Remote Mixing & Mastering

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

A: There's a ton! My biggest thing to date has been my work with Louyah. We've done over 20.5 million streams together, but our biggest song ended up with meeting Snoop Dogg and going insanely viral on TikTok. I'm just so proud that both of us literally came from nothing and were able to build each other up beyond our wildest dreams. These records mean the world to us. I'm also super proud of my work with Kota the Friend, we have done so much together over the years and it's been enjoyed by so many fans. It's been an honor to be a big part of telling his story!

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Tons of stuff. I have an album of my own coming out in March through OneRPM, a Gervs record releasing beginning of next month, an EP I'm working on for Limi, and an album for Young PWavy, and now I'm working on a bunch of singles for Lil Snek, who's about to be a name a lot of people know very very soon. I'm excited!

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

A: Not yet! I'm trying to get a few graphics and video editor friends on board, and I have a couple other audio engineer friends looking for work as well. When they're ready to get set up here, I'll be sure to get them started!

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital, analog takes way too much time for very little return. Plus, if I need to do revisions on mixes, which I try to avoid as much as possible, it's infinitely easier to recall a session. Then again, if I had an analogue LA2A on my desk, I'd likely use that on pretty much every track. It's hard to say

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

A: I promise that I will do my absolute best to make the track match up to others in the style. If you provide me with relatively cleanly-recorded vocals and/or instruments, then it will come out up-to-par. Your job is to give me a good song, my job is to present it in its absolute best light.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Honestly, it's the simplest of pleasures; I like to make drums sound good. That's my most favorite thing. If I can make the drums hit a certain way, I'm happy.

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

A: People tend to ask me if I'm sure I can make it match up to similar tracks. I mean, that's kinda my entire job!

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

A: The biggest misconception has to be that any engineer can do what I do. A mix from one engineer will be totally different to how I might touch it, and people are interested in my work for a reason. The sound that my mixes bring to the table has proven time and time again that it works, and has been accepted by audiences all over the world.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: What's your budget? What are your influences for the project? What kind of plans do you have for this project's marketing/branding? When can you get me the stems?

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

A: Ah, this is an easy one. My monitors, my computer, my mic, my coffee maker, and a bottle opener. That's all I'd need, and I'd forget I was deserted! No volleyball needed.

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

A: I've been doing this for 11 years now. I started because I didn't want to hang out much in high school, so I started making music. I got better and better at it, and made tons of friends through it, and found my home in the DAW and group chats with producer friends. I went to school for music, and just got even deeper. Since then, I've been freelancing around the industry trying to make ends meet. After getting my first million streams on a project with Kota the Friend, I solidified in my brain that this is what I was made to do.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: I've built a sound of making mixes extremely clear and defined. I guess my style is based around making sure each element can be heard clearly, and when you listen in headphones, if you wanted to focus on just the tambourine, it's easy to hear what it's doing. I want to showcase the whole song, and all its components.

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

A: I don't have any crazy reaching goals like that to be honest, I love working with the artists I know. I just want to make great music, doesn't matter who it's with. I wanna work with people making music that I would listen to while I clean up around the house, or driving to an event. If I had to choose, I'd say Blackbear or Playboi Carti, just cause I'm a big fan of the two!

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Force it. I know, it's the opposite of what everyone says, but when something isn't working, force it, and move on. Start a new project. It's better to have a crap beat that's close to finished and never sees the light of day than give up on every idea once you meet resistance. You have to build the skill of making something out of nothing when you end up working professionally, and the only way to have a big catalogue is by making a lot of stuff. Even if 30% comes out garbage, the other 70% is useful. If you make 10 beats in a day and 9 of them come out like trash, you still learned a ton and worked on your skills more than someone who gave up after the first crappy beat.

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

A: I tend to focus primarily on pop, hip hop, and R&B these days, but I'd have a great time mixing a country track. I'd probably have dubious amounts of fun mixing polka, to be honest.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Being able to maximize the potential of the material I'm given. I've got tons of experience working with sub-optimal audio, and somehow making it passable. Audio manipulation is definitely my strongest suit.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I bring a polished, "finalized" sound to the table. I've always been interested in how people get that "professional" sound you always hear about, and I think I've got it down to second nature at this point.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Generally, I'll pull in all the stems and get started renaming them to things that make sense to my brain and organizing into groups. I'll build the track up from there, working on each sound as needed until it starts to take shape as a full product. I'll send back a rough mix to make sure I'm in the right direction and take the artist's notes, and then finish tidying up and master the track to return as a final, Spotify-ready product!

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I tend to work from home nowadays, in a small, treated studio space with my Yamaha HS7s and a PC I built. It's very modest, but I'm reluctant to change the gear, considering the practice has treated me very well over the years! If millions of people like the mixes that come out of my spot, I think I've got something good going!

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

A: I have always been inspired from a wide range of tastes, due to my experience recording wildly different ensembles and solo acts throughout the years. These days, I draw lots of inspiration from Louis Bell and Max Martin, as well as more underground acts like Darci, Teflon Sega, Jutes, Louyah, and tons of others I'm lucky to consider friends!

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

A: Most commonly, I focus on mixing full production tracks, mastering the final product and delivering AAA quality audio for musicians across genre-lines. I do tons of beat mixing, vocal tuning and processing, mastering and even adding to production.