Radio-ready Mix Engineer

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

A: Admittingly, I have not worked with any big name artists or anything but "Asteroid Music Team" does a phenomenal job on their music and I recently ripped the vocals from the song and used them to make my own song around the vocals. What I did was took the vocals, wrote the guitar then wrote the drums around that. I essentially wrote the song, but in reverse. It's become a hobby of mine because it takes a lot of decisions away that would otherwise paralyze me, such as "what tempo do i want to work in?" or "what key and mode should i make this?" and it's become really fun. Also a good way to get some views on things.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: TEDDYLOID is an artist who worked on music for an anime called "Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt" and since it is about to air a second season, I'm going to be doing a remix of the song "D City Rock" to get ahead of the algorithm and really get it out there.

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

A: May have to update this later, but this is my first time being on the site so no, not at the moment.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Both are good. Analog can give a very nice warm, vintage sound whereas digital can give some really unique textures. Both have their place, honestly.

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

A: To deliver a quality product that meets or, ideally, exceeds their expectations.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: That it doesn't feel like a job. It's not fueled by fear of going poor, it's fueled by passion. Fear exhausts itself eventually, that will collapse but when what you do is fueled by passion, you can do it for as long as you want and feel absolute bliss and inner peace.

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

A: They often don't get the chance to ask me questions because I often am the first to ask questions. The most often question I get is regarding turn-around time and it really depends on the service. Audio cleanup can take a day but making an entire instrumental from scratch will generally take me at least a week, start to finish. There's a lot of stuff I do within it to make it shine.

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

A: I'd say the biggest misconception is that it's easy. I thought it was easy when I first started, but it is anything but. From understanding phase to sound design to sound selection even, it gets complicated when you realize how many factors there are to consider. This doesn't even touch the mixing and mastering or even sound design, both of which are entire beasts unto themselves.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Depends on the job, really. If I'm making an instrumental, I ask a list of questions such as "do you want it to be slow or fast", i'll ask "what mood do you want to convey", I'll often ask if they have any "favorite instruments i should make sure to include" and "what length do you need this" If it's audio clean-up, I feel like it's clear what needs to be done so I don't really think there are any questions I could ask past when the deadline is.

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

A: Make sure they're legit.

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

A: 2 answers depending on how this is supposed to be interpreted Assuming you mean "music gear" - Laptop, mouse, MIDI keyboard, foam isolation shield and microphone Assuming you mean "gear gear" - Sword, flint, whetstone, tarp, rope

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

A: I started doing this for fun but quickly started loving it so I decided to pursue it. However, I was not so arrogant as to believe I could pick up a program and start. I didn't release anything, just started messing with stuff and experimenting for about 2 years.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Grew up with a lotta Dr. Dre's productions (NWA/Eminem) and mainstream rock music. I eventually got into metal and started playing guitar. With this particular background in music, I feel like I have an interesting and unique style, able to pull inspiration across such a diverse genre of music.

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

A: J Cole cuz he seems real. Too many phonies these days in the music industry.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Find a way to bus all of your drums and instruments together, separately. I usually have 3 mix buses. Drums, instruments and vocals. To this point, sidechain the vocal bus to the drums and melody bus with some light sidechain compression to really let the vocal sit on top and not get overwhelmed.

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

A: Trap, lofi, Pluggnb/metal/rock are some new ones I'm expanding into.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: I would say that my strongest skill would have to be my mixing and mastering abilities. I've improved quite a lot as a composer and arranger but I'd say that my engineering ability in general is my strongest suit.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: Professionalism, expertise, affordable pricing as well as a quality product.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I often try to make my instrumentals more melody-centric, so I'll often start with the melody and make the drums as an after thought to support the melody.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I work out of my bedroom, I have an AT2020+ USB microphone with a thick foam isolation shield for when I need to get clean recordings.

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

A: "Asteroid Music Team" does phenomenal work, I really look up to them. Metroboomin is pretty cool, I liked "What A Time To Be Alive" by Metro that had Future/Drake on it quite a lot.

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

A: I usually make instrumentals from scratch for clients or I provide them with mixing/mastering work.