Jesse Ray Ernster’s rise has not been without a few bumps along the way, which he shares with us in this brutally honest edition of #HorrorStories.
With a Grammy win and over a billion streams to his name, it’s safe to say that Jesse is one of the top mixers in the industry, but the journey has not always been so smooth.
Full transcript:
“I’ve lost like hundreds of gigs by overstepping you know, the bounds of their intention and their desire sonically.
I had this thing for a while where I would send the first pass like, ‘Hey, this is my liberty pass, I took some liberties, I threw in some ideas, I really think that this takes the song to the next level, like dynamically, this improves the record. And you can either take some of the ideas, or we could just put it back, I’ll put it back. And I’ll just give you the mix that I think you probably want.’ I would do that a lot.
I think that first pass just scares people and they’re like ‘No, this is this is wrong. This isn’t the song we made’. I mean, my life could look way different. If I had gotten that gig, and it’s just not the way to look at it.
So the encouraging message to anybody else out there is like, you get some W’s get some L’s, like you win some, you lose some.
The coolest thing about losing a gig is when the mix comes out. You can stack your mix up against theirs, and listen and try to deconstruct what that individual did to those files in order to get it to knock the way it did. And that is extremely educational. This is a universal principle to it’s not just about mixing or career. It’s life. If you’re not learning from the L’s, you’re not looking at it the right way.”
