Mastering Engineer

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

A: Miles Davis & Bill Evans have been my musical heroes since my early teenage years. Brian Eno, Alice Coltrane, King Tubby, Lee Perry, Rick Rubin, Nina Simone, Serge Gainsbourg, Quincy Jones, Bruce Swedien, and David Byrne have all had a strong influence on my way of hearing music. Madlib, Dilla, Nigel Godrich, Dr Dre, Timbaland, and The Neptunes have been inspirational music makers of "my own generation".

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

A: My career path has been full of twists and turns, but they were all music related. I started at the age of 7 or 8 as a drummer. At 14 I was in my first band. Age 16 is when I first started to earn a living as a drummer. I then left band life behind to become a session drummer for studio and live shows (while supplementing my income working at a variety of record labels and record stores). After a very brief adventure achieving my childhood dream of “being in a band that got signed", I had the epiphany that all I really wanted was to be in the studio creating music as much as possible. At first, I thought I wanted to be a producer, but later realized that mixing and/or mastering was the absolute perfect gig. While trying to figure out how to crack into doing it professionally, I was a club DJ and started an internet radio station with some friends (Sumosound 1999-2003). It was while curating and preparing the DJ mixes for Sumosound, that I first started to do mastering. During this time I was also working as a freelance tech for Solid State Logic and doing technical design for music studios (clients included Babyface, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Eminem, and many others). Finally, in 2005, I linked up with a former studio design client, Dave Cooley, to start mixing and mastering full time. His primary client was Stones Throw Records, a local independent hip-hop label with artists like Madlib, Dilla, MF Doom, and many others. After working with Cooley at Elysian Masters for 5 years, I broke off and started my own thing, Almachrome, in 2010.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: When working on a production, consider where each element fits in the frequency spectrum. It's a bit like a sonic puzzle, and each element should have its own place to create a clear and complete picture. If this is done right, the song will have more impact and be fairly simple to mix, and the master will be loud and punchy. The most common production/arrangement problem I come across is the overcrowding of an area of the spectrum. The next most common is the opposite... a "hole" in the spectrum, an area that is lacking any information at all (instruments or sounds).

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: My Studio is a minimalist environment with acoustic accuracy / critical listening as the top priority. The studio was a "ground up" build and design, purpose built for mastering, completed in 2019. There is a separate studio designed for mixing that also serves as an alternate listening room. I use a combination of analog and digital processing to bring projects to their full potential.

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

A: The most common type of work I do is mastering. Occasionally I also do stem mastering. Stem mastering can be a great option for songs that haven't been professionally mixed.