Multi-Platinum Mixing Engineer

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Being able to help creatives accomplish their vision.

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

A: A MacBook Pro w/ Pro Tools, Apogee Symphony, 2 good pairs of headphones, UnderTone Audio MPEQ-1, and a 67 or 251 type microphone.

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

A: I have been engineering for around 15 years now. I started in 2009, I'm not proud to admit but I was not the biggest fan of school so I dropped out of High School in 2008 and got my G.E.D. instead, I was about 17 at the time. I wasted no time enrolling into a 6-month recording program at Musicians Institute in Hollywood. Right after completing the program I drove around town and literally delivered a resume to every single major recording studio in Los Angeles seeking an internship, I had a few interviews and landed 2 internships one at 4th Street Recording in Santa Monica and the other at Nightbird Studios in Hollywood. Both studios were so drastically different I couldn't have asked for a better situation. At 4th Street I learned how to work with indie artists tracking live instruments to 2-inch tape, at Nightbird it was more major label projects lots of vocal tracking. Around 2011 I was fortunate to meet one of my closest friends and brilliant producer Ned Cameron. He was working with a new artist at the time named Kid Ink, I tracked a few sessions for them they loved my work and brought me on board as their exclusive engineer. Kid Ink soon after landed a major label deal based on some of the work we had done earlier that year. For the next few years I worked exclusively for Kid Ink and Ned Cameron while also taking some side projects for various artists, songwriters, labels and producers. I also had a short run as a staff engineer at APG Atlantic Records. Since then I have been able to establish a successful career as a freelance engineer and mixer.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Very adaptable.

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

A: There are tons of new artists that I would love to work with, artists like TALK, Sabrina Carpenter, Megan Moroney, Benson Boone, That Mexican OT, Chayce Beckham, Noah Kahan, KennyHoopla just to name a few. I strongly believe we are living in another Golden Age of music.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Get to know your gear! You don't need all the gear or all the plugins, you are way more effective getting to know 5 plugins in-and-out rather than having a crazy collection of plugins you don't really know how to use.

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

A: Throughout my career it has been predominantly Hip-Hop, Rap and Pop. However in the last few years I have been fortunate enough to expand into Country, Regional Mexican music and different styles of Latin music. In the near future I want to start taking some Alt-Rock projects or more singer-songwriter projects.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: If I had to narrow it down to one skill, I would say my vocal tracking and vocal mixing. Having worked in mostly Hip-Hop and Pop the vocal tends to be the focal point of the song, that allowed me to spend a lot of time recording and mixing vocals. The first 6 years of my career consisted of mostly that.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I am here to amplify or help get across what the artist or producer is already trying to convey. I am not here to implement "my sound" on your music, I am here to take your project to its highest and most purest potential.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I don't necessarily have a routine or "process", every client and project is so different that I usually just adapt to their creative process or workflow. Being flexible in my workflow has allowed me to learn quicker and work with a wider range of artists and producers.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I have 2 studio setups, the tracking room I work out of has an SSL AWS 900+ with some select pieces of outboard gear (BAE 1073's, Tube-Tech CL1B's, Avalon and some Audioscape stuff). For monitoring we have the classic NS-10's, Dynaudio's for mids and an Ocean Way system for mains. My mix and mastering setup is a lot more intimate, it's an Apogee Symphony and some mastering/stereo buss outboard processors (SSL Fusion, UnderTone Audio EQ and Compression).

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

A: I tend to follow producers more so than musicians or artists. One of my main inspirations is Rick Rubin, I love his genre versatility and approach to music production.

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

A: I'm usually mixing and recording for clients. Then followed by vocal production, mastering and I have recently got into working live sound.