Mastering

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

A: A single I made under my alias "Universal Concepts" it is just simply the best production I have done for that specific project to date. It is called "sum of my strife" and I will be releasing it soon.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Just personal projects, go check out my website, link in my profile.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: digital, analog is cool, but we are in a digital world now days.

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

A: I will get it right.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I like the feeling I get when I know someone is happy with their music and I played a part in creating that happiness which will hopefully be spread to more people who listen to the track.

Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A: Can you make it sound loud? Yes- you will lose dynamics... chose wisely...

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

A: That Mastering "fixes" the mix. The mix needs to be good before you send it for mastering.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Are you happy with you mix? because if your not happy with your mix, there is really nothing a mastering engineer can do for you.

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

A: You have to feel good about whoever is mastering your track... if your going just off of price or experience you will most likely not be happy with your master. Talk with your engineers and feel out who vibes the best with the specific project.

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

A: Laptop with ableton ( I'm counting that as two), headphones, extra headphone jacks, wifi thingy so I could still release the music I was making, that's all I would need...

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

A: I have been playing and performing music my whole life, and have been on the production side of things for almost 10 years now.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: My style of production is sort of a progressive, hip hop style, electronic sound, its hard to explain, just check out some of the samples on my profile...

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: I would love to work with Dave Tipper some day, I think it would be wild to see what goes on in his head.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: This one is for mastering... Only dither once, also know what dither is and apply it when necessary.

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

A: I typically work on different styles of electronic music.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: My strongest skill when it comes to mastering, is critical listening, I feel I have trained myself to listen for things other people might not notice, which I believe gives me a little edge over a lot of people when it comes to mastering.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I have the knowledge it takes to clean up your mix and beef up the volume without losing all of your dynamics, when I am done with your master it will sound "louder" it will also sound more crisp, I will also make sure all of your peaks are under control for safe listening on any speaker setup, your master will be a professional industry standard cd quality production that is ready for commercial release, whatever that may look like for you.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: For a master... I will ask the client if there is anything in the mix I should focus on while mastering (for example: bringing out the high end during a guitar solo, or putting heavy compression on the low end...) then I will ask for a reference track, if the client has no reference track, I will find one... then I just sit down and run through the track a few times while running through my mastering process, untill it sounds good... usually I repeat this process until the client is happy.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I have a pretty basic setup, two ten monitors and a 12 sub, all made by jbl, I run a stienberg interface for recording and production, and I usually record off of my midi keyboard and my guitars for my personal production. I run all of my production through ableton, I have considered other Daw's but with the addition of a few simple plugins I find that ableton has everything I need to do solid production work.

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

A: My biggest inspiration in music has been the grateful dead, but I listen to all styles, some of my favorite producers that share a similar style with me are, Haywyre, Tipper, Ott, Ronald Jenkees, and many more...

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

A: I will master your mix, I can dial in the mastering process based on what type of music you are producing, and what type of sound you want.