“I want to mix for artists who are serious about their music, whatever the genre. I have hit records in Rock, Pop, R&B, Hip Hop, Dance, Latin, Christian, and Reggae. Rarely will you find anyone anywhere as versatile.”
Ken Lewis Mix Engineer, Producer and Musician W
e sit with Producer and musician Ken Lewis whose credits include the platinum hit from John Legend Once Again “Another Again”, a Grammy with Usher’s Confession “Throwback” (mixing and guitar) and sample creation on Grammy winning Kanye West The College Dropout “All Falls Down”, “Never Let Me Down” and “Family Business”. He’s mixed for Mariah Carey, Joe Budden, Mary J Blige, The Game, Lenny Kravitz and many more. Let’s get behind the boards- early. Ken Lewis: I’m eight years old and begging my parents for a guitar. They finally got me one when I was ten. I got my first four-track recorder when I was 16 and just fell in love with the recording end of things and went to college, the Berkeley College of Music, got out, got an engineering job in Ohio for a year. I came to New York City when I was 22 years old, basically, completely flat broke and I had a place to stay and a job. I was working at the Soundtrack Recording Studios and basically I pulled 102 hours in my first week at 92 Producer’s Edge Jan-Feb 2009
Soundtrack and that pretty much set the pace for the next 16 years of my career. Drew Spence: Now, why so heavy in the urban genres of music? Ken Lewis: I think if you are a successful record maker in New York City, chances are you are doing urban or pop or hip hop or R&B or something like that. I definitely had some good successes within Rock as well and many other genres, but I’ve always loved the urban music and that’s where the opportunities presented themselves when I got to New York City and so I just went for them and so far so good, it’s been working out. You share a lot of different inputs, meaning you wear a bunch of different hats while you are working. Could you give us a little bit about the different mindset between the engineering hat, the mixing hat, maybe the artist hat where you are actually contributing musical instruments to the song. I think in order to like an engineer, be it a recording engineer or a mix engineer,
it’s like having the technical ability to go in between the artist and the producer’s creative vision and knowing what they have in mind for a song and how to get that song through a medium that the rest of the world can hear. So when I am wearing the engineer’s hat I am thinking about what’s the best way to record this vocalist or what’s the best way to record this piano or drum kit or MPC-2000 or something like that, you know, when I am mixing I am thinking alright, is this going to be club record or is this going to be a pop radio record? and tailoring my mix to be suitable for whatever that is. If it’s for the club, I am making sure that the subs are hitting hard and then it’s got a lot of energy and if it’s pop radio I want to make sure it comes across radio nice and loud and clear and when I put on a producer cap, then I am the one who is creatively guiding the ship. Even if I’m maybe also mixing or recording, most of my brain is focused on the creative aspect of what’s going to be best creatively for this record that I just get the best vocal performance out of the artists or does the song have