There’s a curiosity involved with those who pursue the process of recording music. The spark could even come from watching movies.
“I started doing it because I was terrified of horror movies growing up, and I don’t know why, but it was always the sound that freaked me out,” Bay Area recording specialist Charles Toshio explains. “As I kid, I wanted to conquer that and started recording sound design for school. I quickly realized the movie stuff wasn’t for me and have stuck with band stuff ever since.” As a kid, he was drawn to the recording process. “In eighth grade I had the game Rock Band and started playing guitar, but I wanted to get my ideas down. My middle school had laptop cards, and I’d take it home and plug the mic in or plug my dad’s amp in and put the mic up to it and recorded my ideas.”
Recording with different artists requires a case-by-case approach. “It usually depends on how new they are to recording,” he explains. “If they’ve never recorded before, I have to be gentle and walk them through the steps, but if they’ve done, like, two albums before, I can just do a rapid-fire session. I like to do it fast but efficient, capture everything in the moment. When people have an idea, I’ll be like, ‘Don’t forget that!’ and throw a mic in front of them.”
Gear-wise Toshio tends to stick with basic tools of the trade. “Aside from the standard stuff, the only exciting stuff I have are some fancy Amphion speakers at home. I’m not too precious about gear, mainly just because, at a certain level, it all starts to sound the same. I usually just use whatever they have at the studio already. Pretty much the same with pedals. I just sold a $600 to $700 overdrive pedal and got a cool one for $100 that does the same shit,” he grins. “I’m much more of an amp guy. I’d rather run two amps at the same time than run a bunch of pedals. I feel like the number one salesman for Science Amplification out of Washington state. I’ve recommended so many bands to Alex at Science. I saw a picture of one of their amps and was like, ‘This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Every band I record at least tries one out, and I now I have two. They’re definitely my favorite.”
Toshio works out of The Panda Studios in Fremont CA, but was recording even before that. “I was recording my friends in my parent’s living room,” he laughs. “Many Bay Area bands have recorded at my parents’ place. This was about nine years ago, and strangers started asking me to record with them, so I needed a change from the living room. I had a friend who worked at Panda, and I was lamenting about the strangeness of bringing bands to my parent’s house, and he said their second engineer just left, so there was a space to rent. I started freelance there 2016-2017 and have been there ever since.”
Audio By Tosh is Toshio’s freelance profile and his resume is deep with RBS (Real Bay Shit) involvement, having worked with Scowl, Sunami, and Gulch to name a few. “It’s been really interesting to see with scene, people I’ve known for 10 years, playing and blowing up. To quote Steve Albini, ‘My job is to just keep your music alive long enough to find its audience.’ And it’s cool to see my friends, whether it’s their first band or their tenth band, get the recognition they deserve. It’s wholesome to see people I’ve grown up with having success, and it’s been fun to watch.”
Toshio has a hand in RBS, whether it is mixing, mastering, engineering, and even performing. Toshio wanted to take part in the scene even more, so he needed a band. “It was around the time I started at Panda that our singer Sierra hit me up because she needed someone to record a song for her. I was originally gonna write a song for her and have her sing over it, and then she’d recruit people afterwards. We wrote and recorded the self-titled song ‘No Right’ in, like, an hour, and I was like, ‘Oh this is pretty fun; maybe I should play in a band!’ And that’s how No Right was formed. Right now, No Right is slowly picking away at putting together an album.”
The man can’t be still and continues to constantly have something to work on. “I just started a death-metal band with a friend called Brick Splitta, and we just put out an album in July. Me and my friend were just playing video games and got to talking about slam and death metal and meeting in the middle, my inspiration being Mortician without the heavy sampling,” he says. “I’m also looking for my own studio space here in San Francisco or anywhere in the Bay, really. I love Panda, but now that I live in SF, the drive and toll is starting to kill me.”
Toshio lives by a simple outlook. “You just gotta do it. You can have all the ambition but sound like a schizophrenic with all these ideas that don’t materialize. Put the reps in. If you play guitar, write a riff a day, or play 10 minutes a day. Be ready, be a nice person, and good things happen.”
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