I started mixing at the age of 4.

Seriously, I started being a bassplayer, both double- and electric. At 18 I went to the Rotterdam Conservatory, studying what was called light music (never did found out what’s so light about it). Left school in the 4th year, being the little unhappy, slightly tormented, seek-and-not-find kinda guy one can be at that age. I saw a Mike Brecker concert and it hit me so incredibly hard I quit school the next day. Being the naive country-guy I was then I went to University to study history, eventually to become a journalist. But, it never fails. As soon as you turn your back on something it comes to you big-time. I got a lot of gigs, toured extensively and played my ass of for the next 10 years. Finished my first year at university and that was it. No time. Played everything everywhere with everybody. Just two gigs that stand out for me are a concert with Mel Lewis (in school) and for the last 20 years I’ve been playing with country-hall-of-famer Charlie McCoy.


In my late twenties I started engineering. At first as an apprentice in Soetelieve Studio’s. Great place to try stuff out, assist visiting engineers and learn from them, mostly from Robin Freeman. Soetelieve didn’t last very long, but long enough for me to realize I had found my natural habitat. Being at the crossroads of music, putting it together, cooking instead of farming. Trying to make the translation from music to a machine (be it a recorder, a radio or a PA) back to music as good and interesting as possible.

It started slow, studio-owners being reluctant to hire a new kid, and I can see why. No need to screw up a string-session just because I think I can do it. Tried to engineer for the artists I was playing with, worked a little at Willibrord Studio, a year at Studio 88, and after I got the chance to do a session at Wisseloord (at the time thé SSL-place in Holland) it took of. I’ve been doing a lot of sessions ever since, and branching out into broadcast-mixing, on-location recording and livesound.

I’m very happy I started of as a musician. I benefit from my understanding and knowledge of music every day. I love techstuff but it’s the road and not the destination. Being able to read charts, have a good pitch and sense of form, know what it is like to be on both sides of the glass or the stage and thus being able to accommodate musicians and crew at the same time, being able to fix a guitar (handy when you work with gypsy’s), being able to tune drums (handy if you work with comedians that want to play drums), and being able to sit in for the bassplayer if he hurts his finger right before the gig (which never happens, fortunately).

I’m also happy with the era in which I learned the trade. I was too late for that period of unlimited budgets, work on a record for a year, have lunch in Paris, let’s try different hi-hats for a week. But I was on time to start cutting to 2” analog, know the difference between 15 and 30 ips, with and without Dolby A, or SR, or DBX, tails out. Work SSL’s, all of them, Neve’s, but also the crappy console’s, outboard when it was still outboard and not a plug-in, the excitement of working on a Sony 3348, my first Atari ST (with 1mb of RAM, what in the hell do you need that much memory for?), the launch of Protools 0.1, Augan, Sonic Solutions, Fairlight, getting crazy of all the different platforms, working with hard-disk recording from day 1, Mac vs PC (completely uninteresting), analog vs digital (very interesting and completely uninteresting at the same time), doing large sessions, really large sessions, with the big-band in studio 1 and the strings in studio 2, prepping for a session, getting stuff done on time, tubes or not, that sorta thing.