Vocal Tuning, Mix, Master

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

A: In 2024 I released a country-pop album called *My Country*, a project that means a lot to me. I wanted to show that artists who look like me, BIPOC and Asian American, specifically Filipino American, belong in country music too. The songs reflect my childhood in Iowa and the multi-identity experience of growing up not fully knowing where I fit in. I’m especially proud of this album because it’s the most honest work I’ve ever made. I created it with my friend Justin, an incredible producer out of Atlanta. He produced and composed much of the instrumentation, while I handled the songwriting, vocals, demos, and final edits. It was the first time I didn’t have to produce everything alone, and collaborating with Justin allowed the music to become something bigger than either of us could have made on our own. I’m proud of the sound, the storytelling, and the representation the album brings to the genre.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I’m currently working on a new R&B album that serves as my ode to the 90s, blending ballads and R&B-pop elements that feel like they could have been released in that era. I’m also continuing my weekly piano-and-vocal cover series, reimagining popular songs in a more emotional, stripped-back style. Alongside those projects, I’m creating a children’s album for my daughter, who is a year and a half old. She loves my music, and many parents have told me that my covers help their kids fall asleep, so I’m recording lullabies and gentle songs in my own style to help soothe her during naps and bedtime.

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

A: Yes. I highly recommend two people I’ve trusted with my own music. First is producer and engineer Johnny Keenan from Seattle. He produced one of my top-performing original records, my album *Love Drunk*. He’s one of the most talented and fastest songwriters and producers I’ve ever worked with. The second is Trevor Yasuda, a Grammy-winning producer and mixer who has worked extensively with Lana Del Rey, Darren Hayes of Savage Garden, and many others. His mixes are incredible, especially his low end, which is some of the best I’ve ever heard. If you work with either of them, I’d love to help finish your vocals so the entire record sounds cohesive and polished.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: My take is digital first, with analog used intentionally. Digital gives me flexibility, speed, and the ability to work anywhere. But the sonic depth and dimensionality of analog is still the goal. So I use a hybrid approach: I mix in the box, but I track through analog preamps and outboard compressors, then run stems through my Neve 5059 Satellite. The result is a sound that combines digital precision with analog depth. Without the 5059, reverb and delays sit in a left–right space. With it, the mix suddenly has front–back dimension and a more believable sense of room. Digital gives me workflow efficiency, and analog circuitry gives the song weight, depth, and character.

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

A: My promise is simple: you will love the way your voice sounds when I’m done. I apply the same vocal treatment, detail, and precision that I’ve used on my own catalog, which has generated hundreds of millions of streams, and the same approach I use for artists ranging from global talent to local bands. You get the exact process I trust for myself, tone shaping, tuning, performance enhancement, and emotional clarity, designed to make your vocal feel expensive, expressive, and unmistakably yours. My goal is for you to hear your finished track and feel proud of how you sound.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: What I love most about my job is the transformation, taking raw stems and turning them into something that feels alive. I’m obsessed with the before-and-after, with shaping a performance until it carries the exact emotion the artist meant to express. In a way, it feels like manipulating energy, because music changes how people feel, even when they don’t realize why. I also love that what I do helps people. Every song becomes a little piece of humanity that didn’t exist before. There’s a moment before a record is finished when it belongs only to me and the artist, and we have no idea who it will reach or how it will impact someone’s life. Hearing those stories later is one of the best parts of this career. Ultimately, I love helping talented people translate the sound in their head into something real so they can share it with the world.

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

A: The question I get most often is: “How did you build a career that reached over 500 million streams?” My answer is always the same. It wasn’t luck. It was a standardized, consistent system that compounded over time. I released music every week, covers or originals, for years. That rhythm created volume, and volume created discovery. In today’s landscape, you win by producing high-quality output consistently, because consistency compounds. I also tell clients that being an artist today makes you an instant monopoly: no one else can be you. My success came from not comparing myself to others, staying obsessed with what I was creating, and sharing work I was genuinely proud of. Once a song was scheduled for release, I was already working on the next one. That mindset is what built the catalog.

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

A: The biggest misconception is that I can take absolutely anything and turn it into magic. I’m good at what I do, but I’m still limited by the quality of the source material. Clean vocals, solid performances, and usable takes give me room to elevate and refine. If those fundamentals aren’t there, there’s only so far the tools can go. I’ve pulled off some near-miracles, like a musical film where the production audio was full of issues and I had almost no alternate takes to work with. But even then, I was pushing Melodyne and every tool I had to the edge. I’m not an oracle. The better the input, the more “magic” I can add on top.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: I usually start by asking what they’ve been listening to lately. Current listening habits tell me a lot about their taste, their sensibilities, and the emotional world they want to create. I also ask what music they grew up on, because early influences often shape how an artist hears themselves. From there, I ask for three reference songs that represent how they’d like their vocal to sound. This helps me understand tuning expectations, genre aesthetics, and the type of performance they’re aiming for. Finally, I ask about their goal after finishing the song. A big part of what I do is helping clients think through the next steps once they have a record they’re proud of, whether that’s releasing it, pitching it, or building momentum around it.

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

A: Make sure the person you hire can actually achieve the sound you hear in your head. I’ve wasted money in the past on services that couldn’t deliver the tone or style I was aiming for, and most of that came down to unclear references. That’s why I ask every client for at least three reference tracks. Different genres require different tuning approaches—modern R&B, for example, embraces a more noticeable tuning aesthetic, while pop may need something cleaner and more transparent. If you know the sound you’re going after, and your provider knows how to get there, you’ll save both time and money and end up with a result you love.

