Career Trek – Freelance Audio & Music Production

My career as an audio and music engineer stretches back to the late 90s when I was in my third year of Radio & Television Arts (RTA) at Ryerson. I learned the layout of our 32 channel Tascam audio console and how to operate the remote control for our DA-88 recorders. My third year group recorded a local Toronto funk band and I immediately fell in love with the entire multitrack recording process.

While at school, I read Stanley R. Alten’s Audio In Media from cover to cover and absorbed everything I could about audio production for radio, television, music and sound design—EQ, compression, gating, effects, acoustics as well as all of the intricacies of working in a multitrack recording environment.

Love Method — Reaching the Sun

A career in audio production was nearly impossible to start by working for someone else right out of school. I had applied to several audio jobs in Toronto with no luck, but found myself in demand as a freelance audio producer for friends and friends of friends who wanted to record EPs and albums. This often meant recording in noisy spaces such as bedrooms, churches and other noisy environments on a wide variety of gear.

Karen Pace – Worship Medley

Karen Pace – Worship medley

As I built up my skills as a problem solver in the audio engineering space, I eventually found myself playing the role of producer more and more. This culminated in the largest project I managed from start to finish—a full Christian pop album for a friend who is a very talented singer. We  recorded, mixed and mastered at several top tier recording studios in Toronto and launched the album in 2006.

Deanna — Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)

My last recording gig was in 2010 when I recorded a full Toronto rock band for my graduate thesis on the accessibility of ProTools. There, I had the luxury of working in an acoustically treated studio on an SSL AWS-900 mixing console.

Heartcore – Blue

Heartcore – Blue

Amidst all of this, I took on recording projects that were a little out of the ordinary including an audio book, VoiceOver demos and lots of PA audio gigs where I was mixing bands live in a room.

I came alive as an audio producer. There’s something fun and exciting about patching in a reverb and riding the faders to add the extra energy a song needs to be ear-catching and hooky. Despite my passion for the craft, a ton of connections and having some of the gear, I began realizing a career in audio was not as easy as it sounded (no pun intended).

Studios were difficult to start and run by the time multitrack recording became ubiquitous. Large studios with big rooms were slowly closing and pop music production was moving away from recording live instruments to using samples.

I will, one day, get back into recording and mixing (the latter being my passion), but I will do it as an expensive hobby rather than a career. As life would have it, all of the late nights as a DJ and the long days as an audio producer were about to pay off with my first full time gig when I sent a demo to a small radio station in north Toronto.