Studio Engineer/Musician

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

A: Actually this EP I'm working on right now is something that I've been very proud of. I've been tracking, mixing, and producing it. It's been going better than expected.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: An EP for a singer/songwriter. There's an example of a cover we're working on for his EP on my page, not finished but I'll probably post updated mixes as I work on things just so people can actually hear my workflow.

Q: Is there anyone on SoundBetter you know and would recommend to your clients?

A: Not really, I just heard about this from a friend and figured this would be another way to help me attain clients and experience.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Analog, real versus fake.

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

A: To get them the best possible product that I can achieve for them in the end.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Everything.

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

A: Well, obviously it's usually "how much do you charge?" and the answer to that is typically, send me and email with all the details and we'll discuss more.

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

A: As stated before, that there's only one way to do things. There's many different techniques used in audio engineering and I tend to like to try different ways of doing things, so lets experiment and get good sounds.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Usually what genre of music they play, what the instrumentation is, and what they want to sound like.

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

A: Trust your engineer! There's no right way to do things in audio engineering, go into it with an open mind.

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

A: Well, I'd take and Apollo Twin Quad, my WA87, a stereo pair of C414 XLII's, my Manley Force Preamp, and a computer obviously.

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

A: I attended the University of New Haven to obtain my BA in Music and Sound Recording in 2012 and graduated in 2016. My goal is to be able to work out of my own studio and maintain steady clients.

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

A: No one in particular, maybe you?

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: I'll give yah two. One being fix it at the mic and the other being know thy monitors. Compression and EQ can't fix everything, if the tracking sucks, then the mix is just going to suck in HD. Knowing your monitors and their frequency response is very important when it comes to mixing and referencing.

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

A: Usually singer songwriter, alternative rock, jazz, and pop/punk/rock. I'm open to all genres though, I actually just spoke to a possible client who is part of a four piece Indian band and I'm really excited to see how that will work out.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Probably patience. Tracking and Mixing is something that you can't rush, there needs to be a lot of close attention put into the small things along the way.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I like to think that I bring my own creative mind into the songs I track/mix. Whether its actually doing some production for the song or just giving the song the right 'space' there's always a strong relationship between my creative thinking and how the song ends up sounding.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Depends on the job. If we're tracking we'd start with scratch guitar, go to drums, I'd time edit the drums, then we'd record bass, guitar, overdubs, and vocals. Mixing is done in between sessions and after tracking is complete. I have a good buddy who I send my stuff out to to get mastered and he is very reasonable with pricing.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I recently made quite a few big purchases on high end pre amps and microphones. I run Cubase Pro 8.5 on my custom built studio computer that I built myself and I run UAD Plug Ins with their QUAD PCIe card. My setup is rather small but very usable, I'm constantly making small upgrades.

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

A: Will Yip at Studio 4 is definitely one of my biggest influences. He's worked on bands like Circa Survive, Balance and Composure, Hrvrd, etc.

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

A: I typically do tracking, mixing, production/writing, and audio editing.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Spacious and mellow, but hard hitting when need be.