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

Alright, Kai thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I first got into producing music in my Junior year of high school. My friends and I would experiment with different softwares such as FL Studio, Logic, and Ableton. For a few years before college, I was primarily self-taught, YouTube tutorials quickly became my best friend. I got accepted into the music program at Elon University, and continued to teach myself production methods during my time at school.

I studied Music Production and Recording Arts at Elon. This major program helped me learn a great deal about the ins and outs of recording studios, digital and analog production processes, live sound mixing, and much more. With my time at college, I continued to educate myself in my free time about my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of choice: FL Studio. I became quite proficient at producing electronic music, beats, lofi, and film score/cinematic works. I also discovered a new passion of mine: Audio Post Production. There were several classes in the music program that helped me to discover this, and continue to practice with sound design, film score, foley, and dialogue recording.

As you will hear a lot in this industry, I believe networking is one of the most essential skills. A lot of people talk about it, but what they don’t say is that without networking, it doesn’t really matter how good you are at something, you may never get the chance to apply your skills in a job you love. Don’t get me wrong, you should really work to become a master at either mixing, mastering, producing, or some other relevant skill, but you should always have networking at the back of your mind. Never say no unless you really need to. You never know where the next career or collaboration opportunity can come from, or who knows who.

More skills I consider to be crucial in this industry: Tenacity, confidence, constant learning, and being tech savvy. All of these skills will always be crucial in our industry. In the recent months after graduation, I have continued my education on my own, learning to code and implement audio and sound design in Unreal Engine 5, using the softwares FMOD and Wwise. I have worked with video game jam sessions, where a group of creatives from around the world come together for a few weeks to create a video game from scratch. These have all helped me to continue to network with creatives around the world and build up my portfolio as I advance in my career.

Kai, 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 Kai Mitchell. I am primarily a music producer and sound designer. I got interested in the craft of digital music production back in high school and taught myself all the necessary skills to succeed. This led me to my path in college, where I was accepted into a Music Production and Recording Arts program. I studied and networked as much as possible with my time in college, and also picked up a passion for video editing, graphic design and web design. These skills provided me with more job opportunities as well as the chance to be my own creative house: from production, mixing, mastering, to promotion, cover art, and more, I got it all covered.

I like to think that I am a jack of all trades. My services include music production, mixing, mastering, audio post production, live sound events, sound design, web design, video editing and graphic designs. I release original music on all streaming platforms under the moniker KVI. I really enjoy being able to create collaborative projects with others, and helping to build other small artists like myself up.

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

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is two-fold. One, being able to make money doing what I love to do, be creative. Two, being able to share my projects and methods for creation with thousands of people online, helping to inspire and teach others. It’s always nice when someone you don’t know randomly messages you on social media asking to collaborate or complimenting your music, because you know it’s genuine. It’s also always fun to hear from someone you are the reason they decide to create something, or pursue a career goal. It gives me confidence to keep moving forward with my own goals to see friends and fellow creatives succeed.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Currently, the entertainment industry is quite volatile. As many of us know, Spotify and other streaming services are not paying smaller artists their fair share for streams. It can be hard for producers and artists to live off of royalties at the best of times, unless you are a world-famous artist. I think unions and creative groups should keep pushing for better pay, benefits, and against unfair systems in the industry. Being united on these key issues is what furthers progress.

Instead of focusing on what’s trending, or who is the most popular, focus on what’s new, and what new sounds could inspire you to listen to or create different things. Music and art has always been subjective, but lately social media virality and major labels have had a death grip on who makes it and who doesn’t. I encourage everyone to take an extra 5 minutes out of their day to research a new genre, style, or set of artists you may not have heard of before. Listen to it, and explore new options.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kairm02.wixsite.com/kaimitchellportfolio
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theofficial_kvi/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaimitchell25/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kvi5927/videos
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/44gEh0OzCi6EcbLC4P3Buu?si=GOJ4MNa5QnyKZaEaJpEs4A