When you were a kid, what was the first thing that caught your attention with music?
To me it seems strange. Having done this my entire life, it still seems strange that it's a job or a career. There are no other professional music people in my family. I have a cousin who's an opera singer, and it's just the two of us. Music, however, was a thing that was always going on in my house. It was mainly Motown coming from my dad's side – I was probably the only five-year-old who knew all the words to every Sam Cooke song. The salsa records and Santana came from my mom. I didn't know what an engineer was until – I remember the very specific moment: I was in my older brother's car, and we were listening to “Kiss,” the Prince song. A lot of Prince songs famously have no bass on them. I was 10 or 11. I asked, “Chuck, what is that? Why is the drum doing that ‘padda-duhn’?” I was trying to mime it. He said, “Oh, it sounds like the engineer put a reverse reverb on it because there's no bass in the song, so they had to fill it out.” My brother was into music production and DJ'ing, so he had the language for it. I asked, “The who did what? What's an engineer?” I thought that music just happened. That was the first tangible time that I even knew that there was anybody involved in that process. It certainly was not a moment where I was thinking, “I'm going to be an engineer.” I was always a fan of music, and much at my brother's behest, listening to things that the average 10-year-old was not listening to. For every New Kids On The Block tape, he said, “You have to listen to A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul.” In high school, my taste evolved. It wasn't until college where I pivoted from doing mainly sports to caring about music in a way where I wanted to interact with it.
I heard you DJ’d. Would you consider that your official foray into music?
I DJ'd a lot when I went to NYU [New York University], at every little tavern, bar, or dive that would have me. All vinyl. I was seeing what music did, and how these things go together. People seemed to react in ways when there would be an unexpected thing blending in underneath. I would also have the challenge where I'd look around the room and think, “I don't know that guy, but I'm going to play his favorite song right now.” Or, “That person's not dancing. How do I get them to dance?” It was cool to not be responsible for being super social at the party. I wouldn't have to come up with small talk because I was DJ'ing. That’s when I got the bug, and the understanding of how music is this thing that we can describe and talk about the theory of and the DNA of, but at the end of the day it does a thing. That's when I started meeting a lot of people where, on paper, we probably had nothing in common other than music. Around that time, I also had a radio show on WNYU, which was an amazing privilege to be broadcasting on FM radio in New York City as a 19-year-old. I was interviewing lots of cool people because it was a pretty big college station. I remember spending a lot of my time on Friday nights after my radio shift in a record room that maybe held 10,000 records and CDs. I thought, “Well, somebody curated this.” A music director listened to it, and there was something in there that was given a production value of why this needed to be in the archive. I would sit there and think, “Okay, I'm going to go to the M's tonight.” I had my little laptop, and I would be ripping the CDs. I was trying to expose myself to music. “Mercury Rev, what the heck is this?" "George Harrison? Huh?” I saw this opportunity where I was thinking, “All I have to do is pay attention to it.” That's how I started thinking about interacting with music, whether it was broadcasting or DJ'ing. The first thing that I produced, like most people who are DJ'ing, was making extended edits. My mom got me a copy of Pro Tools LE for my birthday so that I could chop up songs, and my brother taught me how to use an [Akai] MPC so I could make extended edits. I did bootleg remixes and spent ungodly amounts of money pressing at Hub-Servall [Record Mfg. Corp.] in New Jersey – 50 or 100 copies of a vinyl to give out as promotion. That's when I first started making stuff, and people liked it.
Did you have a DJ name?
