Mixing and Mastering is both artistic and technical.
Vibe, emotion, and flow.
Precision, polish, and power.
A Human Collaborator
You get a real person with experience and style, who can add something alive to your songs: creative flavour, technical care, and fresh ears.
Fresh Ears
When you’ve heard your music a thousand times already, you’re no longer able to hear the forest for the trees. You probably also can’t hear the trees for the forest. Hiring a sound engineer is like calling in a skilled arborist – someone who can still tell which tree is which, and how to tend each one for the sake of the forest.
Technical Precision
When I get a new project, I listen carefully. I can hear your songs like it’s my first time (because it is). I can use my fresh perspective and my highly optimized listening skills/gear/environment to hear your creation more clinically, to identify the things you’ve long since blurred-out for your own sanity (so many trees!).
Creative Vision
Once everything is set up for success, I can listen for new creative opportunities where your song can be enhanced and emboldened.
There’s a unique style to my work. It’s not inherently any better or worse than someone else’s, but it may fit better or worse with your music. Check out my work and think about how my sound could enhance your sound. When you get in touch, tell me about your vision for the project, and we’ll start figuring it out.
Communicative Inspiration
Mixing and mastering does not ‘create’ a piece of art. It’s a craft that helps to refine an already-created work. The challenge is how to creatively enhance your project, without over-running it with new ideas.
A great mixing and/or mastering engineer is able to listen to you, as well as your songs. That takes another special skillset: the ability to learn, adapt, and communicate clearly.
There’s a Crack in Everything
I don’t want to polish the face off of your song. I don’t want to round off the details with careless presumptions. I don’t want to wrap it in perfect plastic and put it up on the superstore shelf, where it can blend in with a thousand other brands of canned applause.
A piece of art shouldn’t be defined by how perfect it is. If you chase ‘perfect’ you end up with shelves and shelves of sterile and standardized. Art isn’t actually intent on perfection. And honestly, listeners don’t care about perfect either. They care about how it makes them feel.
As Leonard Cohen famously sang:
“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
We need to make your music sound technically great, yes. But we also need to work with its wrinkles and quirks - the ‘cracks’ that define your music’s character - and take care not to polish away the soul of your art.
By taking care to appreciate and articulate the special cracks in your music, we can let the light shine in.
Get in Touch
Use the Contact form if you want to talk more about your project. Tell me about your vision, your aims, your influences, and the special ‘cracks’ in your music.
I’d love to apply my technical precision, creative vision, and communicative inspiration to help make your music shine.