Working with the likes of P-Diddy, Quincy Jones and Christina Aguilera, mixer-producer Bob Brockman has earned 20 Grammy nominations and won two Grammy awards.

Brockman is based in New York but was in Invercargill earlier this month lecturing at the Southern Institute of Technology in the audio production course. It’s Brockman’s first time lecturing at SIT and he is scheduled to return in July for a more intensive session, where he will help the students with their mixes and give them his perspective.

The Grammy’s were for his work on Christina Aguilera’s album Mi Reflejo, and Kirk Franklin’s “Nu Nation”.

“To walk up and get a statue and take a statue home, it’s great. It’s great to be recognised for your work”. 

Sitting in a car isn’t the obvious place for an interview, but for a man who’s spent a lifetime striving for the best sound, the car was the obvious choice.

“I listen in the car constantly. I’ll go out into the car in the parking lot. You hear stuff in the car that you never hear in a room,” he said sitting in the driver’s seat of his brother-in-law’s car who resides in Invercargill.

Brockman says the SIT course gives students good, practical training experience.

“They teach much more practical kinds of things really relating to how you’re going to perform on the job.  Things that you actually need wherever; in the studios, in the radio stations, out on the road, which is a big reason why I’m here”

Brockman was born in New Orleans in 1962. Coming from a musical background he was surrounded by music all his life. His father was a jazz piano player in the French quarter.

“Mum and dad had a club called the Gaslight where my mum tended bar and dad played piano, so I spent a lot of time there as a young person.”

His family then moved to Vienna, Virginia, where he spent his pre-teen and teenage years. Brockman wasn’t interested in music at all when he was young.

“I think when I got to be about 12 or 13 – at that time I was playing trumpet and bass and listening to Rhythm of Fire, James Brown and The Sunshine Band and all of this funk stuff – I got really really into it.”

He started an after-school band called The Average White Band plus One because there was one black guy in the band.

“It was kinda cheeky, and it probably wouldn’t go over so well now, but in 1977 it was fine,” Brockman said laughing.

At 14, Brockman was playing in three bands at school and was starting to do gigs at parties, but tension between him and his parents started to grow. 

“They really didn’t want me to go  into music, they waned me to go into law or mathematics, something a little more stable.”

Complying with his parents, Brockman applied to a couple of schools and got into the University of Virginia.

“The big band at Virginia was so inferior to the band at my high school that I had just left in northern Virginia. To me it was intolerable, frustrating. I needed to be in an environment where everyone in the school was better than me.”

With some help, Brockman put together a demo tape and sent it to a couple of schools. He received a scholarship to the University of Miami and got what he asked for.

“It was a cut throat, hard as nails music school. I had been the best musician all through out high school, I won all the competitions and suddenly I was getting clipped by every single guy in the hallway. It was a very, very humbling experience to see people at such a high level.”

Within a week of graduating, Brockman got into his car and drove to New York. When he got there he stuggled to find work. He applied to 140 studios and each turned him down. He received offers from the big studios as an intern but couldn’t live off $10 a week, and didn’t have any support from his family.

After praying on the train to Brooklyn, Brockman walked into Ralston studio.

“I think he was just so surprised to see a white guy walk through the door, and he hired me right on the spot.”

The job was his introduction to rap and hip hop. He earned $150 a week. After coming from the University of Miami and a jazz background, Brookman didn’t know who any of the artists were.

“These guys were coming into the studio with their 808 drum machines and guys were making beats with their mouths and other guys were rapping on top of it, I had no idea. Honestly speaking I thought these guys were ignorant, low brow and I thought it was ridiculous what they were doing.”

Brockman says he soon learnt his lesson.

“I got acclimated to hip hop very quickly within like two or three months. It got to a point where I really understood and, ya know, appreciate and be able to interpret a flow for example, like how a rapper’s flowing against the beat.”

Brockman’s spent almost 10 years doing records with Sean “Puffy” Combs, his longest standing client.

“He was working at up-town records. He got fired, got punched in the face by Andre Harrell and kicked onto the street. That was the worst mistake Andre Harrell ever made because then he went to Clive Davis and got $7 million to start a new label called Bad Boys, and took Mary J Blige and Biggie Smalls with him.”

This was an exciting part of Brockman’s career and he would often walk past a café in Manhattan and hear his record coming out the door.

“You know no-one in that café knows who you are and you don’t know who they are, and you’re standing there. But it’s your record that’s playing and there is something very spiritually gratifying about that.”

Brockman went on to work with LaFace Records in Los Angeles and his work with Puffy slowed down. He spent three to four years at LaFace where he met and worked with Babyface.

“I felt like I got a doctoral crash course in vocals, vocal harmony and vocal production. He is in my estimation the greatest vocal producer there is.”

After mixing more than 2000 records in his career, Brockman had developed his own unique style.

“For the most part I close my eyes, put my hands on the faders and I build a three dimensional visual model of the record in front of me. I see the drum, I see the bass, I see the vocals on the side, I see the keyboards over here. I see everything in its little visual place.”

Brockman often finds himself dropping his work into i-tunes and listening to find out exactly what his work sounds like. He listens on ear buds, on headphones and even on huge 16 inch monitors to make sure that all the music translates across all mediums.

Brockman has just finished executive producing a record for a young female folk singer, Paige Foster. He is still doing freelance mixing, executive producing and developing new artists. Right now he is deeply immersed in the world of mobile branding and advertising.

“I don’t know whether it’s in the stars for me to win more awards because I don’t know where my life is taking me, it’s such a different world out there now.”