Producer Jon FX Attributes Int’l Success To Learning From Jamaican Master Producers
Platinum-selling music producer Jon FX has attributed his successes, including his net worth, to the techniques he learned as a youngster from Jamaican music producers, whom he describes as “the masters.”
“I use these techniques to constantly get those platinum records. And I constantly get them now,” the St Andrew native who was recently in Jamaica for a music conference told veteran entertainment journalist Anthony Miller during an interview on Television Jamaica’s The Entertainment Report.
The award-winning producer made his comments while discussing the state of Jamaican music production, after Miller suggested that “new artistes will tell you they not going back to where the producers call the shots and tell us what to do.”
The producer countered that the advent of the internet caused experienced producers to be excluded from the music production process, which, in turn, has led to the songs coming out of the island being sub-par, for the most part.
“Social media gave us a lot of ego. That’s one. There was a time when artiste use to be humble, wait at the studio. Now you have a guy send them a speaker with a laptop, they have a studio. That’s another issue that we have. We have to get into the humility,” he said.
Jon FX, who had said that the rudiments of music must be learned and understood in order to get a well-structured song and possibly a hit, after being pressed by Miller, admitted that he was a “US- dollar millionaire.
According to him, this was due to him capitalizing on his own Jamaican music practices and sounds, something he said other young Jamaicans could accomplish once they embrace their own culture, go to the studio, understudy and learn from the “masters” like he did.
“Yes,” he said laughing about his net worth. “It’s something I wouldn’t normally say, but I want us to understand that us as Jamaicans that it’s there. I used our culture; It’s me. I went to school here. I am not some foreigner. I used our culture, but I grew with masters here. I worked at the studio and I sat and I learnt, and I took notes,” he stated.
The Ardenne High School old boy’s musical successes are many and varied. In 2010, he produced Gyptian’s Hold Yuh and album of the same name, which also included the hit Naw Let Go.
He also mixed rapper Xxxtentacion’s hit Jocelyn Flores, which peaked at number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. He also wrote and engineered three tracks from the platinum-selling album.
One of Jon FX’s biggest accomplishments in Jamaican Dancehall was the production of Sizzla Kalonji’s I’m Yours album, which hit the Billboard Reggae Albums chart at number two, the highest spot ever for the Black Woman and Child artist. This accomplishment also heralded his appointment to the Florida Chapter Board of the Recording Academy.
During the interview, when Miller suggested that the “sound of the music has got to be a little bit more sophisticated, better mixed, better mastered to rack up the numbers”, Jon FX concurred, noting too that some artists even misunderstand streaming platforms such as Spotify.
“I hear an artiste seh to me that you muss put out a bunch a songs to trigger the Spotify algorithm. What are you talking about? Those records from Jamaica that hit, they are being in the United States for 57 weeks. That’s more than a year. And the records have to grow,” he said.
The producer has long said that the lacklustre presence of Jamaican music on international charts and in nomination pools for the Grammys, was due to the sub-par quality of local music productions, which in many cases sees sounds are not equalised, and songs not being mixed and mastered properly, resulting in the midrange being too loud when songs are played on sound systems.