Producer/Multi-instumentalist

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

A: I will apply myself 100% and be fully present while we are working together. I will stick to deadlines and deliver a quality product.

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

A: Last year I produced my first whole Album for Indigo FM which is coming out this summer! I wrote the songs, sang and played most of the instruments on the album and it was a great creative and learning experience.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Right now I'm working on finishing an EP for Emma River who is a talented singer/songwriter from Norway. We just finished writing a string arrangement for one of the songs and will be tracking it soon along with grand piano. I'm also about to start working with another talented LA artist on her next single.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: There's a romanticism to analog gear that sparks creativity. It's finicky and unreliable and, while frustrating to work with at times, can lead to happy accidents. Analog forces you to commit to the sound of something right away and can therefore focus you 100%. Digital is flexible and reliable and my go to in 99% of cases because commitment, especially in the early stages, can be scary. As far as sound goes, I personally think digital plug-ins are more than able to recreate the sound of vintage analog gear faithfully. At the end of the day, if it sounds good, who cares how it was made?

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I love being creative and using my skills to solve problems. I also love working with other creative people towards a focused goal. I love making art and putting it out into the world.

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

A: What do you charge for a song? The answer depends on many factors: Is the song fully written or does the artist want help finishing it? Are we hiring other musicians to play on the track? Do we need to rent a studio to record drums, or a string quartet etc? Will I be mixing the track or will the artist hire a separate mixing engineer? Will it be a work for hire or will I have a producer cut? These are all topics I like to discuss beforehand and draft an agreement for the artist to look over and sign to avoid any misunderstandings down the road.

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

A: A common misconception about producers is that they are the boss and will tell the artists what to do. That may be the case with some producers but I find that a good producer will listen to the artist and feed off of their ideas, provide guidance if necessary and work towards the good of the project.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: What artists do you look up to musically? What's the vision for your project? Single? EP? Album? Is there a strict turnaround time? Would you like to be present during all the sessions or would you prefer to come in to sing only? Are you going to be tracking an instrument or have a friend track their parts? Would you want to rent out a studio (mainly for bands) and track live or overdub? This is all part of our preliminary chat and every project is different.

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

A: Don't settle for anything less than your vision.

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

A: Laptop (assuming I could charge it with solar panels or something and have endless external hard drives lol), apollo twin interface, Neuman TLM 102 microphone, Fender Strat and a midi keyboard with 88 weighted keys and drum pads.

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

A: I played guitar and sang in bands as a teenager before I went to Berklee College of Music to study Music Production and Piano performance. After graduating, I moved to LA and started working with different artists: producing, song/writing and performing live.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Wannabe indie sleaze, a twinge of folk and a deep respect for the music of Pink Floyd.

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

A: I would love to work with Kevin Parker from Tame Impala. I think he's an incredibly creative artist and I would love to just be a fly on the wall and absorb his process.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Tuning every little thing and putting everything right on the grid can really suck the life out of a track. Within reason, imperfections in performance are what really make a track feel right. Within reason.

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

A: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Folk, Singer/Songwriter, Pop

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Being open and adaptable without compromising on organization and efficiency.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I bring my technical skills as a producer and my diverse musical vocabulary as an arranger and multi-instrumentalist. I also like to think I'm easy to work with and will provide a safe space to experiment and create art.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: First I like to sit down with the artist and figure out the vision for the project. This step can include listening to demos and finding references. After that, I like to settle key and tempo, create a scratch track on either piano or guitar and have the artist sing a guide vocal. The next step is to find the rights sounds and flesh out the arrangement. This part includes laying down a beat, bass line, keyboard parts, guitar parts etc. I like to do this with the artists in the room to feed off of each others ideas and head in the right direction quickly. After that, I like to clean up and edit the track and get it ready for lead vocals. We track lead vocals on one day and I work with the artist to capture a great performance. After that, we edit and tune and record background vocals which I then edit and tune. Finally, we have a session to mix everything down and make final creative decisions. At that point the song is done and would discuss with the artist about mixing and mastering the track. I usually prefer to leave that part in the process to a dedicated mixer and/or mastering engineer to give it a final and objective look before the song is radio-ready.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I have a dedicated home studio with a wide array of microphones, guitars, basses, amps, stompboxes, and other toys. I have an apollo twin mkii as my main interface as well as a focusrite Octopre (connected though optical cable) for additional inputs (up to 10). I also have a dbx 266xs compressor/gate. I have an akai mpk249 midi keyboard with drum pads as well as a weighted yamaha 88key keyboard, a nord electro 3 seventy three and an upright Kawai acoustic piano. I use protools as my main DAW and have a wide selection of virtual instruments and plug-ins from NI, Arturia, Eastwest, XLN audio, Waves, U-he, Soundtoys, Fabfilter, UAD and many more.

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

A: Kevin Parker from Tame Impala, Andrew Scheps, Poebe Bridgers, The Strokes, Rick Rubin, Radiohead, Nigel Godrich, Jack White, Kimbra, Suzy Shinn, Warren Huart. Those are the ones I can think of now but the list goes on and on.

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

A: The most common work I do for my clients is to take their demo/song idea and flesh it out into a full production. What that entails varies from project to project but can include making the beats, tracking guitars, bass, keys or whatever else is needed. Tracking the artist's lead vocals, comping/editing/tuning takes and helping the artist come up with vocal arrangement ideas for background vocals/ad libs etc. Once all the ideas are in the session, I then spend a few sessions editing/cleaning up/tweaking/stripping away sounds and getting a rough mix ready to send to the mixing and mastering.