“The greatest records have always come from breaking the rules” — interview with Ayalonn Merle

Hi Ayalonn, thank you for taking the time! I’ve always wanted to have a chat with an artist who’s active in both the studio and the live environment. What is your story?

My name is Ayalonn, living in Paris. I’m 28 and have been working in the music industry for almost 10 years. I started by working on live gigs, and while I keep touring with French artists as a monitor engineer, I’ve been developing Sonicscape Studio. It all started during Covid when all I could do to work was mix live performances for YouTube, then got to mix some albums. And when we finally were able to get back into making live music, I just wanted to continue working in the studio and have been doing both ever since.

I heard a lot of live engineers saying that they keep their distance from the studio because they can’t relate to that world since it’s so different. Was it hard for you to travel between these two worlds?

Not really, since my first studio jobs were actually mixing live recordings. That was a great bridge between both worlds — I had to balance the polished studio sound with the raw dynamics of live, while still keeping that live energy.

So Sonicscape Studio is a studio based in Paris. The team is composed only of Pierre and me. Pierre, a young engineer I met during rehearsals for a gig, joined the studio a few months ago and has been here to keep the studio running while I am on tour. The main work we do is mixing music and post production. We also get to record some projects from time to time.

 

Was music already part of your life, growing up?

I grew up with a guitar in my hands, listening to everything from Metallica to Toto. After a short detour into accounting, I realized I couldn’t ignore my passion for music and turned to audio. The church I was attending in Paris became my first playground, where I learned the ropes and started mixing both live and in the studio.

That sounds exciting, was there a lot of work in this church? Did you get to try yourself out in a lot of various situations?

Yes, there was plenty of work — events in venues of all sizes, the whole megachurch setup: conferences, musical spectaculars… and also quite a few albums to record. It was an amazing place to get hands-on experience at the console.

Style-wise what is your main cup of tea?

I’m mostly drawn to pop/rock; I really love working on this kind of projects. I also get to work on a lot of CCM as a lot of people I know are playing in churches and over the years I’ve accumulated quite a bunch of experience in this genre that has some really specific musical codes.

I can imagine, there’s quite a few of them! What were these specific musical codes?

On social media, the first thing you’ll notice is that fat snare sound — low tuning, scooped mids, with a bit of sparkle, haha!

But beyond drums, CCM is really about transmitting emotions. That comes through a delicate balance between multiple lead vocals, a big choir of backing vocals, and often crowd mics since many albums are recorded live. Put all that together with heavy arrangements and you’ve got a mix that’s full of information — the challenge is to give every element its own space.

But I guess you’re not limiting yourself to this genre.

Overall, I really enjoy working on any kind of music. I love the challenge of exploring new musical genres, understanding their codes.

I really love this open-mindedness! What are the styles that you haven’t touched yet?

I haven’t mixed as many metal records as I’d like. And in the complete opposite direction, I’d love to mix some Congolese rumba. That genre has its own codes with layers of percussion and guitars — I’d really enjoy diving into it.

Do you always dig in deep and do a lot of research when you have to work on a new style, or do you just let the flow take you wherever you need to be?

I always research whenever I approach a new style. That means a lot of analytical listening to the biggest tracks in the genre to really familiarize myself with references. And I’m not afraid to ask for feedback from engineer friends with more experience in that style — having an honest outside opinion is invaluable.

What are the projects you're most proud of?

This one is really tricky, but I must say I am fortunate to have been able to work on projects like commercials for Lancôme, or do sound design for one of Parcel’s music video.

 

 

 

So in your beautiful studio we can find not one, but two Buso desks!

I am using a Studio 61 desk in the main room, and in the “B” studio we have an Artist 61 desk.

We were looking for a producer style desk, and the Studio 61 became the final choice because of its 8U rack spaces on each sides and its “small” footprint (compared to others) as the room is not really big. It also was perfect because the desk space had just enough surface for my two Avid S1s and mixcubes.

Regarding gear, your approach was also to leave a relatively small footprint?

When I first started going down the hardware road, I promised myself I would only purchase digitally recallable machines which is why I have a few Wes Audio pieces. Then I really fell in love SPL gear. In the studio or out on tour, I always make sure to have SPL DeEsser, it makes such a huge difference on vocals.

So I can imagine, your workflow is also based around being as effective as possible.

I like to have my hands on knobs. Even if I did not grow with large analogue consoles, with live mixing desk we are always hands on. The Studio 61 desk gives me great ergonomics for my two S1’s in front of me, my SLL UC1 and my hardware stuff. Everything is right in front of me, at arms reach, which allows me to always stay in the sweet spot.

In regards to analogue vs digital, how do you see things?

I think digital is great and sounds good. We can’t say it always sounds like the original analogue pieces, and maybe sometimes people are too fast to draw the conclusion that different from the hardware means that it’s worse. Maybe it’s just a marketing problem, that some plugins should not be advertised as recreation of some legendary hardware. I’m a strong believer that amazing results can be achieved 100% in the box, and the listeners will never be able to tell if it was mixed ITB or hybrid anyway… But I also feel analogue gear holds something special sound-wise and also because it is a lot of fun to turn knobs and drive tubes and transformers.

AI and other automated solutions gain more and more ground by the day. How do you see the future of audio engineering?

I think the greatest records have always come from breaking the rules and doing something that’s never been done. Since AI today is based on machine learning, it can only get better at reproducing what’s already been done — matching EQ curves, following references. So now, instead of people being copycats, we have computers being copycats. In other words, the game hasn’t really changed. Creative humans who dare to break the codes will always stand out.

Thank you Ayalonn for sitting down with us! And now is the time for the Buso Audio playlist! What’s your pick? :)

Maybe « Je rêve que tu sois mienne » by Stan Rittner, a really great song I loved to mix, produced by my friend Armand Auclair.