A music production studio on the magnificent Madeira Island, surrounded by green cliffs and the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Sounds like paradise, doesn’t it? That’s the everyday life of Adam Związek aka MAVOOI, a Multi-Platinum Music Producer, composer, and arranger. MAVOOI STUDIO was built in 2019 in Santa Cruz, Madeira, as a realization of a lifelong dream of Adam, the owner and producer working in the venue.
Adam’s interest in music started in early childhood when he played keyboards than switched to music workstations, until he had his computer with Cubase and his first contact with digital music production around 20 years ago. One of the first professional attempt at cooperation was to create a soundtrack for a Belgian musical. Adam and his project partners had recorded two singles at the legendary La Chapelle Studios in Belgium (now DAFT Music Srudios ). Unfortunately, this project wasn’t ultimately released, but it was the first impulse for Adam to delve deeper into music and develop his skills and career in this direction.
For years, Adam worked in his home studio in Belgium. Around 2014, he built his first professional studio and started contacting artists and music labels from Poland (his home country) to establish collaborations. Soon after, Adam began producing for some artists associated with Sony Music and more and more pop artists from the industry. Today, he works as a freelancer with top musicians and labels like Universal Music , Warner Music, Magic Records or with finalists of The Voice of Poland, Got Talent… Many of his projects are very successful and are played on major radio stations, like RMF
FM or Radio ZET.
The main activity at MAVOOI studio is music production. For years, Adam collected hardware synthesizers, keyboards, and drum machines, and now he has an impressive collection of over sixty instruments, including the Minimoogs , Korgs or Rolands classics. After years of mastering his music production skills, the studio’s setup is now based on Steinberg Cubase PRO 13 DAW. Together with versatile top plug-ins and sound libraries like Native Instruments – KOMPLETE with 40+ Libraries, Omnisphere 2, Serum, Waves Everything Bundle, UAD2 Quad Custom with 25+ plugins and sample libraries.
Due to the huge number of orders, it is increasingly difficult to use hardware synthesizers.
“When you have dozens of songs to produce every year, working on hardware synthesizers can be a nightmare. If you need to make a change in some setting of the song, reproducing the previous settings of the synth can take some time. Synths that have the possibility of saving presets are easy to work with, but ones like the Minimoog can be very time-consuming. That’s why often I work with virtual instruments. However, I have some of my hardware instruments always connected and instantly available. When I know that the track will not change its pitch and form, I like to add little motives played on the hardware synths” says MAVOOI.
In the heart of the studio are two Antelope Orion 32+ GEN3 interfacers/converters with total of 64 analog Inputs and Outputs. That’s because Adam uses a lot of outboard analog sound processors, such as the Bettermaker Mastering Limiter and EQ232p MKII to improve his mixes.
“My latest purchase was the Black Box Analog Design HG-2. It adds ‘the magic touch’ to every track that you send through it – saturation, harmonics, and the warm tube sound. HG-2 can raise the perceived volume of the song so that it seems 5-6 dB louder when in reality the track is sometimes 2dB lower than it was. In my case, as I work with radio stations, compression and loudness are still crucial and important topics. I recently got
interested in the 500 series. I like to use the Roger Mayer 456HD, which is a Solid-state Analogue Tape Emulator and adds the high harmonics that make the
sound softer and warmer ” describes Adam.
In addition to the frequently mentioned gear, Adam has in his studio Warm Audio EQP-WA and WA76 Limiting Amplifiers, TB12 Tone Shaping Discrete Mic Pre’s that he mostly uses on vocal tracks. Among other interesting gear, it’s worth mentioning SSL XLogic G Series clones, SSL Fusion and SSL The Bus+ , or Elysia Xpressor. Artists who visit Adam in Madeira can record vocals on Chandler Limiter TG Microphone.
Regarding drum sound creation for modern productions , Adam often uses plugins like Reaktor Polyplex or different drum samples from his huge collection. Kontakt drum libraries when he wants to reach ’70s or ’80s sounds, or GGD Invasion for rock sounds. He also likes to use libraries like NI Kinetic Toys and NI Kinetic Metal to create differently sounding details and Omnisphere, which is user-friendly and a very complex sound resource.
“Today, after so many years of working with music production, I basically know where to search for a sound that I want to achieve. When the artists send me reference tracks, listening to them, I usually already know which tools I will need to use to achieve a similar effect. That’s the result of everyday practice. After so many years of experience, productions that used to take me over 100 hours can now be done 10 times faster. But even though many of the demos I had done in the past were never published, it was a great learning experience”, adds Adam.
The second, equally or more important side of being a professional music producer creating songs for labels, TV programs, or radio stations is cooperation with vocalists. Adam now knows exactly how a song should sound, its structure, length, and the energy needed to make it to the top of the charts. He suggests to the artists which parts of their ideas need improvement, which is a great motive for the chorus, and sometimes advises cutting out some parts or rearrange them.
Adam gained all this knowledge over the years by analyzing how labels and radio stations reacted to his productions, which of his songs reached the top of the charts and why.
In the end, there are some rules that a song needs to meet to be played on the radio.
” What I’ve learned over the years is how important the structure of the song is. Many times my productions sounded better than the ones accepted by the label, and I was trying to figure out why the alternative was chosen. Finally, analyzing some cases, I discovered the importance of the song’s structure. Everything in a song has to serve a purpose. If it doesn’t contribute anything, it shouldn’t be there. These are the basic rules that need to be followed in everyday work. There were times when 8 out of 10 songs produced by me were rejected by the label. Now, 8 out of 10 are usually accepted”, comments Adam.
MAVOOI has cooperated with top artists like Bryska, Roxie, Bajm or KID NOIZE, and doesn’t stop improving his setup to enhance the quality of the productions that can be prepared in the venue. The next investment will probably be a new sound measurement and room adaptation system Trinnov Nova. Once in Madeira, don’t miss the opportunity to contact MAVOOI and experience this amazing sound paradise.
More information: www.mavooi.com
https://www.facebook.com/mavooi
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