Indie/Folk Mixing & Mastering

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

A: Shure Sm57 Shure Sm7b Apollo Interface Gibson Songwriter Acoustic Guitar Macbook Pro (That was hard!)

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

A: I was very fortunate and blessed to be able to start doing recording and mixing in high school, when I was 16, in 2010. My work experience is very extensive within those 10 years. I have been working on artist's records since I knew enough to record an audio track on a computer. I have also worked for a lot of companies as a Freelance Recording Engineer, Live Sound Engineer, Mixing Engineer, Audio Editor, Audio Restoration Specialist, and Videographer. I started my studio, The Kricket Den, in 2015 out of my apartment at the time. While in college I interned and studied under some amazing people, I still work with today, including Adam Pleiman (Grammy Nominated), Ric Hordinski (Grammy Nominated), and Nicholas Radina. Today I own three companies what I work as well as coordinate and schedule and hire contractors, Simple Sound Rentals (Live Audio), The Kricket Den (Recording Studio), and GetMyMusicMixed (Online Mixing Service). Thanks to being able to hire out jobs I have been able to primarily focus on Mixing and Music Post-Production. My educational career starts with taking Music Technology courses in high school, followed by earning two bachelor degrees, one in Commercial Music Production, and another in Electronic Media. Since graduating I have been teaching at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, where I have graduated from.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Unique, full of motion, and "creatively unbalanced".

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

A: I would really enjoy working with

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: If you are producing and writing music my biggest advice is try to have as much as your gear and your instruments patched in and ready to go so you can record drums within 30 seconds of thinking of a part and then hop over to record piano within 30 seconds after the drum take. A second tip is collaborate and get as many ears on your project as you can.

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

A: Most of my work in Cincinnati falls into two camps. At my studio I record and mix a lot of Folk, Singer-Songwriter, Alternative, Indie, and Rock. However at The College Conservatory of Music I teach at, I work a lot on Jazz and Classical Music.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Mixing home recordings or any not so high quality recordings.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I bring a unique and creative mix. Your tracks won't just be balance, standard or bland. Your music will be enhanced and fun to listen to.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: If I have access to an artist mix or a demo, I take a listen to that, first. With that I try to learn what is supposed to be highlighted and what is more background. Then I pull everything into Pro Tools and get an acceptable balance, and fix noise floor issues, and clicks, and pops. I then EQ and Compress tracks to appropriately prioritize and compliment eachother. Once the static mix is balanced, I then try to sprinkle in an appropriate amount of "ear candy moments" and enhance the song creatively with reverb, delay, modulation effects, filter sweeps, all to taste.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I have two main studio setups I work out of. The recording studio I work out is The Kricket Den. About 90% of the gear there is personally owned by me. Our acoustic options there are amazing. We have a beautiful large and giant live room, with a phenomenal dark reverb and roughly a 2.25 second decay. We also have two very dead sounding ISO Booths, one that is 8x8 and another that is 6x4. We also track a fair amount in the control room which as similar qualities to the live room but with a much shorter decay, around 1.25 or so. As far as gear, we have two analog mixing consoles, Midas Venice 420 and an Allen and Heath MixWizard, which we use for EQ, Preamps, and sometimes summing. I also have some compressors, a Dbx 160, Alesis 3035, Universal Audio 4-710d. Preamps are basically an Audient ASP800, with an ART MPA II, along with the 4 preamps on my Apollo Duo Rack. In my home studio I have a drum set, upright bass, upright piano, a couple of guitars, amps, and electric basses. Everything is mic'd up and ready to go quickly so I can quickly get ideas down.

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

A: Producers/Engineers who inspire me would be T Bone Burnett, Darell Throp, Brian Eno, Warren Huart, Frank Filipetti, and Eliot James. Musicians and Bands would be The Rolling Stones, Two Door Cinema Club, Lumineers, The Head and The Heart, The Colourist, Dave Matthews Band.

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

A: Recording and Mixing. Occasionally I'll add layers of Guitars or Synths if the client is someone who is open to me doing that.