The sound engineer has received praise from music veterans as a dynamic, one-to-watch talent.
Recently he added sound engineer at the Rhythm and Alps pre-party, to the mix of his achievements.
The passion for music began early for Oscar.
His mother’s side were all musicians and he joined them, playing guitar from a young age.
"Just strumming chords ... still just strumming chords now, then I got into drums properly when I was about 9 and wanted to be a touring drummer on the big stages. That was what I wanted to do until I was about 12 or 13," he said.
He attended Yami, a music summit hosted every two years at the Lake Wanaka Centre.
That event sparked the transition into producing and sound engineering, he said.
He started using a mixing desk at school and spent most of his lunchtime’s practising in the music room.
"And then every gig I’d go to, I’d just kind of stare at the sound desk engineer awkwardly until he’d show me what he’s doing and that’s sort of how it started," he said.
He practised his sound engineering with Wanaka band Powder Chutes, and still does.
"They’ve [been] really crucial in my career so far. Lots of gigs with them and learnt a lot as they grew.
"You don’t want lots of flat surfaces in an empty room, it proves for bad noise because the waves infer and create anti-nodes that will make the sound sound worse than it actually should [be]," Oscar said.
He considered how flat the roof and back walls were and then went from there.
"In a big hall, it does get hard and you’ve just go to make it work with a lot of EQing ...
"In a studio situation, I’d fill it up with different fabrics and mattresses, so you can get proper soundproof insulation and make it nice and dead," he said.
He used the example of clapping and hearing an echo.
"Ideally, we don’t want it to echo, you want it to be nice and flat sounding."
In his final year at Mt Aspiring College, Oscar credited support from his music teachers and key local businesses for his career progression.
"My music teacher Mat Doyle’s helped me a lot, he’s been legendary actually.
"I definitely wouldn’t be here without him and then just working with Tom Tom productions and sound people a lot," Oscar said.
He started working with Queenstown-based Fidelity Sound System, who provided the sound systems for events such as Rhythm and Alps.
"I started working with Steve [from Fidelity] this year and have been doing a lot of gigs with him. He’s taken me under his wing which is really nice of him," he said.
