Mix Engineer & Pianist

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

A: Be sure you work with someone who understands your music and what you're about. It's important to hire an engineer with experience in your genre so they know how to achieve the sound you want.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: What is your goal for this project? What did you like or dislike about any past experiences working with a mix engineer? What artists do you like the sound of and why?

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: My studio monitors are Genelec's flagship speakers The Ones 8341s with a 7350 subwoofer. What I love about this setup is its honesty. You can hear the entire frequency spectrum and every little detail of a track with these monitors. I know if it sounds good on my 8341s, it will sound good everywhere. The other gear highlight is my 7.5-foot Yamaha C7 piano, which records beautifully for both classical and commercial genres. As far as the studio itself, it's located at the top of a mountain just north of Santa Cruz, CA, with views of the Monterey Bay as you leave the premises. Right now, both mixing and recording take place in a large room with a vaulted ceiling. Most studios I've been to are dark and cave-like, but I took the opposite approach and designed it to be full of light with a blue and white color scheme inspired by the ocean.

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

A: About half of my work is classical music and the other half is acoustic-based genres such as folk, singer-songwriter, New Age, and jazz. With these genres, it's often a similar goal to classical: make a mix that is as true to the original sound of the instrument/voice as possible. However, I also enjoy when I get the chance to experiment with creating unique textures that are only possible in a recording.

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

A: The vast majority of my work is remote mixing and/or mastering for acoustic-based genres and classical music.

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

A: For some reason, I've noticed people call my job "editing." Yes, there's editing involved when I stitch together pieces of different takes into one seamless performance, but being an audio engineer involves so much more than that. Mixing requires a whole other level of creativity to decide how to balance the different instruments in a mix and what effects and techniques to use to do so. And in classical and acoustic genres, it takes a great deal of skill to turn a raw studio recording into something that captures the authenticity of a live performance. Mixing is both an art and a science. Editing is only one tiny part of it.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I approach every project both from an engineer's and an artist's perspective. Being a solo piano artist myself, I know what it's like to pour your heart and soul into your music and how important it is to feel like the recording reflects your vision. I always try to understand what my artist is trying to say musically, and then I use my technical know-how to make sure it comes across.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I like having the skills and know-how to bring an artist's vision for their project to life. I enjoy the collaboration involved in the recording and engineering process. As someone who mainly works with independent artists, I also enjoy that I get to discover so many incredible artists that I'd never heard before.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Don't try to "fix it in the mix." Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. It's always more authentic if you nail a performance in the studio and get the sound right from the beginning.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: I'm known to be able to make seemingly impossible edits when piecing together a recording out of differnt takes. I prefer not to edit unless absolutely necessary, but when the client asks for it, I always try.