Thread December 6, 2014 editorial: comments

Production Tips from a Pro

A great way to improve one’s studio skills is to watch a high-level producer at work, and we’re happy to be able to provide you with that opportunity. Let me explain: Fab Dupont is a producer, mixer, musician, programmer and more. He's worked with Shakira and JLO, among many other top artists. He recently worked on a project with The Arrows, a South African pop group, and the sessions were captured on video by the folks at Puremix and Avid.

Out of that footage came a six-part video series showing how Fab took The Arrows’ demo, analyzed it, and then helped the band revise it and craft it into a potential mega-hit. You can pick up a lot of tips and techniques just watching Fab at work. We already posted Episode 1 of the video, and every Wednesday for the next five weeks (not including Christmas week), we’ll be posting another episode from the series. You can also go to the From Creation to Final Mix site that Avid and Puremix put together, and sign up to see all the episodes from there. There’s no charge.

But you get even more benefits if you sign up: you can also download the tracks from the song, and do your own mix or remix of it. A dedicated SoundCloud site is available for uploading and sharing your mixes. So not only do you get some very cool tracks to mix, you can compare your work with other mixers to see how it holds up. In situations like this, it can be really informative to hear the different approaches everyone takes using the same set of tracks.

In addition, everyone who posts a mix, will be entered into a drawing for a copy of Pro Tools 11 and a 1-year Puremix subscription.

So go ahead check out the videos, I think you'll find them quite interesting. I certainly did. Hopefully, you'll be inspired to download the tracks and do your own mix.

As always, we welcome your comments, and if you do mix the song, please share it with us. We'd love to hear what you do with it.

Have a great week.

Mike Levine

U.S. Editor, Audiofanzine