DJ Tab. I kept it pretty simple. And then I got a harebrained idea of making a record. I don't know why. It could have been a 19-year-old ego thing, or it could have been me dramatically underestimating what it takes to make a record. I was getting a lot of experience talking to a lot of producers, as well as other DJs and people that I liked in the New York scene. This was early 2000s New York, so it was quite a scene. There were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Liars, and TV On The Radio all within three blocks of each other in Williamsburg. People would let me hang out at studios and I'd pretend I knew what I was doing. I guess I've always had the personality of the tech bug; I like taking stuff apart and seeing how it works. Luckily, I've always been technically adept. I thought, “Maybe I can crack the code on how to make a record.” I did a few demos on my [TASCAM] Portastudio 424, which I still have sitting over here, and I could fly on that thing. I had an MPC, a drum kit, a [Roland] JUNO, an ARP [synthesizer], and a Roland drum machine of some sort. I was making instrumentals. I borrowed guitars and instruments from people and started making little demos. Then that got attention. Some people – the right people, I guess – liked it. I was thinking, "Wow, this is going rather easy. This is pretty cool. Maybe I'll get signed.” I was 20 by then. I didn't know how to engineer anything, but I knew that the snare didn't sound as good as [Radiohead’s] OK Computer, so I'd move the microphone a quarter of an inch and try. I started working with a producer who had way more accolades than me, who I assumed knew what he was doing, and who I won't name in this interview. Then the wheels fell off. All of a sudden, there were rules. I went into a professional studio, and I was berated about why things didn't sound good and told, “You can't do that because it's going to distort.” I asked, “Is that bad? I don't know." But I went with it, because I was trying to be open to the fact that this person knew more than me.
Right.
Then I came home, and I was listening. There was a CD-R of the engineer's mixes and then my demos of the same song. I put it on the CD player at home and I was trying to come to terms with it. I listened to his mix and thought, “Oh, it's not that bad. I'm probably being too precious and having demo-itis.” I walked over to the CD player to write a note down and I saw that it was my mix, and I went, “I think I need to do this myself.” Because I didn't know what I was doing at all, but if I'm removed from the bias of it being good and professional, I knew how I felt.
I love what you just said, “Removed from the bias of it being good and professional.” That's so good.
That was the first studio I'd ever walked into in my life. I was the client, and there were big speakers and gear that I'd only seen in magazines. I was thinking, “I guess they know what they're doing.” It was coming to a point where I was dreading going to the studio, so finally I said, “If anyone's going to fuck up my record, it's going to be me.” That's when I started finishing it myself. Around that time my friend, Amanda, was working at Virgin Records, when it was a label in the city. She said, “If you need help engineering, you should talk to my friend Tony. He's a super nice guy, and I'm sure he'll help you out.” It turned out to be Tony Maserati. I don't think I even had a cell phone at the time, so I had to memorize his phone number – which I still have memorized, for various reasons. I called him, and we had a brief chat. He was very nice, and he said, “Why don't you come to the Hit Factory [Studio]? Come by whenever and we'll talk.” Being my overeager self, I said, “How's now?” He said, “Well, it's midnight.” I said, “Oh, is it too late?” [laughter] He told me he was going to be there all night, so I was like, “All right. I'll be there.” I'm sure I spent the last little crumbs of money that I had on a taxi to get all the way to the Hit Factory. I showed up, got to hang out with him, and tried not to be shocked that I was standing in the Hit Factory when two days ago I was convincing myself that I was going to fuck up my record by myself. He would let me hang out. If he wasn't going to use the studio, I could play some tracks for him, and he would give me notes on my mixes. If I knew what I know now, I probably would have been shyer. I vaguely knew most of the work Tony had done, but I didn't realize what a big deal it was that he was taking time out of mixing Black Eyed Peas to listen to my dinky little record. I remember his mix notes were not very technical or concerned if there was too much 300 Hz in the snare or anything like that. It was more about, “Yeah, there's just not a lot of impact here, and I feel like the emotion’s getting lost.” Or, “The vocals are telling a story, but the band is telling a different story.” He would speak in emotions, the way people listen to and think about music, and that was that.
That's amazing.
I think about how many things had to happen for that opportunity to unfold in that way, and that I went that night. Maybe if I had waited and gone the next day, you'd be sitting talking to somebody else entirely.
You did the key thing most people find difficult. You made the phone call, and then you showed up after speaking to him one time. You knew you had to get there.
