Skills: ProTools, Stereo Imaging, Creative direction, Function during stress/emergencies

I got my start volunteering in the contemporary church. I have the upmost respect for Jesus, but the passive book-cult I saw turned my interest away from god and towards the technology used for its delivery. I volunteered over 2000 hours there to teach myself musicianship, audio-visual technology, live sound, leadership, and web design. It was also there that I found my ultimate passion for mixing music.

And miraculously, the lockdowns in 2020 created a paid position for me to redesign their FOH booth for multiple-destination video streaming, without introducing difficulties for their less tech-savvy volunteers. I became extremely familiar with the Presonus StudioLive 16 Console. I wrote extremely detailed instructions for powering up/shutting down the system and how it should be operated by 3 volunteers on any given Sunday morning, while I handled extra tasks during the week to maintain archives and prepare the team for long-term transitions. Also, we made unlistenable podcasts.

I first set foot in a recording studio in 2018, as the guitarist in the TVDSB Honour Jazz Band, fronted by Adam Lamoreaux (who has since went on to be a killer player in New York). This experience led me to obtain a BA in popular music studies from Western University. Instead though, I found strong faculty support for classical music, which introduced me to voice leading, chamber music, electroacoustic experimentation, and the business of recording and copyright. To compensate for the lack of popular music opportunities, I founded Mistapes Records with a group of passionate students to facilitate the production of Sam Hansell’s Inopia. Sam was a freshman at the time, and I turned his demos into a 49 minute album within a year. The lead single and best performing track is “As The Moon Ran Free”, with some good string harmonies written by myself. After our ambition dwindled, the record label morphed into a record label club—the structure of which was inspired by my time volunteering in the church. It is currently being run by a rotating body of student volunteers.

Sam Hansell was also my way into the scene in London Ontario. We sold out tickets and CDs on our first show, and I quickly joined a local ‘jazz’ band called Juice Joint as a guitarist. We released a self-titled project with an alternate lo-fi Bandcamp exclusive, and began accepting corporate gigs while building a local community around our bi-weekly open jam events. The band peaked in 2024, performing at Sunfest: Global Music Festival and a subsequent colaboration with the Park Siyeon Trio from Daegu, South Korea for a private performance for UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).