‘Ambulances,’ says audio and mixing engineer Cole Nystrom when asked what the lasting memory was from his teenage years. Nystrom had been touring as a drummer with metal bands since he was 13. “There were high chances of accidents in these mosh pits, with a bunch of violent people. So yeah, I’ve seen my share of ambulances,” he says. Nystrom is in Chennai for a mixing and mastering workshop at Swarnabhoomi Music Academy.
The 26-year-old from California, who has left the warm stage lights of his metal touring days behind in favour of the cold light of a production room, recalls, “I was the youngest in the band: 13 or 14, while the rest were 18 to 22.” Often, bar managers would refuse to let him play on learning his age. “They’d tell me that I wasn’t allowed there. And I’d plead with them, promise I’d wait outside until it was my turn to play,” he says, adding with a short laugh, “I was a very hungry kid.”
His hunger for music paid off in seven years when, after taking up audio engineering at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, he met producer Dave Pensado, who would give him the chance to work on Michael Jackson’s second posthumous album, Xscape.
“It was incredible, and incredibly stressful as well. It was nerve-racking, sitting with the biggest names in the label industry,” says Nystrom, who mixed the single, ‘Love never felt so good’ that released in 2014. They worked on it for a year, making changes almost a week before its release. “It was an MJ track, so obviously there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Someone tried to change the bass line, someone else wanted to add flutes or woodwinds. But finally they released the original version we had mixed.”
Nystrom has worked with a laundry list of artists from Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Earth, Wind and Fire, to Rihanna. He has also worked on a few tracks for Charlie Sheen’s show, Anger Management. But he has met only a handful of these artistes, and almost never the big names who have their own recording rooms. “ There are so many people we work with that we don’t end up actually meeting. Everything is done over emails. I worked with Snoop Dogg on his birthday, and I didn’t even know.”
On the plus side, this allows him to work with artists from various countries, including the Caribbean, Denmark, Australia, South Africa, Russia and Nepal. What he misses about touring and drummin, he makes up for by “sitting in my box and being fed music from across the globe”. He finds it fascinating how a small country like Trinidad and Tobago has affected US pop music tastes, “If you look at the biggest tracks in pop — take Drake’s or Rihanna’s music — you’ll find Carribean music’s influence: soca rhythm and beats.”
Nystrom leaves us with this advice to producers entering the industry: “In dealing with artistes, producers, record labels, there will be so many people who have their two cents to throw in. But first and foremost, serve the song. Focus on capturing the energy and emotion. That’s what common people with no technical knowledge will gravitate towards.”
