Phillippi Oliveira on SoundBetter

My goal is to extract the soul of a performance, I love to recreate the feeling generated at the recording process.

Mixing and mastering audio engineer working with an analog summing system, since the reel has retired from the routine of a modern audio engineer for practical reasons I found my way mixing reality with the virtual world. I'm also a guitarrist specialized in improvisation, currently playing progressive psychedelic rock and stoner but I also have a bluesy background. So recording guitars are also on the menu. Good experience also with editing for podcasts and music (quantization, beat detective in Pro Tools, etc).

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Interview with Phillippi Oliveira

Q: Tell us about a project you worked on you are especially proud of and why. What was your role?
A: I'm proud of the results of my project with Guerrilha Groove, a local Smooth Jazz trio. Because I was inside the project from the recording session to the mastering session. I could put my expertise to work from the beginning, it was a great adventure. It was also where I could put to practice the concept of analog summing for the first time and I loved it.
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
A: Mixing and mastering for local artists and personal projects. FOH and monitoring at local concerts and producing my own music.
Q: Analog or digital and why?
A: Both. Because analog has the color and digital has the practicality. Analog summing for modern day's audio engineering.
Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?
A: You'll sound as great as was your purpose and truth.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: Bringing life to someone's dream and beautifully craft a work of art.
Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?
A: Create a hit with badly performed and recorded material.
Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?
A: What kind of sound you're looking for? What's your goal with your work?
Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?
A: If you already have an idea of what kind of sound you want we can aim for that goal, and if you are still finding your way to express yourself I could help you with it.
Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?
A: If there's electrical energy on the island I'd take my MacBook, UAD Apollo Twin, Soundcraft mixing console, KRK monitors and Audio Technica headphones.
Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?
A: I've been studying this area since I was 15 years old when I first found interest in producing my own music.
Q: How would you describe your style?
A: Warm, raw and realistic.
Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?
A: I do no have preferences, I find interest in a lot of genres. I fell that every language has it's own art when it comes to audio processing. But right now I'm wandering through rock and acoustic music.
Q: Can you share one music production tip?
A: We must color digital audio. Saturation is life.
Q: What type of music do you usually work on?
A: My most recent job since I found my way through an analog summing system is classified as Smooth Jazz, I'm currently working in a Stoner Rock single and recording my World Music project in which I play Brazilian Viola with some other acoustic instruments.
Q: What's your strongest skill?
A: My strongest skill is finding a balance between the elements of a song. I find really amazing how some tuning and psychoacoustics tricks fool the human brain.
Q: What do you bring to a song?
A: My goal is to bring balance, color, and warmth to an artist's performances.
Q: What's your typical work process?
A: When mixing I usually start bringing balance to the song's instruments, finding a way for them to complement each other within the frequency range. Meanwhile, I'd do some tone adjustments to fit each element to the style that best represents the artist's language. This part of the process is quite subjective since there are infinite ways to explore creatively the aesthetics of music. I always mix with analog summing. When mastering I usually try to reach an ideal amount of RMS for the desired media always regarding the dynamics of the genre, at the same time I'd some fine-tuning equalization to smooth some frequencies that would jump with the signal amplification. All amplification is done with analog hardware.
Q: Tell us about your studio setup.
A: I use a Soundcraft Signature 10 mixing console rigged to my UAD Apollo Twin Duo for analog summing and monitor through my KRK Rokit 5 G3 pair and Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones. Pro Tools is my default DAW and I've got plenty of plugins from WAVES, UAD, Fabfilter and a few more.
Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?
A: Sylvia Massy, Steve Albini.
Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.
A: Audio mixing and mastering.