Hard Rock & Metal Producer

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Working on a few things at the moment: Just finishing up mixing an 11-song album by a prog-punk, math-rock band; in the middle of producing, writing and recording another album for a solo artist and producing and recording bass for another female-fronted rock band. Between those three, current projects I'm covering all the basses of what I do.

Q: Is there anyone on SoundBetter you know and would recommend to your clients?

A: I would highly recommend Joseph Freeman for mastering. He's mastered quite a few of my mixes now and he does great, thorough work every time.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: If I have to chose between the two it would be digital for the recallability, affordability and ability to have infinite instances of any particular plugin in a session. However, I won't discount the character of analog gear. It's very difficult to reproduce the nuances of analog gear digitally (though some companies have done a pretty close job of it). If I could justify the cost, I would definitely buy much more analog equipment for a hybrid setup.

Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?

A: My gold standard commitment to my clients is that every artist I work with can expect their song to sound as good or BETTER than anything that is currently on my portfolio.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I love taking an artist's vision for their music and giving them back a mix that blows their mind! It's a ton of fun and rewarding to take a song to the next level and make it release ready!

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: This has been a thing that I've even been learning as I've grown as a producer. I would say it's how interconnected all the different stages of music production actually are. I've come to the place where I take a wholistic approach to production so that I'm keeping in mind all the stages of music production while I'm working; even though I still split them into discrete steps in practice. If the pre-production is done well, then the artist performs better when recording; if a song is recorded well, then the less editing is needed; if the edits are tight then the mixing comes together much quicker; etc.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: What is your vision for your project? What do you want to accomplish with your next release? What artists influence and inspire you? These are all important jumping off points that help me better understand an artist.

Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A: You really want to work with someone who "gets" you. It doesn't matter if the best producer in the world wants to work with you, if they don't understand your vision (or worse yet, don't care) you're most likely going to be disappointed with their work. I would suggest scheduling a 1-on-1 call with a potential provider and talk through your vision in depth before ever agreeing to any work arrangements.

Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?

A: I don't even need 5 things. With a laptop (a half decent one at least), an audio interface, headphones and a sm7b. I could make a top-notch production anywhere in the world with those 4 things.

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: Things really began taking off for me when I started playing bass with Lacey Sturm 10 years ago or so. Back then I was primarily a bassist, but I was really interested and invested in writing and learning how to produce. Within a couple years I realized that I had a knack for music production and I really enjoyed it. I threw myself into engineering and started working with solo artists about 8 years ago now and haven't looked back since.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: My catchphrase would be "Modern and Massive". I love the modern sounding mixes and I love large soundscapes in songs. I think that comes from my love of movie and videogame soundtracks, but I'm always trying to think of ways to add stuff that makes a song sound larger than life. That being said, I think making music should be a human and organic in nature. I try to record real instruments as much as possible, edit and tune as little as possible and sample enhance, not replace my drums as my default approach.

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: Bring Me The Horizon. Not only do I love their style, but I think it would be an enthralling challenge to try to make all the different elements and genres they bring to the table work together in a cohesive way.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Spend most of your time and energy making a great recording instead of putting all your focus into editing and mixing. The internet is full of mixing tips and tricks, but a good song with a great performance will blow away the greatest mix if it's not recorded well.

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: Hard rock is my bread and butter, but I really enjoy working on metal, metalcore, industrial, pop and punk rock. Basically anything with words "rock" or "metal" in it are fair game for me. B-)

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Probably production. Don't get me wrong, I'm dang good at recording and mixing, but it takes a special combination of skills to be able to catch an artist's vision and translate that into the music that the artist is trying to communicate. That's a very challenging yet rewarding thing to accomplish. Okay, I'm done being my own hype man. ;-)

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: My songwriting skills, music theory knowledge and ear for production. I've been blessed with a half musician, half engineer brain. That enables me to approach music production from a songwriter's perspective, while having the technical knowhow to bring a production to life.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Usually an artist will bring a song idea or demo to me. We'll spend a day or two (either in person or through the internet) on writing and pre-production to make sure the song flows well from beginning to end and all the instrumentation is fleshed out. Then we'll spend a couple days recording all the instruments and vocals. I'll take a few days afterward to edit and tune any parts that need it and

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: 90% of my production work is done in my home studio. It's a humble and cozy setup, but still large enough to record a drum set when needed. For artists looking for a great sounding, live room and isolated control room, there is a beautiful, commercial studio near me that I have access to. Lastly, I have a mobile recording rig that I can pack in my car and take to record just about anywhere that has power.

Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?

A: As a producer/mix engineer, my top two are 1) Nolly, for his depth of knowledge and ability to make real recordings sounds larger than life and 2) Danial Lancaster, for his production and mixing work with BMTH. As a bassist: Jacob Umansky. I took bass lessons from him for a few months. His music theory knowledge and playing ability are insane!

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: Even though I do producing, recording and mixing; I think most artists come to me for my songwriting and production skills. I love creating soundscapes and production layers to transform a song idea or demo into a massive production. For that reason, my most common client is a solo artist that needs help putting all the "pieces" together. Those "pieces" might be instrumentation, sections of an arrangement or production layers.