Mentor My Mix: Find Your Career in the Music Industry!

Bridging the gap from '70's love & hate to rave culture. Born in the oil fields of Oildale California and coming to the Bay via Eureka. Coming to SF heart broken when his band broke up. Going to his first rave in Golden Gate Park and waking up to a whole new generation of music. Asking to buy a rave machine and walking out with two turntables, a DJ mixer and vinyl from Frequency 8. Going back north to Humboldt to start throwing parties on the beach. Connecting with El Jefe from the band NOFX and started throwing Planet Trance raves in the club with a smoothie bar. Getting offered a job managing the record store and becoming a sushi chef. Post 9/11 the climate shifted and so did Bruce. Moving to living from DJ'ing to healing the ego and starting to produce. Connecting with Pyramind as part of his evolution. Not having the backing to go to music production school. Teaching himself Reason v.1 and doggedly sticking with it. Having business mentors who were a major influence in his career. Going to London to work with his mentor and getting very real advice. Turning the glamor nob down and not being an aspiring producer and owning the title and the role. The importance of "feeling it" and not just going through the motions. Believing in yourself enough to own it. Making the shift from DJ'ing to producing and then producing for others. Having an awakening moment and deciding to cut the cord from the conventional work week. Focusing on personal happiness. Putting happiness first and finding "the spokes on the wheel" to drive it. Starting the label first to help generate clout. Not being able to afford mastering at that time and "just figuring it out". Then the tracks started charting and others started to inquire who was doing the mastering. Started with minimal techno but also composing for ad agencies to help generate working capital. Hustling to do what was needed going from mastering to mixing to producing and now artists development. Meeting Ryan Robbins originally as a client and then eventually having him intern and then working together to help drive the growth of the label. Making Ryan a partner in Fierce Animal Recordings. Years of cumulative experience and realizing the real value in what he had to offer was more than mixing, mastering and production but real artist development consulting. Getting consistent top 50 charting tracks. Cosmic Boys & Maksim Dark are currently two biggest artists. Not listening to the haters and the importance of staying positive. Getting "the crabs out of the bucket". Gifts from the universe to make you fight harder. What it takes to find your "soul song". The commonalities of the human experience and feeling that burning need to express yourself. Studying non-dual Kabbalah as a healer. Coming to the table without the ego and helping artists heal themselves from their limiting beliefs. Coaxing out their soul song and helping them get through failure and seeing it as nourishment. Holding the bitterness and sweetness together in relationship to fully experience life. Going deep with modular synthesis with Ivo Ivanov. The two roads of electronic Music: "Disposable Dance Tracks" and the need to keep writing vs. creating a memorable album in the vein of Daft Punk or Chemical Brothers. Not giving in to any limiting beliefs or fears. Learning to get happy with Covid and using this as a way to wake up to how we treat each other and needing to find a new way. Producing Headroom SF to help bring the Bay Are together and grow the community. Radical honesty over brutal honesty! Track Credits: "Chasing Rabbits" by Bruce Mac Vaughn and Deontology (Ryan Michael Robbins remixed by Mac Vaughn).

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Getting his start at 17 at the landmark New York club CBGB's as a lighting tech, then touring with Jane's Addiction as a lighting tech and then Mix Master Mike as his Tour Manager for almost 10 years. Moving to Maui in the early '90s. DJ'ing & producing and moving to SF in 1993 as a DJ and producer, Stand Out Selector. Conscious music and Dancehall Reggae as a driving force. Management techniques from Burger King to effect results in tour management. Producing Marty Dread's first single "Wicked Wahine" and going to #1 on Hawaiian commercial radio. Making first 4-5 albums on the Roland DJ70. Working with Nicodemus, a Dancehall Reggae legend who pioneered dancehall music and is credited with positively influencing many aspiring DJs and MCs. Building his own indie label, Positive Sound Massive Recordings. 

Giving Rocker T from the Skadanks a fresh start producing Tru Ganjaman, If Ya Luv Luv, Show Ya Luv, and touring the world. Helping to produce The Way Life Should Be and the EP Luv Is The Foundation with Greg Gordon, Rocker T and Joan Baez. Working with Bill Ortiz, the ex-Trumpet player from the Santana Band. Recording both Rocker T & Bill's projects at Pyramind Studios. The importance of personal relationships and they're dynamic. Growing those relationships to build his current company, Independent Distribution Collective that now serves over 800 labels and artists. Controlling the distribution and giving props to Greg to help build a scalable model focused on developing a business plan for "IDCPromo": PR, Social Media Marketing, Digital Marketing, Physical Retail Marketing, and Project Management all wrapped into one service. Partnering with artists to get them from "under the radar" to "over the radar". Being your own publicist and being your own biggest champion. Understanding the role of producer and how to navigate the new music business. The true reality is a step by step process on the major services and supporting it with a proper marketing campaign. 

One part old school "who you Know", and the other part of not trying to fit in anyone's mold. Building your own team to push forward. Forty-Four revenue streams for every composition. Plenty of money in the music biz but you have to find your lane in this "game of attrition". The inspiration behind building "The Indie Artists Business Toolkit". Coming up with a working strategy to establish yourself. Do what you do well: "Find your bliss and follow it". Using your time wisely to make as much content as possible. Find positivity and make that a part of your day to day life. We are in a time of change: Needing artists to step up and be leaders. Be the voice of change.

