Were you from a musical family?
I'm from a musical family in the sense that they're gigantic fans of music. My mother played violin since she was a kid and my dad played the accordion when he was a kid, but neither one of them went on to pursue it. My brothers also both played instruments when they were younger, but they didn't pursue music either. I guess my brother still plays drums as a hobbyist. I wish that I was told to play the piano as a kid though, versus picking a horn or a wind instrument. The piano would be a little bit more important to my career trajectory at the moment. I wound up picking up saxophone early on and finding a pretty deep love and connection to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, the jazz greats of the '60s. That's my favorite decade of music.
What was your first experience with recording?
When it was time to decide what direction in music I would go, I was auditioning for the bigger conservatories of their time. I had to record audition tapes. My family didn't necessarily have the budget to put me in a studio to record them, so my dad thought it would be interesting if he purchased me an affordable Korg digital 16-track recorder. It sounded terrible, but it got my head around the idea of multitracking. I would find instrumental chord changes that were already royalty-free recorded, and then I'd find progressions that I was down with and I'd solo saxophone over it. Then I stumbled upon the effects section. I started putting random delays, reverbs, and choruses on my saxophone. I thought it was cool, but I never thought too much of it; that I wanted it to be a career at all. I wound up at The Hartt School of Music in Connecticut, studying classical saxophone and music education. I thought I would be a conductor or educator of some sort. In order to survive at school, I got a work-study job that wound up being in the recording studio of the school. They would record all of the classical and jazz performances and we would edit them together to release on CD and via their website, which was fascinating to me. The first time I saw Pro Tools I started cutting tracks up and manipulating audio in seemingly unique ways (to me) at the time. I thought, "Wow, I should do this for a living." I called my parents and brought it up to them. They were not big fans of me dropping out of school. After a long conversation, they allowed me to do that.
There's a lot more opportunity these days for people to get their foot in the door at a minimal cost.
Yeah! I remember that recorder probably cost only $500. The first time I recorded, it wasn't, "Make this sound as good as possible." It was like, "I know this can't sound that good, so let's get the job done and make it sound the best I can possibly get it."
I think that answers how you got into recording!
I did wind up getting an internship right away at one of the bigger studios on Long Island. My mom had a friend that linked us. I did get into a studio with SSL and Neve consoles very quickly after that. I was able to understand the recording studio atmosphere at a pretty young age. I was taken under the wing of the owner of Cove City Sound Studios, Richie Cannata, who was the saxophone player for Billy Joel at the time. He told me, "You should go in the room and sit behind the engineer. Don't ask too many questions. Keep your mouth shut." He maybe saw something in me, and he always wanted me in the room. Looking back, that was unparalleled luck to have the ability to watch people mix and record every day.
There's a whole palette of skills that you need to do this well. The recording process, mic'ing, mixing, producing, and being a psychologist in the room for the artist. Do you have a favorite of those?
I like them all, in different capacities. I love recording live music in a space that sounds good with good players. I do not like recording just a vocalist over an instrumental track; that happens pretty regularly in the pop music scene that I'm in. I will do that if I am producing a song and it needs to be done, but that is not where I think my forte lies. Setting up a few mics and capturing a performance in a space is one of my biggest passions. I'm into using ribbon mics and tube preamps, which I have many of, thanks to the likes of you and your team. I do love that it doesn't seem to be where I exist, mostly. Until today, I hadn't set up a microphone to record in a few months. I've been mixing for two months straight, every day, which I'm thankful for. But the psychologist in the room part is actually my favorite. I love dissecting and getting into the nitty-gritty of where peoples' intentions are coming from. To me, that's the biggest privilege of what I get to do, as well as the most impactful. If done well, you'll get the best out of the artist in that circumstance and in that session. Hopefully it'll translate to the world and the listener. That's my favorite part. It's hard to feel purposeful when your job is so replaceable, in a lot of ways. Especially in Los Angeles, there are hundreds and thousands of people who have talent – if you're not available for the gig, someone else will get the gig and do it adequately, if not more than adequately. I think, for me, the purpose is found in helping the artist translate their thoughts and emotions into a product that will stand the test of time. That's the most important role.
When you start a project from scratch, do you envision the final product in your mind and keep working towards that goal, or does it evolve?
It is dependent on the situation. I talk about this pretty regularly, because intention seems to be the most distinguishing part of being a professional. The ability to understand reference points and the intention of the artist, and get it over the finish line at as high a quality as possible. I have to give credit to the PMC speakers team, because I have recently upgraded my speakers to this MB3-A [three-way] active model, and they get me to my end goal much faster. I probably would say that 90 percent of the time I hear where I want it to be before I touch it. Part of that experience is listening to it in Apple AirPods. I like to walk around my block for the first three or four listens of the song to understand what it's like in the real world before hearing it on such a hi-fi reference system. This way I can understand how other people are going to digest it.
Can you give us a sense of how much you envision the final product when the artist might not be familiar with it or comfortable, and how you get around to convincing them?
The caliber of artist I work with on a production has not been as high as it is on the mixing side of things. The few production cuts that I've gotten with bigger named artists, I have not really been in the room with. I'm coming in more as the producer on a "finishing touch position" on the team. You don't want to convince someone that your idea is better than theirs, because that's obviously very subjective. But if you have any emotional capacity and empathy towards the artist's product, if you're able to have that connection, they'll feel that too. You're on the same team, at that point, and you want the best for the product. I tend to wind up seeing eye-to-eye with people, and I'm also only going to pick and choose certain arguments in an attempt to "win." A "snare up" mix is not a fight I'm willing to fight for if it's not distracting from the vocal and the emotion of the song. If that snare up mix takes away from the rhythm and impact of the vocal, I'm going to explain to them, "It's getting in the way of the vocal, so maybe we should lower the snare so it doesn't take over the vocal place." That's usually an easy win. If you start by saying, "You're wrong," or hitting them with more definitive language into why their decision is maybe dumb or incorrect, it can run you down a dark hole and they'll probably never hire you again. You have to be malleable and go with the flow, but also know that you're the hired professional and expert in the room. That's a tough balance.
