Professional Mix Engineer

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Analog is my favorite, it has a more silky top end that I like whereas digital's top end is kind of scratchy. Both can get great results and for effects I prefer digital as well because it's easier to experiment with multiple different delays and reverbs on the fly.

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

A: Make sure your recordings are quality recordings. As a mix engineer, I can't rerecord the song for you unless we're in the studio together.

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

A: I'm taking my Neumann U87, Neve 1073, 1176, LA-2A, and a SSL Bus Compressor easily!

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

A: Vocal recording and stem mixing primarily, in some cases I'll work on designing soundscapes or post audio for my brothers film projects.

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

A: I typically work on Trap, Pop, and RnB. I grew up on trap music such as Gucci Mane, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, French Montana, Ace Hood, and Doe B to name a few. Over the years trap music has evolved in to Drill music and to this day is still my favorite kind of music. I listen to pop music a lot as well as my family, friends, and quite frankly the whole world listen to on a daily basis. I believe fusing pop and drill is detrimental to drill music's success.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: My strongest skill in the industry is having a long 15 year history of songwriting in the trap and drill music scene. There are certain things that artists will say that will go over someones head if they haven't studied the lingo of these artists and that skill allows me to use my engineering skills to enhance those moments in a song that other engineers might miss.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I like things to be wide, big, and diverse. My goal is to bring out the hit in any song. I like the mix to move with the music so I use a lot of automation with my effects to create subtle changes in the music to create the mix interesting. I am big advocate of not hearing the same thing twice respectfully.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: The first thing I always do is organize the session, I am very OCD about a clean looking session and it just allows me to navigate the session quicker and more efficiently. After the session is organized I will usually just listen to the song to get a feel of how the artist wants their song to sound. Each song is different and requires different fixes so I can't give you an exact process step by step but I do have a method of mixing drums first, followed by bass, percussion, guitars, keys, then vocals. Processing wise I like to address subtractive eqing, dynamics, eqing again, and saturation. I always do delays and reverb last typically as it clouds up the mix before it can start in my opinion.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: My home studio is where I mix most of my work, I usually offer this for a cheaper price because it does not require me to book any studio time and keeps the budget low for up and coming artists that may not have a record label budget. My home studio features Yamaha HS8 monitors, an Apollo X6 interface, a Universal Audio 1176 and LA-2A, and I work on Pro Tools. At work my facility has all the tools that any engineer or musician could ever need for a recording/mixing session. State of the art control rooms, all the analog equipment one could hope for, large format recording consoles from SSL and Neve, theres a lot of options for those who want their songs to be mixed in analog rather than digital.

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

A: Jon Batiste for his incredible production skillset, Andrew Scheps, and Micheal Brauer for their approaches to mixing and between you and me, Micheal Brauer was the one who spoke on compression in a way that made sense to me. I also love the way he creates movement in his mixes.