Doja Cat "Woman"

Jesse Ray followed in his parent’s footsteps by pursuing a life of music. In 2017, he moved to California and began his Los Angeles journey by delivering obnoxiously colored resumes attached to donut boxes to every studio in the San Fernando Valley. This hustle continued as Jesse built a reputation around town as a hungry engineer. In 2018, he became Kanye West’s engineer on the “Yandhi” and “Jesus is King” albums. Jesse worked creatively alongside Diddy and Timbaland while mixing Burna Boy’s Grammy Award-Winning 2020 LP, “Twice as Tall.” 

Following the success of Burna Boy’s - African Giant album, producer Yeti Beats reached out to Jesse to do a spec mix on an Afrobeat track by Doja Cat, which ultimately led to a Grammy Nomination for Record Of The Year in 2023.

In this Puremix exclusive video, follow Jesse as he:

• Explains the background of the project and sets up the session to feel familiar to him with his routing and effects template
• Explains the importance of the rough mix and starting from where the session was left off
• Adds samples to the kick
• Moves quickly while balancing the tracks, lowering the faders, and adding them back in by feel
• Balances the tone of the bass to live well with the kick drum
• Dials in the mix bus processing early in the mix
• Sculpts the low mids of the vocals to keep the warmth from the tracking session while bringing them into pop territory
• Adds a sheen to the top of the vocal using the Tilt EQ from his plugin company, MIXLAND
• Solves resonances in the vocals with dynamic EQ
• Discusses when to mix with your eyes and when to block the meters cleverly using the Force Quit window in macOS
• Manually edits breaths in the lead vocal track, discussing when to tame the breaths and when to keep them intact.
• Reviews the client effects from the session and supplements by quickly auditioning effects chains pre-routed in his template.
• Explains the order of introducing elements to the mix
• Adds saturation and EQ to the Wurlitzer to make it speak in the track
• Compares the mix of the day to the rough mix and released version and discusses what he finds
• Revisits the balance of the mix to look for moments to accentuate with automation
• Adds samples to the downbeat of the chorus
• Uses Metic A|B to analyze different frequency areas of the mix
• Checks the mix on his phone speaker and AirPods using Audiomovers Listento