That's the psychologist, again.
Yes, exactly. With songs being as loud as they're given to mixers in this day, when I start undoing the amount of limiting (and Ableton Live distortion) without a limiter on and peaking, it starts showcasing imbalances in the mix that were hidden. You're unveiling problems, where, if you have the rough mix on you at all times, you can A/B the balance. I think that's a secret that not everybody does, which is to constantly reference. You're still giving the artist and producer the balance they're striving for, but doing it in more of a proper way with dynamics; then all of a sudden you can see the deeper parts of the picture. I think there are tools to get the balance and loudness back that need to be studied and practiced.
When you're setting up a mix, whether it's your own project or something you're handed, do you have a process for exploring and figuring it out?
Yeah. First off, I have two assistants that do the prepping part. It happens most of the time. Ideally the session, whether it's stems or a Pro Tools session delivered to us, comes back sounding exactly like the last listened-to rough mix. When I say "listened-to" I mean by the A&R, the manager, the artist, the producer, the sister, the brother, the mom, and dad. Everybody involved who said, "Yes, this is the magic. This is the one. Let's get Jon to take it that last 5 percent and finish it off." When [my assistants] Josh [Deguzman] or Ingmar [Carlson] are setting this up, I'm coming in at that place. Every once in a while I'll be like, "Guys, I don't care about the rough mix. I don't think the rough mix sounds good, so put the stems in and get my templating. Get it colored and make it look nice for me. I'm going to mix it." I'd say that's few and far between, because people have their vibe injected into their rough mix, most of the time. And, at the level I'm working at, it's by great producers so there's no need to recreate it. Every once in a while, I get to have a lot of fun and do a faders-down mix of it. But the process starts there. As that's happening, I'm probably walking around, grabbing an espresso, and listening on my AirPods to that rough mix and understanding the intention of the producer and artist.
There are times when your process has to be fixing things, and there are other times when it's enhancing things. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, it's part of my 80/20 rule. This shifted in the past two or three years, where I spent the early parts of my career working on 80 percent of things I needed to do for survival and probably 20 percent things I felt passionate about. Now I've flipped it, and it feels good, to be honest. I think 80 percent of my sessions I feel passionate about. Twenty percent are, "I should probably take that gig," for whatever reason. In that 80 percent, there's a lot less fixing, because the producers are at a similar place in their careers, and the artist is too. But, very specifically, I would say the biggest culprit for having to do a fix is the bad vocal recording. It's pretty consistent. I'd say more than 50 percent of the time the vocal does not sound like what would have been acceptable in the '50s, '60s, '70s, maybe even up to the '80s or '90s, for a passing vocal sound. There is a lot of fixing there. I wind up doing pretty bold reduction EQs, whether it's from boominess from bad mic placement, or harshness in cheap capsule sound on a microphone – you're on a budget, and you have to get your ideas down in your bedroom. I do broad reductions in harsh harmonic frequencies, and then I recreate that area pretty broadly with the Hazelrigg VLC-1. It rebuilds the even-order harmonics on sounds after doing big EQ reductions. I remember doing something on Macklemore's vocal. It was recorded bright. Ben [Haggerty; aka Macklemore] likes his vocals bright. That's fine, but I wanted to do it in a more tolerable way. I remember taking a linear phase FabFilter Pro-Q and doing a reduction of a 7 kHz shelf down 20 dB – a pretty substantial dip – and then taking the high boost on the VLC-1 and cranking it. It was a makeup of the information that was there, just in a better way. I thought, "Wow, this is magical that you can replace harmonics with a better version of those same harmonics, all with a box that has the precision and audiophile clarity that your tube gear has." That's influenced my ability to fix sounds, and feel confident. Not saying, "You need to re-record that vocal." That's never going to go over well, for two reasons: One, the song might be coming out tomorrow. Two, the vibe is there, and you're never going to get that performance back again. That's the only time I'm fixing. Another example would be out-of-phase kicks and [Roland TR-]808s, or out-of-phase drums in general. It's the first thing I look for. Are the kicks in phase? Are the snares in phase? That's the first thing I do in a mix in general, almost every time.
Are you getting tracks that come in with processing already on them, or are people sending you mostly dry tracks?
It's a combination, but when I get the processed and the dry tracks separate, the processed is usually so much further along than the raw vocal that there's literally no way that I could remake the vibe on the raw vocal. I wind up using the processed one, because I'll never get the mix across the line if I start from scratch. Maybe they did ridiculous amounts of Waves Renaissance Compressor and RVox – whatever people do with that plug-in. That's stuff that I don't mess with at all. I'm not going to be able to recreate it, so I use the processed [track] a lot of the time. Especially if it's a loud, dense pop or R&B track. If it's a more dynamic, organic track, I will always use the raw vocal and do my own thing to it; but when things are dense and already caked in with vibe, I use the processed. When possible though, I will not use a processed, effected vocal with their reverb and delay unless it's a deadline issue and they're like, "This is all we've got. We've got an a cappella, and it's coming out in a day." It's very rare that that occurs.
You're relatively young, but still there's been a lot of technology shifts throughout your career. How do you see that changing the way you work?
