Mentor Mixdown: A personalized mixing course like no other

It's a 100% personalized educational service that'll show you how a pro mix engineer mixes YOUR music.

By watching one of our engineers work on your own track, you'll learn pro mixing techniques in context - making your learning experience much more effective than if you were to take a standard mixing course.

Once you've purchased one of the Mentor Mixdown packages, here's what happens:

• We'll get in touch with you to request your stems. Not sure what these are or how to do that? No problem, take a look at this handy guide which will talk you through the whole process. And if you've still got questions, get in touch so we can help you out.
• For the Gold and Silver packages, we'll ask you to fill out a short online form telling us a bit more about your project and what you're looking to achieve with the mix
• We may then arrange an initial 1-on-1 live call to chat things through with you
• Your assigned mix engineer will then get started mixing your track and recording everything he does

No. Our mix engineers are based in various locations across the world and may not be in your timezone, so organizing live sessions isn't easy. So, they'll mix your track whilst videoing themselves and the screen, showing all the moves they make in the DAW.

So you'll get a high-quality, edited video so you can see how your track is mixed by the engineer. You can then watch it in your own time, at your own pace and as many times as you like! So it's a great learning resource for you to keep forever.

If you choose the Live Q&A option though (available on the Gold and Platinum packages) you'll get to chat live with the engineer once you've seen your personalized video. That way you can ask them any questions and get additional help if you need it.

Absolutely not. Even though you will get a final mix, it is first and foremost an educational product that’ll teach you how to mix by showing you how a pro mix engineer mixes YOUR music.

With the Gold and Platinum packages you'll get a video and (optionally) 1-on-1 live contact with the engineer so you can take the learnings from what he's done with your track and apply them to your future tracks.

Because of all this, it takes longer since the engineer needs to explain exactly what they're doing and why. Also, we’re recording and producing a personalized video tutorial JUST FOR YOU! So it’s much more labor intensive than a mix engineer who simply mixes your project with no explanation or video recording teaching you how it’s done.

We're not just mixing your track. We're creating a personalized mixing course just for you that shows a pro mix engineeer working on your track.

You'll get to see the moves they make in the DAW and hear them explain why they're doing what they're doing. By seeing a mixing session in the context of your own music, you'll learn much quicker and be able to apply that learning to ALL your future tracks.

The quality of vocal stems delivered to us is very unpredictable. It could easily take an entire day to clean up a vocal with pitching and timing tweaks. So in order that we can make Mentor Mixdown an affordable product, we assume you'll be providing the vocal stems as you want them to be used. Of course, we'll add the relevant EQ, compression and other processing that might be needed, but we won't do any pitch or timing edits.

Want to Learn Vocal editing? Get in touch with us and we can put together a custom package for you.

Stems are the industry standard way that files are shared with mix engineers. They make the whole process of sharing music projects betwen people much easier and less prone to problems with missing plugins. Have a read of this handy guide that explains what they are and why they're important.

Great question! It's really important that you send us audio stems and NOT a DAW project with virtual instruments and a whole bunch of plugins in it.

But don't worry, when we receive your Mentor Mixdown order we'll send you instructions on how to prepare your stems. You can read those instructions now if you like. And if you have any problems we're here to help you out.

It somewhat depends on the mixing queue that we have at the time, but typically we need around 3 weeks from the time you deliver your stems to the time we deliver your course to you showing you the final mix.

No. Since the Silver package is where we're just working on your stereo bounce there's no major advantage to us sending you a video. We'll send you written feedback on the track with, where it's necessary, screenshots of any processing that we feel would enhance the track.

For the Gold and Platinum packages, you get the option to discuss the final mix and video course after you've received it. You may, for example, have questions that come to mind when you watch your personalized course. So the Live 1-on-1 Q&A is a way you can spend time with your mix engineer to ask them anything about the mix.

For those two packages, we'll also put you directly in touch with your mix engineer in advance of them starting the mixdown so they can get a good idea from you about what you want to achieve with your track. This will help them focus on the areas you specifically need help with, giving you the best outcome from the personalized course.

That's something we're looking into in future but at the moment, we'll assign you a mix engineer depending on a number of factors including their capacity and the genre of your track.

Yes sure, you'll find an example of what you'll get on this page. Click here and we'll show you.

That depends to some extent on what your track is like, but typically it'll be around 2 hours or more.

Mentor Mixdown is an educational service so our primary aim is to teach YOU how to mix.

So, for example, if you've got a stem with 25 crash cymbals in it that need processing, we'll show you what to do with one or two of them but we won't necessarily do that to ALL 25 of them - that would be a waste of time and your money when it's something that you could do once we've shown you what needs doing.

However, if you choose the release-ready option we'll do everything that needs to be done to get the track completely finished. So, in the above example we would address ALL 25 crashes! The only exception is vocal editing and tuning which is not part of our Mentor Mixdown service.

Yes of course! But you'll need to select the Platinum package and choose the 'Release-ready' option. As you can appreciate getting a track to a final release-ready mix and master takes longer and will need more time than if we're just producing the course and track for your own use.

You won't need to credit our mix engineer or agree any royalties with them - the track is free for you to do with as you wish without any obligation to the mix engineer who worked on it for you.

Not necessarily. Mentor Mixdown is an educational service so our primary aim is to teach YOU how to mix. Mastering is a whole other process and workflow. Often times, our engineers will do a “pre-master” or show you a quick “DIY” master, but not a fully dedicated mastering session.

So, for example, if you've got a stem with 25 crash cymbals in it that need processing, we'll show you what to do with one or two of them but we won't necessarily do that to ALL 25 of them - that would be a waste of time and your money when it's something that you could do once we've shown you what needs doing.

In terms of mastering, if you choose that option on the Gold or Platinum package we'll master the track and the project session files we send back to you will show the mastering chain and processing that we've used.

Yes, you'll get the project file in your DAW of choice (we support Ableton, Logic Pro and Cubase) with the mixed audio stems in it.

Most customers want to see the REAL process that each engineer would use with all their favorite plug-ins. Since you’ll have the finished stereo mix, this is our recommendation.

However, if you really want the engineer to focus on “mostly” stock plug-ins, that is possible. Just be sure to let us know as we prepare for your mix. We really don’t recommend the engineer using 100% stock plug-ins, because that is not the reality of how industry standard mixes are created. We feel that even though you may not have every plug-in the engineer uses, you’ll see which ones may be the most critical and therefore focus on those as ones you may consider purchasing for your own future mixes.