About Me

On this page you won’t find boring stories like when I was born, how I studied, where I worked. All this information is in my CV, which is here, by the way, and if you want, you can have a look at it…

After graduating from a musical school I was often asked: ‘Why have you chosen exactly this profession, so obscure for most people (including some musicians), so mysterious. One would think: what’s difficult? You just have to set the microphones, just have to push the button on time, and that’s all. Done. It may seem that there is neither creativity, nor any self-expression; in short, that’s unrelieved boredom and dullness. I confess, I myself had a misty idea of many-sidedness and diversity of this specialty.

Judge by yourself, the job of a sound producer is not only so-called "photographic" sound recording, which implies that a sound producer should be as imperceptible and as "transparent" as possible (mainly this strategy is applied while recording classic music, sometimes while recording jazz). There exist numerous styles which imply that recording is creative, or, in other words, a sound producer is as active while creating a piece of music as the musicians themselves. For instance, he may offer some interesting tricks which are unknown to the musicians or they just never thought over them. Or it may happen that it is necessary to improve arrangement or even the form of some part of a composition (certainly it should be done with great accuracy and tactics not to offend a composer). To say more, it’s necessary to be able to record and to mix a record so that it seems “bigger than life” (oh yes, the sound, as the cinema, is a great illusion). I assure you that this is very hard indeed.

Another aspect is working with a live sound. In this field a sound engineer is often underestimated by many inexperienced (and, unfortunately, sometimes by experienced) bands. Exactly this strange unshaven and furry guy at the console (that, to say more, is situated somewhere behind the loudspeakers) is responsible for everything: the sound in the hall (or the comfort of the audience), the sound on stage (or the comfort of the musicians). Just imagine! How would the rhythm section play if a bassist has only vocal instead of drums in his monitor, while a drummer hears only the keyboards… Unfortunately, this happens not so rarely. I could often see that a guy at the console just couldn’t manage the room acoustics or his equipment. Still, more often I could see that a sound engineer didn’t give a damn for the musicians or for what was going on in the hall. It’s much more pleasant to sit sipping beer and smoking a cigarette...

If you think that only studios and concert stage need the presence of a sound engineer, you are wrong. There exist radio and television too. In this field, in my opinion, there work more engineers than in studios. Tremendous upgrowth of computers contributed to the necessity of recording of music and texts for all possible games (very often large companies even build small studios for this). Mobile telephony expansion caused the demand in new content: melodies, ring tones, IVR etc.

But I’m aware of all this only now, while five years ago I could explain everything by the words: "I just want to get there and that’s it!" Well, it was hard to debate over such an argument and my parents had to accept fate. So, I became a happy student of the Russian Academy of music. In a year I began my work in the studio.

I was up against a hard task – I had to choose the priority: live sound or studio work. It was necessary to understand what was closer to my soul, so I decided to try the both directions. At that moment I was making studio records. At the same time I began to work with Dmitry Sukhin at the concert stages (first as his assistant, then at my own discretion). I worked in the club "Dom" as a FOH engineer too. Approximately in a year I knew it for sure – I could tackle live sound, but studio work was more interesting for me than working at the concert venues.

So I threw myself into studio work. Exactly at that time my first serious records took place. They were "Priklyucheniya Elektronikov" and Lina Milovich and "Melnitsa" and many other curious projects (by the way, you may listen to the fragments of the most outstanding (in my opinion) compositions on the "My Works" page).

In the meantime there took place another event, very important for me too. My composition "Khodyat koni…" in the performance of the vocal quartet "KVATRO" won the first prize at the Students Competition which was hold as part of the 118 AES Convention in Barcelona. I should add that this is the first (and yet the only) case when Russia managed to gain the lead at an international contest.

What comes next? Exactly during the convention I met the president of the AES Theresa Leonard who invited me for probation to the Banff Centre where she directs the sound producing department. I believe no one would refuse such a suggestion. So I spent three months in Canada studying the peculiarities of our foreign colleagues’ style of work. Now, calling up old memories, I realize that it’s hard to overestimate the significance of such experience.Now I may put a comma or dots in this part of my biography. As we’ve come close to the present day of my life. I can’t foretell fate. But I know for sure: I’m not going to rest on my laurels; otherwise, the life is going to be unbearably boring!