I grew up in a very Polish family in a very Polish enclave on the far Northwest side of Chicago. When I was 11 or so, I first opened up GarageBand and rapidly I became the de facto recording and mixing engineer for my brother’s, cousins’, and friends’ numerous rock bands. Hey – better than being the bassist!

I followed my passion to New York, where I studied guitar, piano, and music tech at NYU with Saul Walker. I also assisted the producer Nick Sylvester of Godmode, the label, management, and artist development company behind a diverse slew of acts like JPEGMAFIA, Channel Tres, and Yaeji.

This was the beginning of my 10,000 hours. I learned how to tune up vocals in imperceptible ways. I learned what proper low-end felt like. I learned how sometimes, after 98 revisions on a mix, the second pass is actually the best one. I learned that every record is different, and I learned that sometimes doing a little is actually doing a lot. 

Mixing a record isn’t that different from framing a painting. My job is to take what you’ve done and elevate it. That doesn’t mean polish it to death – quite the opposite. My job is to protect the original spirit, and accentuate what’s special about your work. My job is to make sure your work makes people feel something.

I’ve had over ten years experience recording, mixing, and mastering across so many genres for both independent and major label artists – r&b (Jai Paul, PawPaw Rod), rap (Channel Tres, Tyler, The Creator), house (Yaeji), pop (Tove Lo, Mura Masa, LoveLeo), rock (Christian Leave), etc. Genres are constantly changing and reinventing themselves. A large part of my job is making sure your work competes within the genre, but also stands out.

These are your records, not mine. Before I take on any work, we’ll have a conversation about your goals for the record, what you like and what you think could be better. You’ve probably already made a few thousand decisions about the sound of the record before it’s even gotten to me – let’s honor all that work. If the demo is banging, I’m going to tell you that, and from there maybe we discuss ways how mastering can elevate the record without losing the raw energy.

I’m based in Los Angeles and work out of the A Room in Godmode Studios, which is outfitted with custom Augspurger mains, a Neve summing console, a variety of tape machines, and a recallable outboard multi-buss mix system I helped design.

If you’ve made it this far, here’s one last thing: My last name is pronounced “SHMER-lo” – ha!

Thanks for reading.

Robert