Mixing Engineer and Producer

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: The musicality which I believe is one of the most important parts of a good mix.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Usually when writing music, I start off by writing a chord progression using a piano, either my physical upright piano in my living room, or directly in the DAW. Once I have that done, I find a track I want to use as a reference, and add arrangement markers and structure out the song. Finally, I start filling in the gaps with elements and build my arrangement. When I find that all my elements are gelling fairly well, I remove most of the processing and bounce the project to individual stems and import those into a new project. Then I start the mixing process. This usually takes 2 to 3 hours with breaks to rest my ears every 30 minutes or so. I leave the mastering to another day most of the time just so I can come back to the song in a few days with a new perspective.

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

A: Have a vision for your project that you think I can achieve with my production. References, similar sounds to what you want from me and some basic ideas will absolutely ensure you get the best result from me.

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

A: I started producing/writing my own music in 2007 with mostly pre-made loops and samples with Sony's ACID Music Studio, and slowly built up the experience designing my own sounds and melodies once I got FL Studio. I went to school for music and that's where the bulk of my knowledge and experience came from, and I credit it with advancing my production sound ten-fold. I started releasing with Trance labels in 2017, and now largely release music independently under two different aliases: Tecnosine and Sam Cydan.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Tecnosine: relaxing, chill and music for sleep. Sam Cydan: Emotional, energetic and uplifting music for the festival or the club.

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

A: I would LOVE to work with Charlie Puth. The guy has defined my music ethos for a few years now and his music is amazing.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Keep things as SIMPLE as you possible can. It will help you in the long run.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: I have found my strongest skill to be the songwriting when it comes to writing the music itself. When it comes to mixing, I find that I am most at home with the overall soundscape.

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

A: Charlie Puth, Sean Tyas, Armin van Buuren, Alan Morris, Claude Debussy, Jim Brickman.

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

A: My absolute favorite project I've ever worked on in a school setting was my college Capstone project which was my final requirement for graduation with my BM. The project was an album of music inspired by Pop music of the 1980s and I am very proud of the end result. I was the clarinetist, producer, and mixing engineer of the entire project, and I saved up enough money to have a professional analog mastering engineer master the project to completion, which I was very impressed with.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Currently favoring Trance at the moment, so I've been tinkering away at a couple new tracks recently.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital, but I would love to start building up my analog collection at some point. Digital is what I've been most familiar with since the beginning of my production life.

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

A: My computer, my computer monitor, my M-Audio speakers, my Komplete Audio 2, and my samples and VSTs

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I am all in-the-box, using FL Studio. I hope to start collecting more gear at some point, but I am very comfortable working with digital-music.