Stu Watts chats with Keelan Sanders, who is a producer, mix engineer, songwriter and musician based in Naarm (Melbourne), who's worked with artists including Children Collide, Beddy Rays, Screamfeeder and more. Starting out in Meanjin (Brisbane), he began working as a producer in 2017 at The Shed with help and guidance from producers Darek Mudge and Bryce Moorhead. For the next couple of years Keelan lived and worked at Bedlam Records, a recording studio & sharehouse, whilst also freelance engineering at studios including Airlock and The Plutonium, eventually launching his own recording space, Blue Green Studios. His engineering credits include William Barton & Veronique Serret's ARIA nominated world music album "Heartland", Jaguar Jonze's debut art-pop album "Bunny Mode", original music for the ABC short film "Viv's Silly Mango", plus work with Full Flower Moon Band, SGO and more. Since relocating to VIC at the end of 2023, he's been engineering with producer Paul "Woody" Annison at Red Door Sounds in Collingwood, playing drums for local band Jazz Cigarettes and producing his debut solo album under the name Worry Weather.

Chapters:

00:00:00 Intro 00:02:04 About Keelan Sanders, childhood years 00:04:15 Learning guitar and musical influences 00:05:22 Listening to production elements 00:06:10 Learning more about production 00:09:03 Early days of recording 00:12:20 Becoming an engineer 00:14:49 How Keelan's process has changed 00:18:12 Keelan's current recording process 00:21:32 Production process 00:23:04 Workflow improvements 00:26:37 The approach to working with different artists 00:28:40 Confidence in decision making 00:31:58 Paypal spiel 00:32:22 The importance of microphone choice 00:38:11 Artists getting attached to demos/"polished" recordings 00:44:03 Having honest conversations and saying "no" 00:48:50 Why does every band do a music video with a white backdrop? 00:51:06 Expectation vs reality of being an engineer 00:54:45 Creating something that sounds different 00:57:09 Best pieces of advice for engineers & artists 01:01:31 "What's on in the near future?" 01:02:35 Conclusion/Outro

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Keelan Sanders: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@keelansanders

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