(I WROTE THIS BACK IN 2006… FIGURE I'LL START WITH IT)

A lot of people are trying to do what I do and make money in the music industry and there are obvious things to be thought about that they either aren't thinking about or just simply aren't capable of. This goes for anyone in the music/film industry as well as anyone trying to make money doing whatever they like to do, period. 

1] KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE: For example, I put my life into every track I mix. What makes people prefer my mixes over someone elses is not at all that I have more "life" than they do, but that I know what I have. I know how good music makes me feel and I know how I like things to sound so therefor I take that representation of a good mix in my mind and apply it to the unmixed song I am about to work on and picture all of the possible potential. I keep my standards high, start with the kick and the rest of the drums, move on to the bass, then the instruments, vocals last and since I already know how everything should sound I get the mix done in minimal time. It took me years to get to this point but even when I was learning I kept my standards high and didn't settle for a wack mix and I was making sure that I was improving every day. [I'm still to this day trying my damned-est to improve by the end of each session]

They say you don't know what you have until it's gone and that explains my situation perfectly. I will tear up when I hear a good song or when I turn a bad mix into a really good mix, and sometimes it is followed by some crying. When I get done with a track and it sounds way better than how it sounded when it was given to me, it starts out with tremendous joy but then a dark cloud sort of takes over and I realize how close I came to not being able to ever mix a song. I know how lucky I am to be alive right now and I am very thankful for just being alive in general and being able to look at and talk to my friends and family and have them respond and be a part of my life as much as I am a part of theirs, as well as the props I get from the people I work for. Even if everyone I know died tonight and I was stuck in a world full of strangers, my mixing would probably accel to a whole new level because it would strike up so much emotion. Instead of putting in 16 hour days back to back like I do right now, I would be putting in 60 hour sessions until I won a Grammy or Emmy just so I could feel the presence of my lost loved ones when I was dedicating the award to all of them in my speech up on the podium in front of all the big dog celebrities. That is the mindset you have to have. I know first-hand what it is like to be locked in a padded cell and thinking that everyone I know is dead; that's why I put in 16-hour days right now. Whatever hardships you live through make you stronger and add to your life experience and that emotion is what you need to learn how to deliver to your work. God uses people that are strong from serious pain and loss to do big things and an easy life is a sinful life. Remember that. 

2] IF YOU GOT A LIFE, DITCH IT FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES: To get to the level you need to be at with engineering in order to make money, it takes a shitload of time, effort and practice. It also requires certain aspects of one's personality to fit the part and play the role. Out of every professional engineer I have ever met, all of them put lots of hours of overtime in every week and none of them go out and get wasted on the weekends. If they drink [most of them don't] then they only have a couple once in a great while. All the young engineers I have met that go out and get wasted a lot have either already spent many many years sober developing their strategies in their youth or they are not making it because somehow they ruined their name or couldn't prove themselves worth working with. If you go out and drink heavily on some nights, even if it is at a show, then you will not be at 100% for about 2-4 days. It will be 2 days if you exercise and eat healthy and take care of yourself, and it could be a week before you are at your best if you go out drinking heavily two or three nights a week, especially if they are in a row. Smoking weed too. If you haven't learned by mixing something when you are high and listening to it when you are sober that when you are high you think things are way cooler than they are and it takes you twice as long to make these wack moves, then you need to be slapped in the face. If you get high every time you sit in front of Pro Tools, unless you are Jake Wagner, then chances are your mixes are wack and you and your high friends are the only ones that appreciate them. [Making music is different; sometimes drugs can bring out creativity but leave that to the talent. Engineers need to be sober.]

While my clients are at the club either performing or partying it up until 2am on a Friday or Saturday night, I am alone, slaving over my HD rig and making their tracks sound larger than life, drinking Monster Energy Drinks, Yerba Mate and Naked fruit juices to stay awake, sober and focused. On days that i don't work the door at Guitar Center, I am in the studio turning on my rig at 10 in the morning and I don't turn it off until at least 8 at night. If I go running around Burnsville regularly and go to bed early one night, I might find myself at the studio at 6 in the morning the next day and I will stay there [only leaving the building to find food] until 4am that night. Exercise and eating healthy helps give you the energy and endurance you need to throw down insanely long days in the studio. It also helps to have people constantly coming in every few hours to record, but drinking and doing drugs are things that you need to have down time from. Especially starting out, you need to be flexible as Hell and can't miss sessions and you have to get everything done on time in order to make a name for yourself, and you have to be doing better than your best work to succeed. Even just having a couple drinks every here and there can slow down your mind/brain enough to fuck with you down the road. 

Also, going to parties and bars is a waste of time if you are trying to make it as an engineer. Well, maybe if you put in tons of hours in a week it might be nice to kick back with your buddies but if it means getting wasted or doing drugs than you should be either in the studio or on the internet looking up new topics on engineering and new gear specs. It is fun to go out once in a great while and see everybody you know in one place, especially if you have been very productive. I get a lot of props for having the willpower to not drink when I see all my friends at the bar, and every time it's so long between that my hair is at least 2 inches longer. 

The way I did it was I worked as a Laser Operator for Boston Scientific six days a week for almost half a year. I rarely went out unless it was to take my girlfriend out for dinner and I saved up enough money to buy a TDM I rig to practice on. Literally, though. Six days a week, all the overtime I could get so sometimes I'd work for a month straight. I didn't have shit for gear when I got that job and I was able to spend tens of thousands of dollars on gear when I got laid off. Now I will never work a full-time day job again unless it is for another studio. If none of the studios in town will give you the time of day when you ask them to hire you on, get a really high paying [very hard work] day job and save money like crazy by not going out. Hide out for half a year, buy a bomb HD rig, master it in and out, then just telling a studio owner that you have an HD rig will get you a lot further. If you go out and get drunk then that's money that could have been spent on gear. It all adds up and could be the difference between whether you are able to get a bomb HD rig with everything you need to do it on your own or just simply a computer with cards and an interface monitoring out of a home stereo system and using headphones plugged into an Audio Buddy as your best means to record.

3] KNOW COMPRESSION!!!!!!!!!  They say that the difference between a prosumer and professional mix is all based on how it was compressed; how things were compressed during recording, mixing and mastering as well as which type of compressors were selected. Compression is an animal that took me two years [after recording school] of taking older, experienced engineers out to lunch twice a month, picking their brain and then taking the bus back to the practice space where my rig was and applying their advice into my mixes over and over until I got their techniques to do what they were supposed to do, but that's only phase 1. Phase 2 of true understanding of compression is being able to map out in your head WHAT you are doing to the sound by visualizing the attack, release, threshold, ratio, input, output, knee, etc. Compressors are a professional engineer's paint and paintbrush- don't think of them as just colors, there are shades, types and variations of all sorts of variables as well as techniques. 

Just know and realize that this shit takes time. It also requires you to be kind of "geeky" in the sense that you have to spend the majority of your time alone in front of a computer, and that's your life when all your friends are out "boozin'." Keep in mind that if you don't put in the time required to reach a professional level, someone else is. While you are building your tolerance to alcohol so you can be the life of the party and out-drink people, there is some geek [probably a little socially inept from social isolation] who is developing mind blowingly advanced mixing tactics who will out-mix you...