Meet Vincent Beard | Music Producer and Engineer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Vincent Beard and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Vincent, what do you want your legacy to be?
It’s kind of a loaded question, but my goal is to bring people’s ideas to life as much as I can. I work for the song as much as I work for the people involved; my goal is always to realize someone’s vision as closely as possible, to make something they feel proud of.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Since I was a kid, I always loved making music, and I knew I wanted to do it for work. I had a few different ideas on what that would look like; I went to college to be a music teacher, but I didn’t really feel fulfilled by it. After that, I figured I would just go around auditioning for orchestra jobs or something for a few years and hope something stuck, but I was missing the creative piece of making music that I loved so much.

After school, I was a bit lost. I had a degree that I barely scraped by earning, I didn’t really have any real interest in being in an orchestra and playing that kind of music, but I didn’t think there was much of a career to be had working in extreme music. Somewhere along the way I stumbled across some YouTube videos about mixing metal guitars. I was starting to make some songs for fun and wanted to know how to make them sound better. After that, I was watching videos on setting up drum busses and parallel compression and…all the boring stuff, but I was hooked on it. Maybe I had a screw loose but I was having so much fun dialing in tones, gain staging, routing effects busses…I felt like I was having fun making music again.

I started out doing some work for some buddies who wanted to record some demos. After working with them for a little bit, they said I should start doing this more, and asking people for money to do it. At that point I never really considered it an option, but I loved doing it and it made sense. So I just started reaching out to every metal band in my area until someone agreed to work with me.

There’s a ton of rejection that comes with it. For every band that’s decided to work with me, there’s probably another 50 that have told me no and another 100 that didn’t even respond. And I get it, I’m a stranger on the internet, why should you pay me money to work on your song? Since then, I’ve been fortunate to have enough work and build up enough of a portfolio to have something to talk about. I think that’s been my biggest takeaway from doing this work: if you know you have something to offer people, someone will take the chance on you if you keep at it.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
There are so many great music venues in Denver. HQ is one of my favorite rooms in the city, great energy every time I’ve ever been there. I’ve personally been spin kicked in just about every square inch of my body in that room.

Some other great smaller venues where you can check out extreme music are The Rickhouse, Seventh Circle, Black Sky, The Roxy…so many great places to beat up your friends.

I’d also take them to Pablo’s. Best coffee in town.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Thanks to the boys in Soulherder (@soulherderco on Instagram and all other social media platforms) for giving me my first job as a producer and engineer, I wouldn’t get to make music for a living without you taking a chance on me.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tenandsix_productions?igsh=cnN1c3cwNnV3YWgw&utm_source=qr

Image Credits
Sinister Star

Kai Frawg Fine Art