about

Dragonfly Creek Recording Studio is an idyllic DESTINATION for ARTISTS TO creatE music.

Located on a private ranch in the scenic hills of Malibu, CA, Dragonfly Creek Recording is surrounded by vineyards, horses, and just ten minutes from some of the world’s most beautiful beaches. This fully equipped, state of the art recording studio and residence, allows for the production of all types of sound projects and easy access to Hollywood, Los Angeles and the Westside.

The main studio features a completely isolated tracking room with 12’ foot ceilings, great light and variable acoustics, a large iso room for piano or drums and a small iso booth for vocals, single instruments or amps.  A separate machine room was added to keep the noise floor very low in the Control Room so it can be used as an additional recording space.

The main Control Room was custom designed by George Augspurger, whose monitors are found in the top recording studios in the world.  Pro Tools 12 HDX is the main workstation with Apogee Symphony providing 32 analog I/O.  The collection of outboard gear includes Retro, Purple audio, DBX and Empirical Labs. Monitoring is by Shadow Hills and Barefoot Audio, and was fine tuned by Bob Hodas.

There is an ample assortment of mics, including tubes and ribbons as well as 24 channels of premium mic pres composed of API, Brent Averill, Calrec, LaChapell, Avedis & Shadow Hills. The array of instruments  includes an especially rich sounding Yamaha C7 piano, originally from the world famous Jazz Bakery, A stunning vintage Wurlitzer 140b and an early 70s Rhodes suitcase 73 - both gone through by Ken Rich, Hammond M3 and Leslie,  Custom Recording Yamaha and Gretsch drum kits, several guitars, basses, amps and plenty of small percussion.

The Farmhouse is also available for recording. It provides astounding live, but controlled acoustics with 34’ ceilings and over 610 sq ft of recording space. It is wired with 24 mic lines and video, and offers a unique and incredible recording sound.

For those seeking residential options, the 4 bedroom farmhouse is available, as is the Guest House with kitchen, bath and loft bedroom.  Our ranch features an organic vegetable garden and fruit trees, free-range chickens and eggs, a large pool and jacuzzi and our very own resident pygmy goats Dizzy and Shorty.  We can accommodate writing camps and large productions utilizing the beautiful Calamigos Guest Ranch and Beach Club which has 1 and 2 bedroom cottages, a spa, gym, multiple pools and is only 1/4 mile away.  

CHARLEY POLLARD

DCR’s full service studio contiues with Charley Pollard, whose skills include engineering, producing, mixing, editing and collaboration. Charley’s multi-faceted career has allowed him to work with artists ranging from Lady Gaga, AWOLNATION and NSYNC to Gloria Estefan, Robbie Robertson and Frank Sinatra.

As a composer, Charley has scored for shows such as CW’s Reaper, CBS’s Chaos, NBC’s Playboy Club and MTV’s Inbetweeners.  He has contributed to countless film and TV scores for Emmy and Grammy winning composer, Patrick Williams as a scoring mixer, midi orchestrator, percussion programmer and co-composer. Charley has produced and mixed songs for OneRepublic and he has written horn arrangements and played trombone on Netflix’ Arrested Development. He has also arranged strings, programmed drums and keyboards and mixed for a variety of artists such as Robbie Robertson, Gloria Estefan and NSYNC.

During his academic career, Charley studied jazz trombone performance & arranging at the prestigious University of North Texas music school where he also learned the art of recording. Throughout his schooling, he worked at a commercial recording studio in Dallas, where he soon established his own private clientele, bringing in many bands to record during off hours. This experience also honed his drum and keyboard programming skills and led to his next move…Los Angeles.

In LA, he worked his way through the ranks at The Village Recorder, recording and producing bands on his own.  Through contacts at the Village he began writing music for theatrical trailers for Warner Bros. Over the next 8 years, he was Patrick Williams’ scoring mixer, MIDI orchestrator, drum programmer and sometimes co-writer for dozens of features, TV movies and series.  In addition to the film and TV work, Charley worked closely with Phil Ramone and Patrick on album projects for Gloria Estefan and Frank Sinatra among others.

In addition to working with Patrick, Charley began writing music for commercials and shows on his own. A wide variety of projects came through at this time from doing tracks and string arranging for NSYNC, to writing music for Honda car commercials, to producing Ryan Tedder. David Schwartz, Emmy and Grammy nominated composer of shows such as Arrested Development and Northern Exposure called on Charley to co-compose a series he was working on. That led to several series that they shared over the next several years.

Meanwhile still passionate to record more live instruments and bands, Charley's vision led him to DCR where he had a full tracking room designed by renowned acoustician, George Augspurger, and has expanded the recording and producing side of his career since then. This state of the art recording studio at Dragonfly Creek Recording, allows him the opportunity of working on a variety of projects from writing, to engineering and producing on his beautiful ranch in Malibu, CA.