Redbeard - Mix Mentor
We live in a world where creative and professional relationships are harder and harder to find. The ability to intern in pro studios and sponge off of the greats is harder to find than ever, and with AI affecting the industry more and more, the jobs that most people ‘cut their teeth’ with are getting harder and harder to find. Schools may teach you the technical basics, but having someone who cares about music and not grades sit over your shoulder to help you find the weak points in your mix is invaluable!
This is where I (Red Beard) come in. I spent years as the house engineer at Electric Deluxe in Austin, TX, and recently moved to Puerto Rico to give my kids a more diverse childhood experience. With that move I transitioned to primarily just mixing and realized there was something that I missed. At Electric Deluxe I had a fantastic assistant who aggressively wanted to learn and grow. This meant we would spend hours on hours where I would teach him what I do and we would nerd out over the arts of recording and mixing and continue to learn together. I’ve found that I miss sharing my knowledge and learning from others in the process.
Now you come in. I am looking for a handful of fellow engineers who are looking to really dig deep and grow in their craft. Over the course of a couple of months we would dive deep into your sessions, learn best practices, and figure out what is working as well as what’s not working! There is no course or lesson plan because every person is different and has different strengths and needs. I want to help you learn the technical side of mixing as well as help you tap into what makes you unique and different than all the other mix engineers out there!
AI - And why it Matters
You may have noticed all the art on this page is AI. This is by design. I am not a graphic designer. I don’t even screw with photoshop, yet here I’ve been able to get stylized photos on theme with the correct content without employing a single person.
- Soon AI will be scraping all of the articles and pdf’s that people put out there with mixing tips. It won’t check with top engineers or people in studios to see if it is accurate or helpful, it will collect the most commonly repeated info. This info is often only true in certain circumstances, completely untrue, or extremely basic. This makes information extremely easy to find, but there will be almost no ways to verify what information is reliable.
- Next you’ll have plugins using AI to get you 75% there like I did with these images, but no one to tell you how or why it did it, or worse, how to get the other 25%. This means that digital services and plugins will be eating up all of the ‘starter’ work where you would normally start to get past the basics through experience.
- The online resources that have already begun to feel flooded with questionable advice will steadily get worse. Already deciphering between experts taking time out of their day to help, and amateurs repeating what the AI or other amateurs said online just to make more “content” that they know little to nothing about is getting hard.
This is where I want you to have what I was incredibly fortunate to have starting off. One on one mentorship. Someone with experience who can push you to grow, while helping guide the path you’re going down.
So what does it look like?
- Ten, hour long, one on one sessions spread out over three months.
- We will open and tweak the mixes you are working on and go as deep as needed for you to grow as a mixer!
- On top of actual mixing concepts and practices, we will also go over session setup, creative approaches, organization, and more.
- This is not something that is geared for people just dipping their toes into audio, but to help those who are already on the journey to make some real progress!
If you’re interested in taking your mixes to the next level, I’d love to chat with you! There is an interview process as I don’t just take on everyone, and only want to Mentor people that I know I can truly help and add value to. I primarily mentor engineers dealing with live tracks and instruments, and not so much just dropping vocals into a beat. If we are a good match we can start right away or once a slot frees up!
Shoot me an email at RedBeardMixMentor@gmail.com and we will line up an interview to see if we’re a match. I look forward to meeting you!
