Mixing Engineer

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I would argue that I’m a bit more invested than most online mix engineers. I want to know more about the song before I begin: the meaning, the headspace you were in when you created it, the parts where you really feel it, etc. I usually spend a good 30 minutes just chatting about that with clients. Then we head into gain staging and the whole subtractive process, which I do alone, before starting with the real mixing. At that point, I like to have the artist as involved as possible, helping steer decisions, especially when it comes to automations. I would say I do about 50% of the work alone, and 50% with the client, and we can usually arrive at a stellar mix in a day or two, depending on the size of the project; complex songs can take a bit longer. Once we’re finished, I give them a few days to purge their minds and listen from different perspectives, and then we often do one last tweak to finalize the mix. 90% of the time, that’s how it goes.

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

A: To be honest, it's difficult to endorse a fixed hierarchy because it largely depends on my state of mind. That said, I would say on the top tier rests Brian Wilson, Hugh Padgham, and my own mentor, the late Al Schmitt. These are the mix engineers that probably influenced me the most, and to whom my work sound most similar. Then I have more aesthetic, artistic influences under them, such as Vangelis, Phil Colins, Peter Gabriel, Michael Cretu of Enigma, and a number of others. At that point, the list becomes quite lengthy. I’m mainly an 80s and 90s guy. I appreciate the 60s and 70s, as well as modern music, but my soul definitely dwells between 1980 and 1999.

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

A: In the grand scheme of things, I’m fairly green when it comes to the whole mixing scene. I’ve been in the music industry for a while, sure, but I used to be a music artist, and then I became a producer for a while, going back to the late 90s. I’ve also had other careers as well. My proper “career” as a mixing engineer started between 2013 and 2018, and it was really just a means of completing my own projects. However, I very quickly began to realize that I absolutely loved mixing, especially mixing other people’s music, and by 2020, I had basically abandoned my other careers to pursue mixing full time. I don’t have any awards or Hollywood credits to my name yet, but I have been very active, and all my clients have been very pleased with my work, which is enough for me, honestly. I’m not doing this for fame. So, I would consider myself experienced and skilled, but still “new” (ish) to the scene.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: I suppose I’m known for my Gestalt approach to mixing. If the mind cannot easily switch between listening to the song as a glued whole and listening to the song as separate and clear parts, then I’m not happy with the mix. I put a lot of effort into the psychoacoustic aspect of mixing, focusing on the question: “How are their minds going to organize the audio?” Once that’s locked in, I focus mainly on the aesthetics: Is it smooth and silky? Crunchy? Textured? Wide? etc. Clients would probably say my mixes are precise and intentional, aimed at enhancing the message and emotion of the song, which I see as the main goal. So, that’s really my style and approach.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Everything… just everything. Unfortunately, I came a bit late to mixing. I’ve had careers in other fields. Heck, I was a philosophy professor for several years before this, but mixing is the one thing that doesn’t seem to grate on me. I can mix all day, every day, and still feel like each project is new and exciting. How many people can say that? Right? I’m in love with mixing, plain and simple.

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

A: I think (and this probably applies to most mix engineers) that sometimes people mistake us for producers and/or sound designers. Sure, I can do those things, but my main focus is mixing, which is really a postproduction task. I like to keep tasks separate so that I can give one specific task all my effort and power. This way, you get the best results. I always talk about this with clients before the project because I prefer to know if non-mixing tasks still need to be done before we actually start the mixing process. I’m cool with that, but I just need to know this before I start to strategize.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: My strongest skill is really my auditory scene analysis. It’s not voodoo. I’m just quite neurodivergent and, I think, my echoic buffer is slightly longer than most. I can hold audio in my mind’s ear for a rather long time. I also have a pinch of synesthesia, where I can almost see and zero in on specific sounds that, to most people, seem buried under layers. I’ve been able to do this since I was a little kid; it’s just something I was born with, I suppose. Sure, I’ve studied audio engineering and all that, and I have doctorate level research in the field—that helps—but if we’re being honest here, fate (the universe, divinity maybe) simply gave me an uncanny ability to analyze and process audio, and I’m thankful for that.