We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dan Criswell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Dan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I received an education from Cuyahoga Community College’s Recording Arts & Technology program. I have been making beats since high school and decided I wanted to pursue a more professional career in audio, so I taught myself the basics and moved on to higher education. After a few years of working with artists and producers around Cleveland, I genuinely believe that more experience in the field would have sped up my learning process. I had the blessing of being able to learn on industry standard equipment in a private, guided, and controlled environment, but nothing compares to real life situations. Obviously, there is a lot you need to know before you throw yourself out into the field, but running sessions outside of school once I had a basic understanding of how those sessions should go has easily been the best way I have learned.
Working with people you’ve only just met, especially in a creative environment, can be overwhelming as well as frustrating. A skill I find necessary is being able to keep your cool and work through a problem. There is nothing more nerve-racking than lacking a solution to problems while a client is staring at you through a window. The best skill I’ve learned was to work through problems, keep your head calm, and know that there’s always a work around.
When it comes to any sort of audio recording, you get out what you put in. When I first started recording on location, an obstacle that stood in the way of progression was the lack of access to gear that I needed. Not having the gear that I needed really hindered my growth. I never got the sound I knew I could get when using some of the equipment I was using in a studio setting and it was very frustrating. I did myself a favor and invested in the things I knew I needed in the first place, and it has made a world of a difference for me. This is not to say, however, that expensive gear will immediately lead to a higher quality recording. It’s all about how you use it.
Dan, 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 started making beats back in high school and fell in love with creating music. Throughout grade school I was in the band, so I had some sort of a background in music, but never had any sort of exposure to professional audio. I was in nursing school for the first year of college, but I didn’t really get any excitement from the thought of being a nurse for the rest of my life. I switched my major over to Recording Arts & Technology and never looked back. I stepped into a recording studio for the first time during class and found myself fascinated with how it all worked. Everything came easy to me, and I enjoyed school for the first time in my life. I knew immediately that professional audio is what I need to do, and ever since then I have had a never-ending obsession with recording and mixing music. Once I started to feel confident in my skills, I invested in some equipment and went off to record my first artist.
As an engineer, I pride myself on being able to provide a high quality recording and mix. I provide recording services for any artists that want to record, as well as mixing services. I am very confident in how my mixes sound and I feel that I can get a high quality recording wherever I have a session. Whether we are in a recording studio or someone’s living room, I feel that I can help artists find the sound that their songs are missing.
Nowadays, it’s so easy to buy an affordable microphone and interface to start your journey as an artist. Anyone can buy a few plugins, throw on some presets, and record into a free DAW. The music industry is so saturated with songs that sound the exact same with little to no excitement, and a lot of artists get discouraged when they don’t know why they aren’t blowing up. In my experience, and from what I see all over the internet, this problem stems from a lack of understanding and a LOT of misinformation. A lot of artists seem to have a misunderstanding as far as how a song is made in a professional setting, as well as how much time is spent on each song. It makes me so irritated when I see an A-list artist go on YouTube and say “I made this hit song in 30 minutes”. Sure, there are anomalies. But what they won’t tell you is that there were five producers in the room with them, they waited three weeks for the mix to be finished, they waited another two weeks for the master to be finished, they had to get approval from their label, and then they had to promote the song. False dreams are sold all over the internet on a daily basis when it comes to music, and it makes me so sad. I try my absolute best to make the session as comfortable and free-flowing as possible, and clients seem to appreciate that. I give them space and only interject when I feel it is necessary, all while making sure the recording is as perfect as possible. Also, everyone’s style is different. On the mixing side, there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to processing. I like to take my time and do everything for a reason. I’d rather take my time and be proud of my work than just throw on Autotune, Pro-Q, and an 1176 and call it a day. It’s unfair to the artist who is pouring their heart out on a song to be handed a lack-luster file after a session, and it’s certainly not fair to them to claim a mix is done when you have no idea what exactly you did. In my opinion, a good recording and a good mix can make or break a song.
The main thing I want readers to know about me is I will let you, as an artist, be an artist. Be creative and try new things, and you won’t have to worry about how the song will sound when it’s all said and done. I want my clients to have fun while making their music, because at the end of the day, it should be! Music is the best job in the world!
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I think it is hard for people who aren’t familiar with the music industry to understand what I do. I am not a self-proclaimed producer, nor am I an artist. I like to make beats on the side, but that doesn’t make me a producer. There are so many steps in helping a song come to fruition, and a lot of different minds work with each other to get the best result possible. There are so many stages a song goes through before it hits the ears of the listener, and I guarantee you’d probably cringe at the raw recordings of some of your favorite artists. The amazingly perfect sound that you hear in today’s music is all thanks to the teamwork. Manipulating audio is no easy task and it is difficult to master. It takes a long time to understand EVERYTHING that goes into making music, and in my experience, an even longer time to perfect your craft. I personally think everyone has room for improvement, and whoever thinks otherwise is delusional. Patience and a good attitude go a long way, because staring at software and a bunch of random knobs for hours and hours tends to make the learning process seem tedious. But once you get to a point where you can show an artist their song and you see their face light up with excitement, it’ll make it all worth it.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Since the beginning of my journey creating music, my goal has been to help create music that will make people happy. Satisfaction is hard to come by when it comes to new music, and I am grateful that I have the opportunity help artists mold an idea into something that is tangible and, well, satisfying! Sometimes all an artist needs is someone who knows how to make their song sound the way they envision it, and there is nothing more rewarding than knowing you can bring that song/idea to life. The end goal is to create an environment for the listener rather than just an audio recording, and to be able to see people singing, and loving, a song that I helped create.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: d.criswell21