And then I come back to the record and begin the “creative phase.” I’ll do a four-to-six hour session where I get the 90% of the mix done. If I have the luxury of time, I might wait a week. Sometimes I’ll take a day and do the housecleaning phase. On a record with 150-plus tracks, clean-up can be a solid 10 hours. I want that taken care of first so that I when I go into the creative mode, I don’t have to change brains and start dealing with that. That they’re in the right spot, the crossfades are clean there’s no egregious clicks or pops or scratches or outtakes that shouldn’t be there. I separate mixing into a “clean-up phase” and then the “creative phase.”įor the first phase, I make sure that I have all the parts. Now everybody can draw in all the pitch changes in FL Studio, but it wasn’t so easy back then! On 808s & Heartbreak, instead of the bass line, you had the 808s changing keys and doing chord changes of the songs. There were a lot of 808s in hip-hop before, but they usually carried the same note throughout the whole song. That was one of the first albums that had the 808s driving the chord and key changes. That was what I loved about 808s & Heartbreak. Because you get to be fun and creative with it. You have to figure it out on your own, which is the best way to work ever. We’re inventing new ways to do 808s and ways to process vocals and ways to do instrumentation. Every album you do with him keeps you on your toes.
The great thing about working with Kanye is that he pushes the sonic boundaries and looks for new production styles every time. Are you going to have the drums distorted? Are they going to sound ambient? Are you going to capture the vocal intimate? Will you capture the background sound in the room? These are all production choices that are made in the engineering of the record. The way sounds are captured today in hip-hop and modern music, the engineering is a key part of the production itself. It’s because that person has worked with them enough that they can anticipate what they want. There’s a reason artists rock with the same engineer for a long time. But when you’re an engineer you’re part of the vibe: you have to be able to read a room, read an artist, read a producer. Because if it takes an hour to get the idea out, you might have lost the spontaneity of the idea.Ī lot of people think that engineering is just technical.
Your job as the engineer is to help remove all those creative barriers. They’re basically the frontend capture of all the information.Ī big part about being an engineer is not just capturing the sounds properly, it’s ready to capture them-when they’re about to cut a verse, you get the microphone ready, or when someone has an idea, they can just go bang on a keyboard. They’re involved in the day-to-day creation of the album: recording the sounds, making sure the vocal takes sound right. The engineer is the person who’s probably with the artists and producers the most. The first stage of a record is engineering. I don’t think “Well I’m only a mixer…” Sometimes I’ll get a song and send it back with a completely different bridge, replaced the drums and replayed the bass, and most of the time they’re like “Yeah, we like it better too!” But even if not, I’ll say, “No problem, I’ll put it back the way you had it.” If an artist hears the record in a new way, they might be inspired to try something new on it. That’s where I’m a little different than your average mixer because I’ll dive in and do whatever it takes to make it better.
There was a little more sparkle in people’s eyes when they were listening to it. This sounds great.” It had taken on a new light. But they came back the next and were like, “Whoa. I don’t remember specifically what I did. I was like, “This track is dope.” But I felt like the rough mix at the time didn’t represent where the song could be. It was only my second day with him, but after he left the session, I stayed and made rough mixes of a few songs on the album. Kanye had half of The College Dropout done when I started working with him. It was cool enough to be cutting Beyoncé’s vocals, but was the icing on the cake. They just couldn’t beat it.” It was the song “ Is She the Reason.” A month or two later, the A&R hit me up and asked, “How do you want your name to be credited for mixing on this record? We’re going to use your rough mix for the album. I spent maybe 30 minutes on them to make it sound good. I think I cut three songs with Beyoncé that day.Īt the end of the night, I would make rough mixes of the songs. I was the engineer, and I was cutting Beyoncé’s vocals. One of the first big mixes I did was with Destiny’s Child on their last album, Destiny Fulfilled.