Rising Stars: Meet Moncho Berry

Today we’d like to introduce you to Moncho Berry.

Hi Moncho, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My name is Simon Yriberry, but people call me Moncho. I’m a Composer, Producer & Recording/Mix Engineer. My story starts in Lima, Peru, the city where I grew up and where I discovered my passion for music. Growing up with a music lover like my dad made me develop a musical ear, and by the age of ten I was already listening to beautiful music in both the English and Spanish languages all the way from Latin American Folklore to Afro-descendent Rhythms, Pop, Rock, Jazz, Salsa, Classical…you name it!

Interestingly enough, not many people in my family appreciate art. Most of them are doctors or businessmen; however, my mother, born in the US, and my father, born in Lima, were some of the few people that blessed me with access to a culture and lifestyle where people not only considered but highly appreciated art and made it part of their daily routines.

Whether it was the paintings hanging from the walls in our home, the orchids and flowers in our living room, or the music flowing through every corner of each and every room of that small apartment, art was always present, and so was our sensitivity to it.

Even though none of my parents were artists or musicians, they have always been creative beings that pushed me to do creative things. My mom was and till this day is a Spanish teacher for small kids, and my father is a Medic (Gastroenterologist to be precise). Both of them do their own form of art; on one side, one saves people everyday and faces true life or death situations, and trust me folks, if you’ve ever seen Dr. House or Grey’s Anatomy, these people are highly creative when it comes to problem-solving. On the other side, to teach is to love, care, and provide education in creative ways in order for true, authentic relationships to form between the teacher and the learner. We learn something every day, every day is a different teaching, and every teaching is different from the previous one! You see, my mom is definitely not one of those medieval teachers like the ones Pink Floyd are singing about in “Another Brick in The Wall”, and the reason I know this is because I was once one of her students. She would always come up with the most creative and fun ways of engaging with her students. We once read a whole book, and she made everyone in class form groups and act out specific scenes of the book. Another time she made us create a small mock-up of the Amazon Jungle based on some other books we read about Amazon stories and traditions. We’ve all had one of those teachers that leave a mark on us; the passion she had for teaching was so pure and crystalline that it was impossible not to feel it.

Both of these humans encouraged me from a very small age to join creative/artistic activities such as Art Class, The School Band (in which I learned how to play my first instruments; the Tuba and the drum set) as well as the Acting Club. At the age of 15, I got my first drum set and that’s where everything changed. After the drum set came the piano, and after the piano came the ukulele, and after a couple of years of experimenting with those instruments, I started singing. Without any vocal coach or vocal lessons, I started singing in school performances and realized that I could actually sing and didn’t suck as bad as I thought I did. I was lucky enough to hit my eighteenth birthday, and I already knew that I was gonna dedicate to exploring this artistic/musical life that I had been blessed with. Before applying to a couple of Universities in the US and UK, I took a sabbatical year right after finishing High School in which I decided to create my own art for the very first time. It was there where Moncho Berry was born and my first EP titled “Critic to the young kind”. This EP led to another beautiful LP titled “Zoo Lion”. After months of preparation and hard work, I was finally accepted to Berklee College of Music where I spent six years studying a double major in Music Production/Sound Engineering & Contemporary Writing/Arranging.

In the last decade, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Latin Grammy Award winners and highly respected music producers that have taught me so much about music, its undeniably complex making, and the effect it has on human beings. I am currently a lot of things at the same time: as a producer/mix engineer I deal with gigs such as Editing or Tuning tracks, assisting someone else with their recording session/mixes, musical direction, producing my own artists, and mixing for others. As a composer/singer-songwriter, I deal with gigs such as co-writing sessions, arranging for others as well as live performances for my own music. I know it sounds like a lot, but all of these activities work like seasons. There’s a season for writing, a season for producing, and also seasons for nothing (because I’m not a machine and I do care about my mental health). There are always a couple of priorities among all of those activities however, and those priorities have changed in the last couple of years. I am flexible enough to accept and permit some of these changes because we all have bills to pay, rent, and basic living. We all have to hustle at some point, and sacrifices must be made in order to do some of the things we love. What cannot change however, is the creative way of being. This is why making art is, has always been, and always will be part of my life. I’ve lived moments in my life where I’ve had to work for others and stick more to production gigs just because they provide me economic security; still, that has never interfered with this commitment I have to my art.

