Music Producer

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

A: I'm very proud of my last solo album Refractions. I'm proud of it because it's some of the best mixing and production work I've done, and the songs are very unique but still memorable and accessible to the listener. The album is just full of memorable performances by excellent musicians and the effects and mixing and editing techniques I used on those really brought them to life in a great way. The vocal tracks also all sound very clear and balanced to me and represent some of my best vocal mixing work.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I've just wrapped up a new piano and violin album, and I'm working on another solo album that's generally in a nu-jazz/downtempo electronic style. I'm also working on a new dance album with my side project Thoma, an ambient cello album, and a jazz album with a band from Luxembourg.

Q: Is there anyone on SoundBetter you know and would recommend to your clients?

A: 9Theory (Gabe Lehner) is an amazing producer and friend I'd recommend, I've learned a lot about mixing and vocal tuning from him. I'd also recommend Gregory Allison who is a fantastic violinist and arranger.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: I prefer digital in general, because I prefer flexibility and raw power while I think the warmth and rawness that people want out of analog can be achieved through plugins. That being said, I love mixing organic/live instrumentation with digital synths and samplers as well.

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

A: My promise to my clients is that I will help you realize a unique and personal vision for your music, will come to your project with energy and enthusiasm, and find a way to get your project delivered and finished in a timely and organized fashion.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I love music so much because of its ability to bring people together; everyone loves and relates to music because music is one of the main ways we can tell stories and experience the raw emotion of just being alive. Learning more about that power and channeling it in new ways, growing with people while discovering their styles and approaches, etc., all of that is what keeps me in love with music.

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

A: A question I often get is what genre my music is, and my answer is that I strive to defy genre and encourage others to do the same. Obviously, having genre restraints like 4/4 beats in house music or extended chords in neo-soul can lead to creativity, but I think it's important to always think beyond genre and be willing to challenge your own idea about what you're trying to make. That opens the mind to exploring new possibilities and options in the production process that can really help your music come alive and represent your unique voice.

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

A: In general I think producers can be seen as people just polishing the work and ideas of others, but there's a lot more to it than that. In this day and age, producers are also effectively composers and that's how I see myself. I have a lot of training and experience in composition that I bring to the table in all of my production work, and so that gives me flexibility and the ability to help clients not just with mixes or editing but with the musical side of everything that's going on as well, from writing melodies and harmonies to rhythmic ideas, songwriting etc.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: I ask them what this project means to them, and why they are doing it. When I know that, we can move onto thinking about references in terms of films, paintings, other albums, books, anything that helps start to create the world in which this music is going to exist and the emotions and experiences it's going to relate and represent. From there we can get into practical issues and I'll ask about timelines, the kind of communication and workflow that works best, and the general framework of the project that is being committed to.

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

A: My advice is, you don't need to come to me with finished songs or compositions but have a sense of your vision and what you really love and gets you excited to make music, and we can work from there. I can help with every part of your track from the conception to the writing to the recording to the production and mixing but if you don't know why you're doing it or what you love about this music the process simply won't work.

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

A: A piano, my digitakt, a Zoom H5 field recorder, my alto saxophone, and a granular synthesizer.

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

A: I've been making and producing electronic music for about 15 years, but my career path has gone in a number of different directions. I studied philosophy for a long time, getting a PhD in that,

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: I would describe my main style as downtempo electronic. I channel a lot of different genres in my work, from classical elements (especially the way I use and write string arrangements), soul, jazz, and world music. I began with a very sample-centric approach but have expanded a lot more in terms of composition and improvisation with a variety of musicians.

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

A: I'd love to work with Solange. She's just such a wonderful and creative songwriter and unbelievable singer, her voice is just so powerful. I think we'd have an amazing workflow and that the collaboration would lead to some very unique and interesting results.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: One tip is that less is more. In production sometimes we can be a bit addicted to how powerful our tools are and the vast array of options at our disposal at any given time. It takes real discipline to limit yourself and have constraints on what tools you will use and how you will use them, but developing that discipline is very powerful down the road. I've seen many producers struggle to make good music because they get overwhelmed by their tools or struggle with mixing because they're trying to add too much, when usually the answer is to strip things down to their essentials.

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

A: I mainly make some kind of electronic music, but I'm always using live instrumentation, from strings, to woodwinds, to live percussion, and vocalists. So the music where I'm most at home is electronic-adjacent in that it has electronic elements but isn't exclusively electronic like techno.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: My strongest skill is texture, both in a compositional and production sense. I have a very good sense of how to give tracks a unique space/ambience so that when you are listening to them you feel as though you're entering a whole world.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I bring a deep compositional background, experience in production of a variety of genres, and a knack for texture and sound design that makes my tracks very unique to listen to.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: My typical work process for production is that I'll lay out an arrangement early on and listen for important markers and transition points and set those up. Then I'll decide on a handful of effects that support the identity of the track and set up sends that make that work. Next, I'll get into whatever sampling/drum programming/sound-design elements need to added, in that order, doing mixing as I go along. Eventually I will step away from the track to give myself space and write notes about what it needs to be improved. Then I'll execute those decisions and move to a final mixing and editing process. I think it's very important to separate the artistic/compositional/exploration process from the mixing/editing/finalizing process, because those are two very different parts of our brains that are mainly used for those.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I use a variety of software synthesizers and plugins, I like to keep my setup manageable in terms of size and flexibility so I use a lot of great in the box plugins by companies like Valhalla, Waves, Arturia, Fab Filter, and Toneboosters. I use Yamaha HS8 Monitors which are very faithful, and a Focusrite clarett interface which is quite transparent and clear.

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

A: Floating Points, Four Tet, Bonobo, Nicolas Jaar, James Blake

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

A: The most common type of work I do is production and composition.