Mixing, Mastering, Production

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

A: 1) The island is a huge open space, so dealing with reflections is not a problem. And it should be my Adam S3V 2) My UAD audio interface - I think that it really works great 3) My microphone which does the magic - Sterling ST6050 4) My Neve 1073 pre - it really DOES the magic two. 5) A pair of good headphones!

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

A: I began working as an independent sound engineer almost 15 years ago and my attitude to the things, to the music that I record and mix helped me to achieve success in my native country. I began with "renting" a working space at a small local recording studio, later we've moved and rebuilt the studio, later it became my own studio, later we've built a second studio. And we keep growing, we have our own students whom we help to develop.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Before mixing you have to properly edit and prepare all recorded material, which has to be properly recorded, which has to be properly arranged at the very beginning. Mixing itself won't make you like your own song if you don't like how it was arranged and recorded. Every part of creative process is very important!

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

A: Previous years it was mostly rock, pop rock, pop music but the development of modern music genres we began to work a lot with rap and hiphop. It's possible because we are not just one person -- we are a group of professionals with different knowledge and different music tastes and we collaborate and help each other with every project to exactly fit the required genre/style.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Responsibility and attention to the details -- work isn't done if I see anything that I can make sound better.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: We have two studios - the first one is in Minsk, Belarus which is aimed at recording drums, bass, guitars, vocals and mixing and mastering (here we've got Yamaha Stage Custom drumkit, TraceElliot bass gear, Marshall, Orange and Fender guitar gear, Universal Audio UAD-powered workstation with Adam A8X + Sub10 mk2 and Genelec 8340A), our second studio is in Warsaw, Poland and it is aimed mostly on arranging and hiphop production, recording vocals and mixing and mastering (a pair of Adam S3V + Avantone The Abbey)

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

A: I take my inspiration mostly from rock music. It always reflects my mood and my mood can be even controlled by what I listen to. It can be a aggressive with Metallica, a little melancholic with Depeche Mode, sometimes I'd like to be forever young with My Chemical Romance, or be sure that I can achieve everything with Bon Jovi. As a sound engineer I was always inspired by Alan Parsons from The Dark Side Of The Moon through all albums by Alan Parsons Project.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital, only digital. In modern world when we network and collaborate, to send projects to each other, when we work with 10 projects at the same time, when we need to have the ability to make revisions even after a week or even a month after the work was done the digital way is the only possible and convenient way to do the job.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: That we makes small pieces of art which will stay in music history, which can make someone happy or sad.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Are you satisfied with your recording (both from musical side and from technical side)? If not, than maybe we can change something before we come to mixing? How do you like it sound? Examples, inspiration? At what marked are you aimed, who are our competitors (bands and singers) on this market?

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

A: I'm especially proud of four seasons of "Belsat Music Live" music show (you can check it on YouTube) where I was a chief sound engineer. This project gave me fantastic ability to work with lots of musicians and bands of different genres and styles.

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

A: It depends on clients requests - we can just record instruments or vocals, we can record and edit/tune audio and prepare it for further mixing, we can mix and master records or we can even produce the whole song for the artist beginning from the arrangements through hiring and recording session musicians to mixing the song. Also we've got a huge experience in recording and mixing live performances - we've produced 4 seasons of live music TV-show plus recorded and mixed a bunch of concerts.