Currently, I am a freelance record producer/mix engineer I’m working on my second album as a singer-songwriter. I’m a full-time creative with half a decade of experience working in the Boston/New York music scene with both national and international artists. My first album came out last year and is titled “Degenerado”, the Spanish word for “Degenerate”. The reason behind the title might tell you more than you think about the type of music I do. I’ve always loved the idea of exploring genres and different styles of music. I’ve never limited myself to only do one type of music, Growing up in South America, I was exposed to beautiful colors and traditions. In Peru, I have always had a strong connection and enormous respect for Afro-Peruvian rhythms such as Lando, Festejo, Samacueca as well as other Latin genres found in Peru such as Cumbia, Salsa as well as Andean music (Music from The Andes). The amount of amazing music in Latin America is crazy. For every good song in English, I know two or even three songs in Spanish/Latin languages. At the same time, I’ve been exposed to American (United States of America) music such as Jazz (which comes from African roots), Classical as well as more contemporary genres of music such as R&B, Pop, Hip-Hop, and Indie/Alternative and while being in Berklee, I had the beautiful opportunity to learn more about Afro-Caribbean cultures as well as European and Asian. Life has proven to me that there is more out there to explore so let’s not limit this exploration, let’s embrace it and rejoice in it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Leaving my home country and moving to the US to pursue my dream has definitely not been an easy task, still, after all these years I’ve managed to cope with the immense uncertainty of now knowing what’s gonna happen next. I moved to the US in 2018 to start my education in Berklee College of Music and struggled getting used to American culture. We all know what starting from zero means: solitude, making friends, new cities, new country, new languages, new chapter! Starting alone in Boston and especially during Spring was definitely a challenge. It was a very rough start; I broke up with my girlfriend with which I was doing a long-distance relationship, lost a couple of family members, and had a hard time making new friends which led to a lonely start. Even with all of those obstacles in my way, my love for music never ceased to exist. There has never been a moment in my life where I’ve even considered the smallest possibility of not dedicating my life entirely to music. There is a quote by one of my favorite singers, Gustavo Cerati, which when translated to English goes something like this: “Nothing is lost. Everything counts. We can transform it”. I take those words everywhere I go and that’s how I’ve managed to transform some of the saddest experiences into beautiful things.

When it comes to my work, getting to where I am today has been a hell of a ride. Before celebrating my accomplishments, I have always praised my dedication and the love I put into my work. I’ve hit the shed. I’ve put in the hours, read the textbooks, daily practice, networking, rejection, humiliation, and failure. I’ve spend the last decade of my life preparing myself for this moment. Fall after fall, I’ve always managed to learn from my mistakes and get back on both of my feet. I do not believe in cutting corners or finding “shortcuts”. Discipline and work ethic have been game changers when it comes to my skills and what I’ve been able to create in the last five years with them. A lot of hours have been spent studying, practicing, and experiencing music in all of its forms; all the way from singing, composing, arranging, and conducting to producing, recording, mixing, and mastering.

I have to thank both Berklee and myself for allowing me to explore music in all of its forms. Learning all of these skills was difficult and required patience and a lot of educating myself and then applying experimentation in order to test my knowledge. I remember learning how to play the piano; it not only required weekly lessons but an extent amount of Musical Theory along with daily exercises. I never missed a day, and now it’s the principal instrument I use to compose. Same with singing, songwriting, playing the drum set, and even more with the whole production/engineering thing! Learning about microphones and the different types of microphones that exist, recording techniques, mic placement, production mindset, analog consoles vs. digital consoles, analog processors, a lot of cables, patch bays, mixing, Pro Tools, Beat Detective, Melodyne, mastering, Sequoia…even when it comes to more logistical skills like scheduling and budgeting, all of these skills and the fact that I use them on a daily basis have been the fruit of pure discipline, hard work and commitment. With all of this said, I still remain humble to this day and am aware that there is still a lot to work on.

The only thing I regret about how hard I’ve been on myself is that I’ve seen my social life get affected. I never thought I would consider myself a workaholic until it was too late. Work-life balance has definitely been hard to achieve. All those hours spent were a sacrifice; I missed a lot of parties social reunions and even missed out on a lot of networking opportunities by prioritizing my education and ethics. I even had to end relationships and lose friends simply because they were not as focused and determined as I was. With time I have been able to find more balance and I’m still learning how to manage my time better in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Lastly, one of the greatest and most important challenges has been to accept that this is a way of being and not only a hobby or a pastime thing. It took me five years to realize that. You either are or you’re not. Everything else comes after realizing that.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a Composer, Producer & Recording/Mix Engineer with half a decade of experience working in the Boston/New York music scene with both national and international artists. In other words, I spend a lot of my time writing, recording, and editing music.

At the same time, I write, produce, and perform my own songs under the artist name Moncho Berry; however, will get to that later.

