“Elements of Mixing” Seminar Announced – Feb. 10 at Mission Sound, Brooklyn
Here’s a one-day way to max your mix skills.
You’ll see sound from a different perspective after “Elements of Mixing”.
The next Elements of Mixing Seminar – GRAMMY-winner “Bassy” Bob Brockman’s comprehensive look in to all aspects of the mixing and production of hit records – has been announced for Monday, February 10th, at Mission Sound in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Brockman (Christina Aguilera, Biggie Smalls, P Diddy, Babyface, Brian McKnight, Herbie Hancock, the Fugees, Santana, Sting) leads a distinctive course that goes way beyond hands-on. Limited to 15 students, his students assist him as leads real mix sessions emphasizing “exciting and visually three dimensional-mixes.” EQ, compression, distortion, saturation, and image management are all on the agenda.
The seminar runs from 10 AM – 6 PM. Register here for tickets, which cost $199.
Brockman gave SonicScoop a detailed look of what students can expect from this immersive audio education experience.
What is the Elements of Mixing ?
The elements of mixing is an all-day eight-hour intensive seminar that I do at Mission Sound in Brooklyn, where I currently have my mix room. The idea is to replicate the atmosphere of the professional mix room with the students being effectively the assistants standing behind me.
I’ve divided up all of the tasks and tools that I use in mixing to a list of elements that I actually use on a day-to-day basis, and I convey those elements over the course of the eight-hour seminar.
The elements are things like volume, panning, spatial enhancement, modulation, reverb, delay, things like that… I will focus on four mixes of differing genres over the course of the day.
How did the elements of mixing come about?
It started out as a casual conversation that Ryan West — a good friend and fellow mixer — and I were having backstage at a Remix Hotel that was being hosted by Hank Shocklee. This was in 2011 and Ryan and I were sharing our sadness that so many big studios in New York City had closed, and that it was in fact the studios that have been the launching pad for many great careers.
We did two seminars which were great but Ryan got super busy as did I and we lost the thread. I’m excited to re-invent it at Mission.
I myself in fact owe a great deal of my success to early engineers that I assisted for like Chris-Lord Alge, Andy Wallace, Ron Banks, and many, many others. The greatest early lessons for me came from simply standing behind them and watching them mix and observing what kind of moves they made.
As I got older and more successful as a mixer I ultimately ended up building a studio in Manhattan called Numidia NY, which is now Germano Studios. At that studio I had many assistants who I would share all my secrets with as a normal course of our daily work… One of those assistants, John O’ Mahoney is now a world class mixer producer with an impressive list of credits from Coldplay to a Grammy nomination for his production on Sarah Bariellis. Another former assistant of mine Ken Lewis is among the most successful mixers in the country today.
These are the success stories I love to see. My hope with the Elements of Mixing seminars is to inspire the next generation to greatness. Whether in mixing or production or both.
“Bassy” Bob Brockman
How did you mix your first hit records?
Mostly accidents, luck and trust. With Debbie Gibson “Only In My Dreams” it was a demo I mixed for Fred Zarr, her producer. I had been working for six months on various demos for Fred for free at his home studio in Brooklyn on the weekends. One weekend he asked me to mix another demo for a 14-year old singer.
He paid me $50, and six months later it was a #2 single on the pop charts and sold over 500,000 copies. That single made my career.
Other hits came the same way…Ron Banks was Surface’s engineer. He got called out to LA for several months to mix a project. He asked me to look after Pic Conley, Surfaces producer. Pic asked me to mix two songs : “Ain’t Nutin’ Goin In But the Rent” by Gwen Guthrie and “Happy” by his band Surface. They were both huge records and I mixed for the next ten years for Pic.
It’s a relationship business. If you can deliver your clients usually remain loyal. If older engineers trust you they usually kick work your way. That’s the apprentice nature of the music business. I think it’s very important.
So what do you cover in your seminars. Is it quite technical?
It is when I’m describing a particular technique or quick key. There’s definitely a strong focus on the use of the best plugs.
But more importantly it’s about the aesthetics and philosophy of mixing. Which for me is to highlight what’s important and de-emphasize that which is less important. Developing the skills to ferret that out and expand upon it I think is the essence of great mixing. Showing the listener what to focus on, like an editor does for a film. It’s all about foreground and background like in paintings.
Also things like compression and distortion are what make music exciting (like spice in cooking ). Most rock and hip hop records apply a lot of distortion and saturation. I think clean records are kind of boring. I’ll be covering all of that and more.
And why Mission Sound as the venue ?
It’s where I have my mix room currently, and it’s an amazing-sounding control room Oliver (Straus) has built.
It’s one of a handful of amazing rooms in the city. I’m thrilled to be producing out of there and having the seminars there. It takes a great room with a great image for students to really hear what’s happening image-wise, and also in the low end. It goes down to about 20 cycles. It’s awesome.
Will there also be online videos and tutorials ?
Yes for sure. It’s in the planning stages. I plan on releasing a bunch of videos in the upcoming year on elementsofmixing.com. It’ll cover a wide range of topics, but focus initially on mix techniques.
Thanks Bob! Good luck with the event on February 10th.
Thanks, David. Looking forward to it.
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