by guest contributor, Eoin Donovan
During our conversation, it became apparent that Aaron is passionate about making time for important projects, having confidence in his work, prioritizing time management, and planning self-care. For the interview, we covered Aaron’s audio engineering background, film and music career, and event organization.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Aaron Payton in the control room of Zig Productions. The studio is hidden “underground” at the Arlington Museum of Art.
– Eoin Donovan
An Interview with Aaron Payton
As we got settled next to the mixing board, Aaron thoughtfully looked back to past experiences that made him who he is today.
AUDIO ENGINEERING AND MUSIC CAREER
Aaron knew from age 6 that playing guitar would be a big part of his life.
At 16, he ended up forming his band called Infrastructures. Since Aaron’s high school was part of a church, he was allowed to play in their band. The drummer of that band, Jeff Rockwell, oversaw a recording studio in Fort Worth that is now called Southside Recorders. Aaron’s band, Infrastructures, recorded 2 singles with Rockwell that cost much more than they anticipated. After realizing how expensive it was to record, Aaron decided to learn how to do it himself, so he secured an internship at a recording studio in Fort Worth. This was where he learned about routing, signal flow, how to use Pro Tools, and set his foundations in place for being an audio engineer.
Despite having been through different music courses and even learning saxophone in the school band, Aaron still found his heart solidifying his focus on everything related to guitar.
“I went home, did some googling, watched a bunch of videos, and then made note of my guitar. I took it in. I had someone set it up and I felt the difference. Then, I took my other guitar and I set it up – I figured it out.”
Tinkering with his equipment was a natural next step for him. Setting up the intonation on his guitar and fixing his guitar amps became tools under his belt. Currently, he has three guitars that he refers to as “Frankenstein Guitars”.
For years, Aaron has been involved with the Arlington music community. He has collaborated with the University of Texas at Arlington’s record label as well as many other music endeavors. He and McKenzie Webb started Big Sug in 2019, which has played across DFW. That same year, Aaron performed solo and full band gigs under the moniker, Melon Soda. In 2020, Aaron revived his high school band, DTB, which received a lot of attention. Aaron’s bands, DTB and Melon Soda recorded at Zig Productions. In 2020, DTB’s EP called “It’s Summer Now” was the first personal project that Aaron completed at the studio, and it can be found on Spotify. In 2022, Aaron focused on solo work called The Vex Project.
FILM WORLD
Aaron is no stranger to re-recording, foley, voiceovers, mixing, and mastering. His work on “The Actor,” an indie film directed by Richard Blake, has been a month in progress, and expects to be done with it within the next month. Normally, it could take an engineer three months, but the musical composition work being finished streamlined the process. Rafael Dargënt is the composer for the film and has a YouTube channel called PHAR.
Networking in the film community as a post-production engineer has helped him get the work that he was seeking. When seeking new work, Aaron has found that creating customized sound reels related to the project he wants to work on has given him the most success. “If someone’s doing something doing something horror, I would love to do that. I feel like that is super fun, but I’m not going to send them the comedy I just did.”
Recently, Aaron came up with a video series called “Now You Get It” that asks artists about their upcoming works. It is currently in post-production.
ORGANIZING AND SELF-DISCOVERY
College was a pivotal moment for Aaron in his music career. He spent some time at Tarrant County College Southeast campus where he met Reggie Terrell and Gabriel Deshaune Parker, two horn players and important friends active in the Arlington community today that he has kept up with. His hopes at the time were to collaborate on a music project that would lead to his next step. After TCC, Aaron went to UTA and auditioned for vocal performance in the school of music which illuminated a problem for him.
“The schooling system at the time was very performance/recital based and you’re gonna get scored on how well you follow the written notation. That wasn’t anything close to what I wanted to do.”
After much thought, Aaron discovered that he did love music, but it was the story part that he wanted to get involved in. This led him to pursue his education in the School of Film and Video at UT Arlington.
After graduating, Aaron spent approximately 6 to 8 months networking with as many different creative people as he could. He found out how inclusive the DFW film community is, which enabled him to explore another passion. He found himself working with Lone Star Film Festival in Fort Worth. Chad Matthews chose him as an intern with the festival, but soon Aaron transitioned to web design and booking for about half of the festival.
Continuing his passion for organizing festivals, Aaron consulted with Big Sug drummer, McKenzie Webb, and organized a Juneteenth Festival in just two months. “That whole day of black-led artists was probably the highlight of my entire 2021”. Aaron was honored to have his mentor, David Isaac, fly out from California to emcee the festival.
ZIG AND BEYOND
Aaron’s mom has always been a great support figure and advocate throughout his musical journey. To keep up with her son, she is going back to TCC to earn her Film & Video Associates degree. She has edited a 30-second commercial from start to finish. So far, she has been able to step into his studio and have a better appreciation of his workflow.
Aaron’s mom was the connection with Zig Productions. After graduating, Aaron’s mom found herself finding passion in volunteering for the Arlington Museum of Art. His mom met Billy Herzig, the owner of Zig Productions, during her work at the museum and put him in contact with Aaron.
In late 2019, Aaron visited Billy at Zig Productions and met Austin Gardea, another audio engineer. The three of them got to know each other through their work and Aaron got to know the setup at the studio. Zig Productions opened up opportunities for him to take more creative risks and try out new equipment. “They taught me about the patching, the wiring of all the channels, what channels are burnt out, the caveats, and all the little weird things.”
These days, Aaron works out of Pro Tools Ultimate. He is involved with the DFW Film community and does a lot of commercial work, location sound mixer, and boom operator.
MORE INFORMATION ON AARON
Meet Billy Herzig: zigworld.com, plus read Eoin’s other story
Eoin’s story is shared through the AMA’s POV series.
POV provides AMA friends and fans the opportunity to discuss their knowledge and points of view about art.
