Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Price.
Hi Joseph, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My name is Joseph Price and I grew up in Suwanee, GA for most of my early childhood, I remember having a love for music. Starting in elementary school, I began to take guitar lessons at a nearby music store which led to me joining the newly formed guitar ensemble at my middle school. It was here that I really began to take an interest in being heavily involved in music. Not only was I playing guitar all throughout middle school, but, because I now had my first cell phone, I also began to listen to music at any point that I could.
In my last year of middle school, a new class called “Music Technology” became available, and, considering my near obsession with music at this point, it seemed obvious that this was a class for me. It was in this class that I learned about my first DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and other very basic musical recording processes such as MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface).
Thankfully my high school also offered a 3 year music technology course during which I made an attempt to discover who I was within the musical world. It started off with me thinking I was going to be a beat maker which then shifted to becoming more of an EDM producer and that somehow led me to land in the “Bedroom Pop” space.
For a while I decided that I was going to be the next big Bedroom Pop hit, however, after a while (and thankfully with the help of my parent’s wisdom) I realized that, while there was something I liked about being the artist, it was not lighting the passion that I had inside of me for music.
What I slowly came to realize is that, while I enjoyed recording music, I really seemed to prefer to be working on other people’s music rather than my own. It seemed that my colleagues wrote better songs and they realized I was better at accurately capturing a recording of the idea that was in their head. So with this, I went into college with the idea that perhaps I was going to be either a producer or some sort of audio engineer.
When I got to college, I was offered a job at the music/music production lesson establishment I was a student at during my high school years. During this job, I ended up meeting a group of students who had formed a band and they wanted to start getting their songs recorded and released. I mentioned that I happened to be into the recording aspect of music and they essentially booked me as their engineer for their first EP.
The EP I did with this group, “Midsummer Motel”, took quite a while to complete, and while we started the process at that lesson studio, it ended up moving around various small studios as I ended up leaving that job due to poor management and moved more into live sound. For a while, I was in and out of low-budget recording, live sound, corporate live production, and other audio-related jobs to help support myself until about February of last year.
Through a program at my university, I was sent over to Tree Sound Studios for an internship. It was at this moment that I realized I was finally home. The passion I had been wanting to feel for anything else I had been doing, I finally felt within the walls of a world-class recording studio. I made sure to make this internship my top priority during this time in my life and within just under 5 months I got moved up from intern to assistant engineer.
This was especially a proud moment for me because in December of 2022 I would have said that a part of my 5-year goal was to be working in a professional studio, and not even a year later I was an assistant engineer at arguably the most iconic studio of the south.
As time went on I took a mentorship under the head engineer of Tree Sound and between then and now I have been learning the ins and outs of studio life, how to deal with the tremendous pressure that comes with being the engineer, how to record things with the highest quality gear and technique, and just generally getting the best experience anyone my age could possibly get anywhere in the country.
I now officially have a handful of sessions under my belt that I was the lead engineer for, countless assisting experiences, and my personal recording/mixing clientele and general network only continue to grow as time goes on.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I have been fortunate enough that, overall, my journey hasn’t been filled with too many obstacles. However, I think the main obstacle I have experienced is one that most people within the music industry face during the majority of their careers. It has been my experience that when I explain to people that I am going into the record industry in particular, it comes with a stigma.
Most people assume there is no money, no success, and no real personal value in doing such a thing unless you get really lucky. I am lucky enough to have parents who, without a shadow of a doubt, support my engineering endeavors, however, even family members have their limit of what they think is possible in the music industry unless they have walked that path themselves.
What I think this ends up leading to for most people, and especially in my case, is a bad case of imposter syndrome. Often times I convince myself that I either don’t deserve to be where I am, or worse, that I have made an unwise career decision and should have done something “safer”. Furthermore, there is an element of truth to what most people outside of this industry say. They are absolutely correct that what I do and what many others do in this field is uncertain, unsafe, and risky.
This causes me a lot of anxiety for my future as that outside talk gets to me easily and makes me think yet again, that what I am doing is a bad idea. Thankfully my journey is based on both a deeply rooted passion and a strong Christian faith that has undoubtedly led to where I am right now and I know that as long as I use those two things as my guiding light, I will be okay.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a professional recording and mixing engineer. With the recording aspect, it is my job to capture both an artist’s idea and performance as accurately as possible. This includes choosing the correct acoustic environment, and the appropriate microphones, and creating a recording system that allows for an efficient process that lets the musician be the only person that can decide how quick or how slow a session goes.
With the mixing aspect, it is then my job to take that recording and make it exist somewhere in space. I must take these isolated recordings and make them work together in a way that allows them to coexist in the same healthy atmosphere and also helps musically convey whatever the artist’s message is.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I think what ends up surprising most people, particularly colleagues in my own industry, tends to be my age. As of a month ago, I turned 21 which means the vast majority of the success I have had so far in my career has been between the ages of 17-20yrs old. Around the studio, I tend to be one of the younger people, especially when I am working on sessions. The age gap is much more prevalent in the live audio world.
A lot of times I end up working with older in-house engineers who have extensive touring backgrounds, a few odd studio stories, and more often than not are usually working at the venues I work at because they decided to come out of retirement to get back into audio. The best example I can recall is a corporate gig I did for a major national production company here in Atlanta when I was 19.
At this gig, I was the audio lead at a big gala at a nice downtown hotel and I had just finished getting everything tested and setup for the event in a few hours when the project manager of the same company at a different gig across the street called saying that their audio lead had nothing set up and it was 2 hours until the event began.
I rushed over to the other gig and managed to get everything set up, tested, and ready to go just in time for the event, and as I did both the video and lighting directors sitting next to me mentioned how they were “gonna need a drink after this” and I responded, “I really wish I could”. They looked over surprised and were even more shocked when my age was revealed. While being a humorous moment, it also made me feel a little bit of pride that I seemed to be able to punch a little bit above my weight.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/price_audio/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-price-14357a283/
