“I don’t know if any of us were expecting things to shoot into the stratosphere the way that they have. I’m so so grateful to have been a part of this.” – Jesse Ray Ernster
We’re teaming up with some of the most esteemed producers, engineers and mixers in the game who are lifting the hood behind their biggest hits.
In the latest episode of #TheMakingOf we catch up with Grammy Award-winning mix engineer Jesse Ray Ernster. Jesse gives us an access-all-areas look at the mixing process for Doja’s chart-topping album ‘Planet Her’, describing it as “a game of small subtle tweaks”, embellishing and lifting the impact of the record with small, precise decisions.
Jesse was nominated for five Grammy Awards at last night’s 65th Annual Awards Show, including nominations for ‘Record of The Year’ for his work on Doja Cat’s ‘Woman’, ‘Best Global Music Album’ for ‘Love, Damini’ by Burna Boy, alongside three participation nominations for his work with both Doja Cat & Burna Boy.
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TRANSCRIPT
“So they had the beat sounding a certain way. They have stacks of vocal sounding a certain way, as well as her vocal effects. So a lot of the sound of the record that you hear now was already embedded into that when I received it. There were just a couple of opportunities to just embellish and just add impact.
It’s a game of just small subtle tweaks, the finished vocal that you hear on the masters or on the radio, if not a vocal running through 10 busses and chains of plugins. And with this effect feeding into that, no, absolutely not. It’s an EQ and a compressor, a delay and a reverb all doing very, very little.
She has a controlled delivery, an impeccable mic technique and great tone and the mixers job is to just leave it alone and don’t do too much because it doesn’t need it.
It’s so incredible to see the impact that these recordings have had on other human beings and the culture as a whole and this album and the single, it completely took off and took all of us by surprise.
I don’t know if any of us were expecting things to shoot into the stratosphere the way that they have. I’m so so grateful to have been a part of this.“
