Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Saiz.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Music has really been the only hobby I have ever had. I started with drums when I was five years old, and started playing guitar when I was ten. Unfortunately, I never had any friends my age around that I could play music with, so when I was twelve my parents bought me a tascam portastudio and I finally had a way to play instruments over top of each other. Without even knowing what a producer or engineer was, I was slowly getting glimpses into the processes of how it music comes together to make a track. I started playing in bands when I was 16 years old and had my first experience in a studio when I was 17. That is actually when I first found out about Tonal Recordings, owned by Cris Marshall. The band I was in at the time was sitting in the room with him as he was working on our song and I was just absolutely in awe of how he could make music sound so incredible. Since I was a kid all, I EVER spent my time on was making music. I can remember ever since I first got the tascam (and later around 15 when I moved to pro tools), I spent every second I could trying to get it to sound right. Hundreds of hours up all night simply wondering “why the heck doesn’t this sound right?!” And as much as I enjoyed being in the room with Cris and watching him do it, I was even more overwhelmed with the feeling of “I want to be able to do that.”
After about another year of sleepless nights trying to become better, I was finally at a place with my skill where I brought something valuable to the table at Tonal. I started working there in 2014 and recorded music full time for about two years. This is what REALLY made me understand what it takes to bring a song together. Whether it be creating, recording, editing, or mixing, the ONLY thing that made me stop running into brick walls in my work, was running into EVERY SINGLE BRICK WALL THERE IS and figuring out what the heck you do in those situations. There is no way around it, and there will never stop being walls. They just start to come up less the more you put into it. And my first two years at Tonal Recording gave me the experience I needed to really dive into my production career.
As much as I enjoyed recording bands and working with artists, I wanted to do something bigger, and really build something. When I was 20 years old, I met Sam Harvey. Sam came over to my house one night after I got tagged in a random Instagram post of his, and we made a full song the first night we ever met. I have worked with a lot of very talented people, but I could absolutely tell there was something special with Sam. Very long story short, I started to back off of my recording work and really started focusing on building Sam as an artist. It is fun to make and record good music, but I really started to have the desire to be heard more. As fun as it was working with a new act every day, I knew I wanted to start really developing a project, and just like that. Me and Sam were living together and working all day everyday. In about two years we made a 70+ song catalog, and just at the end of last year, we finally released him as an artist.
So currently, I still work with artists, and occasionally record bands, but my main focus is the project Sam Harvey, Austin Sheets(our manager) and I are working on.
The same drive and the same desire to be heard and liked when I was a kid trying to make a song to show off at school on my iPod, is the same exact drive and passion that pushes me now. I just love making music. And there isn’t a better feeling in the world than showing that music to someone else and them connecting with it. That’s all I want.
Has it been a smooth road?
The hardest part has just been staying motivated/confident. Trying to make music your career is a scary thing. Having your bills all hit in two days with no work booked is scary. Showing people your art you’ve poured your heart into and hoping they understand it is scary. But at the end of the day, you HAVE to put yourself out there to be seen and heard. It’s as simple as that. And you can NOT be afraid of the small failures that might come with it. This took me a long time to learn but the second that you can genuinely not be afraid of messing up, it’ll unlock so much more potential out of you.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
We just like to make dreams come true. Between me and Cris we are very fluent in almost every genre of music. We don’t just hit record with artists when they come in. We spend the time to make it special, figure out how to make it stand out. And most importantly we DO NOT compromise the vision of the artist. So many producers will sit down with an artist and turn the vision into something new entirely. It’s our job to make your vision clear and the best it can be. Not make it into a new vision.
Contact Info:
- Phone: 6786995940
- Email: brandonjsaiz@gmail.com
- Instagram: Brandonsaiz
Image Credit:
All photos are Jose Estrada @strada.digital on Instagram
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