Mixing, Mastering, Production

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Hybrid, leaning digital. Most of my mixing and mastering is digital, because it is so much faster and easier to do iterations and revisions, which I believe are crucial to delivering top quality results. In the mastering realm, as a producer, I've worked with some of the truly legendary mastering engineers and we've decided to work ITB with amazing results. Seeing those guys have so much success working digitally convinced me to dial in my ITB work as well (that said, your converters and your monitoring is absolutely critical). I think the debate should be more focused around the production/the production-mixing crossover side of things. Working more analog when you're first putting a track together or getting a mix going can do things that are nigh impossible to achieve digitally. To me, it's more about how working analog changes your process rather than the sound. When I'm putting, say, an fx vocal through my tape machine, I'm going to play with things and get weirder (read more interesting) results than I likely would were I automating a plugin. There's huge value to getting an interesting stem and working from there rather than something that you're endlessly tweaking.

Q: Tell us about a project you worked on you are especially proud of and why. What was your role?

A: I produced, mixed, and mastered one of the tracks off BONES UK's album last summer, another song off which ended up being nominated for a Grammy. The recording was a tricky one in a lot of ways - we did five songs live with an audience and video crew - and Carmen (their guitarist) and I worked really hard on those arrangements. It was beautiful to see it come together and even more exciting for them to get that recognition from the academy.

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

A: Great results, full stop. I don't see the point in making mediocre music; there's more than enough of that out there already.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: It changes week by week. Unfortunately I'm bound to secrecy on some of my most exciting production projects.

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

A: Thinking of mixing and mastering as purely technical, or production as purely non-technical. If you're writing a book in English, you need to have a good degree of mastery over the English language, but just because you've got great language skills doesn't mean you'll write anything good. The technical side of mixing and mastering is essential to learn, but it will only get you so far without developing the artistic side, and knowing how the material fits into context. Likewise, most of the really good modern and producers have a pretty high degree of mastery of the mixing (and in some cases) mastering sides of the work. Producers like Labrinth or Finneas are expert mix engineers, and you can hear it in their work.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: It's really important for me to get a sense of timing and sonic expectations right off the bat. I want to know where they think the song needs to get (or if they're just looking for a bit of magic/another voice to take it to 100%), and I need to know how fast they need it to get there so we can set expectations accordingly. I always like to get a couple reference songs, both for sonic matching and overall song vibe.

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

A: A sat phone to call a lift out of there.

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

A: Totally unexpected! I would say my musical path began when I was 5 or 6 and began taking piano lessons. My professional career path began when I was 19 and began getting paid for scoring/production work. Since then I've spent almost every day with a DAW open. The two things I'm most grateful for in my career has been the artists and engineers I've worked with and learned from, and the range of studios and stages I've gotten to spend time in/on. For me, the best learning has come collaborating with others, and I wouldn't be the engineer or producer I am today without the people I've worked with and learned from.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Don't change something just because you can. Listen to what the song needs first and move accordingly, everything you do is at the service of the song and the artist.

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

A: I intentionally keep it as wide a spread as I can. Recently I've worked on pop/indie-pop records, soul/rnb, lo-fi, cinematic, future rock, trip-hop, neo-classical, the list goes on. Fuck genre.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Listening.

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

A: My work is split between mixing, mastering, and production. I've also scored some films (including an upcoming big budget historical epic in India - that was rad!) and I perform from time to time, but the vast majority of my work is in the studio.