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

A: I’d bring my MacBook Pro M2, my Neumann U87, my Apollo interface, a small MIDI keyboard, and my BAE 1073 preamp. The only swap I ever debate is trading the 1073 for my Teletronix LA-2A, but it’s a close tie.

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

A: My music path started in a Filipino-American church community where everyone played or sang, which became my earliest training ground. I later formed a band called New Heights, which I ran from 2006 to 2013. We toured nationally, went viral multiple times on YouTube, and even entered early conversations with EMI before the label dissolved. In 2013 I moved to Los Angeles to focus on production and studio work while beginning my solo career. After about a year of producing artists, I started releasing weekly covers. In 2014 Taylor Swift reposted one of them, which became the signal to fully commit to my solo artist path. Since then, my music has accumulated over 500 million streams on Spotify and Apple Music and over 100 million views on YouTube. Alongside my work as a producer, vocalist, and artist, I founded Fanded, a platform helping talent build membership-based communities with their fans. I’ve been creating, producing, and releasing music for nearly 20 years.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: My style is what I call sad-happy. It carries the emotional weight of sadness but is lifted by hopeful, bright tones. I write and produce music that makes people stop in their tracks, music that interrupts the chaos of the day and reminds you that you’re human. I lean into emotional textures, sonic melancholy, and honest storytelling, but I wrap them in melodies that feel warm, uplifting, and grounding. My listeners often tell me that my songs help them deal with anxiety, fear, and overwhelm. That’s intentional, because I’m using music the same way when I create it. At its core, my style aims to bring people back to themselves, to help them feel more connected to who they are, what they want, and the life they’re trying to live.

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

A: Adele would be my dream collaboration. Beyond her incredible voice, she has a personality and presence that seem genuinely fun and grounded. I spend much of my time creating ballads and emotional, storytelling-driven songs, so working with her would feel like the perfect intersection of what I love and what she does best. Her voice carries so much character and honesty that even being in the room to help shape a performance would be an unforgettable experience. Getting the chance to guide certain moments, support her storytelling, and hear her deliver those massive emotional lines firsthand would be the ultimate collaboration for me.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: My favorite production tip comes from something Tom Petty once said: “Don’t bore us, get us to the chorus.” In practice, that means less is more. Every decision you make should move the listener toward the emotional peak of the song. Remove anything that distracts from that journey—busy arpeggios, extra instruments, or sounds that compete with the vocal. Ear candy should enhance momentum, not pull attention away from it. Get to the chorus quickly, sometimes even using a half-chorus early on, so the listener connects with the hook on the first pass and remembers it. The goal is clarity, impact, and a clean path to the song’s emotional core.

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

A: I primarily work on pop and R&B records, especially songs that live in that sad-but-hopeful emotional space. A lot of my recent work has been big vocal ballads and piano-vocal versions of pop songs, where the performance and storytelling take center stage. I’ve also produced a full country album and several country singles, but most of my day-to-day work is modern pop and R&B with a mix of real and digital instrumentation. I love blending drums, live instruments, and layered vocals into something cohesive, powerful, and emotionally honest.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: My strongest skill is vocal production and helping artists achieve a performance that feels even more honest, emotional, and alive than they imagined. I take raw vocals and shape them into their best possible form through detailed tuning, coaching, and production choices that preserve sincerity while elevating clarity and impact. Artists also tell me that working with me feels like a mix of vocal coaching and artist therapy. I help them tap into the emotional truth of the song so the final performance feels real, intentional, and compelling. Alongside this, my songwriting and production instincts lean toward big choruses and strong emotional arcs, which gives every track a sense of lift and catharsis.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I bring a vocal that sounds more polished, expensive, and emotionally convincing than what most artists expect when they send me their raw stems. My background as a singer for 20 years gives me an instinct for phrasing, tone, and performance that goes beyond technical tuning. I make vocals feel like they could sit on The Voice or American Idol. I also bring a storyteller’s sensibility. I treat every song as a journey that should bloom as the listener moves from section to section. My goal is to shape the vocal so listeners feel pulled forward, anticipating what comes around the next corner. This combination of technical precision and emotional architecture is why clients come to me when they want their music to feel elevated, engaging, and replay-worthy.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: My process starts when I receive the raw stems. If I’m tuning vocals, which is most of my work, I begin by stabilizing the performance with Antares Auto-Tune Pro. If the project includes comping, I’ll comp to the stabilized track, then move into detailed cleanup. I use iZotope RX10 to remove breaths, harsh sibilance, mouth clicks, and room reflections so the vocal feels polished before any tuning. Once the track is clean and consistent, I move into hand-tuning in Melodyne. This stage usually takes a couple of hours because I focus on natural transitions, believable pitch movement, and especially the passing notes. After releasing 300 records, I’ve learned that passing notes are what separate an amateur vocal from a professional one. Once the tuning is complete, I shape the vocal with parallel compression, tasteful delays and reverbs, and vocal riding to keep the performance dynamic but controlled. If I’m mixing the full track, I also use multiband sidechain compression to carve space so the vocal sits above instruments like guitars and piano. The process is surgical but fast. I usually turn around a tuned vocal, full mix, and master within a couple of hours and deliver a finished, radio-ready product back to the client.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: My studio is built around an Apollo X8 interface feeding a hybrid analog/digital workflow. On the front end I track through a collection of high-end 500-series and rack preamps: dual BAE 312A’s, a BAE 511, a BAE 1073 rack, and a Manley TNT for both tube and solid-state flavors. Compression options include the Chandler Limited EMI TG Opto and a classic Teletronix LA-2A.

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

A: Ryan Tedder, Josh Gudwin, Eric Ivan Rosse, Dann Huff

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

A: The most common work I do for clients is vocal cleanup, vocal tuning, and mixing and mastering.