Mark Plati on SoundBetter

NYC based producer/mixer/musician Mark Plati has a long history in music, having worked on both sides of the glass as well as onstage with a variety of world-class artists such as David Bowie, The Cure, and Prince. Mark has the perspective and experience that comes from a lifetime spent as a musical collaborator and co-conspirator.

I've been fortunate to spend my entire adult life working with a wide variety of amazing artists and musicians, serving in any role from producing, recording and mixing, to composing, arranging and programming, and finally to performing live and on record. I’ve worked on recordings in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, and a host of other places (Venezuela! Iceland!) - you go where the music takes you. I’ve performed in coffee houses, stadiums, Roman amphitheaters, and on Zoom. I’ve recorded in environments as diverse as world class studios to kitchens and bedrooms with a laptop remote setup. Whatever the situation, one rule applies: I’m always in service to the song.

While my credits cut across a number of genres, most notable would be my 7 year association with David Bowie. I was a part of 8 albums and 3 tours in a technical or musical capacity, many times both.

When I'm not traveling I mix at my studio, Alice’s Restaurant, in Manhattan’s East Village. Built around a Rupert Neve Designs 5088, Pro Tools HDX, and some warm and wonderful tube outboard, I've mixed both attended and remote sessions there since I bought the 5088 in 2010.

I usually end up telling my clients ‘you’ll be happy before I am' - I won't rest until we get to that sound in our heads. My name goes on the record too, so I never view any mix, production or overdub as simply a job.

Would love to hear from you. Click the contact button above to get in touch.

Credits

7 Reviews

Endorse Mark Plati

by Charles H.
Verified
Amazing experience, elevated my song well beyond where I had it. A great mixing engineer and all-round producer who brings in valuable expertise from his many different roles. Definitely recommended!
by Robert Fleming
Working with Mark was a fabulous experience and I couldn't have been happier with the final results. Mark was brilliantly creative but also diligent and detailed in his work on my album project. His contributions on a musical level and a mixing and production level are incredible. His communication was top notch. Mark is always pursuing excellence in his work and doesn't stop until he and his client (in this case me) is 100% happy. Highly Recommended!
by Nigel Reeve
Really enjoyed working with Mark on a couple of Bowie projects. I probably drove him insane with my tiny amends here and there but he always dealt with everything with great humour and thoroughly professionally. I learnt from him as we went along too. Hopefully I'll work with him again but I'm very proud of the work we did together and in the end he made the complicated feel easy.
by Paul Brown
A superb musician and sympathetic producer. Always a pleasure to work with.
by Felix Huybrechts (Starman Records)
A great pleasure to work with Mark ! Always thinking in creative musical solutions in funcion of artist and soong, without losing grip on the budget. Strong and smooth communicator and always an excellent finalized production. Strongly recommended !
by Thomas Simonis
As a journalist and head of music first, I appreciated Mark’s work, even before I met him. He mixed songs by Louise Attaque, Puggy and Alain Bashung that I love but I also admired him as a musician alongside David Bowie during the Reality Tour. Then in a role as manager of artist, I proposed that he mixes first a single and then the whole GRANDGEORGE album. We visited him in his studio in New York, we drank beer, and we left the city that never sleeps with a great album under our arm. This guy knows how to do everything, with humility, talent and kindness. Hope to work again with him one day
by Roland Beelen
It's a great pleasure to work with Mark, I enjoy his musical skills and his never ending efforts to obtain a perfect product. His dedication and understanding of what the client wants is outstanding. Communication with Mark is smooth and frequent, and very pleasant !

Interview with Mark Plati

Q: Can you share one music production tip?
A: If everybody is talking at once, you can't focus on a single voice. Still, at times that cacophony can work - again, whatever serves the song and the vision of the artist.
Q: What type of music do you usually work on?
A: The majority of the time I tend to work on vocal-centric songs with live musicians, yet many times with added electronic elements.
Q: Analog or digital and why?
A: Both are important for me. Digital provides ease of editing and recalling, and analog brings warmth and personality.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: Getting to work on music every day has been a lifelong privilege and blessing.
Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?
A: I've been involved with music since I was 10 years old, beginning with drums and then moving to electric bass and guitar when I was 12. I played on my first session at 16, and seed was planted - this marriage of music and audio was something I wanted to be a part of. I went to university to pursue both passions, lived in Dallas for a year working on a 48 track remote truck and playing in bands, then jumped into the late 80's NYC studio scene. That opened a lot of doors for me to meet people in the industry, and for them to see me work; I made the jump to freelancing fairly quickly (within a year) and I was working internationally a few years after that.
Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?
A: A lot of the usual suspects - artists and bands I grew up with like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Police, Stevie Wonder, Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, and David Bowie. There are too many individual musicians to list, suffice to say all those associated with the previous bands as well as a huge host of others ranging from James Jamerson to Joni Mitchell to Eddie Van Halen. A shortlist of music professionals who inspired me would include George Martin, Tom Dowd, Bob Clearmountain, Alex Sadkin, Arif Mardin, George Massenburg, Kevin Killen, and Tchad Blake.
Q: How would you describe your style?
A: I can't! Where I when I musically came of age - the New York City area in the 1970's - I was bombarded with a host of musical influences ranging from rock to soul to jazz to punk to prog to folk. It ALL made sense to me, and I found something in every genre that I could not only appreciate but really get off on :)
Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?
A: I've always wanted to work with somebody like Kate Bush. She has always struck me as the embodiment of a true artist who is searching for something ... and that search is why we're here.
Q: What's your strongest skill?
A: My musicality and sense of taste, and knowing how to construct the flow of energy within a song.
Q: What do you bring to a song?
A: I bring decades of experience listening to music across multiple genres. I bring the perspective of a performing musician, and I dial into the arc of how a musical work can unfold from start to finish.
Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?
A: My promise is that we get it as right as we can!
Q: What's your typical work process?
A: For mixing, first I'll set up a song to fit my setup - modifying the I/O setup to breakout into (up to) 32 outputs (in the case of receiving a song in Pro Tools) or load WAV files into a present I/O template. I then go through the tracks to see if anything needs to be tuned or edited, clean up extraneous noise, and decide which plugins or analog pieces will work best. This is of course on the tech side - before I ask for files, I'll listen to the work in question and make sure that my musical/sonic sensibility is a good fit for it.
Q: Tell us about your studio setup.
A: My studio is an analog/digital hybrid based around a Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console and Pro Tools HDX. Most of my work goes through an analog chain and then gets printed back into Pro Tools as WAV files. While I use outboard tube compression, most of the effects processing takes place in the computer given the 21st century work dynamic of recalling mixes. Some of those plugins include UAD (2 cards), Waves, Sound Toys, and number of miscellaneous plugins from the Plugin Alliance. On the recording side I have a few nice mics - the standout would be my 1956 Neumann M7, which I've used to record the vocals of nearly everyone I've worked with since I got it in Berlin in 1992.
Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.
A: At the moment I'm mostly mixing, and more often than not adding additional production - additional parts, modifying structure/arrangement, etc. It all depends on what the artist is looking for.