Yeah. Never underestimate the naivete of a 20-year-old! The opportunities that I had, at least in the realm of DJ'ing, were socially based. I'd hang out somewhere long enough, and if I wasn't a complete idiot then I'd get booked at some gig. I'm not saying that's unserious work, but it's different than being in Studio 1 of Hit Factory. There have been myriad times that I've been in rooms like that since, where I've been stunned that I'm there, “What am I doing in this room?” Especially when it's, "What am I doing in this room? I'm low key in charge right now. I have everybody fooled.”
I have that feeling constantly.
Yeah. I think it keeps you alive. It keeps you honest, at least.
Somebody once said, “There's great power in not knowing what can't be done.”
That's a more articulate way of saying you can learn rules, but you learn limitations when you learn rules. I can't say that the record that I released [Cacophonics by The Ten Paces] was popular, by any stretch. But, for whatever reason, people liked it when I put it out, and they were like, “Hey, can you help us produce our record?” I'd say, “I'm not entirely sure I know what that means. But, as luck would have it, I'm not employed anymore and I've got oceans of time. If you want to figure it out with me for the better part of a year, let's do it.” In the early 2000s of New York, there were so many bands and so many people that just wanted to make music. I'm not going to say it was easy, but the hustle was rewarded well.
Right.
People knew me from DJ'ing, and I think a lot of times I was one of those engineers or producers that knew more about it than the artist did, so it seemed like I was good. I skated by a few times. But I kept doing that until I didn't have time for a real job anymore. I used to work directing television. That's what I went to NYU for, journalism. One day I had to make a decision between a gig of a band that was going to be big – spoiler alert, they didn't end up being big – or going to my shift. I went to the shift because I had to bring the network on the air, but I was thinking, “This is going to be my last shift. I'm out.” I quickly realized that working in television was not my bliss. The worst day I've had as a producer is still better than the best I ever had doing that.
And you were learning on the job?
All learning on the job. I worked for Tony casually. He was either at Chung King, Sony [Music Studios], or Hit Factory. I never worked at a studio as an intern or as a studio assistant. I think that bullseye on my back made me even more proactive than I normally am. I would bribe the intern and say, “If you give me the [SSL] G Series [mixing console] manual to take to Kinko’s, I'll buy you lunch tonight.” There'd be some esoteric thing that Tony would use, and I'd think, “I bet tomorrow he's going to ask me to do something on that.” We all know the annoyance of recalling a [Lexicon] PCM70 [reverb]. The thing sounds great, but it's so many menu pages. I would get the manual for that. I was always aware that there were people who had gotten the traditional education, and I wanted to find a way to stay useful. One of the ways I would do that is I would overhear engineers talking about things they had to do every day that they hated doing, and I would pretend that I loved doing that. Like editing drums, [Celemony] Melodyne-ing, or Auto-Tuning. I would say, “I love doing that. I’ve got a little rig, and I can sit in the closet and do it.” As long as no one watched how painfully slow I was, they were happy to not have to do it. So, there was definitely on-the-job training, but there was also a lot of bobbing and weaving of social norms of why I was allowed to be in the rooms, and why I was superseding hierarchies. When I put out the record of my own music and it was not a commercial success, I was relieved. I realized I didn't want to be an artist, and this job that I made up of a producer and helping other people make records was a revelation. I'm in everyone's band for a month or so, and I don't have to drive a van across the country or work out the guest list. Around the time that my record came out, TV On The Radio put out their first EP. I listened to it, and I realized these guys were doing what I was trying to do, but they're doing it so much more effortlessly and so much better than I ever could have. I don't need to be an artist. I want to listen to records like this, be inspired, and help other people. It felt freeing to be a producer. I say this to younger people all the time, "Remove 'aspiring' from the name producer and just start making things." I don't think there's a formal permitting process, “I anoint you producer.”
