Cameron Craig

Can you take me back to the beginning in Australia? How did you first get into audio engineering, and what made you realize this could become your career?

I guess I fell into it like a lot of people I think. I was in bands in my teenage years but I was always the guy that had organised the PA and set it up, so always interested in that side of things. I started in a studio pretty much straight out of high school. I finished high school (year 12), got offered a course in electronics at collage but didn’t really want to do it so I thought I have to get a job! I wrote to all of the studios and didn't get anywhere. I got, I guess it was an interview, I went and saw and talked to somebody and then nothing happened. So I went and worked in a music shop for a little while and I suspect the owner of the music shop knew my heart wasn't in it and knew I wanted to be making music, I didn't really know but he was friends of somebody who was quite a well-known producer engineer who'd taken over a studio and was now managing it, so I went and did some work experience there on, I'm guessing, the recommendation of my old boss. So with my naive self answering a one question interview of “So what do you make at the shop?” Legendary answer: “we don’t make anything we sell stuff” when I was actually being asked how much I was paid I had a studio job.

I was very lucky, my new boss Ern Rose was a very good engineer. He was looking to get out of engineering and more into managing studios, producing and stuff like that, so he obviously decided I was it and taught me, I didn't have to sit there and look over his shoulder and kind of go, oh I wonder what's he doing there? He actually would sit there and go here, see, this is out of phase. See, hear the difference. Just little things like that every day. I just I progressed very, very quickly because of that.

It was a career from day one no matter how hard it got I never thought of doing anything else from then on.  So never say no to anything as you’ll never know where it might lead.

In 1995 you moved to London, UK. What prompted the move... was it the UK’s 365 days of sunshine and alfresco café culture?

Haha yes definitely the sunshine and cafe culture!  It took a long…long time before I could even get what I’d call a coffee. Thank goodness Australians get everywhere, now it’s reasonably easy.  Happy to recommend good coffee places now.

I’d had a successful career but I felt like I’d done what I could do in Australia and nothing was going to progress unless I did something drastic.  So I did something drastic and moved to a country where I didn’t know anyone and had very few contacts! Set about starting again, which is a lot easy to say than actually do.

How would you describe your production/mixing style today and how has it evolved since you first started?

I’m very much artist/song first. I need them to be happy no matter what that takes and I’ll modify what I’m doing to suit. This is something that has changed with remote work.  Just gauging what they are thinking, sometimes from a few lines in a message. In person a look can mean so much more than 3 pages of notes. When we do get to a consensus I work in so many different styles and genres so have a huge stock of influences to draw on but even so I enjoy gently pushing things into unchartered water to create new sonics. Sometimes it can go too far and I’ll rein it in but sometimes it will fire up something new and take it places it wouldn’t have gone before and create new areas. 

You’ve seen a lot of technical changes since you started, both from an audio engineering/recording point of view and in the music industry as a whole. How do you navigate those changes whilst keeping the soul of the music intact?

Sometimes I hark back to what were thought to be simpler times but we do always look back with rose tinted glasses.  Mixing manually or syncing multiple tape machines and sequencers together was never easy or straight forward. I have a wary smile every time someone says that they love the sound of tape and that way of working, they weren’t there when it was the only choice! I prefer the working methods of today but it was very helpful to have known all that and be able to apply that knowledge to how I work now. With so many safety nets we have time to be creative, think about what we are doing, try things and go back if they don’t work or take them places they could never have gone before. 

With so much music being made remotely, how has file sharing and digital collaboration changed your workflow?

I’ve been quite used to remote working for a long time now, so always have had that workflow in some form or another. Quite often it’s not my end that is the issue, keeping tabs on and understanding what happened in a production along the way can be tricky. A simple request can, with bad file management turn into days of confusion. The best sessions are when you have all the right parts with all the right names that everyone involved also has… but that not always the case. A simple request from the artist to turn up the bridge guitar actually turns out to be Audio 04_27.09 that the producer is calling the Pre chorus can turn into days of back and forth. 

Do you think better file management can lead to better music? Why or why not?

Yes better file management absolutely can lead to better music, it isn’t just about organization for its own sake, it improves the quality of decisions you make from the very first move, it removes obstacles that prevent good work from happening, and in creative work, that difference is massive.

I always ask for rough mixes so I can keep tabs on what’s meant to be there, just to make sure I have all the right parts at least to start with.  Sometimes there can be things missing or interesting effects that are part of the sound that were might have been left off. With good file management that can be sorted very quickly. 

Its always such a better start to a mix when you import everything in, do a quick balance and you’re in a good place to start getting creative rather than hunting though loads of files to find the right or even missing guitar solo, you stay in a creative headspace instead of a problem-solving one 

How does quick, secure file sharing impact the creative flow of a project?

Being able to control who can download or listen to mixes that are works in progress is imperative. Sometimes you might have a client that is interested and understands your the working out phase, others don’t and it can be quite detrimental, you really need to be able to be on top of that. I’ve found that sending an MP3 can make people think the track is finished when it isn’t intended to be. A streaming or listening link feels more temporary, which helps manage expectations.

If you could take away one routine audio-engineering job – what would it be?

Getting paid :-) I hate the chasing money part but being self managed it’s a big part of things. 

When you look back on everyone you have worked with to date – you must have some fantastic stories, are there any that you can share?

I do, most really great some I didn’t even realise were great until looking back years later. But there is also a level of trust you get from any artist from the superstars to the maybe the next stars… so that’s about all you get 😃

For people trying to break into engineering or production today, what skills or habits do you think matter most

If you want to break in make yourself useful, be someone whose presence improves the session for the client. The best thing that can happen is the client asking for you to be there. 

At this point you’ve worked with so many prominent artists, but can you give us one that you would love to produce or mix (living or dead)?

You know what! I moved to the UK because of the excitement around Britpop and managed to work with most of the main players in that in some capacity. The Clash were a big childhood influence and I got to record and mix Joe Strummers final record, Streetcore.  Got to work on one of the last diamond selling CD’s with Adele. So pretty happy overall. 

I do love working with new talent coming though, trying get them through to the next level. So more of that please.