We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katsuya Sezaki a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Katsuya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

Before I ran my music studio and work as a producer, I was an instructor at the college. I consider myself to be a pretty good teacher, as I have won Instructor of the Year Award (voted by students) 5 times from 2 different programs while I taught there. I taught in this college for 12 years, I learned many lessons but the one of the biggest lesson I learned was that I have to continue to be curious and attentive what I am passionate about as I go through the journey. I noticed that my work at the school was becoming less inspiring for me each year. Without passion, the work becomes dry and way less enjoyable, even though I really liked my colleagues and students. As I taught many classes from Music Theory, Sightsinging, Production, Notation classes, I found myself gravitate toward more on production, studio and working with people, understanding their stories, understanding where the songs comes from, and help their visions come true, etc. I was able to find my true passion. That’s when I started my “side-hustle” home-studio work, built my network, which lead me to be where I am today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Katsuya Sezaki, I was born in Brazil, grew up in Japan. I came to US when I was 15, and attended high-school in Tennessee. I went to college in Los Angeles and I was full time music teacher and part time home-studio producer until 2020. I just became US citizen last year (2022) and continuing to pursue American Dream! :D

We decided to build our “dream studio” in our house, and we did it in the midst of the pandemic 2020. We call the studio “AnK Studio 81”. With the help of our family, we built bright and modern music studio that is unlike any other studio in LA. We are loving this workspace so far, and we are receiving incredible feedbacks.

We designed the studio to fill the need mostly on music production, arranging, recording, vocal production, and mix and mastering with singers, songwriters, and composers from all over the world. What I do differently than other studios or producers and arrangers is that I have the option to do all these arranging/production/mixing work together with clients just like the writing session. I really enjoy getting to know my clients personally as we create music together, and I am making sure that they feel safe and comfortable working on their songs with me every step of the way. This also gives them the opportunity to put their input towards to their songs from very early stage, which makes the music way more “personal” for them. Basically, I’m becoming the chef to cook with the ingredients that clients picked, and we are cooking together as a team. My experience as an educator really helps as I’m knowledgeable in different musical styles, I can understand and explain what they are looking for in sounds most of the time, I take it as a great challenge to find what clients envision and bring their sound come to life.

We are also getting great feedbacks on vocal recording sessions we provide. When clients come to me for vocal sessions, I’m wearing 3 hats; vocal producer role, engineer role, and an honest friend role. I take the vocal producer role to help with their performance throughout the songs and coming up with harmonies and vocal effects etc… I’m also an engineer to capture their voices in the highest quality. I’ve invested the best analog gears for vocal recording over the years and the recording room is designed for artists to feel very comfortable being themselves. Lastly, I’m going to be that friend to make them laugh during the session and gives honest feedback if the take is not the best they can do.

These days, we are finding ways to extend the help to independent artists we work with. We want to serve them the best we can. We are still building small team to make this happen!

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I started my side hustle with $300 microphone, recording software offering to help singer-songwriters record their own songs. I and my wife decided to dedicate one of the bedroom at the apartment as the “studio” and this room was tiny!! 9×9 81 sqft, and this is one of the reason why we named our studio AnK Studio 81. My clientele was usually the students I taught at the college. They knew what kind of person I am, so it made them feel comfortable to seek help from me. I am forever grateful to each and one of them who took a chance to work with me at that time, even though I didn’t have much experience. In 2014, I was able to produce an artist from China who was doing quite well at that time. This is also the time my side hustle income started to win over my full-time teaching job. Although it wasn’t much, this was a milestone for me.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

For one of the big budget project, I decided to hire this “grammy-nominated” producer to arrange the song. Initial meeting went great but I should’ve seen a red flag here and there. We paid enormous amount of money as down payment for a song, and there was no contact for 2 weeks.. Then he sent this mp3 that sounded like it’s been worked on for 5 minutes. The arrangement was definitely not the quality we expected. We requested the revision, but he is requesting more budget. We had no choice but to drop him. I should’ve done more research and it was at my fault. I still remember the drive back from studio to the home, feeling helpless and upset. BUT I was not ready to wave a white flag. Instead of crying out, I decided to arrange and produce the song myself, without telling the artist. I was up all night trying to get this arrangement done and I showed it to the artist the next day, without telling her it was my arrangement. She LOVED the production, and she gave a go-sign! This experience gave me confidence, that I deserve a seat in the industry, if I keep up with my integrity and my faith.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.instagram.com/musicatsuya/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ank_studio81/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katsuyas/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katsuya-sezaki-254276a/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkyP0lJgHY0