[laughs]
I remember this formative and prescient moment in my career where I realized this is something that I want to be doing. We were at Chung King’s Blue Room. It had a big SSL [console] in it, and Tony was mixing. I think it was Black Eyed Peas, and it might have been “Where is the Love.” I'm not sure, but it was going to be a big song. Tony was there and sort of paying attention and not. I was thinking, “Man, when does he actually start mixing? This is crazy.” Then he got a message from will[.i.am] that he was going to be there in about 45 minutes, and Tony was like, “Oh, shit. I’ve got to go do something.” I watched this guy take something and make it magical. I saw him not thinking in ways that I hadn't seen other engineers do before. He was just reacting to the music. It wasn't until years later I realized he was intentionally not “overcooking” and listening to it 10,000 times, because he knew will wasn't going to come for another seven hours. He wanted to have it be fresh, and he probably had an idea in his head of what he wanted it to be. He did his 45 minutes on it, and it sounded amazing. Then he came to me, “Hey, do you know how to edit the SMPTE? Because the bridge is going to change, but I have automation on there. You've got to edit the thing here so that the bridge is a little less long, but I need my automation to stay the same. You know how to do that?” I said, “Yeah, yeah.” He's like, “Cool. I'm going to dinner, but will.i.am will be here when I'm back.” I knew 60 percent of what he meant, but I had this idea that I'd either get fired or I'd do this for the rest of my life. It took me the full hour. At the height of me working on an [SSL] J Series every day, it should have been a 20 minute task, including checking it. It took me a whole hour. Today, we would just slice it in Pro Tools and not use that automation. Tony walked in as I'm checking it, and thankfully it sounded okay upon first listen. But he definitely knew something was up! He said, “Did you finish that just now?” I didn't know what to do, so I made up a reason why I was still listening, and he was like, “All right. Whatever.” He sits down, rewinds, listens to the spot, switches speakers, tilts his head, listens to the spot again. He doesn't say anything, and he doesn't acknowledge me. will.i.am walks in, and we're there until the sun comes up. After everyone leaves and I'm tidying up, he says to me, “What are you up to tomorrow?” I turned him and said, “I don't know. I'll be here.” End of story. No, “You saved the day! Great job, Chris! Hey, will, did you know that Chris did this thing that was really cool with the…” No. The reward was that I got to come there again and learn some other crazy shit. It was great. If it went south, Tony would have fixed it in ten minutes, but there would have been some consequence or domino effect that would have made the session not go so great. I remember that feeling, and I remember thinking that no one who listens to the song is ever going to know. I liked that. Maybe that means I prefer being behind the scenes. I could have flown on a cloud home that night for all I remember, but I remember that feeling very distinctly. I don't remember the train ride home. I don't remember how tired I was. All I remember is that really good feeling. I have no idea if Tony remembers that story!
What inspired you to bet on yourself like that?
Both of my parents are autodidacts, for sure. My dad built my parents’ house and started a construction company. He wasn't a union carpenter or anything; he just learned how to build and figured it out. My mom came here from Puerto Rico when she was quite young, taught herself English, and then was valedictorian of her class in high school That's what I came up under, as well as the general ethos of, “You can figure this out.” There's a degree of mythology to everything when you tell stories that are 20 years old – but that the 20-year-old version of me probably wanted to go with the flow of the energy in the room and keep up. I wasn't completely reckless; I was prepared. I was sitting on the couch, watching Tony do this thing – which, at the time, seemed like watching Superman lift a 50-ton boulder – and it made me think I could lift up the back of a Hyundai! I was watching a thing that I barely understood at the time, but I could tell how good the music was sounding and how the song was coming together, and it was demonstrating how musical mixing really is. He made this this experience that I'd seen in the faces of people that I've DJ'd for, and in the faces of my parents dancing in the kitchen playing Motown records. I thought, “He did all that. I'm not going to drop the ball.” What a bummer it would be for him to do all this and then the assistant says, “I don't know how to do that.” So, I just figured it out. I was commuting on the subway, and I don't remember a trip where I didn't have the SSL Little Green Book or manual in my hand. I was aware that the other people that I was working around had gone to school or had another leg up, and I had to figure it out. I was nervous, but I was smart enough to save a new mix pass and a snapshot on the desk so I could backtrack if I messed up. I was pretty pragmatic about it. It took me way longer than it should have, but it worked out.
