The process of recording and interacting with engineers can be peculiar and/or perplexing sometimes. Especially when there hasn’t been much dialogue upfront. These are things you can expect from me while working together on a project.

Email Chain and Phone Call - I like to get to know people. We can decipher a lot of what needs to be accomplished, and how, on a quick phone call after some brief email exchanges and filling out of my recording form.

Pre-Production - Do you want me to attend a practice? Do you want to send me voice recorder demos made on your phone and have me jot down my thoughts? We can discuss where you feel your songs are succeeding, and where you feel they’re falling short of what you hear in your head.

Audio Recording - Whether at No Fun Club or D.C.Riekman Recording, I’m able to meet the needs of nearly any sized project. You want to record two drum sets at once with total isolation? We can do this at No Fun. You want to record intimate vocals in a comfortable space where you’re not worried about your bandmates listening to your cracking voice takes? We can do that as well. Whatever I can do to facilitate the best recording experience for you, we can ascertain that and make it happen.

Mixing - We should get as close to a finished product that you hear when we hit the record button. I’m not someone who enjoys fixing it in the mix. That being said, certain things need to happen to make a song exactly work across all the vessels of listening. Mixing takes recordings from a great arrangement and performance and introduces cohesion. It’s an opportunity to be creative and push and pull pieces of your song dynamically, harmonically, and through modulation. When going back and forth with notes, never be afraid to phrase things in a way that isn’t “technically correct”. We’ll always figure out what’s trying to be achieved.

Mastering - I do not master, I highly recommend people budget out a chunk for mastering. It’s the phase that can take a B grade recording and make it an A, and take an A recording and make it A+. If mastering is something that feels esoteric to you, let’s chat about it, I know many great mastering engineers who I’d be happy to connect you with.