DAW Mixing & Muse

Grammy-winning producer Charles Dye’s experience is well communicated here. [...] Continue Reading…

With the onslaught of DAW-based recording studios, there’s been a resulting explosion of instructional DVDs designed to help YOU. This new one from KAGI MEDIA offers up more than just the “here’s the plug-ins I use” instructions (although there’s a lot of that here) with Grammy-award winning mixer/producer Charles Dye being the focus of this comprehensive look into the art of mixing. Along with sharing many tricks of the trade, he examines the process of creating a musical mix that builds on emotional cues to really grab the listener’s attention.
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DVD Producer Jonathan Kagi and Multi-Platinum, Latin Grammy-winning mixer and producer Charles Dye (Lauryn Hill, Ricky Martin) team up to deliver an exciting Digidesign Pro Tools mixing tutorial in this feature-packed new dual-layer DVD-ROM, Mix It Like A Record (MiLaR). Focusing on a pop-rock song called “She Loves Me” that Dye recently mixed for the independent band eL, the three-hour DVD guides you through the entire mix process using the hybrid facilities of newly opened Miami-based Supersonic Studios on it’s maxed-out Pro Tools|HD Accel system and Icon D-Control work surface. [...] Continue Reading…

Charles Dye has tackled a topic I wouldn’t even know where to begin with, and succeeds with Mix It Like A Record. Its DVD and Pro Tools sessions create a framework for the subject of mixing that provide a path the younger engineer, producer or musician can take to jump-start their learning process, bypassing much trial and error.

- Eric Schilling, 12 time Grammy-winning Producer/Engineer/Mixer (David Bowie, Shakira, Barbara Streisand, Gloria Estefan, Quincy Jones, Elton John, Janet Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole, and the list goes on…)

Featuring three hours of video instruction plus 40 accompanying Pro Tools TDM and LE sessions, Mix It Like A Record on DVD let’s you see, hear and work along with an actual professional mixing session to learn exactly how it’s done.
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Mylar® Film

Magnetic Recording Media: Hard Disk systems employ polyester (or Mylar) film. Mylar is a magnetic coating that allows it to accept data recording.

MiLaR® DVD

Recording and Mixing Media: DVD Courseware that teaches you how to get record quality mixes on hard disk recorders.

As I traveled the world (quite literally from Paris to Taipei) teaching a Master Class about mixing in DAWs at Digidesign’s DigiWorld events, I noticed that users were most interested in learning how I was able to get big sounding, finished record results while the entire time working completely inside the box, without using a console or outboard processing of any kind.

As well, I have read a lot of posts on various web sites where users say they cannot get mixes that sound this way without: a lot of hard work, or changing their approach from analog dramatically, or by bypassing their DAW’s mix bus and mixing on an analog console instead. And there are others who just don’t know how to make their mixes sound good because they are new to mixing altogether. I feel this is creating an incorrect impression about DAWs, and it’s simply because users don’t know exactly how to get the results that they are searching for.

Based on the questions from the Master Classes, and from hearing users’ frustrations with the results of their mixes in DAWs, I started to examine my mixing process to see what it was that allows me to accomplish [...] Continue Reading…

Educators tout Mix It Like A Record as indispensable teaching aid

Mix It Like A Record, a popular interactive mixing course authored by Grammy-winning engineer, mixer and producer Charles Dye and produced by Kagi Media, has been added to the curriculum at several well-known recording schools and colleges across the country, and is garnering endorsements from the music industry’s top educators as an excellent resource to teach the subject of mixing, a craft that at one time was seen as un-teachable.

“For years books and magazines have tried to convey the art of mixing,” said Chris Davie, Director of SAE Institute in Miami, engineer and mixer (Vince Gill, George Strait, Wynonna Judd, Trisha Yearwood). “Mix It Like A Record’s format goes one step further by bringing the viewer directly into the mix with techniques, discussions and practice sessions. In our educational environment it’s the perfect resource.”

SAE Institute in Miami is a branch of the SAE Institute, the world’s largest recording school with 46 campuses in 22 countries, as well as a Digidesign Sponsored School, and is using Mix It Like A Record in their advanced level audio production courses.

Mix It Like A Record also plays a key role in teaching mixing [...] Continue Reading…

For the last few years I’ve been asking myself a question about an aspect of our industry many of us may accept as just the way it is, but I don’t believe it has to be. Why do we have “engineering secrets”? More importantly, why is each new generation of engineers required to essentially re-discover many of the techniques of the previous generation’s masters?

Imagine if the same were true of medicine or science? Each generation would have to re-discover the polio vaccine, electricity and the semi-conductor. That clearly doesn’t make sense. In many vocations new techniques are simply shared with colleagues for the sake of improving their industry’s common product. Do we as an industry benefit by not sharing with each other? Probably not.

Somehow we’ve created a culture where techniques we learn are kept secret from one another. Presumably the reasoning behind it is if I know how to do something you don’t, then that makes me a better engineer. But I don’t believe that’s really true. For example: doctor’s all have available to them the same information base to learn from, allowing each of them the possibility to have equal skills. Does that mean one doctor cannot [...] Continue Reading…