That's a rare blend of belief, self-esteem, and just mojo, you know?
It would be impossible to overstate how fortunate and lucky I've been in the constellation of people that have been patient with me asking questions, believing in me, and showing me that they're willing to invest the time. That we can meet each other in this mutual commitment to excellence, and that's our currency. I hesitate to use the word “lucky,” but I will say that I always rose to the challenge. I wasn't scrolling on my phone. I was always thinking, “There's something I should be doing right now. I want to make sure everything's good in this room." There's always something to be thinking of or doing. When I was working with producer Alex Newport [Tape Op #53] at The Magic Shop [#66], I remember they had a drum tech come in and then everyone left – it's their time to go take a smoke break and not be around while he goes tap-tap-tap. I thought, “Wow, everyone's leaving the room, and this guy's a library of knowledge.” I love drums, and the sessions that I had at the time couldn't afford a drum tech. So, I asked him if I could hang out and ask questions, and he said, “No one ever does that. What do you want to know?” Now, if I work on a record and they can afford a drum tech, great. But if not, I love tuning drums. I do it; it's a pleasure, and I love that it makes my life as an engineer and a producer way easier down the line. That's all because I asked him – over ten different sessions – to show me, “How do we get the rising note out of the snare? What happens when the tom starts doing that farting thing?” This wasn't a Moon Gel [drum damper pad] situation; this was a purist that I was dealing with, so I got the real science. Same thing with techs. When repair techs would come to studios, I would stay around. We all know techs can be socially taxing at times – and usually that's inversely proportional to how good they are at their jobs. But I would ask techs all the time, “How do you know that sound means that the tube is gone in the mic and that the capsule is fine?” I've always been a sponge that way. I'm lucky that when someone tells me a thing, I can usually retain it and file it in my brain.
I am exactly the same way.
Oh, I know. I can tell. I haven't seen you at any of the meetings, but it takes one to know one! [laughter]
I'm sure you run into younger versions of yourself, every once in a while. It's probably rare, but you can sense it right away.
I can tell who has the bug, and who also really dislikes not knowing how to do things. You'll only catch me once not knowing how to do something, and later I'm going to know five different ways to do it.
The first time I worked with a great mixer in-person – this would have been the late-‘90s – it was Chris Lord-Alge. I remember nervously asking, “How are you getting that vocal sound?” He says, “Oh, it's a little of this, a little of that.” I said, “No, really, how are you getting that vocal sound?” He looked at me, shocked. He asked, “You really want to know?” I said, “Absolutely. I'd love to know.” And he showed me the whole thing.
It's a pleasure sharing it. We learn by explaining and teaching, and you're shutting down an opportunity for dialogue by saying, “Oh, a little EQ, a little compression, whatever. Don't worry about it.” If you get into it, you're reinforcing what it is that you do, and you're also appreciating that the person cares. But then, why not talk to the producer about their sound? So many times, we – as mixers – spend all this time and then we get an email of the things they don't like. We have to have a thick skin about it. I have to think, “Well, if they didn't mention it, it's good news.” But when somebody invites you into that dialogue – excited about a thing that you did – I can't imagine not wanting to talk more about that. I've learned so much from getting mix notes from producers – young and preeminent people – because of the way that they talk about their music. I always learn something from the way that somebody articulates music. I'm sitting in front of thousands of dollars' worth of gear, and it's a very technical thing. But sometimes people forget that language is a technology, too. The way that you're talking about your music says a thing – whether it's the artist, the producer, or anybody creatively invested. If someone says, “That's a great vocal sound,” I'll tell them what I did, but I also want to know more about what they like about it. I love those moments of dialogue. I've learned so much in those moments of comedown after crazy sessions; the artist is walking down the hall, everyone's looking at each other, and it's like, “Well, we can't go home right now," because everyone's vibrating at this high. Those are the moments where you can tap into something that feels like a community instead of, "It's just professional." I wish more people were aware that they have something to gain by entering into this kind of dialogue. It's part of a special tradition of artists and creative professionals sharing and making each other better.
It's that whole misnomer about, “People are going to steal my sound.”
