We recently welcomed 2002 Recording Arts graduate Marcella Araica back to the Full Sail campus, where she spent the day speaking with current students as part of a panel discussion sponsored by music technology leader SSL. Marcella is an award-winning recording and mixing engineer with credits on dozens of hit singles, and we got a chance to catch up with her as she looked back on her first decade in the studio, and what continues to inspire her work.

“Music is the universal language, it’s the one thing that everyone understands,” she says. “I can speak English, you can speak French, and we’re not going to understand each other, but you throw on a record and we can understand each other through sound. Since I can remember I was hooked by that, and ultimately it’s my passion, it’s my love.”

Marcella began her career shortly after graduation, moving to Miami and landing a job as a studio assistant at the Hit Factory. The studio is one of the hotbeds of the city's recording scene, and she soon found herself assisting on records for a number of the biggest names in pop, rap, and R&B. This included an early collaboration with influential producer Timbaland, which would turn into a close partnership that continues to this day.

“When I first met Timbaland he gave me a hard time, but now he’d say he always knew I had it in me,” she says. “So the transition with him was really special for me because I spent a lot of time with him engineering, and he started seeing what I could bring to his music, and I started seeing that his mind was open to what I thought. I had to prove myself, but it wasn’t like everyday I went in thinking I had to prove it to him. It was all very natural.”

The strength of her work with artists like Timbaland helped cement Marcella’s reputation at the studio, and it wasn’t long before she would become a full-blown recording and mixing engineer. Looking over her discography since then is a testament to the diversity of her skill set, with highlights that include hit singles like Usher’s “Love In This Club,” Keri Hilson’s “Knock You Down,” Mariah Carey’s “Migrate,” and Pink’s “Sober.” In addition to those credits, Marcella was awarded the ASCAP Rhythm and Soul Award in 2010, in addition to two other ASCAP awards for her work on the Keri Hilson and Pink tracks.

She attributes much of her success with that variety of talent to being able adapt to different creative processes on the fly – something which played an important role during her most recent studio collaboration, the solo debut from Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers.

“That’s been so much fun because Joe allows for the art of creativity, from the recording side even down to the mixing,” she says. “Some of the artists today aren’t always as receptive to being explorative in the studio, but with Joe I was really experimenting. I always like to say I’m a mad scientist when I’m in the studio, so even though I work on very technical equipment, my process of thinking is very creative, and I think it just matches with the other creative people in the room.”

The freedom to experiment with your craft while working with these caliber of artists is what many engineers strive for, and what’s obvious when speaking with Marcella is the genuine passion she has for the music she’s making. In addition to the credits and friendships she’s built, just being able to walk into a recording studio every day still brings the same spark that inspired her career in the first place.

“I’m really grateful for everything that’s happened to me,” she says. “I knew what I wanted to do the second I came to Full Sail for a tour. I had my ‘aha’ moment when I walked into one of the studios, and I was like ‘this is exactly where I want to be.’ So I followed my dream, and I can’t really ask for anything more – I love interacting with people, I love creating, and I wake up every day happy.”