kHey fellow Nerds,

Lord Nikon here again with something quite interesting, i got to interview a very interesting person. An audio engineer by the name of Drew Mazurek. He happens to be my instructor at The Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts. He has worked with Linkin Park, G.W.A.R., Nothing Face and Hell Yeah . So here’s the brain picking i got to do.

1. What has been your favorite project to work on?

It’s hard to pick a favorite. I’ve been fortunate to work on projects that looking back have ended up being somewhat influential, at least in their genre.

2. After 20+ years in the music business do you still feel like you are able to be creative?

Absolutely. There is so much going on in the industry that I feel like I learn something new everyday. There are infinite approaches to doing things so that if one truly loves working with audio, you’ll never run out of things to experiment with. Hell, I still feel like I’m in pursuit of the “perfect mix”.

3. What was the one moment that you knew you were hooked on engineering?/sparked your interest?

It was very early on for me. I started by recording my song ideas, as a 12 year old guitar player, onto a dual cassette deck that had a mic input and allowed for a crude form of overdubbing. Once I saw this, that was it. I quickly moved on to 4 tracks, then an 8 track, and so began the odyssey that continues today.

4. What is one recomendation that you have for young aspiring engineers on getting into the biz?in retrospect what would you have done differently? was the lesson learned there worth the trouble?

My recommendation might be to NOT get into the biz. I wouldn’t say, don’t record, but I might say, don’t get into the business of recording.

5. Do you like to record or mix better?

I def like to mix better these days. I do like to “get sounds”, be it drums or guitar, but once that’s done, I get a little bored til mix time. I always joke that my least favorite thing is “punching bass”. i.e. sitting in the control room recording and fixing the bass parts all day, no offense intended Bass players!!! Recording isn’t terribly difficult to do. If you’ve got decent gear and don’t distort things, you’ll end up with decent tracks provided you’ve got good instruments to record and of course good players. I can teach people to do that pretty easily. Mixing, on the other hand, is much more difficult and IMO the last bastion of concentrated skill in the field. This combined with my natural inclination for it have caused me to “specialize” in it over the past few years.

6. Whats your favorite piece of gear bar none(hardware)(plug-in)(monitors) &y?

Wow, tough question. I’m going to have to say my speakers. They are Barefoot MM27s (http://www.barefootsound.com/products_mm27.htmln) and they pretty much kick ass. :)

7. What is the biggest contributing factor when buying monitors/gear.

Monitors? Can you hear everything? If not, is that ok? In other words, either your speakers are meant to tell the truth or present sound in a way that causes you to make good decisions regardless. Google Yamaha NS10 for the latter and see the Barefoot link for the former.

Gear in general? I’d say, “is it really going to make a difference in what I do?” Don’t get caught up in the gear hype. IT’S NOT THE GEAR, at least not at first. Only once you have some skill can you actually appreciate the difference. It’s like being put in a Ferrari at age 16, and be expected to drive like Michael Schumacher. It ain’t gonna happen. Drive that Corolla to within an inch of its life, then move on. Same with these higher bit depths and sample rates you may have heard of, 24/96k or 32/192k, or 64 bit recording. I say, make shit slam at 16/44.1 first, then worry about the rest.

8. How many internships did you do if any? how long were they? where?

Unfortunately, I’ve never done any. I’ve never actually worked for anyone else in audio, ever. And it kind of sucks to be honest. I had some chances to assist in NYC years ago but turned them down because I was already established, at least locally, and didn’t want to lose momentum. Who knows where I’d be now. Having said that, I’m very happy with my business now and don’t have any real regrets. I do encourage people to seek out mentors and internships though.

9. How did you get into recording your first real session in a pro studio? how was it?

I had recorded in my home studio for people for years before I got my first experience in a “real” studio. The first one wasn’t a good experience at all. The place wasn’t that great to begin with, I wasn’t comfortable with the monitoring and the engineer there was clueless about the genre.

10. What is the most interestingly creative thing you have heard in the last few months?y?

I recently mixed a band from Barcelona Spain called “Eikostate”. They mix traditional Japanese instruments with western style hard rock and it’s a really cool sound. I enjoyed working on the project a lot.

11. How much do you feel that ,having the trained ears that you do, has taken the fun out of listening to music? is it that your brain goes into an auto-inspection type of mode? does that go away with time?

It absolutely does take some of the fun out of it. I now hear bad punches, click track bleed, etc in all sorts of music and movies/tv. It has not gone away with time, it seems to just be one of the prices you pay.

12. What do you think was the biggest single contributing factor in being successful in what you do (general)(specific)?

Persistence. When I was starting out, I did almost nothing but write and record music. Every chance I got, I locked myself in my basement and recorded either me playing guitar, or my drummer playing drums. Second would be making my clients happy, whatever it takes.

13. Being that you mostly deal with rock music do you feel that ,that limits your creativity or creates a comfort zone in what you do ?

Little of both. You do tend to get pigeon holed in this business. Doing mostly rock does create a comfort zone since I know how stuff should sound but often I wish I had more varied projects to work on.

14. How hard was it to build clientel (without self-promotion?)when starting out?

back then, not too hard. Now a days? it’s tough because everybody and their brother does recording.

I would like to thank Drew for the time and you guys for checkin out our site. if you would like to know more about Drew visit www.drewmazurek.com
Thanks again,
Lord Nikon

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