It's not about, “It was a little 6 kHz on the vocal.” It's about, "Why did you have that creative idea? Were you inspired by the music to do a technical thing that had an emotional outcome?" I think a lot of people that are secretive think that everything is a mix template or a secret. They're missing the point that it's about generating ideas, responding to music, and being inspired. And then having the technical wherewithal to execute the idea. But it begins with the idea. I say that all the time, "The equipment doesn't come with songs." For a lot of great mixers, it's about what's magic and compelling in the song, and how to showcase that and support it in the best way possible. And there's no one right answer for every time!
What creatively turns you on as a record maker? What are you looking for, and what do you not like?
Well, that's a big one. You and I have both been fairly successful in not being pigeonholed into one genre or type of artist.
I love your discography.
That's something that – in terms of my career – is the thing that I look back at and I feel the proudest of; just having diversity in my discography. As soon as you have a little bit of success in one thing, everyone wants you to start doing that thing because it's bankable. “Oh, he's the – insert whatever – person.” Things start to get referential, and then all the jobs that get pitched to you, or that you seem to be getting to work with, sort of sound the same. I've always been self-conscious about that. And maybe that comes from a DJ'ing pedigree, where I'm going to make these songs work in a certain context in a way that's maybe surprising and might not occur to most people. That's what I liked most about DJ'ing: Presenting new context to people. You can't really argue with a room full of people dancing. So, I've always aimed for that and worked very hard to not be the “insert genre here” guy. Because of that, what makes me the most excited is working on weirder stuff that no one's heard of yet or the label's saying, “Well, we don't know if this one's really a single.” I often find myself working on the album track that the artist says is their favorite song on the record, or it's the interpretive key for the whole album. I could think of a handful of artists where that's already the case. Or it's the one where this is the first time the band has worked with a producer who's not their buddy from high school or just themselves. I love that too, because that's a vulnerable place to be in and I like meeting people halfway – sometimes more than halfway. There's this precious thing where they've gotten as far as they can get it; it's missing something, and they might not even be able to articulate it. Then here's this guy coming in swinging in on a chandelier telling them what to do. From my early times, working with a producer and engineer who wasn't me, I liked to learn from the antithesis of that experience. It shouldn't feel, “Oh, when we brought Chris in, that's when we started losing control of the record.” It should be, “Wow! This thing is blossoming into something that we didn't even know it could be.” That's what gets me excited. I always do this creative conversation – even when mixing, but certainly when producing – and I just had it the other day with a new artist. I made them make me a mood board, but the rule is anything goes. All artists are necessarily interdisciplinary; we're talking about music right now, but they probably have strong opinions on photography, sculpture, painting, and film. Fundamentally, as an artist, they are somebody that sees the world slightly differently than everybody else, and we get to enjoy that articulation of this. The rule is that any art goes, and you can't explain it. It's the opposite of sending me a Spotify playlist where they're saying, “We like the drums on this song, and the vocals here.” We're not defining x in terms of y anymore; I'm stepping into their world for a taste of what they enjoy and what makes them feel good vibrationally. I print out the images and put them up in the studio. I like to interpret for myself what the painting of an old barn has to do with the third song on the record. I don't need them to tell me, “It was my grandfather's barn.” I want to also interpret it for myself, because I'm a creative collaborator here. I think that does two things: It gets people excited, because it's like, “Oh, now I'm not doing something where I'm just sitting comping vocals for six months. I'm thinking about what this record means to me and what I like artistically.” And it also gets people in a holistic and emotional and creative mindset for mixing. If I can advance that to them, that gesture, then that means when we're going over mix notes or they're talking about what they want things to sound like, they're speaking emotionally and creatively. They're not saying, “What was the attack time on that compressor?” They're in this place that is familiar to the reason that they started making music anyway, and it's my job to find the technical correlation of whatever affect they want. It also invites people into the headspace that this is going to be a fun process. We're going to do a great job. Nothing's going to happen that you don't sign off on, but we're also going to have fun. I obviously took to heart that first experience that I had, where I thought, “Well, this stopped being fun quickly.” If I’m working with newer artists, I can usually do that. If I'm mixing a major label project where there are 15 A&Rs and 36 producers involved, we all know that's a different skill set. I'm making sure it sounds good on everything and that it's done. There's no need to reinvent the wheel there, and that's a different need. But that's what gets me excited. The other part of your question was what don't I like…
…that's one of the best answers I've ever heard to any question.
