Mixing and Mastering engineer

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Several mixes are active at the moment for albums for artists in Australia, UK and Canada. I'm also involved with an EDM duo signed to Warner music, and an Indie Rock band with a childhood friend of mine. I also continue to write and produce my own pop rock/punk songs.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Mostly Digital for mixing and mastering. When producing and recording I use my Shelford channel and LA2A - not because I cant get similar results in the box with plugins but because I know that the performance is heavily affected by the tone you hear while recording. So using a channel strip and a compressor during recording makes sense to me, but with an already recorded performance I rarely use outboard gear. I piece of hardware that I love the sound of is the Neve Master Buss Processor. For rock mixes it always is part of my master buss.

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

A: I'll get you to 95% very quickly and for the last 5% I'll work with you until you say its 100%

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: The deep focus I go into while mixing. I like to detach myself from the outside world for a while and focus on building the mix.

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

A: "Do you mix X genre" - yes I do - I truly believe all mixes can be approached more or less the same way. All you need to know is where you want to go, and knowing the methods of how to get there. "I mix rock" doesn't necessarily mean "I cant mix EDM". A mixer worth his salt can easily dial a live kick AND an EDM kick.

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

A: I utilize templates for mixing and I've seen this misinterpreted as "using presets" - templates are a starting point and they only aim to cut down the time to reduce the time setting up the project. I know I'll be using a reverb send, so my template has several reverbs built in. Which one I'll use depends on the song.

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

A: Focus on the vision for the song and try to build a brief that will let me understand it fully. This can include references, details about production, what you had in mind before recording - anything you feel relevant. You cant have "too much information"

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

A: My Laptop, my DAC, Audeze headphones, a Mic and fabfilter plugins.

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

A: Over 30 years. I started as a guitar player and was fortunate enough to tour with national artists and played gigs in 4 continents. For the past 10 years I have been heavily investing in my skill building and studio to transition to producing full time.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Having worked in a multinational software giant for almost 2 decades as a consultant, I bring my professional skills to the musical world and provide a service which is world class in all aspects.

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

A: Green Day.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: De-ess your reverb auxes.

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

A: Rock, Indie, Pop, EDM, some hiphop.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Mixing.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: As a musician with more than 2000 gigs under my belt myself, I am able to bring a musical perspective and apply technical practices to amplify the power of the song.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I utilize templates which allows me to mix fast and send back the 1st version within hours. This allows for us to start working on revisions as soon as possible with the artist, avoiding fatigue that comes from analysis paralysis and helps get the track to "release ready" stage quickly.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: A mixing studio with top shelf gear and software for fast turnaround and modern sound. I use Amphion Two18s and Genelec Ones for monitoring, fed by an RME ADI Pro FS2 DAC.

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

A: Mutt Lange, Reinhold Mack, Jack Antanoff, Andrew Scheps, Chris Lord Alg

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

A: Mixing and mastering