The Exquisite And Eco-Friendly Vermont Setup
IN 2015, JAMES SHAW, founder and lead guitarist of the band Metric, was attempting to squeeze recording sessions in during days off on tour. “We booked studios all over,” he recalls, but Guilford Sound in southern Vermont left a lasting impression. “The land is bonkers — rolling hills, something like 400 acres,” Shaw says. “The only person who didn’t enjoy it was the bus driver trying to get the tour bus down that dirt road.”
Guilford Sound belongs to Dave Snyder, who left New York in the 2000s in search of a place where — after years spent drumming in the band Ruth Ruth, then turning a Lower East Side rehearsal space into a recording facility and owning additional Manhattan studios “with varying degrees of complexity” — he could build a studio of his own. By overseeing the construction process, he was also able to ensure the studio’s operations were, top to bottom, eco-friendly. “The awareness of global warming and environmental impact was not in the news every day when we first moved up here,” says Snyder. “But it was on my mind, and I thought if I have the opportunity to build with a green approach, then we’ll do it.”
Get The Lay Of The Land
Snyder’s first attempt to find a parcel of land was a bust: He bought property in nearby Marlboro, Vt., and spent six months surveying it, only to find there wasn’t a suitable site for his dream studio. But a new piece of land went on the market around the same time in Guilford — “80 or 90 acres with a house attached.” Snyder says he “fell in love immediately” and purchased the neighboring property, too. Then the real work began: blasting through rock to create a 250-foot-long road, then clearing space for the studio itself. Some of the wood incorporated into the studio and living quarters was harvested on property and kiln-dried down the road.
Don’t Be A Drain
Recording studios are “notorious energy hogs. We leave our console on in the control room 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” Snyder says. Guilford Sound offsets this usage in a variety of ways. Construction incorporated “insulation treatments,” including triple-paned windows, to prevent hot or cold air from leaking out. The buildings rely on geothermal heat pumps, which harness the relatively constant temperature of the earth hundreds of feet below the surface for warming and cooling. And when those pumps need a little extra help, Snyder feeds a wood-fired boiler with lumber he chops down himself. “I learned quite a bit about forestry and wood felling,” he says. “There’s not much chopping; it’s mostly chain sawing. I’m environmentally conscious — I’m not a masochist.”
Be Mindful Inside And Out
The homemade New York studios Snyder worked in weren’t built expressly for the purpose of making pristine recordings. “You can have great speakers in a crappy room and those speakers will sound terrible,” he says. “When I moved up here, I wanted to have the control room be as accurate as possible.” Francis Manzella of FM Design, Matt Marinelli of Coral Sound and technical consultant John Klett all aided in creating acoustics that now make Snyder feel “spoiled.” The extra space he has in Vermont also has its advantages where equipment is concerned: “We have a bass trap that’s just gigantic,” Snyder says, so bass frequencies “don’t bounce off the back wall and come back and distort what you’re listening to.”
The attention to detail on display in the studio is also mirrored outside its walls. Snyder has carefully cut goat-path-sized trails “so they just fit in with the woods.” If one member of a band is working on overdubs, perfecting a vocal part or a guitar riff, the others can walk out the door and wander through the trees. “I almost got lost,” Shaw says. “Then part of you is like, who cares? It’s so beautiful.”