Top recording engineer lives right in our
backyard
Author: Jim Barber
Date: Aug 07, 2007
Right: Courtesy of Visual Roots Photography
Wasaga Beach resident, and recording/mixing wizard, Richard Chycki
It takes someone to delicately and masterfully pull all the pieces together, add the technical flourish and capture not only the best of the artists’ work for all posterity but enhance it.
Wasaga Beach resident Rich Chycki is one of the best in the business at doing just that.
One of the top recording engineers/mixers on the planet, Chycki has demonstrated his technical know-how and ability to get the most out of a recording for a veritable who’s who of the music industry.
Starting with Canadian artists such as Jeff Healey, Our Lady Peace, Tom Cochrane and Amanda Marshall, Chycki’s reputation as a quality engineer led to work with the likes of Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Foreigner, Seal, P. Diddy, Mick Jagger, and Canuck heavyweight rockers Rush.
So what exactly does a recording engineer/mixer do?
“There’s two different jobs that I do. One is basically the recording process, which is pretty straightforward. Get the band, have the actual musicians there, and capture … the performance and the sound to computer. So the performance is captured,” he told Simcoe.com.
“The main process I do for a majority of my clients is mixing, which is taking all of the individual elements and combining them together to make the finished product that you’re listening to.”
Record labels will often call upon Chycki to take the raw recorded material of one of their artists, and, with input from the artists, make music magic.
Although there is a great deal of technical skill involved in mixing – knowing all the different effects and layers that can be added to the nuts and bolts of a song – there is still a large creative element to what Chycki does.
That’s the fun part for him, using his own imagination and musical ability to build a song that achieves what the artist and the record company wants to say artistically, and something that will also appeal to the music-buying public.
“Artists will send me a reference mix and say ‘this is what we’ve done so far,’ and I interpret from there. And I will talk to both the artist and the record company and if they have an idea and they’ll say, ‘this is the mix, this is what we’ve sent you, this is what we’re looking to do. And then it’s the interpretation based on that.
Like a lot of youngsters, Chycki picked up a guitar at an early age and began playing in rock and roll bands with his chums. Along the way, he and his bandmates wanted to record some of their musical masterpieces for posterity, so Chycki began experimenting with rudimentary four-track, reel-to-reel machines.
“Other bands heard it and started coming to me (to record their music) and they would submit these demos to record companies and it just fed off that. In this industry, the majority of the business you get is from word of mouth. And as things get bigger, the mouth gets bigger and louder, and that’s now how I get all of my projects,” he said.
For example, a producer named Marty Frederickson had worked with Jeff Healey and knew of Chycki from Jeff.
“He gave me a call … and said, ‘hey, you want to come down (to California)? I’m recording Aerosmith, do you want to come down and record some drums?’ So he originally had me scheduled for five days, and I stayed for 11 months. I just ended up doing the whole record.”
The album was 2001’s Just Push Play, which included the hit single Jaded.
For a mixer, there is no need to be on site, unless that’s what the client wants. This allows someone like Chycki to work from home, which means he can live wherever he wants, as long as there is high-speed, broadband Internet access.
After coming to Wasaga Beach on vacation for many years, three years ago, he decided to make it his home, bringing his business, Mixland Music and DVD with him.
“I was coming up here for holidays all the time, and I really liked it, so I thought I might as well just be on holidays all the time, and then go into the city every couple of weeks,” he said. “When I was living in California, the thing I loved about it was the beach lifestyle. I used to just go and hang out on Malibu. I used to love being on the beach and got to the gym and that part of the lifestyle I love.
"And that’s one of the reasons I came up here. In Los Angeles, the concentration of people there was so intense. But here, there’s no concentration here relative to Toronto or L.A..”
Technology has meant he doesn’t actually have to be face-to-face with the artists he is working with in his capacity as mixer.
“I have two different servers. The artists can stream and listen to the music wherever they are in the world. I have no problem with people coming up to hang out. If they want to ski in the winter and go to the beach in the summer, it’s great,” he said. ‘Right now, I just finished a song today, and the artists, they’re probably listening to it right now on the server, and they’re in New York. And they just send me their list of changes, and I make the changes, post it again, and that’s it. It’s done.”
Technology has also made it easier for musicians to do their own recording, effectively and cheaply, which Chycki believes is a good thing, as it really democratizes the music industry.
“The great thing is, with the proliferation of the technology, now it’s a level playing field … it’s now about the painter, the artist, just as it should be,” he said. “It’s about creativity and it’s about the people involved.”
This hasn’t meant people like Chycki will need to be filling out unemployment insurance forms in the near future. In fact, mixers and experiences engineers will be more in demand than ever.
“When it’s all said and done, they need somebody that’s going to put the stuff together at the end, and that’s how it’s worked out. And it’s worked out great for me, where I get tons of calls from artists that are recording their own material, to some extent, in their own facility … and they need it mixed in the end.”
With his vast knowledge of the ins and outs of the music business, Chycki says musical artists need to be media- and market-savvy if they want to make a career out of writing and playing songs.
As much as creativity and talent is key, business acumen is also essential, he argues.
“Before, the artist just used to be creative. The artist just used to say, ‘hey man, I just play my instrument.’ And now it’s far from it. The artist has to be a lot more conscious of their career, and make a lot more intelligent, sophisticated business choices earlier on. You have to go out there and learn how to market yourself, and you have to get to a certain level of achievement, on your own, before a record company’s going to grab you.”