The Process
The song comes first.
I'm not chasing perfection for its own sake. A great production should make the composition, performance and emotional character of a song more compelling — technology is a means to that end, not the point of it.
What I care about
Guitar
Electric guitar, arrangements and tones built to serve the song, not to show off the player. I'm particularly interested in guitar parts that support a composition harmonically rather than simply filling space.
Production
From the first musical idea and arrangement through recording, editing, guitar tones, keyboards and saxophone — shaping a song into a record, one decision at a time.
Mixing
Balance, space, depth and dynamics between instruments and vocals, without losing the character of the original performance.
Mastering
Preparing a finished mix for streaming and every other room it will eventually be heard in — attentive to loudness, translation and true peak, not just volume.
In the studio
Records get made in Logic Pro on a Mac Studio, with a toolkit that's grown over years of recording, mixing and mastering my own music and Song Soldier projects — things like iZotope Ozone and RX, Valhalla's reverbs, Universal Audio and Tokyo Dawn Labs.
I pay close attention to LUFS, true peak and dynamic range, and how a mix translates between headphones, studio monitors and whatever a listener is actually using — because a record that only sounds good in one room isn't finished yet.
None of this is the point, though — it's just what makes the point possible.
Guitar
My main guitar is a Fender American Performer Telecaster, modified with a DiMarzio Area T noise-cancelling pickup in the bridge position. I like the Telecaster for its combination of clarity, attack, character and versatility — but the guitar isn't what makes a part work. That's still down to what it's playing, and why.