Dance Music Mixer/Producer

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Record yourself jamming. Many producers often fall down in arrangement. Their track sounded amazing in the loop stage but then when they went to arrange it just didn't sound right. To escape this hole, I always record myself jamming in the loop, unmuting and muting certain elements over a long period of time to see what combinations of elements work best together. When you find yourself working like this, you're able to get lost in the moment and your muscle memory takes over and it's this exact mindset that often produces the magic that can't be replicated by laying music out on an arrangement screen. Once I've recorded a long jam, I'll listen to the recording in a different room and make notes of the times of the combinations that work best and then use this recording to plan out a structure for the track. When I go to arrange, I then have a concrete plan of attack that retains all of the magic that only a jam can deliver. For Mixing: apply a less is more approach to adding mix effects. It's very easy to start slamming on plugins but are they really helping? Compression is usually the biggest culprit. Before squashing the life out of a part, match the volume of the compressor's output with the original volume of the part and A&B between the two. Often plugins raise the gains of the sound to make you think it sounds better and to the naked ear, louder always sounds better. But it's often not and A&B'ing between the wet and dry signal will tell you whether that part needs to be any more squashed.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Having a good ear and understanding of and an ability to work in many different styles of music. My personality type is INFP and one of our common creative gifts is to be able to foresee and plot ourselves doing all sorts of different jobs and tasks. For me this extends to working on other people's music. I have a very broad range of experience working across all sorts of music, both as a producer and journalist and I'm able to put my own tastes aside and use my imagination to foresee the possibilities and options that may be available for each of my clients' tracks, regardless of how different in style they are to my own. Some people listen to tracks and hear only their negative features. I prefer to home in on the positives and plot a course for how they can be enhanced.

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

A: I specialise in house and techno. But within that world there are two polar extremes and I'm lucky to say i've been able to work in both spheres. I have plenty of experience producing and mixing music for the Beatport Top 100 charts. But I've also written music for vinyl only labels and I have experience in working on other styles like electro or disco also.

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

A: That I'm a ghost producer. I personally don't like to write tracks from scratch for other people. I much prefer helping people to realise their own musical ideal and giving their music the extra level it needs. I prefer the idea of the producer as the fifth member of the band, as famously executed by greats like Nigel Godrich or George Martin.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: As a mix engineer, it's important to know when a track needs major surgery but also crucially when it needs merely small refinements to give what's already working that extra ten per cent. I have a broad range of experience to draw from as I've been a DJ, a producer, a manager and a top flight music journalist in my career. All of these come into play at some point as the music I work on needs to appeal to the press and dancefloor just as much as it does to the casual listener. One of the things I like most about engineering is helping people to realise their own potential. Working with engineers can often be a very boring process where the engineer sits off in their own world clicking a mouse while their client sits beside them trying to figure out what's going on. I try and help my clients write tracks that are individually theirs. Whether that's by hunting for samples that are unique to them at the beginning of a session, or getting them to jam on a sequencer or create a rhythm on a drum machine, I see myself as a conduit for their musical talent and try to help them walk away from a session with the satisfaction that the track we worked on sounds uniquely theirs.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I start by speaking to a client about the problems they're having and what they'd like to improve. I listen to their reference tracks which is essential for understanding what particular part of the music world they are working in and what kind of sonic aesthetic they are trying to realise. I suggest a list of improvements that I can make and then get to it. I'm often rotating between many clients and projects which allows me to keep a good perspective on all of the work I'm doing and pride myself on being a good listener and helping peope to realise their own musical ambitions, not my own.

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

A: I take inspiration from a lot of sources. Artists like Aphex Twin, Ricardo Villalobos, Drexciya, Pepe Bradock, Thomas Melchior. Ron Trent and Chez Damier, Fela Kuti. Tony Allen. Delano Smith. Swayzak. Moodymann. DJ Bone. Moritz Van Oswald. Steve Reich. Boards of Canada. The Orb. Maurice Fulton, CJ Bolland, late 90s drumnbass by the likes of Ed Rush & Optical, etc. etc

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

A: I started out as a music journalist, working for the world's biggest dance music magazine, Mixmag, from an early age. I was edting the Techno section in 2001, appointed Music Editor at the age of 22 and later Features editor and interviewed all of the big names in techno but I made a break from journalism in 2007 to become a producer. I had some success from a track called Machine Ate My Homework, that was championed by people like Laurent Garnier and Luciano, and moved to Berlin to learn my trade. I played at clubs like Panorama Bar and Watergate and over the following few years and toured all over the world. I released on lots of big house/techno labels and made the Beatport genre Top 20's many times. Around the same time, I started to help friends out with engineering here and there and things snowballed. I had a stint in artist management also and nowadays I occasionally produce and DJ under a couple of different aliases but engineering is my main focus.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Every working day usually includes a mix for an artist and/or revisions OR an engineering day producing for a client. This week I'll be mixing a track for the label Music For Freaks, a mix for Strictly Rhythm, consulting for a couple of clients on Skype and in person and producing for a techno duo.

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

A: To give an honest opinion and my fullest concentration and efforts regardless of the client's status.

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

A: If you're spending money on an engineer, listen to their advice and give them great references. A classic mistake mix engineers often experience is when the client is usually not working in an acoustically treated room (the reason they are using an engineer in the first place) and when they listen to the new mixdown in the same environment that they made the track in, they insist on making the same mistakes again that their original mix made (i.e. turning the hi hats or bass too loud). Your engineer, whether they're mastering or mixing, is your second pair of ears so use them. If you've listened to a track 1000 times in a poorly treated room you need to understand that your listening environment is creating an illusion of how you think things sound and now how they really are. Your engineer is listening to the track afresh in a treated room so use their advice. That's what you're paying money for.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Everything in my life revolves around music so every day in the studio is a blessing for me. There is always a tension and release in working on music. There is always the uncertainty and mystery of where things are going to go at the beginning. And then at the end, the satisfaction of bringing a project to a close. That process is so exciting regardless of the type of music I'm working on.

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

A: The work I do splits between three areas. Engineering, where I help people to finish tracks or write from scratch. Mixing, where I add the extra 20% of shine to a track for producers who need a second pair of ears, or who aren't working in an acoustically treated studio or are on the road. And consulting where I draw on my experience as a DJ, producer, manager and journalist to advise people on how to approach their productions as well as their careers.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: My studio is designed for working in and out of the box. I like to create an environment where the writing part is spent on both feet and not sat in a chair clicking a mouse. I like to get a jam going, and get my clients moving from machine to machine and use a variety of hardware synths and drum machines along the way. I use a 22 channel analogue mixer with USB sends on each channel also so it's great for combining the best attributes of analogue mixing with digital plug ins.