Mixing, Production & Sound Design

I’m James Richmond, a British-Australian producer, musician and writer with over thirty years in the industry. Volt Per Octave is my studio in Oxfordshire.

It isn’t a room for hire. There’s no house engineer to hand you over to and no rota of freelancers. If you work with me, you work with me, from the first email to the final master.

That means I take on fewer projects than a studio with staff would. It also means the person who understood what you were going for on day one is the same person mixing it on day thirty.

Mixing

Mixing through a deep collection of analogue outboard, with an Avid S6 and Pro Tools at the centre of the room, monitored on ATC SCM45As and Kii Three BXTs with Trinnov room correction.

Send stems from anywhere, or come and sit in for the session. I’ll send you a version, you tell me what isn’t right, and we go round from there. The quote sets out how many revisions are included, and I charge for time beyond that. I’d rather tell you that now than surprise you with it later.

Production

Taking a record from demo to finished. That covers arrangement, sounds and performances, and the less comfortable part: telling you which songs aren’t ready yet, and why.

Sometimes it’s a full production built from nothing. More often it’s someone with a nearly-finished album who needs another pair of ears and somebody willing to make the final call.

Playing

I’m a multi-instrumentalist, which mostly means I’m a guitarist who kept picking things up. Guitar, bass, drums, keys, mandolin, mandola and enough banjo to be dangerous.

Guitar is where I’d point you first. There are eleven amps here, including three Matchless, two Louis Electric, a Marshall Studio Jubilee and a Mesa Dual Rectifier, running into Zilla cabs loaded five different ways. If you need a particular tone rather than a generic one, that is an unusual amount of ground to cover. Send me a track and I’ll send back parts.

Sound design

Original music and bespoke sound for film, games, advertising, theatre and installation.

This is where the synths earn their keep: Moog, Prophet, MatrixBrute, Hydrasynth and a large Eurorack system, alongside a set of Max patches and web apps I’ve built to do things off-the-shelf software won’t let you do. If you need something that doesn’t exist yet, this is the part I enjoy most.

Liam Vincent & the Odd Foxes  ·  Breath, Blood & Bone

Production, engineering, guitar, mandola and guitar loops

Irene Ketikidi  ·  Martial Arts & Magic Tricks

Production and engineering

Featuring Darby Todd, Dave Marks, Phil Hilborne, Dave Kilminster and Justin Sandercoe

Joe LePaul

Session guitar and additional production

Natacha

Session guitar and additional production

DJ Antoine

Session guitar and additional production