Composing | Mixing | Producing

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

A: I promise to work fastidiously to tease every bit of emotion, impact, and excellence out of your music.

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

A: The biggest misconception about what I do, since it is almost always meant to augment some underlying work, is that I can fix something that is broken. If there are problems with the song, the performance, the arrangement, or the script, these will always have negative downstream effects, no matter how well I do my job. I can make things the best that they can be, but I cannot transform a fundamentally weak source into an excellent overall product.

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

A: Figure out your vision. You have something unique to say, but you need to know and own that. Understand where you want to go with it and make sure you find someone who both understands and complements those aspirations.

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

A: I would like to work with Max Martin or Serban Ghenea. These guys are at the apex of their games in very competitive lanes, and they do incredible stuff. I just want to experience their process and learn first hand what goes into making things as amazing as they do. I want to see those qualitative aspects they bring to collaborations: the vibe, the personality, the interpersonal finesse, the sharing of authorship, etc.

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

A: I'm usually working on songs. Sometimes that's folk, sometimes it's rock, sometimes it's hip hop. But the vast majority of what I do involves work in forms that feature a voice over music.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: It really depends. Is this a film score I'm composing? A song I'm producing? A record I'm mixing? Each has different needs and a different workflow. I am methodical and disciplined about process. I do a lot of background research mostly with a client or collaborator in order to plan a vision no matter the nature of the project, but from then on it differs. I like to think of things in emotional terms, identifying stories and the characters that tell those stories. Often there are only a few elements that belong in the spotlight and everything else is seasoning. That garnish is absolutely essential and is often what differentiates something that works from something that's great.

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

A: Brian Eno is one of my heroes. He is someone I very much admire for having straddled the line between art and craft; between deep, conceptual works and enormously successful commercial records. He is at times both artist and producer. Most of my musical exemplars have enjoyed success in several media and in several roles. Jonny Greenwood, Jon Brion, and Kanye West are others that come to mind.

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

A: I most commonly mix records. I tend to come in at the end of a process, where all the sounds and ideas are in place, and now they need to work together. Secondarily, I also often work as a composer/producer, taking skeletons of works and collaborating with an artist to actualize an ambitious vision.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I am a voracious learner. I love being constantly at the edge of my comfort zone, being challenged, and having new experiences. The beauty of making recordings is that as I've grown, I've had a literal record of my own development like snapshots in the family album or trophies on the wall. This learning, like much of life, is full of proud accomplishments and embarassing memories.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I am proudly in the box. I believe it is the vision, not the gear that makes a great record, and that compelling music can be made with any tools, whether they're pots and pans or a mouse and keyboard. Mine is simple: controller, powerful computer, compact, top of the line converter and monitoring path, high end microphones, trustworthy acoustics, more software than I'll need on any one project, and lots of out of the box instruments and toys. Some day, I may add some analog gear to my 2-buss...

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

A: Laptop, speakers, midi controller, portable recorder, hard drive.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Go to the source: compromises you make with the foundation of any work of music will create problems down the line. A great record was never made without a great song. In other words (working backwards), it is much harder to mix a bad arrangement than a great one, it is harder to arrange for a performance that is uninspired, it is harder to perform a song that isn't written in a way that caters to the voice, and it is hard to write a melodies and words that don't fit together in a compelling way.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I'm mixing some music by a folk-rock artist from Michigan. It's heart-breakingly beautiful stuff, impeccably recorded and produced. A true pleasure to listen to and work on.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital. It is so convenient, it has gotten to be unarguably higher fidelity in the most literal definition of the word, and the sonic differences in processing are getting smaller and smaller. The tools are more expansive, numerous, precise, predictable, stable, transportable, and recallable. Digital is the great leveler in the music game. It seriously lowers the barriers to entry for everyone, which means there are more people than ever creating and evolving music at an incredibly high level.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I am an outsider. I get to hear a song as someone who has never heard it before. This perspective exposes blind spots and unearths hidden treasures.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Mixing and sound design, realistically. I love all aspects of the music making process and can contribute with ease and skill to nearly every part of making a record, but I feel most confident about my ability to make things sound great.