Producer Interview: Erik Hawkins

Erik Hawkins is a composer, producer, remixer, and author whose talents and technical expertise have leaders in the music industry calling him a “taste maker.” He has worked with and remixed a variety of top artists, including Irene Cara, Digital Underground, Conscious Daughters, Strypper, Brenda Russell, and DJ Sasha. His own progressive dance music tracks have been used by major television networks and film studios, including ABC, CBS, MTV, Nickelodian, and New Line Cinema. Some of the TV shows and films in which his music can be heard include, Ugly Betty, CSI:Miami, Burn Notice, Big Brother, The Last Day of Summer, The Disaster Movie, and The Informers.

More than one hundred of his articles have appeared in the industry’s top publications, including Electronic Musician, Mix, and Keyboard. He’s had monthly columns in Remix, MC2, and DigiZine. He has authored several books, including Studio-in-a-Box (ArtistPro, 2001) and the Complete Guide to Remixing (Berklee Press, 2003). Currently, he teaches Pro Tools 110, Producing Music with Reason, and Remixing with Pro Tools and Reason at Berklee College Online.

So when did you decide to start producing music?

Hawk: Around fifteen, after my high school band dissolved.  I was like, “To heck with trying to coordinate everybody’s schedules and personalities, I can get a 4-track and play all the parts myself!”  That was the beginning of the end of my gear addiction.

You are well known for your books “Studio-in-a-Box” and “The Complete Guide to Remixing”.  What inspired you when you decided to write theses great books?

Hawk: I’d been writing gear reviews and features for magazines like Electronic Musician, Keyboard, Mix, and Remix for years.  Writing a book was the next logical step, and, I thought, a potentially better way of sharing information with aspiring music producers and remixers.  I mean, think about it, an entire book in which to delve into music production versus a few pages in a magazine.  That’s a no brainer.

You are a teacher at Berklee College of Music Online and you still continue to write music for T.V. and films, and work on other projects.  How do you balance your time with so much going on?

Hawk: A constant state of sleep deprivation.  Come to think of it, I’m going to doze off right now, excuse me, it’s not you . . . actually, I write some of my best chords when my forehead hits my keyboard controller, like this . . . [clunk].  No, but really, I just love what I do, that’s what keeps me going.  I mean, what could be better, composing music and then sharing my experience with other aspiring producers.  This is really the best of both worlds and I feel very, very blessed to be able to make a living at it.  Also, I feel strongly that I must be out here, in the real-world, composing and remixing in order to have relevant information and lessons to share with students.

How did the teaching position come about with Berklee?

Hawk: I had just finished writing the Complete Guide to Remixing for Berklee Press, the publishing division of Berklee College of Music.  And, at around the same time, Berkleemusic.com was just starting to beta test its courses online.  I was invited to be part of this—history in the making, really—and taught an early version of the Desktop Music Production course and Pro Tools 101.  Teaching online and my skill set were a good match, and Berkleemusic continued to invite me back to teach more of their online courses.  In fact, I have since authored two popular courses for Berkleemusic, Producing Music with Reason and Remixing with Pro Tools and Reason.  The team at Berkleemusic are just amazing to work with and I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing online without their ongoing support and expertise.

You are well known for being a master at using Reason in Production.   What do you think is the biggest misconception that producers have about Reason?

Hawk: Probably that it’s a toy and that the sounds aren’t very good.  Nothing could be further from the truth, the synthesizers and the samplers inside of Reason are amazing and have all the professional features.  It’s really an amazing raw sound engine, but it’s up to you as a producer to mix the sounds so that they really pop and have impact.  I don’t think you should expect something to sound incredible and match the sound you have in your head right out of the box.  I mean, if it did, where would you go with it?  That’d be like trying to make a sculpture out of a stone that had already been chiseled.  Or, a better studio analogy might be, like a mastering engineer getting a mix that’s already compressed to the max.  Sure, it sounds good all by itself, but you can’t balance it in relation to the rest of the songs on your album.  And, I would add that, like most software, Reason is only going to sound as good as your audio interface.  For example, have you heard Reason through an Apogee or Digidesign 192 I/O?  Talk about a big sound, much better than hearing it out of the Mac’s built in audio outputs.

So what is your current studio production setup?

Hawk: I’ve got a Pro Tools HD 3 system running on a Mac Pro Quad-Core, bunches of plug-ins and virtual instruments, Event P8 active monitors, Avalon and Mackie Onyx pre amps, and way too many hardware sound modules from the late 80s eating up rack space.  But, with everything being virtual these days, I guess I need to have some kind of eye candy in my racks, otherwise, they’d be nearly empty and that just wouldn’t be cool.

What piece of gear could you not live without? (Hardware or Software)

Hawk: Obviously, my Mac, because without this computer I couldn’t run any of the good stuff, like Pro Tools and Reason.  Otherwise, I’ve got to have my favorite guitar, a Tacoma CC10E4 nylon string with Fishman Prefix Plus pickup and preamp.  I’ve had it tweaked to fit my playing style and it records great.

So what is your typical process when you are working on a song?

Hawk: A typical process—compose, arrange, mix, and master.  Pretty standard.  However, when I’m composing, I often get an idea of the direction I need to go with my writing from what a music supervisor is looking for.  My agent might drop me an email and say, “Hey, so-and-so is looking for a track that sounds like such-and-such for this new movie, do you have anything like this?”  If I haven’t already written something like what they’re looking for (often, I have, because I’m always writing), I’ll launch into writing a few songs in that particular vein.  I should explain that I confine my writing to the styles that I know best, modern beats and electronic, dance music, with some orchestral and Latin elements.  I’m known for a particular style and these are the tracks that I produce.  I’m not going to try and write a country song or a heavy metal anthem because it just wouldn’t be authentic.