[laughing] Aww, come on!
What's something that is a non-starter for you? What is something you don't want to work on?
I say this often: It's like asking a barber if you need a haircut. I'm always like, “I don't know. The demo sounds great. You guys should just master this. Oh, you want me to mix it? Okay, I guess I could do that.” And with that, I'm always investigating. Whether internally or out loud, I’m always questioning, "Why me on this project? What is it that they want me to bring to it, and am I the right person to do it?" It’s a gut check of, “Am I the right person to collaborate with on this project?” It's tough. This happens more in the mixing side of my life than production, because I have so many filters with the production thing. I've got to believe and want to attach myself to something for a matter of months. It takes a lot of time. One isn't easier than the other, but they take different sides of energy of me. People coming to me for the wrong reasons doesn't happen as much with production, because usually I will have been like, “You guys have something here, but I don't know if I'm the right person for this.” They'll usually take less offense if it's a production job. With mixing, I feel like there's a trend to think antithetically to what I just said about, “Let's make this an emotional thing.” And, again, I say those things in certain contexts and to certain people. I said in an interview once that the best thing anyone's ever said about a mix of mine is, “Wow! I really love that song.” A lot of people got it, but a lot of people didn't. I do find sometimes people are after a sound, or solving something that mixing really can't. I don't know that my sound as a mixer is anything more than your song's best version of itself. I thoroughly enjoy working in a craft where the degree to which I did my job is inversely proportional to the degree to which you're able to tell I did anything.
That's beautifully put.
I got notes from an artist once – it was actually on the SOHN [Christopher Taylor] record that we did last year, Trust. I sent him the mixes and then it was a holiday break. I knew he was going to be a little bit jarred by these, so I gave him some space. Then, two days later, he said, “Man, it sounds so good. Everything's really close. I'll come to New York, and we'll knock it out. It sounds beautiful.” I couldn't help myself, so I had to ask him, “What was going on the last two days?” He replied, “Honestly, I listened to your mixes and I felt a little mad. I thought, ‘He didn't even do anything.’ Then I listened to my rough mixes, and I realized, ‘Oh! He did what I thought my rough mixes sounded like.’” I said, “Yeah, that sounds about right to me.” Because we had been working on it for so long, and he's an amazing producer, technically there was not much that I could do that he couldn't do. It's just perspective, at that point. But I knew we were in a good place. That's easy to do when the artist is a producer and a friend of mine, it's on an indie label, and he wants to make this artistic gesture. It's harder to do when you're being confronted with how art intersects commerce, and it's about making it loud, or making it like the rough mix. Sometimes, I wonder if we'll look back on this last ten years of music and wonder what the hell we were doing in some respects. [laughter] I don't have as concrete an answer of what's a non-starter for me, so much as what I tend to avoid. I'm more skeptical of, “Why do you want me to mix this? Are you actually looking for something different? Or do you want me to do a Serban [Ghenea], Manny [Marroquin, Tape Op #109], Jaycen [Joshua], Tony [Maserati], whatever impression for slightly less than they charge?" That, I'm not interested in. There are people that are going to do that better than me. That's probably the most cogent way that I can answer that.
What would you say to someone who's getting involved in recording music as a profession?