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Jamming in Ableton to produce new music as Wavelux. Dealing with canceled tours and making the most of being given "a break from the road". High pressure lifestyle of the DJ and getting "a year off of Raves". Starting out as a young promoter as 17 and moving quickly to touring as a DJ. First big break with "mentors" willing to take him under their wing in the studio and the clubs. From small hits on Hope Recordings with help from Nick Warren from Way Out West to getting noticed by Anjuna Deep from self released tracks put out on vinyl. Being invited to Goa, India to play the first ever Sunburn festival at Anjuna Beach. Being invited to the UK by the team at Anjuna Records. From home studio to "legit": Above & Beyond's studio. Piano from 6 to 16 years old with the same teacher. Computer nerd from a young age. Being completely "oral" with perfect pitch. Learning by ear. No formal training in music production but an early adopter of computers & music. Started with Acid Pro then moved to Logic & Ableton. Falling out of love with finishing tracks in Ableton and now using Studio One for a more transparent sound. Live PA tour with tons of gear and realizing that it went over most people's heads and made his set too uncompromising vs DJ'ing with a USB stick that made it easier to play to the crowd. Re-designing his sets for live performance with fail safe backup systems. Pre-lease Jaytech track: The Axis. Influenced by Nile Rogers "Every track that needs to have a deep hidden meeting just for you and an outer meaning for everybody else". Being a Progressive Trance Producer & existing squarely between those two worlds: Progressive & Trance. Making that Big arena feel. Figuring the track out as you go along vs. mapping it all out first. Notes that linger and float into the atmosphere with 10 second decay times. Using Slate digital Reverb suites and Native Instruments Raum. Layered sub basses at different frequencies with different roll offs to make sure they don't cancel each other out. A dedicated sub bass, a main bass at 80-100 HZ, and a support bass at 200 HZ and up. Using a duck buss that runs to an LFO tool for everything that's ducking (side chaining effect) so long as the kick is playing and switching it off when there's no kick. Steering clear of sidechain compression in favor of the LFO tool. Sound bites made from vocal samples giving people who can't live without vocals something to latch on to. Sidechaining the reverb tails to the original vocal sample to create room when using long reverb tails. When and where to use loops. Finishing a new Jaytech album. Not the same Jaytech coming out the other side of 2020. Not being just a DJ and using that to adjust to the changes during 2020. Mentoring with Jaytech as a "judgement free zone". Creating a blueprint to work from. Creating his own corner of the music world weather with other labels or on his own. Collaborating with Steve Smith.

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Starting at young age and sticking with it. Influenced by the greats: The classics Beethoven, Mozart, Ludovici, to the contemporaries Yani, Avicii, Kygo, and Eminem and studying their music and productions. Training your ear to develop the acquired skills needed to hear intervals, chord progressions, arrangement, arpeggiations, and in so doing playing over 5000 covers and releasing close to a thousand! Leave his job in banking to invest in online learning to broaden his knowledge of music production. "A formal education will make you a living, self education will make you a fortune". Studying many different genres. Basketball injury that helped focus his development in music. Graduating college and going to work on Wall Street. Misconceptions of Wall Street. Understanding investing and business operations and using that experience, money and knowledge to launch his own music business. Generating over 50,000,000 streams online through releasing Piano covers of well known artists tracks and learning songwriting by deconstructing the arrangements, melodic and chord patterns. Big break with covering The Weekend's "Starboy" that was added to the official acoustic calm playlist on Spotify. Tagging all the artists that were covered creating a wave of recommendations and placements in more and more playlists growing plays to over 200,000 and placements and close to 250,000 playlists! Loving what you do and the unrelenting passion that drives success. Making the switch from Wall Street to a full time music career. How to create passive income streams. Learning how to build online courses. Opening music credit Jonn Connor AKA Seventh Sign

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Meet Jor van der Poel: Originally from the Netherlands and now living, working and producing in Berlin. Jor has been working with Pyramind as a music production educator and course developer for over three years. Moving from bands to production work and transitioning from being a drummer to guitarist and now full 88 key pianist and keyboard player. Why starting with an instructor is so important and keeping the beginner's mindset. Super Powers and how they are driven by your passion and interests. Using personal challenges to drive the growth of skills that end up becoming your passions. Picking and choosing the Ableton Live features that work best for your needs. How to manage complicated sets, tempo and key changes and still be hands free to perform live. Maintaining a full schedule and the importance of strong time management for working, creating and always learning. Being disciplined but still keeping it fun. Favorite artists and influences. Experimental live streams, Jor's studio setup secrets and different favorite controllers. When and why to use Logic vs. Reason vs. Reaper vs. Ableton. Favorite synth plugins for creative sound design. Parametric composition with Opus Modus. The importance of collaboration even when you're fully self sufficient. Jor's favorite effects and how to personalize your live set with your own custom designed FX & device racks.

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