Is this process any different when you are doing a remix for someone?

Hawk: For remixing, there’s definitely a different process, a series of specific steps that you need to follow to produce a finished, professional sounding remix.  Because, if you don’t nail down all of the technical elements, from the initial tempo change, to writing the proper supporting lines and harmonies with the original melody and chord structure, to making sure that everything sounds as it should sonically in your new arrangement and at the new tempo, you’re going to end up with a train wreck.  I delve deep into this process, the steps necessary to produce an exciting, professional sounding remix, in my Berkleemusic course, Remixing with Pro Tools and Reason.

Your programmed drums like those in “Rock Da Beat” are nothing short of amazing!  How do you get that great live-drummer/break-beat sound?

Hawk: Well, it helps if you can play the drums.  I’m a crappy drummer but I can play well enough to understand how to program really authentic sounding beats.  Plus, I always use a ton of layering when I produce beats.  That is, I hardly ever use just a MIDI drum beat or a REX loop, instead, I use several of these elements beat matched, groove matched, and mixed together to produce a sound that’s larger than the individual parts themselves.  For example, I might take a live drum groove and beat match a drum loop under it, and then add some of my own MIDI drum accents on top of it, then mix it all together with compression, EQ, and effects.

On the topic of producing beats, I’ve got some exciting news to share.  I just finished a new book called, appropriately enough, Producing Beats.  It’s being published by Berklee Press and is due to hit bookshelves in the second quarter of 2010.  It’s all about programming and producing killer sounding beats, and why this is so important for modern songwriting and music production in general.  I was inspired to write this book because over the past few years of working with students, I’ve met many amazing instrumentalists and songwriters that couldn’t write a decent beat for their otherwise fantastic music.  For example, basing your song’s entire beat around a single drum loop seriously undermines the overall production quality of your song.  Hopefully, this book will help to inspire songwriters and aspiring music producers to write bigger, better, more interesting, and music appropriate beats.

Your song “La Corrida” has some excellent classical guitar styles playing in there.  Is that you?  If so, please tell us a little bit more about your background with the guitar.

Hawk: Yes, that’s me.  I studied guitar for years, throughout my teens and into my early 20s.  I got a chance to study with a lot of amazing players in the Bay Area.  I even got to sit down for a lesson with Joe Satriani.  But, my absolute favorite instructor was Tuck Andress, of the vocal and guitar duo Tuck & Patti.  He was a huge influence on my playing.  I just love what that guy does on his guitar, you’ve got to see him perform live, it’s truly inspirational, and jaw dropping.  When I was studying guitar with Tuck I also took the time to study vocals with Patti Cathcart, which was an equally influential experience.  She introduced me to Bobby McFerrin, they were good friends and would play shows together regularly, and seeing Bobby McFerrin perform opened my eyes wide to whole other way of using the voice.

Who are your biggest influences when it comes to music production?

Hawk: For sure, BT.  I’d always loved his work, but when I was writing articles for Mix and Remix magazines I had the opportunity to sit and chat with him about his production techniques and it just made me appreciate his music even more.  BT was also gracious enough to let me quote him several times in my book, The Complete Guide to Remixing.  Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook, is another contemporary artist whose tracks have been a big influence on my beats.  And, of course, you can’t do big beat without being influenced by The Chemical Brothers.

But, I also have pretty deep roots in the jazz scene.  My dad was a jazz DJ in San Francisco, starting back in the 60s.  I grew up listening to him playing all the classic jazz records.  He’d take me to concerts when I was a kid and introduce me to jazz greats like Oscar Peterson and Sarah Vaughn.  And, two jazz musicians that were a tremendous influence on my desire to push sonic boundaries were Charlie Mingus and Thelonius Monk.  I just love their music, freaking amazing rhythms and tonalities.  However, I try not to listen to them too much for fear that I might go off the deep end and lose touch with reality.  You know, start writing really out there stuff that nobody gets.  I was starting to do this in the mid-90s, when I was an acid jazz artist in San Francisco, during the heyday of acid jazz.  Anybody remember acid jazz?  Of course, being a teenager in the 80s I also grew up listening to all the 80s new wave bands, from Depeche Mode, to The Thompson Twins, ABC,  O.M.D., and New Order.  And, my mom played classical guitar.  So, all of these different musical influences seeped into my psyche in one way or another.

What advice do you have for the future producers that are just starting out and want to get into production?

Hawk: Finish your songs.  If you don’t finish your songs you won’t be able to develop a catalog of your work.  And, if you don’t have a catalog of your work you won’t have any songs to shop, to get placed, to sell, or even just to play for your family and friends (without making an excuse like, “This isn’t finished yet, but . . . ”).

So what projects are you working on right now and what is in store for the future?\

Hawk: I’ve got a new album coming out that should be available online by March of 2010.  I’m really excited about it because it represents a collection of tracks that I’ve had placed in network TV shows and movies over the past few years.  I’ve collected all these tracks, extended and remixed them, and compiled them into a sort of theme album called, Erik Hawk and the 12-Bit Justice League.  There are lots of big beats, techno flavored tracks, and orchestral moments throughout the album.  I plan to make it available initially through iTunes and CDBaby.  I’ll definitely be letting everybody know when it’s in stores and ready for downloading.

So where can the readers find you at?  Blog, Website, Music, etc.

Hawk: I’m on all the usual networking sites, such as myspace (http://www.myspace/erikhawk) and facebook (http://www.facebook.com/erikhawk1), and I have my own label site, muzicali (http://www.muzicali.com), but probably the best place to keep up with me is via my Berkleemusic blog (http://erikhawkins.berkleemusicblogs.com).

Erik, I know that you are a very busy man and I want to sincerely thank you for taking time out to do this interview.

Hawk: You’re welcome.  Thanks for inviting me.

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