Benjamin J. Arrindell
Benjamin J. Arrindell is a GRAMMY ® Award-winning engineer who has lent his signature sound to such
diverse talents as Aretha Franklin, Janet Jackson, Busta Rhymes, The Village People, Mary J. Blige, En Vogue,
Kool & the Gang, The Temptations, Gerald Levert, and Yolanda Adams, among others. He is the in-house
engineer at Old Mill Road Recording in East Arlington, Vermont.
On His Start
“After high school, I joined the Army. And after basic training, I was stationed in Germany, and I opted to buy
a stereo. That was my intro into music and that was when I really started loving music. I asked my friend,
‘Why do these records sound like this? You know, how do they get made?’ My friend was like, ‘Yeah, man,
there are these things called, ‘recording studios.’ So, when I got out of the service, I went to a recording
school, Center for the Media Arts, in New York City, which has since closed. The first time I saw the control
room, I was like, ‘Wow, look at all them knobs!’ I was hooked. I told my mother, ‘I’m going to work in a
recording studio.’ She was like, ‘Yeah, do you get paid?’ I said, ‘Not really. Not at first, Mom.’ And she was like,
‘Okay, follow your dream.’ And that was it. And off I went.”
On Mixing
On Vermont
“I enjoy being up here. I lived
in New York my whole life.
I never lived anywhere else
other than Germany. But as my
sister would say, ‘that doesn’t
count because that was the
Army.’ So, building Old Mill
Road Recording was the right
opportunity that showed up
at the right time. And it’s so
pretty up here, particularly in
the summertime. The first time
I brought my friend Isabel here,
she was like, ‘Oh my God, this is
amazing. This is paradise. Look,
you have a river.’ And that’s
right. The studio overlooks the
river. It is paradise.”
GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Benjamin J. Arrindell in the control room of Old Mill Road Recording
manchester life magazine 2019 49
“What is mixing? Let’s say I'm a baker, and I'm going to make a cake. I have to gather all the ingredients,
right? ‘Recording’ is like gathering all of your ingredients. You gather the bass, the piano, the lead vocals, the
drums. ‘Mixing’ is the process of putting all of those elements together to make them one cohesive thing,
which we consider a record. But like in baking, the key is to mix the raw ingredients in the right amounts.
Not too much salt, not too much egg, not too much sugar. Not too much drums, not too much bass, not too
much piano. The art of mixing is, literally, putting together all of the elements in the right amounts to make
a unified sound.”