I always find it hard to explain what is it that I exactly do, but I’ll give it a try. When it comes to my work as a record producer, it’s all about sensitivity, human relationships, and care. You see, my role is not to distract or invade the art, but to get it through; to be sensible enough to understand the artist and to help them get their ideas out of their head and transformed into a fully produced/recorded song which exists in the format of a WAV file that will be then uploaded into many different streaming platforms to be later heard by millions of people. Trust me, it sounds easier said than done. Perhaps you might understand better if I told you about my latest production experience working with one of my current artists, Sandro Bevilaqua.

Sandro and I became friends during our time living together in Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout the years, we formed a beautiful relationship made up of music and brotherhood. He went to Berklee to study Film Scoring and Composition and spent most of his days and nights orchestrating, arranging, transposing, and writing music. He’s probably one of the most talented and virtuoso individuals I have ever met. During our time in college, I saw him grow as a musician and got to even see him conduct a 20+ people orchestra, score music for horror films, I saw and heard him write several pieces for strings and horns, as well as seeing him shred the guitar and play the piano as smooth as Debussy or Erik Satie. In all of those years, however, I also got to see him as more than just one more Berklee kid…he was a roommate, a friend, a brother, and family.

As a person, he was always pretty quiet and reserved when faced with social interactions and was definitely more of an introvert around other people, but every single time we would be alone, he was such a great hang; a master comedian, a great actor, and impersonator and one of those friends you can just be yourself with. As the years passed, I saw him grow in confidence, I saw him date girls, I also saw him go through hardships and heartbreaks, I saw him fall and get back on his feet several times. A year before graduating, we lived together in a beautiful apartment in Beacon Street in the city of Brookline, where we both faced a lot of existential crisis and doubts regarding the future until eventually facing graduation and the end of a life phase. After graduating, he went back to live with his mother in a beautiful apartment in the city of Hoboken, New Jersey. Reality hit him hard. We’ve all gone through the classic post-graduation depression. Doubts, fear, and uncertainty fogged his mind, and he faced a year of solitude, grief, acceptance, reflection, introspection, and most importantly, creation.

Almost a year after he had left Boston, one day during my last semester in Berklee, I received a voice memo from him after many days of not hearing from him. The memo was a song, with both lyrics and melody, sang and performed by himself (something that I had never heard before). The words, melody, the harmony, and the emotion were unique. It was such an authentic experience, one of those listening experiences that gives you goosebumps for no specific reason; it simply moved me. His force penetrated every shell or carcass I had, and it simply released me. It allowed myself to be completely vulnerable, I knew every single word and feeling provoked were honest and truthful, something that as both a writer and producer, I had not felt before or for lack of better words, something I had been missing out on. The song was titled Sacred, Blameless Love and became the start of our relationship as Producer & Artist.

After hearing the song, I asked him to send me any other ideas he had or was currently working on and told him that I would be willing to help him produce them. That same evening, I got sent a folder with five songs. Each and every single one of those demos shook me off my roots and made me feel things I had forgotten about. It was as if I was learning from zero about music and emotion. His words were so pure and transparent…there was no bullshit…no small talk…no superficiality. This was rooted in real deep emotions, real pain, real suffering, real happiness, real loss, real heartbreak, real people, places…simply real shit. As soon as I had finished hearing all of the demos I already knew this was special and different from all the other projects I had worked on. Not necessarily better or worse, just shockingly special.

I proceeded to plan out the recording stages of the production process and got my ass on a train ride to Hoboken, New Jersey with nothing but my laptop, my audio interface, and a couple of microphones. I knew that he had been writing all of these songs in his room so because of this I decided to go to him. I had to challenge some of the things I learned in my time as a production/engineering student at Berklee, and for the first time in my life I decided to take the studio to him rather than making it the other way around. I prioritized his safe heaven above everything else. I just had to. This was the only way of capturing his truth. Right away, and since day one, I understood that all of his music was rooted in vulnerability. I had to be cautious with my production; I couldn’t risk to loose the original essence of his music or put his story and his expression in danger. I knew that I had to be thoughtful and do my logistical calculations with precision and care. When it came to the music, I also had to give him his space and avoid giving him any ideas or opinions that instead of helping would distract or prevent him from painting the picture in his head. With this being said, we began the recording process.

For five days, we worked non-stop on tracking the basic instruments (acoustic guitar and vocals), which we recorded inside his room. For this, I had to get creative in order to try to minimize the noise pollution and create the proper recording environment. We had rugs everywhere, mattresses against the windows, towels, pillows…you name it. We created a little homemade, sound-proof studio room. Before starting each song, we would always go out and sit in his front porch and talk for an hour. I would always start the conversation by lighting up a cigarette and talking about the day, the weather…some casual shit. I would then try to ask him how he felt and what song he would like to record next. I would then also have him play the demo for me, and we would talk about the song, what it meant for him, why he wrote it, and how he envisioned it. This was such an intimate moment for him as well for me; I had to basically enter his world, his mind in order to truly understand what these lyrics meant and where all of this emotion came from. We also spent a lot of time listening to some artists that served us as references such as Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, among other folk/indie artists. By the end of the week, we had finished tracking all of the songs.

