Maro Music, (real name, Marek Walaszek) is a prolific Polish DJ, producer and sound engineer. For more than 15 years, he has DJ’d at major nightlife venues throughout Europe and Asia. As a music producer and sound engineer, Maro Music has worked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop, reggae and electronic music, including Agallah, Dominique Young Unique, Wu-Tang Clan, Sizzla, Redman, Bang La Decks, DJ Kazzanova and others. Sought by the biggest international brands – Coca-Cola, Absolut Vodka, Jaguar and BMW among them – to create music for their advertising campaigns, Maro Music has proven his skill in the recording studio time and time again.
Walaszek’s studio and record label, Addicted To Music, maintains a heavy schedule crafting original productions and doing mixing and mastering work for internationally recognized artists. The studio regularly produces Polish artists for Warner Brothers as well as for the bigger Polish record labels. The Addicted To Music commercial studios does ongoing engineering and post-production work for top TV shows including “The Voice.” Marek Walaszek is in high demand on the lecture circuit, widely sought by universities to speak about music production. He has served as a judge for the Audio Engineering Society’s modern music and sound engineering contest at the annual AES conventions in New York City, Berlin, Milan, Hungary and Warsaw. Maro Music has released music as the producer for MXF alongside DJ Frodo. Maro Music’s solo mixes have landed him consistently in the “top 5” charts on Mixcloud. In 2011, Walaszek founded Bettermaker, an award-winning, critically acclaimed manufacturer of professional-grade mixing and mastering hardware and software built for professional musicians and audio engineers. Bettermaker is used by a who’s who of studio professionals, including the GRAMMY-winning and GRAMMY-nominated mix engineers, Dave Pensado, Jimmy Douglass, Luca Pretolesi and Greg Wells. Artists like KO:YU and DJ Kazzanova also use Bettermaker products to achieve a supreme quality of sound.
Maro Music is steadily making waves in the U.S. and currently hosts a weekly “Addicted To Music” radio show on Dash Radio’ ElectroCity channel and other radio networks broadcast across the U.S. and world. Maro Music has been featured in the press in several leading media outlets, including, DJ Times, EDMSauce, EDMTunes, YourEDM, EDMProd, OneEDM, EDM.com, ThatDrop, Music Promotions UK and on many other media outlets. He recently appeared as a featured keynote speaker on the “Remixer’s Panel” at the annual DJ EXPO (Testa Communications) convention in Atlantic City, NJ, at Harrah’s Resort & Casino. Maro Music made his most recent Amsterdam Dance Event (A.D.E.) appearance in 2018, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
EDMTunes: First, we’d like to congratulate you on the Gold Record you were just awarded! Please tell us about that!
Maro Music: Thanks a lot! This one is for mixing and mastering of a remake of Dr. Alban’s classic hit, “It’s My Lfe.” It was a super fun project to do as I was listening to Dr. Alban on tapes when I was kid. He was one of the first artists who later established a genre called Eurodance. The song was also produced by an iconic music producer, Denniz PoP (Dag Krister Volle). The song was originally released in 1992 and at that time it was #1 allover Europe and peaked at #3 on Billboard’s Dance chart.
EDMTunes: There are some really big-name DJ/producers and GRAMMY® Award-winning mix/mastering engineers raving about Bettermaker hardware. Without getting too technical, can you explain what is it about Bettermaker that, well, makes your music sound better?
Maro Music: All Bettermaker designs come from a pure need of having a particular tool in the studio arsenal that was not available before or had some space to be improved. The Bettermaker hardware (and now software, too) is made by engineers for engineers, with a deep understanding of their needs and the workflow of a modern studio. The Bettermaker makes you work more efficiently, make decisions faster and with a supreme quality of sound and a wide range of sound manipulation options. One of the unique and patented functions is that all of our hardware can be recalled and automated from a plugin in your DAW.
EDMTunes: A lot of the raves online among the global DJ/producer and mix/mastering elite are about the new Bettermaker EQ232D plugin you recently released. Again, without getting overly technical, what does this plugin do? Why is it so special compared with all the other plugins available to producers today?
Maro Music: As it comes to our latest plugin, the Bettermaker EQ232D, it’s a faithful recreation of our award winning hardware equalizer EQ232P MKII. We took a lot of time to make it as close as possible to the original unit, that is used by heavy pros all over the world ‘til this day. This EQ has very musical curves, has a precise and fat bottom end and very airy high frequency boost. There is no place that will not benefit from its features, if it’s a vocal, drum buss or slapping it on the overall mix. Some people call it the “the cleanest Pultec around” and it already gained a lot of great reviews by big names like Hardwell, Luca Pretolesi, Matt Shaeffer, Klaus Hill and Jimmy Douglass just to name a few.
EDMTunes: We’re diggin’ the weekly Addicted To Music radioshow you’re hosting on Dash Radio‘s Electro City! Some booty-shakin’ sounds, for sure. As a DJ “locked-down” during the COVID-19 global health pandemic, how are you connecting with fans and keeping your DJ sets fresh? Are there any live, in-person club or festival events that are happening in your hometown of Warsaw, Poland, where you can actually gather?
