We recently connected with Jeffery Banks and have shared our conversation below.

Jeffery, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

If anyone knows anything about this industry, they’ll tell you high risk-high reward . . . low chances. Extremely low chances. If I could give my younger peers a single piece of advice, it would be that corporate availability of jobs doesn’t exist for audio engineers (in a musical setting). To make a living, I had to work on my soft skill of videography over the years to open a job possibility in the Communications field as an Audio/Film Specialist. If you’re looking for a 9-5 in a studio environment, there is virtually no such thing. From a practical standpoint, there is no need for scalable employees or redundant hiring in a studio environment. The traditional studio workplace was built for 1 or 2 main engineers and possibly studio technicians and customer service. This means the barrier to entry was high and work only came if the studio was in demand with very high level clients. Unless all these pre-requisites were met, a studio would be riding the wave of bankruptcy. The financial availability, let alone stability and insurance, was simply not there. In order to succeed you would have to intern until something or somebody hands you the chance to perform and flex the wisdom you would have to accumulate over years of interning. Today, this model has collapsed into the hands of independents but the barrier of clientele still exists. In order to profit in this industry as a studio owner or producer, you are at the mercy of your clientele, who is at the mercy of the musical trends of the age. Taking into account the availability of high quality equipment in the hands of the clientele themselves, streaming services, lack of physical sales, social media, inflation, etc, this makes financial accumulation very difficulty unless you find a niche market to profit from. It’s not as easy as receiving a degree and being picked up by the local firm looking for new talent and fresh minds. This industry is bias and financially skewed. Everyday will be finding a way to work against the grain until you find a break. This scratches the surface of the uphill battle we have to face as producers & engineers.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My family doesn’t have much experience in the way of playing music. The closest connection I have to it stems from my father playing the trumpet in the military. I started flute in 5th Grade, made my way to clarinet in the 7th Grade, then played alto saxophone in the 9th grade. Throughout my childhood, I wanted to learn piano but my parents refused to put me through lessons so everything I know is mostly self taught. Sometime in the 11th grade, I was introduced to live audio, engineering the worship services for my church and learning how to make music on websites beatmakers. It was also at this point I began to heavily listen to 9th Wonder’s and Nujabe’s instrumentals. I would write songs for hours straight in the living room. I would even post some of them on an old site called Booksie.com or stay in the comments section on YouTube practicing my pen. Then I went to college.

As far as creative services, I am primarily a source for music production collaboration and audio engineering. I’ve won awards for sound for short film (Wishful Thinking, 2017), edited podcasts (DJ Grandpa’s Podcast), produced for artists, and mixed & mastered a lot. Anything in this circle is within my wheelhouse.

I mainly try to be an academic voice for the creative music process. While I do enjoy being the creative technician on a project, I also like educating about it as well. I don’t like when people consider the work that I do is magic. I like collaboration and working together to achieve a goal. I dislike distant clientele and pay to play relationships. For me, everybody has a strength and weakness and the combination of everyone working together is much greater than the sum of the individual elements. This is what I’ve been told sets me apart. I have an ability to describe things to clients and remove the veil of the process, allowing artists to have more control over their vision because someone finally explained what they are trying to accomplish. Things become more objective and less subjective. From this, they instantly learn how to push the boundary and more accurately get the product they are looking for rather than gambling until they hit gold. I’m very proud of the consistent reputation that I make when I work with people and it’s become the main selling point and networking strength. If you work with me, know that I generally have answers to problems (as I have probably already attempted them myself) and if not, know where to get them.

My studio/brand is Mellow X Brew. Search that phrase and you’ll find music production, mixing tutorials, and generally anything that encompasses my musical lifestyle.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Pride comes before the fall. There was a time I would overestimate my abilities due to the lack of challenge during my undergraduate studies. Not only that, the praise I received kind of stunted my growth. I was ensured that the level I was mixing and mastering my own music was beyond others. This changed when I went to graduate school. What I believed about myself, echoed by those around me was quickly dismantled when I began to compare my results with others. Then the worst humiliation I believed to have faced to date was the failure of my portfolio. The portfolio was supposed to showcase the range and abilities of everything a student has learned thus far. Failing the portfolio meant a couple of things. To start, it inevitably meant that your mixes suck or you suck at mixing. Two, your ability produce or come up with a song is not well developed. And three, you probably don’t know what good music is. Disregarding the other two, I was stuck at failure #1 & #2. That was my identity in school. One of the best mixers & producers in the class if not the best. I strived for that title since undergrad and it felt as if someone was telling me the very thing I denied myself of all these years. “I’m not good.” It was something that I repeated in my brain constantly until I forced myself to acknowledge it as truth and have to relearn my art from the ground up. In the short time before my 2nd portfolio review, I went back to the basics, taking into account the knowledge that I learned since I enrolled in MTSU. There were things that I was very smug about because I believed I perfected my workflow, templates, etc. Going back to the beginning was jarring at first but things started to work differently the second time around.. Most notably certain concepts that I didn’t quite fully understand REALLY made sense to me. One of these was fully understand compression. That’s a topic for another time but if you ever made your own music, understanding compression is like trying to understand why the sky is really blue. Really easy to explain in laymen’s terms but MUCH harder to explain properly and accept the whole truth. Let’s just say I spent so much time in the studio that I near gained 15-20 lbs eating Cookout quesadillas and fries from midnight to 8 AM with a 9 AM class start time. For many, this level of dedication was brutal, but I was getting it. It was like when I read the Bible for the first time. Everything started to MAKE SENSE. I felt like a dummy.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative . . . probably that I can be one as my career. Currently my 9-5 title is Film & Audio Specialist. However, that title pretty much carries more weight in the Audio department. I was hired to be the Audio Specialist alongside the videographer to work as a 2 man team complimenting each others skill sets. This means I get to make suggestions, decisions, and adjust workflows based around my knowledge of audio. I am then able to continue my career work at home doing freelance and being a content creator. This means the two worlds always collide with each other and I never have to feel as if I’m working a job just to pay the bills in a field that I don’t want to be in. My professional identity and title is “Audio Specialist”. I get to create with the satisfaction of experience, scholarship, and professionalism.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mellowxbrew.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hibrustea/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferybanks/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MellowXBrew/videos