We then proceeded to tracking Over Dubs (all the other instruments/parts needed to complete the song). We recorded the lead electric guitars in his basement which had a natural chamber-like reverberation (this is the beauty of recording shit outside the studio). There was simply a unique sound and vibe, unlike anything I’ve recorded in a professional recording space. This was raw. It felt real. It felt special. It was different and above all…it was good music. We also had a couple of recording/mixing sessions in the studios of Berklee in Boston, where we tracked pianos, drums and where I finished editing and mixing all of the music. We then had the five songs sent to Franky Gonzalez – a mix/master engineer which fell in love with the songs and proceeded to do the Mastering of the whole EP.

Yes of course there’s more to this. I could spend a couple of hours talking about the details; the microphones I used – what pair of condensers I used to record those Stereo Guitars or the microphone placement for the Grand Piano – the plug-ins I used as a mixing engineer, what DAW I used, wether we used analog processing or not…even though these are all important details for the mixing process, none are more important than the art. This is not about the fruit of experience but the experience itself. I tend to know when a mix is good and ready whenever I find myself not listening/looking for errors/things to fix, but when my own experience feels more, rather than less, real to me.

Every artist is different, but in other words, this is basically what I do as a Record Producer: Meet humans. Understand them. Accept them. Feel them. Record them. Mix them & make them sound good and ready for the real world. Music comes to you, proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments sake.

As an artist, I actually think it might be better if you judge for yourselves. I do a little bit of everything when it comes to genres and styles, so all I can say is I do music from the heart & soul for the heart & soul, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English! Above all, I don’t believe in limiting our creative process in any way. As long as we respect those who’ve come before us and left us their musical legacy, we shouldn’t feel afraid to discover ourselves through the process of music exploration.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I have to start by thanking my family for all of their unconditional love and help throughout the years. Nothing would have been possible without their hard work and support.

If there is someone that deserves credit, that is my mentor and ex Berklee professor John Paterno. John mentored me through the initial stages of my latest production (Sandro Bevilaqua’s “Lila”). John became like a father figure in my last semester in Berklee, I was able to open up to him, and we formed a beautiful relationship. I have a huge admiration and respect for everything he’s done/does and everything he taught me about record production, recording techniques & mixing. As a Grammy Award winner, having him as a mentor and advisor gave me perspective and challenged me to push myself as hard as I could. I went the extra mile, put in the extra effort, and developed such a passion and work ethic in the time spent studying with him. He also helped me get through some of the most challenging periods of my life when I faced doubt and uncertainty regarding my future as an artist/producer. I was able to rely on him not only as a student and for my work as a producer but also as someone I can lean on with any problems life throws at me. He opened up his doors to me and gave me a shoulder I could lean on when there was no one else around to do so.

I also want to thank Sean Slade, another one of my mentors and previous professors during my time in Berklee. Sean taught me that the true essence of production was rooted in emotion; in understanding it, transmitting it and being enough present and sensible to be one with it. As the producer of one of my favorite bands (Radiohead), having him as the first experienced producer who taught me everything when I knew nothing was probably one of the most important experiences I’ve lived. If anyone helped me develop my sensorial listening and musical sensitivity, it was Sean. This is something I will never forget and have taken with me since then.

None of my own productions would have been possible without the mentoring of John, Sean, Enrique Gonzalez, Jonathan Wyner among other professors I had during my time in Berklee. I cannot thank them enough for challenging me and pushing me to become who I am today. However, nothing would have been possible without the help of my teammates and friends; Julian Picado (Berklee Alumni and NY/LA based Producer/Mixing-Master Engineer), Franky Gonzalez (Berklee Alumni and Boston/NY based Mixing-Master Engineer), Juan Torres (Berklee Alumni and NY based Sound Designer & Recording/Mixing-Master Engineer), Sergio Salamanca (Berklee Alumni and Recording Engineer).

Lastly, I want to thank every single artist that has trusted me with their art, whether it is a producer, co-writer, recording engineer, or mixing-master engineer: Brisa Bacigalupo, Gustavo Moses, Alessandra Aguirre, Mattias Herreman, Daniel Machorro, Sofia Fuentes, Sandro Bevilaqua, Rafael Moreno and Oliver Berg.

Thank you all for everything and forever.

Contact Info:

• Website: monchoberry.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/monchoberry?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-yriberry-b43771221
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@monchoberry4725?si=zJKQMzRbgfmKHXIr

Image Credits
Gabriel Barreto. Javier Falcon.