Producer & Mixer & Singer

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

A: I'm always the most proud of my own music. I love composing, writing my own songs, this way I feel 100% like an artist. So far I've released one solo album under my own name and 3 singles under Hornatkiewicz & Skiba. It's a duo with my soon to be wife and I'm especially proud of our song Obwiniam Pełnię. It's like my lifelong inspirations with my own twist met halfway creating a somehow unique song.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: At the moment I'm producing and mixing an artist that's just been signed by a major label. This will be one of my biggest projects ever.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: A great analog preamp, like WA-273 is irreplaceable. But other than that, digital, I mix in the box because it's fast and I can always revisit old sessions without worrying about proper cable work.

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

A: My promise is that I will do everything it takes to make their music sound professional. Even if it takes re-recoding some parts when I'm not paid to do that. I often go an extra mile for my clients.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: I love what I do for a living. I never stopped being excited from making music. That's the dream.

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

A: Clients usually ask me to produce something close to their demo, but perfected and more professional. I always try to stay true to demo, learning their instrumental parts by ear so that they feel familiar with the final result, but I always do additional layering to the arrangement to make things sound richer.

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

A: I think often times mastering is perceived as something really important and time consuming, people often overlook mixing. I think mixing is super important. Best mastering engineer won't be able to make a weak mix sound professional.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Mostly about what music inspires them, how would they like to have their song sound like.

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

A: Sometimes people try to do everything themselves. From recording, producing music, through mixing and mastering, all the way to making their own music videos and distributing their own music. Sometimes it works great, but other times it's great to let someone else handle some part of the job. You don't have to be amazing at everything, if you like to produce music, let someone else mix it for you. A fresh set of ears is always a great value.

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

A: My PRS Custom 24, Neumann TLM-103, my acoustic PRS A50E, Audeze MM-100 headphones, and a channel strip, probably SSL.

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

A: I've been producing music since I was a kid. Loved multitrack recording since I can remember. Professionally, I've been doing it for 7-8 years, starting with local artists with some major Polish acts along the way.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: I'd say modern, polished but with a strong emphasis on human factor, not leaning to much on technology but rather get a great, emotional take from an artist.

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

A: A dream that will never come true is to work with Jeff Buckley. Hearing his voice live and experience his sensitivity must've been a fantastic experience.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: What has been giving me great results lately is producing music with eq that emulates NS10 monitors - hi pass everything up to 150 Hz and from the very top to 5 kHz. That makes you focus on the midrange more, which is where a lot of energy is in any type of music.

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

A: I most often work on rock music - whether it's alt rock, indie rock, pop-rock or even metalcore or djent. I also produce a lot of pop music, but always try to make it sounds more alive and organic by adding live drums and guitars.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: I think my strongest skill is the ability to make things sound professional really quick. That's because I mix as much as I produce and have my trusted plugin combinations ready to go whenever I want to show what a song can finally be as quick as possible.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: What clients usually are happy about is the modern, radio ready sound I bring to their songs. I've been listening mostly to modern rock my entire life, grew up listening to CLA mixes, which has a strong impact on my taste.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I start with listening to references and calibrating my ears to them. Then, I usually start with layering drums - I have some trusted drum libraries with my own custom samples, sometimes I also record live drums when there's a need for that. Then I layer guitars on top of drums, then synths, loops and ear candy. Vocals usually come last, when I have a pretty much ready arrangement.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I'm in the middle of rearranging my studio. Things that stay the same, no matter what I do is my Warm Audio WA-273 preamp (I love the Neve sound), I also love my Neumann TLM-103 and Shure SM7B microphones, they compliment each other really well. I recently switched to M4 Mac, which has been great so far, but my monitoring setup will change from Adam A7X monitors to Barefoot Footprints.

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

A: Lately I've been really inspired by Ken Andrews from Failure. I've loved Failure ever since I was a teenager, but since I found out that Ken's been producing and mixing some of my favourite bands, I've been really drawn to his sound. It's organic and modern, raw and polished at the same time. Something I strive to sound like.

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

A: I usually do full productions - it starts with a demo from clients, sometimes a rough voice memo, sometimes pre-produced arrangement. I always ask for references, what music inspires my clients, and then start producing from scratch. 90% of the time I also mix and master my productions, sending clients files ready to publish.