We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maria Paula Marino a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Maria Paula 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 started learning how to engineer and produce in college, at Loyola University New Orleans. Before coming to New Orleans I had never even stepped into a recording studio, and had never considered engineering or production as a career path. It was definitely not a streamlined process, and it took a lot of effort and hard work to be “in the room”. More so than with formal classes, I started learning from my peers, from observing and taking notes, from studying and reading and practicing in my own time. It’s all about self-discipline and endurance! I still have a long way to go and I take each day to learn more and more and build my craft to start making a name of myself. I would’ve loved to start learning about studio work from an earlier age, but back home in Colombia I didn’t have the exposure or the tools to do so–coming to New Orleans opened up a whole new world for me in regards to music creation and made me fall in love with being in the studio. With songwriting, it was a bit different because I had been writing and singing from a young age, so it was more so a matter of practice and collaborating and learning with other artists and producers.
It has definitely been challenging, because I had to learn about all these technical aspects in my second language, and had to learn how to code switch to fit more in the “studio world”. Not to mention the fact that women engineers and producers (especially Latinas) are still a rare sight. I admire greatly those who I have met and have had the amazing opportunity to learn from!

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.

I am an engineer, songwriter, and producer from Bogota, Colombia. I also do photography, mainly focused on concert and artist photography!

I have a passion for all things audio and visuals, and in my work I always connect them both. Each song I create has a specific visual feeling to it and I love working out what colors my mind “feels” with each of the projects I work on.
As a studio creative, I am at the service of artists, and I am passionate about helping them materialize their visions and create art that feels truly connected to who they are and what they want to convey to their public. I usually focus my efforts in fewer projects at a time to make sure I can clearly capture and create something meaningful, something we are proud of putting out there to the public. I love being involved in the different stages of music creation, from the beginning concept, songwriting, to arranging and producing and then recording and mixing the song. Afterwards, I also love working on the visual component of the work through my photography. Every song is its own universe and there is nothing more important than learning how to be at the service of music. One of the things I am most passionate about is collaborating with my peers and bringing on more people onto the projects I work on. I have come across incredibly talented people that have taught me a lot of what I know now.

I have worked in projects both in Spanish and English and in recording studios in New Orleans and Miami. I have experience with multiple genres, ranging from latin pop, songs for film, indie rock and jazz. Recently, I had the experience on working on songs for two movies from the Loyola Film Department and found myself deeply connected to the storytelling role that music plays in a film. I want to keep pursuing a career on the path of sync licensing and music for film too. In my work I want to bring influences from my Latin musical background and explore new sounds and genres that could bring the Latin industry and the commercial US industry closer together.

I started my career interning at a studio in Miami called Art House, under the direction of multiple-Grammy winner Colombian producer and engineer Julio Reyes Copello. After that, I went back to college, where I worked as a recording engineer for the university’s studio facilities. After graduating I started working as an assistant engineer at a studio in New Orleans under Eric Heigle, main producer and engineer for Arcade Fire. My diverse background and experience with different genres has been extremely helpful in shaping the creative I am today, and continues to inspire me to learn from every experience and studio I have the pleasure of working at.

My first big project, a four-song Latin Pop EP created with my friend and incredibly talented singer-songwriter SHELLA (also from Colombia, follow her at @isabellacabal_) is coming out in November! We are both very excited to share this entire project we worked so hard on.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Yes, I think back home I wasn’t really exposed to the idea of unconventional learning–I thought that all the knowledge had to be acquired from traditional academic classes. In reality, even though I did go to college and learnt a lot, the majority of what I’ve learnt has been self-taught. I completely taught myself how to take pictures and edit them, starting on smaller projects with my friends, to taking pictures at iconic venues in New Orleans. With recording and engineering, I wish I had started earlier learning on my own, researching, looking at YouTube videos (the term Youtube university is very real!), and using the technology tools and accessibility to knowledge that we have nowadays to my advantage. Anything can be learnt online if you have enough self-discipline. It is something that I am still working on, but I would definitely advise anyone wanting to start something new to not wait until they have proper direction or training to start learning and trying it out.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

One of the biggest lessons that have stuck with my ever since my first big internship at Miami (which I learnt from Julio Reyes) is that when we create music we are opening a divine path from which energy flows. There is something so unique and special, a certain type of divine energy, that fills up the room when you are creating music. I’ve met and worked with incredibly talented musicians that you can tell when they start playing they are taken over by a special something. Music is divinity, its spirituality, its medicine, its healing, its unity. The most rewarding aspect of being a creative and getting to work in the presence of other artists is experiencing this divine energy of music. That is why I fell in love with working at recording studios, and why I love capturing–whether with a microphone, a camera, an arrangement–what each artist transmits through their music.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @mariapaulaamarino
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-paula-marino-850/

Image Credits
All of the images are mine. Maria Paula Marino Photography