Carlos Rodgarman on his ‘musician first, engineer second’ approach in the studio

With multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations to his name, Carlos Rodgarman is a Spanish-born, Los Angeles-based engineer, songwriter, composer, and musical director. He grabs a chat with Headliner about his ‘musician first, engineer second’ approach to his work, collaborating with Michael Buble, his work composing and engineering music for television and media, and how Genelec studio monitors very much fit into the broader picture.

Hi, Carlos! So you’re an engineer, songwriter, composer, musical director, pianist, owner of RG Studios, the RG music production company, and band member of The Rodgarband collective. Missing any key titles or details there?

On spare days I wash cars, paint walls, a little bit of everything!

Was music a big factor when you were a youth growing up in Spain?

Music has always been in my family. My dad is a musician, and my older brother plays piano as well. On my mother's side, my uncle was an opera singer. So, music has always been around, and for half of the family, it was the profession. Like many others in Spain, I started at the usual age of eight on piano, and later studied it at a conservatoire.

How did you transition from formal piano studies to the music technology side of things?

I got a little bored of classical piano, and went off the rails into learning jazz and playing in bands! I’ve always had an interest in technology, but also in arranging music. I started doing small production jobs in Galicia, my region in Spain. It led to a very comfortable professional position where I was making money and happy playing with my friends.

But you always want more, and there’s a limit to what you can do there. It eventually came to a point where I had to decide: either I go to Madrid to see how I can grow there or take a shot at something bigger. I figured I might as well go to L.A., and worst-case scenario, if nothing happened, I could always come back and start again in Madrid. I came here on a three-month tourist visa, and here I am 22 years later.

There don’t seem to be many engineers who are so outspoken with a ‘musician first, engineer second’ like yourself; could you talk a little about this and why it’s so important to you?

I attribute a lot of my perspective to my dad and his point of view when I was growing up. He taught me the basics and more, but even as a pianist, he’d say, "Yes, you play piano, but unless you're playing solo concerts, you need to understand the piano from the band’s point of view." That mentality stuck with me because it made me a better player. By learning to listen to others, the band sounded better, and I grew as a musician.

The same mindset applies to music production. You don’t have to be a musician to be a great engineer — there are incredible engineers out there who don’t know music theory. But as an engineer, you’re still making music. That requires at least a basic understanding of communication with session players, orchestras, or whoever you're working with. And when you're mixing, you need to know what every instrument is doing, whether it’s programmed electronic music or organic music with live instruments.

The other crucial thing as an engineer is to know how these instruments sound in real life — I need to often be in the room with the instruments and musicians so I have a reference point when I mix them.

You’ve been working with the likes of Michael Bublé and you’re also very active in the world of film and TV — how’s it all coming along?

With Michael Bublé, we’ve been working on the immersive Dolby Atmos Mixes for his latest record. It’s kind of a greatest hits style record.

I’ve done a lot of different media projects over the years, but one of the things I truly love is working with strings, orchestras, and big bands. In L.A., I’ve worked so many projects, a lot of commercial campaigns. Every beauty product or type of commercial you can think of! 

I’ve done some TV work — composing some original music for Ray Donovan and Rescue Me back in the day. I’ve worked on orchestrating for projects, and engineering for others. I’ve also worked on independent films, but I haven’t fully broken into the feature film world yet. I’m trying to lean a little bit more into the film world — that feels like me, my sound, my music, my vision.

You’re a long-term user of Genelec studio monitors. Can you remember how you first began using them?

I've used Genelec on and off because most of the big studios in the world you go to will have a Genelec system I always liked them, but I wasn't that familiar with them. I've always used Barefoot Sound monitors, and I was very used to their sound. I've worked with Humberto Gatica (Celine Dion, Chicago, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand) for years, and he's always used Genelec, so I was familiar with their sound through his work.

Humberto has been on Genelec since forever. He’s mixed on Genelec for most of his career, not only in his house, but wherever he went he would always request Genelec. So I would listen to his mixes on Genelec, and I loved the sound of them. But then I would come home and I was used to the Barefoot monitors in my room.

I was considering converting my studio to Atmos, and I thought it made sense to have a second system for stereo mixing. I started talking to the Genelec team in the US, and I immediately liked them. I started having a conversation with the Genelec people here in the US. Paul (Stewart, Genelec’s US senior technical sales manager) has been incredible, and I knew that I liked the speakers. From day one, I felt like, "This guy is so cool. I want to be friends with him!" The more people I met from the company, the more I realised that they truly care about the community, not just the quality of their product.

So I ended up installing my system here with the Genelec 7.1.4 immersive system, and it's just incredible. Now I very rarely find myself going back to the Barefoots. I'm 90% mixing on the Genelecs. I'm really, really happy and very used to it now.

How has it been, calibrating an Atmos system with your Genelec Monitors?

For people who might not know their SAM monitoring system, it allows me to see how it calibrates. Calibration was a big part of it, right? It literally took me one minute to calibrate the 13 speakers. I didn’t want to have to buy a dedicated monitoring controller or change my interface because I love my interface. So suddenly, I had a system that sounded amazing, and I didn’t have to buy or do anything extra.

These are big investments, so I try to do as much research as I can, and try to see what's the most effective. Now I'm even happier, because I have the Neve Genesys G3D console. So now I'm able to control all the monitoring in Atmos from the console.

Can you give an example of a recent project you worked on using your Genelec monitors?

There are many projects, but since I was just talking about big band, one of the last ones we finished was with Luís Jara, a big artist from Chile. The project took Latin classics that everyone knows and reimagined them in the crooner, big band world.

This was also the first project where I was mixing in Atmos, and I found myself writing arrangements with the immersive presentation in mind, rather than just thinking of the traditional stereo format.

It's amazing how, when you're conducting a big band in the recording studio, you're already setting up the musicians in a way that reflects how you want to present the sound spectrum later. That initial arrangement is crucial because you don't want to have to shift things too much afterward. Especially with so many microphones involved, you're essentially creating the immersive experience in the room itself.

When it comes to Atmos mixing, there's so much flexibility — there's no right or wrong. You can go completely natural or as artificial as you like; it all works. For me, in these situations, I prefer a conductor's point of view — not exactly where the conductor stands, but close to it. For example, we placed the saxophones on the left, trombones on the right, and trumpets in the back of the room, creating my Atmos perspective. And with the Genelecs, everything just translates so brilliantly.

For this project, we also recorded strings with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra. We even made specific requests for room placements, which worked brilliantly. The way you position the room mics and set up the space translates seamlessly. With the Genelec system, whatever I do here just translates perfectly, making the sound as natural as possible. It sounds great.

What’s in the pipeline, currently?

We're actually doing some stuff with Mexican singer Gloria Trevi. She's a huge artist And there's some very interesting duets with some very big artists too, in the Latin world which I can’t talk about just yet. There’s a lot of fun projects at the moment!