Ben replies. “It’s really our job to make that translation.
“We do not expect any director, no matter what their musical background is, to have to tell us what music to do. That’s really why we’re doing the job, because we’re experts in identifying what they mean by certain things. It’s just solid communication and then an empathetic approach to trying to understand their needs. And then above all else, trying to make the best thing possible.”
“What Ben touched on,” notes Jeff, “you want to bring all of your personal voice and creativity as a musician to the process. But sometimes the most important thing is knowing when to suppress that. Because really, you need to completely open yourself up to what the director, the showrunner, the writer wants, because often it is more difficult for them to describe it.”
Keeping the proceedings lively, I reference one of the greatest films in the history of cinéma (which also happens to be culturally and geographically relevant): As Jeff Elmassian is a clarinetist living and working in Santa Monica, how does he feel about Gene Kelly in Xanadu?
Surlier sorts might sneer, but Jeff runs with it: “There’s a part of me that has the nostalgia because I was a kid when Xanadu came out. I’m a Gene Kelly fan, Singin’ in the Rain. And here’s the thing: There’s a long tradition of watching non-clarinetists playing clarinet. I actually had the great fortune of being in an orchestra that did a show with, of all people, Barry Manilow, and I had to play the clarinet while he was faking playing clarinet. So I’m very sensitive to people faking clarinet. I give ol’ Gene a thumbs up, having a lot of experience watching people muddle their way through that.”
With movies in mind, I ask if the approach of Endless Noise changes among formats.
“From a really zoomed-out level, our approach is generally the same,” says Ben. “However, even within a feature film, or a television commercial, there’s no set form for anything. That’s actually what I fell in love with, doing composition 10 years ago: that no matter what I did, it seemed like I could never just do the same things as last time.”
“This is one of the reasons why Ben and I are having meeting of the minds,” adds Jeff, “because we approach this very similarly: every single process is different, based on the creative people that you’re working with. So if there’s any difference, it’s less about the medium. Because a narrative medium is a narrative medium.”
As Jeff has worked for Mtv, I ask how that venerable and once-revolutionary channel shook things up.
“I felt that shift, where the visual medium became an important part of the music, and the selling of the music. But you know, another part that’s not talked about as much is the final sort of transition. Ben can speak to this, because being generationally separated from me, I’m sure he has some strong feelings about this. I was also there, when the transition from television being the primary medium that you had in your home, to now you are carrying the entirety of filmed entertainment, as well as YouTube, around in your pocket every day. What I really saw starting to happen was, it wasn’t just film composers and rock-and-roll stars or whatever, that had to be worried about the visual medium. It was now, as a musician, you couldn’t not think in visual terms anymore.”
Jeff recalls John Williams conducting a master class at USC, emphasizing and paraphrasing: “You need to understand film language, as a musician, you need to understand the visual mediums, because we’re moving to a place where it’s almost anachronistic to think about sitting down and just listening to music. Even when you go to the symphony hall now, there’s all kinds of mixed media that get incorporated into it, because everything has a visual component attached to it.”
Ben speculates: “I wonder if one of the bigger turning points was when Netflix hit its popularity, and how that really changed how content is taken. Even moreso than MTV. I was a child at that point. But it’s still television. Netflix really brought it into new ways of ingesting media. I feel like, in terms of progression of media in general, and art, we’re living in a really exciting time for this kind of growth.”
We turn to the future (as well we should), and at Endless Noise, which has been evolving over three decades, I ask Jeff, and Ben, what’s next for them.
“There are really two things right now,” explains Jeff. “One is the final integration of the library, and the processes that it opens up in so many different mediums. I’ll let Ben talk about that.
“Then there’s this other part for me, which is the record store that we have out front. Having been around for 30 years, and having been a founder in the company, another really important thing for me with our clients, is to put not only the art that we’re creating, the music and everything, but also the process of what we’re doing, into a larger cultural context, and to bring that around in a way that makes it enjoyable and fun to be working together. So I’ll just tell you a little bit about this.
“I’ve always had a huge record collection, and I’ve always entertained this notion that I would, at some point, retire and open a little record shop, and that would be one of the fun things that I would do in my life. One of the awesome things about having younger partners now is that, you know, I was telling them this story, a few years ago, and they were all like, ‘Well, why aren’t we doing that now? That would be a cool thing!’ So Ben, and Dave Chapman, we spearheaded this.
A talented musician and craftsman, creative director Chapman built out the Endless Noise record store from fun concept to execution. He hand-designed a number of furniture pieces in-store, a process which now reflects an important part of Endless Noise’ ethos of cross-pollinating various creative abilities.
“We just started by building out the foyer in the studio, to look like a record shop,” Jeff explains. “And we never entertained the notion that it was going to be anything other than a place that would be fun and inviting for our clients as they’re coming into the studio. It makes total sense, because it’s records and music. Within a few months of opening up — where we are, we’re actually zoned for retail, so people walk by the front of our studio all the time — people saw the records, and they started coming in and going, ‘Hey, are these records for sale?’ We responded, ‘Well, no, they’re not really for sale,’ and one thing led to another, and it was like, hey, maybe we’re missing an opportunity here! And now not only do we have a fully functioning coffee and vinyl store, because we also have a really great barista, but we started doing events in in our space: music shows, clothing swaps, and whatever.”
Mr. Chapman elaborates: “When I first partnered with Jeff back in 2019, we had been discussing long-term goals for the business and beyond. He mentioned this dream of retiring in France someday and opening a record store. And I was like, yeah ok…why don’t we just do that here and now? We have the space. We’re zoned for retail. The concept of a coffee and vinyl shop fits perfectly with the larger business. Less than a year later the pandemic offered us the opportunity to realize our vision, and we just went for it.”
Jeff continues: “We have a handful of new clients who came to us through the record shop, and then only found out afterwards: ‘Oh, wait, you guys are a post-production studio? Well, I’m a producer…’ There’s been a bunch of actual commercial work that’s been based on that. And it really reinforced for me, how if you’re working in the entertainment business right now, you cannot specialize and cut yourself off from any aspect of the business, you need to embrace all of it.”
Ben chimes in: “We’ve gotten a lot of good opportunities to do what we’re talking about: this method that we’ve invented with our library. In the commercial world, it’s worked really well; in dramatic, it’s worked well — I mean, that’s where we kind of invented it. In documentaries, on television, it’s worked really well. But where we haven’t gotten to try it out yet, is the place where we initially met. And that is what I’m looking forward to this next year, is doing this in the family space as well.
“That’s a goal on the horizon for me, because Jeff and I both have a background in that. It’s where the lineage of our relationship really came from. So it’ll be really interesting to work on a kids’ show or a family project, utilizing our new methods that we’ve invented for our library.”
“In many ways,” concludes Jeff, tying his founding philosophy to the present, and future, “the kids’ genres, whether it’s animated or live action, or Muppets, for that matter, oftentimes you find the people that are willing to take the most creative risks — which is why I think this method will work out really well. So I’m also extremely excited about it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aE1Vs5Kq-M
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
Images courtesy of Endless Noise.
Check out the Endless Noise website ; it’s a treat!
Endless Noise Studios
1825 Stanford St, Santa Monica, CA 90404
