Come to Life

When Ye (Kanye West) premiered his album, Donda, via livestream, from Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Recording Connection graduate Alejandro Rodriguez-Dawson, AKA Dawsøn, was the engineer capturing Ye’s performance for all 5.4 million viewers. We sat down with Dawsøn to chat about that experience, learned more about his own path into audio engineering, his founding Junxion Søund, and got his advice for those looking to build their career in music.

When Kanye West live-streamed the release of his new album Donda, you were the audio engineer there to make it happen. Tell us about that experience…

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of pressure, so much pressure. Before we even started recording, there was so much going on. We arranged the room three times and everybody was working out and playing music and so by the time it got time to record, I was much more calm. I do this every single day. The only difference, in that moment, was it was for Kanye. I’m an extremely efficient and quick engineer, which is exactly what he needs because he demands the thing immediately. I had to be on point, super on point. But he’s a genius and he needs to get it out immediately and you’ve got to be able to capture that. So, that’s the challenge. He was loving our vibe and our team and everything like that. We just stuck it out.

[T]here’s a lot of pressure, so much pressure.

How did you get into audio engineering in the first place?

I got into music probably in high school. I was living in Hawaii at the time. Me and my friends just started rapping. We thought it was fun finding YouTube beats and stuff. My mom was super supportive! She helped me build a little studio set up and I just had my friends over every single day, and we were just making music. I was also an artist at the time, but I was more the one putting everything together. Engineering just came naturally to me. I didn’t really know that what I was doing was an actual occupation. Around the time when high school was over, I was looking at colleges and stuff like that, trying to figure out what I was going to do, and that’s when I found Recording Connection.

I understand that you enrolled in Recording Connection for Audio Engineering & Music Production and did your externship at Camel Hump Studios. Tell us about the program.

What I really loved about the program was that they just threw me into a studio immediately, which I thought was really, really good. It was a very homey environment and the people there were super friendly. It was easy to feel like you were part of a family. That comfortability made it super easy to learn.

It was easy to feel like you were part of a family.

How fast were you able to progress through the program?

I was only about three months into the program [when] they had me start running sessions. They would leave the room and just leave me there to record. Before Recording Connection, I did have a little bit of prior experience, just like recording my friends. So, the process in itself was familiar for me.

You went on to get hired at Camel Hump. After that, you got creative when it came to building your credits and growing your career as an engineer. How did you do it?

I had some money saved and I was now a full-time engineer at Camel Hump, like a junior engineer, and they were paying me hourly. I had met my soon-to-be business partner at the time, TNES, and he had an event called ‘Tuesday Blend,’ which happened every first Tuesday of the month. [He was known for bringing hip hop acts in Vegas to prominence]. He was building a new team and looking for a talent coordinator. He had a creative space where there was a studio, but it was kind of trashed and needed a lot of work. When I got brought in, I [could] already foresee what was going to happen. I was new to Vegas, I didn’t have any clients here, but now, I’m the talent coordinator for one of the biggest local events. Now they’re all emailing me. So, it was just a no-brainer. Now I have this whole list of potential clientele. And then, sure enough, a month or two into that he asked me if I wanted to rebuild the studio and run it. It worked out better than expected. Once we opened that up, I was consistently booking 10-hour days. That’s really where I got my chops up of just recording over and over and over again every day and just getting quick and precise.

You make it sound like you just kind of fell into this dream position. Had you ever thought about running your own studio?

It was always a plan of mine to own a studio. I was taking business classes in high school and we had to make a five-year plan, and that was my five-year plan; to build a studio. It actually did happen in five years exactly. It was not how I had planned it out in high school, but it eventually ended up being that way. I think just having a vision and writing everything down is very important. And when I go back and I look at my old journals, everything that I have right now was written down. I’m a firm believer of just writing things down and actually preparing for it. It’s crucial to the process.

And when I go back and I look at my old journals, everything that I have right now was written down.

So how did you get from there to working with Kanye West?

Once we opened up Junxion Søund, I started working with a bunch of people. There were probably about three to four artists who I selected who I was going to have a different work relationship with. These were the people that I just wanted to work with, free of charge, and just build a sound together. That was something that I’d always wanted to do. 40 and Drake are my inspiration. Derek Ali and Kendrick. Just having an artist that you break with, and you’re known for being that person’s engineer. So, over the years, there were a few artists who I had worked with as collaborators. Most of them, I ended up having a falling out with, except for the one person who actually linked me with Kanye. His name is Fya Man. Before I met him, he had already done a lot of major things like working with Pharrell and Jay-Z and a bunch of really big-name people. He was the one who brought me into the Kanye situation.

What’s your advice for Recording Connection students? How can they make the most of the program while they’re in it?

I think just to be able to come in as much as you can because that’s really when the opportunities present themselves. Things happen to those who are available.

Definitely, my biggest advice, though, is to stick with it. If you’re an artist, engineer, or whatever it is that you’re doing, you gotta ask yourself, ‘What am I doing this for? Do I really love what I’m doing?’ For me, the answer is, ‘Yes!’ I’m doing this for the long run regardless. If money wasn’t an issue, I feel like I’d still be doing the exact same thing. A lot of people, they’re not going to see what you see, and they’re not going to understand. They don’t get it and that’s fine. You just gotta believe as much as possible in yourself and it really doesn’t matter. You gotta believe in yourself so much that other people have no choice but to believe in you too.

You gotta believe in yourself so much that other people have no choice but to believe in you too.