John El-Jor: Demo Production

In March 2021, I was approached by recording artist John El-Jor to edit and mix demos requested by a record label.

Note: John El-Jor exercises copyright ownership over these sound recordings and the contained musical compositions. Requests to use these protected works should be sent to John El-Jor at JTElJor@iCloud.com. DO NOT send usage requests to Michael Smedley.

What I Did

When Mr. El-Jor brought me onto his team, he had already recorded his demos and was searching for a mix engineer. My role in the project was editing and cleaning up tracks, comping vocals, and correcting and time-aligning elements of the songs that needed to be corrected, in addition to engineering the final mix of the tracks that were turned in to the label.

Once I began working with Mr. El-Jor, my goal was to help him get the version of the songs he heard in his head printed to the final mix. Mr. El-Jor and I maintained an excellent stream of communication and were constantly sending rough mixes and notes back and forth. The end result was two tracks that we were both very proud to have been a part of. I am grateful to Mr. El-Jor for giving me the opportunity to help him bring his creative vision to the final mixes of his songs.

What I Learned

In addition to honing my Pro Tools, mixing, and editing skills while working on Mr. El-Jor’s songs, I learned a lot about the best ways to communicate with artists. He and I, despite never sitting in the same room, were able to maintain constant, professional communication. We exchanged rough mixes and notes constantly and discussed exactly what changes we wanted to make to the next draft before I ever opened the session file. This allowed us to be on the same page so that I wasn’t changing elements of the mix that Mr. El-Jor liked or missing an edit that was really important to him.

I found that it made the process quicker and smoother for both of us when I sent a detailed list, in plain English, of all of the changes I had made to the mix along with each rough mix. This way, when he said things like “can we go back to how the backing vocals were balanced two mixes ago”, I could read through my notes and quickly figure out what I had changed since then. This saved me time and both of us headaches as we were able to quickly and efficiently pinpoint what parts of eachh mix we liked and what my adjustments would be for the next pass.