We recently connected with Sean Spence and have shared our conversation below.

Sean, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I ever decided to take was to move to the United States. I was born and raised in South Africa but I wanted to get away and pursue a career in music as an audio engineer and producer. Nashville seemed like the place to do that, so I decided to obliterate my life there and make the move. I had never visited the city before and pretty much had no idea what I was doing, but felt it was something I had to do. This was about 12 years ago.

It has absolutely been a bumpy ride but I would never take that decision back. The process of moving here and the legalities of dealing with visas and green cards and dealing with immigration took its toll on me and my mental health which has taken a long time to get over. But as bleak as that sounds, it has also had amazing moments and to be able to get to make music for a living is a great blessing.

On a much smaller scale, the simple act of being a creative is a constant risk. It is a truly vulnerable thing to put your heart and soul into a piece of art (whether it is a song, painting, photographer, whatever) and bring it before the world. I think I’m starting to realize that my ‘big’ risk of moving to the US was a great lesson in risk taking for the daily risks – that if you are going to be putting yourself out there, you need to put it all out there and not hold back.

Sean, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Sean Spence. I am an audio engineer and music producer based in the Nashville area. On a daily basis, I work with artists, songwriters and other producers to create music that we hope will touch the world. For me, this looks like running recording sessions at my studio, whether I’m recording drums, vocals, strings, a whole band, whatever it may be. It also includes producing the songs – deciding on how a song should sound, what elements / instruments should be in the song and how to give the song the best emotional impact. Ultimately, it also includes mixing songs – taking all those elements and deciding how they best fit together to tell a cohesive and emotional story that keeps the listener hooked. I also have a passion for creating music that will work in film and TV settings and have had numerous songs and productions used in many shows, so when I produce, I often treat songs as if I see a film or tv scene playing on top of the song.

I got into this business back in South Africa. I was an audio engineer and studied it there. My main job back then was working with television and radio audio – creating TV and radio commercials. I always wanted to make music my full-time work and did as much of it in my spare time as possible.

Being a producer and engineer, one of the main problems I’m solving for my clients is how to best present them to the world. Songs can be ‘assembled’ in a myriad of ways, so my job is to listen to my clients and interpret their heart for their music into audible music that conveys their heart and personalities in song form. Sometimes that takes a lot of listening to them talk about themselves and their passions. Some artists know exactly who they are and others don’t, so it’s a little being a therapist… asking questions to get to their heart. I think that’s something that sets me apart from others. I don’t want every project I work on to sound the same. I want it to reflect the artist.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Just over a year ago, my wife and I decided that we needed to move. We had a wonderful home with a truly incredible recording studio on the bottom level (the kind of studio that makes it into industry magazines). It almost seemed like a crazy move to make, but we felt the time was right for our family.

So we sold it and moved a little further away from the city into a house that would need work to get a studio space ready. As soon as I could, I setup something of a studio space for me to be able to work… it was certainly more rustic compared to the glamorous space I had before. I was pretty terrified as the old studio space brought in a good amount of work from people looking to rent a professional studio space. And now we no longer had that revenue stream.

Amazingly, work just came in that didn’t require a big studio… lots of mixing and production work. I began to see how I had previously had a really fixed mindset about finding work and the move had broken open my mind a bit to see other opportunities. To put it another way, I was stuck in a certain routine before and I had to pivot and change to meet the new situation. It has also provided an opportunity to start saying ‘no’ to work that just isn’t contributing to my vision of the future.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

I’d say there are 2 strategies that have proven effective…

The first is word of mouth which, unfortunately, is something I have little control over. But when a client tells a fellow creative about me, that is the highest praise they can offer me and I’m always so grateful for that. And while I can’t control who they tell, what I can control is how I treat each individual client I work with – I can make sure that I do the best job possible and continue to hone my craft even after doing it for 20 years and truly listen to the needs of each client.

The second strategy that has worked is having some kind of online presence. This includes social media but also certain industry websites where people are specifically looking for production and mixing services. I am certainly not super active on any of these, but having places where people can learn about me and hear my work is crucial.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bluegrottosound.com/sean
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmichaelspence/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluegrottosound
• Other: https://soundbetter.com/profiles/2642-sean-spence

Image Credits
Sean Spence / Annie Loughead