Rising Stars: Meet Dylan Becker of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Becker.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’d always wanted to make a difference. I grew up in North Dakota – a quiet state where everything tends to stay the same. By the time I was a teenager, I’d realized my ceiling was very limited where I was at. I was often unloading my creativity into random mediums more than structured art forms.

Like many 16 year olds, I was hiding from the world in my headphones; drowning out the noise of the cyclic machine that was school and work. After obsessing over (and subconsciously studying) hip-hop for years, I finally decided to try making beats in my basement. It wasn’t long before I found out how deep the rabbit hole goes, and how difficult it was to make things sound like all the songs that I loved. It became a form of therapy more than anything. I found that the collaborative aspect of creating music was the most fulfilling.

After a while, it clicked – music is the perfect blend of art and science. There are chords, frequencies, vocal tones, drum patterns, even phonetics that are inherently pleasing to the human ear. My curiosity drew me to searching up the credits for the songs I was hearing. Finding out how many people work on these records told me this: there’s a job for me somewhere here.

It took me years of bouncing around dead-end jobs in different cities before I decided to stop playing around and chase the dream. I went head-first into an intensive program for audio engineering at The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Phoenix, Arizona. After spending about 9 months on campus completely enthralled with the facilities and its resources, along with a tight-knit group of classmates, I ended up moving across the country to Atlanta to complete my internship – where I found Generation Now.

The mentorship I received at this studio, which doubles as a record label office, helped fill all of the gaps that my education could never have taught me. The confidence they instilled in me, combined with my determination to set myself apart from the rest, put me in position to become the chief engineer of the studio and work with so many incredible artists.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There were several times I considered throwing in the towel. The music industry is extremely difficult to inject yourself into. And frankly, the industry doesn’t want any more people. The system is meant to discourage and filter out the faint-hearted and the starstruck super-fans that are unable to see their favorite artist as a human being just like them. You will be tested by long, unpaid shifts where you don’t go home until the sun is coming up. You will be thrown into the fire of an intense, high velocity recording session where you also have to maintain the vibes, and fix everything that goes wrong; because they will go wrong, and you will have to adapt. The challenges are what make or break you. You can either overcome them and be better on the other side, or submit to them and find a new career path. Your mindset is just as important as your skillset.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m an audio engineer in every sense of the term – in that I do recording, mixing, mastering, and technical troubleshooting. The foundation of my work is cultivating a space where an artist can be themselves and not worry about having to be something else. I’m there to help translate the creative’s vision onto the canvas in the most authentic way possible. My mentor once told me, “You are the computer.” And, in a sense, that’s true. An engineer should be capable of doing anything and everything that is asked of them within the realm of possibility. A great engineer can interpret the emotion or style that an artist is going for and (re)produce it as audio. That’s why I chose the moniker of cadylist. As a catalyst would, I make it happen.

My craft is recognized as resolute. I was trained as an engineer, but my ear is my most fundamental tool. A recording can have the sound quality of a radio hit, but if it doesn’t evoke an emotion within the listener, it can never be a hit record. Simply put, if it feels good, it is good. The best music is polarizing. You love it or you hate it. The worst thing that a song can be is indecisive. I think that goes with any art form.

What makes you happy?
What makes me happy is feeling involved in the process. I love being a catalyst to good music and being able to put my impression on a song, even if it’s miniscule. This is one of very few ways to create something out of nothing. It’s incredibly satisfying and humbling to witness time and time again. It’s like magic.

Pricing:

• Mixing – starting @ $200/song
• Mastering – $150/song
• Advice & Opinion – free!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://engineears.com/cadylist
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/cadylist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584706560653