I say this a lot. Whenever I'm interviewing for an assistant. When I had a team of engineers when I was working at Red Bull [Music Academy]. In DMs all the time. The first gut check is to understand the industry and the business aspect, but not to the detriment being a fan of music. That sounds simple, and perhaps it is, but you might be surprised how many people that DM me and say, “Maybe I can come to New York. I want to do this. I want to be an engineer. What do you recommend?” I'll ask them what music they're listening to right now. Not even, “Send me three of your mixes.” Or, “What bands have you worked with?” Simply, ”What do you like?” And that is usually a difficult thing for them to answer, because they're focused on what music is. They forgot that there was a point that music did a thing to them that made them think, “I want to be immersed in this.” That's the first place that I start. Do I think everyone gets a shot? I don't know that everyone gets a shot, but I know that the people that do don't get it when they're ready; they get it when they're prepared, at best. You're never ready. The first huge song that I mixed, I was sitting in the room in L.A. with Tony Maserati. We'd been there for three days straight, and he was going home. The A&R [person] said, “We have this other one coming in.” I said, “I'll do it.” I'd been there longer than Tony had at that point, but I had to put on a happy face, muscle my way through it, and take advantage of the opportunity. I was not ready, but I was prepared. Don't overthink it, keep moving through it. Respond to the music, trust your ears, and trust the room. A lot of people invert the two, and they think about being ready in terms of listening to someone that's older than them, watching Mix With The Masters or whatever, and emulating the tactics of people but not emulating their strategies. People hear an amazing vocal performance and the thing that they gravitate to is, "What was the vocal chain?" They're going, “Okay, [Telefunken] ELA M 251 [microphone], got it; Neve 1073 [preamplifier]; [Tube-Tech] CL 1B [compressor], great.” I'm not saying that those tools aren't important, but ultimately thinking strategically is, “How do I put an artist in a place where they're going to feel so comfortable, yet challenged?” That's the harder work, and for most young people it takes them a while to get that. But the ones that have that bug that you and I have, they get it pretty quickly. Understanding what it's like to have to put trust into someone who's engineering, or producing and empathizing at that level, that's way more important than what EQ you're using.
Let's blow that up a bit. How do you approach making people feel safe in the studio?
It operates differently, based on the artist. Everyone has their differences of what feeling safe looks like. When I'm starting out, the artist walks in and I've got anywhere between 4 and 15 seconds to show them that I'm not an idiot. That's not going to be that I put up a [Neumann] U 47 [mic] with an old capsule in it. No. It's going to be that it's really neat in here, I pay attention to detail, I have the song up already, and I’ve figured out the key and the tempo. I'm calm, but professional. I ask what they'd like to do, and how they want to go about it. I'm there to take their lead and facilitate how they want to go about the process. “Safe” can look like, “Did you pay attention? Did you think of me?” Those are some ways that we can communicate quite simply, “Hey, I thought of you.”
It's empathy.
Yeah. We work in the craft of manufacturing stored affect. We take emotions, we get people who are so talented, we get them to do what they do most naturally, and we get to capture it so everyone gets to enjoy it forever. That is one of the biggest privileges I can think of. Just having appreciation and excitement that we get to do that for a job is palpable to people. One of the most contagious emotions is excitement. Being excited can make somebody feel at ease. “Oh, you actually like the music? This isn't just a gig for you?” If you're excited, they'll be excited as well. There have been so many times where I wonder if these would have even made it to becoming songs that people have released if I didn't say, “Oh, what's that thing you're doing over there? Are we going to do that? Can we get a voice note of that?” And honestly, that's the least I can do. It comes down to people skills. There are a lot of ways to communicate, “We're in this together. I got you.” I remember the first time I recorded Mary J. Blige, I had asked a friend of mine who'd worked with her for some tips of what she liked. He started telling me what mics he used and what preamp. I said, “No, no, no. I got that. What's the insider?” He told me about a candy that she likes, and that's what I wanted to know. You bet she noticed that when she walked into the control room. She was happy, she was put at ease that I was paying attention to details, and the session went great. Mary is phenomenal; there's nothing I'm going to do to make her not sound like her! That matters way more than the vintage mic and preamp. They can be writing this song from a vulnerable place, then all of a sudden they're in this studio and there's this stranger staring at them from across the room, they have a big silver thing in front of their face, and everyone's saying, “Okay, so make it more believable.” There's a way to set the stage, and I find it thrilling to figure that out. 