Maro Music: They tried to reopen the clubs over here, but we are going towards a second lockdown right now. Sadly, my only connection as a DJ for today is through my radio shows. I’ll have a new show called “Bass Face” on Radio Kampus since October. As for keeping my sets fresh, I still go though premieres on Spotify, Beatport and DMP (Digital Music Pool). But also I get a lot of new stuff from befriended labels and producers. I’m trying to keep it fresh as much as possible, but I always remember about the classics that I used to play and have a sentiment to them. I also do remixes of latest tracks that come out to fit them into my show’s profile.
EDMTunes: Being a studio professional of your stature — one who’s recognized by some of the biggest hip-hop, pop and EDM artists in the world, from Method Man of the Wu Tang Clan to Hardwell — you probably spend a lot of time in your professional recording studio, Addicted To Music Studios in Warsaw. What advice can you offer to readers out there who may be having difficulties with their mental health during these unprecedented times?
Maro Music: This is also quite challenging for me. Being around the world every year was my way of life and right now I cannot move around freely. So, I have to find positives here and concentrate on what I can do in the studio. Quite interesting is that as “we all” are grounded, this year was one of the most productive and networking years so far in my career. People tend to sit more on social media, listen to more music. Use it to your advantage. I chat with artists, fans, fellow engineers, learn new things, make new collabs. Suddenly the whole creative process is going much faster as there are no tours. My main focus right now is on my physical health and music production. I’m trying to get as little couch fat as possible and see it as a time to step back for a moment and see what really benefits me in my career. Tim Ferris once wrote in his book, 4 Hour Workweek, something that I can paraphrase to: “Imagine that you had a heart attack and suddenly you have to cut off all the things you do in your life but keep the essential ones that keep you going. This is the way you should actually lead your life.” People take too much on their shoulders and do not concentrate on what is really important for them. I make these mistakes too, but I try to learn from them and cut off many activities in favor of those that lead me to my life goals.
EDMTunes: In this “new reality” that’s the world today, high-quality music is more important than ever. Music is literally one of the only threads keeping some of us (ahem!) tethered to our humanity during these trying times. Can you leave us with some words of wisdom as you and we all look forward to the next several months? What can we expect from you specifically, and from the music-makers in general?
Maro Music: I feel that music (especially electronic genres) slowed down a bit and will slow down a little more. There are no festivals or parties right now, so there is not much need for anthems or stage bangers. Producers dig deeper into their hard drives and finish the tracks that they were finding interesting but not really in the vein of catching the next festival gig. The genres will open up a bit and a lot of producers will experiment and show quite new faces. I already play tracks in my show from producers that were purely stage animals and now they go mellow and reflexive as the whole world is in a slumber. But that also does not mean that you cannot turn up the volume in your room and dance around a bit for your health benefit! 😉
Industry Reviews
Matt Schaeffer
Recording Engineer (Kendrick Lamar, Bakar, A$AP Rocky)
“The Bettermaker EQ232D is the Pultec of the 21st Century.”
Paul “Willie Green” Womack
The Roots, Wiz Khalifa, ScHoolboy Q
“The Bettermaker certainly lives up to its name, it’s a wonderful sounding EQ that’s simple enough to get results quickly, but with enough features to address any problem areas in your audio. The P EQ section allows for great tone-shaping, while EQ 1/2 and the HPF let you address the fine details. A great addition to anyone’s EQ arsenal.”
Luca Pretolesi
Producer/Mixing/Mastering Engineer (Diplo/Major Lazer, Snoop Lion, Steve Aoki)
“The analog version of the Bettermaker EQ has been my final top-end and bottom-end for final touches on almost every single mix for the past five years. The plugin version is a winner! Sounds, looks and feels fantastic.”
Romesh Dodangoda
Motörhead, Bring Me The Horizon, Funeral For A Friend, Twin Atlantic
“The Bettermaker Plugin has given me an EQ sound I didn’t have before. I love this across the mix, and it’s also great for adding some shine to the drums!”
Klaus Hill
Ministry Of Sound, Will Sparks, Chris Lorenzo
“The hardware has been my go-to analog EQ for years. It’s clean, tight solid-state Pultec is my first choice for reinforcing a light bass when mastering. And the new plugin version does not let you down in the same role. Love it, just added unlimited Bettermakers to my chain!”
Jimmy Douglass
Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, Jay-Z
“I can use my Bettermaker on a plane, I can use it on a train, I will use it on a bus, I will use it everywhere man oh man.”
Lucas (Luke) Pimentel
Multi-Gold & Platinum Mastering Engineer
“Not all EQs are created equal, some are just made better! The Bettermaker EQ232D is likely to be one of the most gratifying and effective tools you can add to your master bus.”
For information on the Bettermaker EQ232D plugin, click here.
Follow Maro Music on social media:
Official: http://maromusic.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/maromusic1/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/maromusic1/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaroMusic
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4iHE8t7vhPwUX0TrF4cETN