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

Nic, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Last year, I took the jump of working as a freelance audio engineer and producer full-time. I began with working as an assistant to the house engineer of a regional performing arts center while getting my recording studio set-up. I had moved back to my home state of New Jersey after moving from Seattle to Paris for a couple of months. I was basically starting from the ground-up because all of the connections I had made in the live music scene were all based on the west coast. After working a couple shows as an audio assistant, I began to work the mixing board for smaller concerts and events, until I eventually was asked to operate the board for the full run of a musical after covering the last musical’s engineer while he was out for a week. All while that was going on, I was building my clientele of local vocalists and actors looking to record songs or audition tapes at my studio. It was a mix of old friends that were building their catalog, acquaintances of other friends, and actors I had worked with at the theater, creating a cool overlap of my in-studio and live sound knowledge and dynamics. Eventually, I had to expand my studio space so I moved it into a larger room in my house with its own entrance and built a vocal booth with more space and features than the one prior. Not long after opening up the new studio, my influx of live sound work exploded as the engineer who I had covered in the musical mentioned before introduced me to other work that I was able to make lasting impressions with, pulling me away from the studio, but still immersing myself in audio nonetheless.
I’ve recently been able to balance my time better and that is one of the many important things of being freelance; it is very easy to overwhelm yourself with work. You have to make sure you give yourself proper time to relax and step away from the work so that you can see it from a different angle or fresh perspective.

Nic, 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?

I got into the music industry through rapping when I was in middle school. My older cousin had a massive collection of Rap albums from Big Pun, Big L, Wu-Tang Clan, and other notable rappers from the ’90s and early 2000s. He would play some of them for me when my parents weren’t around or sneakily let me borrow a CD every time my family came to visit. I was rapping from 13 until about 15 where I started to dabble in producing. One night while I was staying up late to watch Adult Swim, a bump came on where there was a black and white image of a door with the words “Baggage Room” on it. The music was high passed to sound like it was coming out of an old radio and once the beat dropped in, the image went from black and white to color. I was immediately blown away and thought, “THIS is what I want to do. Make beats.” That was my introduction to Flying Lotus and not long after, J Dilla. Throughout the years, I’ve discovered many talented producers that I’ve drawn inspiration from, which also helps to expand my music knowledge as I dive into the catalog of albums they’ve worked on. Along the way, I’ve picked up different skills like playing the keys, a bit of the bass, and the drums, and also honed in on my songwriting, but this time, for other artists.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Definitely having an outlet to not only express emotions, but to evoke emotions from people who may come across my art.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Ideally, paying for artists’ products or services, but sharing art that you like and tagging the artist on social media is a big help.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://deadzonerecordings.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sirnicofficial
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/sirnicofficial
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sirnicofficial
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sirnicofficial