A steadfast bass player and vocalist, lifelong learner, and hands-on music maker, blending her Nirvana-tinged roots with a love for storytelling, sonic exploration, and self-produced creation. From Rock Camp to mixing her own record, Alex Angelich is this month’s SoundGym Hero!
My mom loves to tell the story of how Baby Alex would crawl over to the radio, turn the dial to the classical station and crank it. The first song I ever sang along to was Sade’s “Smooth Operator. Mom gave me RHCP’s “Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic” on cassette for my 4th birthday and Nirvana’s “Nevermind” for my 5th—she didn’t bother tracking down the clean versions, and that probably explains a lot. On car trips, my dad would administer 1-second music quizzes (it was pretty much always the Beatles, CCR, Aerosmith or Zeppelin, but sometimes he would throw in Queen or Supertramp).
I grew up in Austin, Texas and after about a year of piano lessons, I auditioned for the Austin School of Music’s Rock Camp in the summer between 4th and 5th grades. My piano skills weren’t up to snuff, but in a Hail Mary, I sang a quick tune and landed a spot as a lead vocalist. That’s how I got my first taste of being in a band and it never washed out of my mouth. I picked up guitar and bass in middle school and spent most summers at Rock Camp through high school.
Fast forward 20-something years, I’d been playing bass and singing backup in various bands, got married and started a family, and then decided to get to work on a bucket-list item: making an album.
But because I am a completionist and a lifelong learner, I wanted to do everything: write every part, perform a lot of it, record, mix, master. I didn’t know how to do any of that, so I sought educational opportunities online. I dove into Hooktheory and wrote every part of an album in their MIDI sketchpad before sending parts of it off to my friends to learn on live instruments and doing the same myself. I joined Mastering.com’s Membership Program to start learning how to record and mix. The mentors there recommended we join SoundGym for ear training. And here we are. I’ve released two singles and am in the homestretch of mixing my album.
My husband will laugh (or cry) at this, but other than trying to get my kids interested in music, I love to start projects and not finish them. What can I say? I’m an Ideas Gal. I have an entire room devoted to art supplies and construction materials, and unfinished projects accumulated over the years. Recently, I did complete a 13-year-long guitar project, but I also have a half-painted fuzz pedal enclosure on display in the workshop. I think I’ve managed to solder in 3 transistors so far…We started renovating our entire house during COVID and…well, the MAIN parts are done, now it’s just all finish work …
Oh, and I collect Fiestaware.
I’ve been doing construction work on my house for long enough to be able to paint a straight line against trim without tape. I’m also not terrible at ring-toss, but otherwise am in no way athletically gifted.
I should take a pass on this question since I already get to play with all the people I want to play with. I could say that I wish we had more opportunities to create things together, since most of the spontaneous creation time I get tends to be solitary, which for me is not ideal. Maybe that’s what retirement is for.
This is going to sound silly, but my phone is the irreplaceable piece in my process. It’s the constant companion that lets me jot down lyrics and ideas in my chaotic Notes app, find inspiration through listening to music in any situation or environment, make on-the-go mix notes in Reminders, and record ideas as soon as they come to me. More than one of my songs has begun as a voice memo recorded in the middle of the night, upon waking from a dream with a melody in my head. All the MIDI demos have vocals I recorded in Voice Memos and airdropped to my computer. And I’ve kept the voice memo vocal takes—room tone and all—in a couple of finished tracks just because I couldn’t match the rawness of the original performance on the demo once set up in a more sterile environment.
I don’t currently have access to a treated room, since our basement studio flooded last fall and we haven’t been able to do the reno it needs yet, so I’ve been doing all my mixing in a temporary office setup with a pair of Sennheiser HD 600s, which have a great frequency response.
But the piece of gear I LOVE most is Mustang Sally Ride: the MIJ Mustang Bass I bought off the rack at a Guitar Center in Dallas when Teenage Alex played in a rockabilly band.
I make learning a priority. I try to hit SoundGym and ToneGym at least 5 days a week for ear training. I am getting back in touch with my keyboard roots by doing a daily, gamified piano lessons app called Simply Piano; my kids call it “doing my 10 minutes.” I’m also doing remedial guitar lessons through the same company, trying to work through some old, bad habits. I am not as disciplined there and haven’t gotten very far—I haven’t yet hit the level of my own incompetence, so success isn’t giving me those dopamine hits my brain needs to keep plugging away.
Of course, I still say yes to pretty much every gig that comes along, so I get plenty of bass-playing and harmony-singing practice in on most days as well. All in all, I probably average 1-2 hours of dedicated practice daily. And that learning mindset keeps the creativity turned on: If I learn something new, I want to apply it. Whether that’s through writing a new melody and chord progression, adding a new bass lick to an old favorite, learning one of my own songs on a new instrument, or trying a new mixing trick as I work through my album.
My entire life has been about music. At this point, the machine has so much momentum, it would take a good deal of motivation to STOP making music.
That changes on a pretty regular clip. I get obsessed with songs and listen to them hundreds of times in a row and then put them away. I’m not in one of those holes right now because I’m deep in tearing apart my own mixes, but the last few years have seen some vibey anthems from different genres. “Neon Roses” by the Technicolors, “Cryin Over U” by Medium Build, “I’m Not in Love” covered by Local Natives, “So Into You” by Atlanta Rhythm Section to name a few.
EQ Cheetah for sure. As of writing this, I’m on Level 35. It’s so satisfying to pass a level because it’s so hard to do. It forces you to make decisions and not second-guess yourself. That time penalty when you get a wrong answer is devastating. It really makes you learn the frequency spectrum fast. Now I’m much better at pinpointing EQ issues in drums specifically, although I still have a long way to go.
This isn’t the question, but my LEAST favorite game is Delay Control. I’ve been stuck on Level 15 for a month. How am I supposed to hear the difference between 1ms and 8ms delay??? Wait, I…Okay, now I’m on Level 16. Okay 17. Okay, maybe I like Delay Control, too.
Well of course, I’m really excited about working on my record! And I’m looking forward to being done with it so I can start new projects. I made peace with (some of) my own hubris and decided not to master the record myself. The consequence there is that now I feel more pressure to mix it well, since I’ll be handing it off to someone who is already a professional to tear apart.
The bulk of the process of making this record was solitary, so I’m hoping the next one is more collaborative. And I would very much like to mix someone else’s record. Mixing my own has been brutal, which is probably relatable to some of the people reading this.
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