RSR288 - Rafa Sardina - 5 x Grammy Winning Mixer For Alejandro Sanz, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, and D'Angelo
Recording Studio Rockstars
Lij Shaw
4.8 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2021
⏱️ 122 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guest today is Rafa Sardina a recording and mixing engineer with 5 Grammy wins, 12 Latin Grammy awards, and a total of 60 Grammy nominations during his career including winning the South African SAMA award in 2018. A Basque native of Spain Rafa started out with four years in med school before deciding to pursue his passion for music which led him to Full Sail University.
After graduating as valedictorian he found himself at Oceanway in Los Angeles working with a wide variety of artists including the Black Crows, Celine Dion, Greenday, Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Frank Sinatra to name a few. Today he works from his own After Hours Studios where he regularly mixes artists from around the world.
Though Rafa is best known for working on pop, rock and R&B projects, he has recorded and mixed just about any genre of music you can imagine: orchestral recordings, big band, R&B, dance, gospel, soul, rap, choral, film/TV soundtracks and huge movie scores like "Any given Sunday", "102 Dalmatians", "Michael Jordan- To the Max", Johnny Depp's "The Rum Diary" and many more.
He is also a founding member and vice-chairman of the Latin Recording Academy's CPI the equivalent to the Producers and Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy. And Rafa enjoys teaching what he knows through platforms like Mix With The Masters, Pensado's Place and of course Recording Studio Rockstars.
Thanks to Andris Evelis at JZ microphones for making the introduction.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Recording Studio Rockstars is brought to you by Sound Porter mastering, Adam Audio, |
| 0:06.3 | OWC, JZ microphones, Spectra-1964, and Isotope. In fact, you're hearing my voice right now on the |
| 0:14.0 | JZBB29 microphone through the Spectra-1964 STX-100 micpre, C-610 complementar, and isotope RX and ozone. |
| 0:24.2 | So get ready to rock. |
| 0:26.5 | When I was more in demand for mixing, that's when my recording style also changed. |
| 0:32.1 | Because I started to recognize where the missed opportunities were, even in the recording stage. |
| 0:37.9 | I'll always be thinking when somebody would send me some tracks to mix, I'll go like, |
| 0:41.7 | damn, why didn't they set this extra microphone? |
| 0:44.9 | And they could have. |
| 0:45.9 | Very often they had the resources, but probably didn't have the imagination. |
| 0:49.4 | Yeah. Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars. |
| 1:02.7 | I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio. |
| 1:14.6 | Music you become a rock star of the recording studio. I'm Brian Murphrey, and I strive to produce masters that move your song emotionally, |
| 1:19.6 | but maintain the spirit of your mix and the intention of the artist. |
| 1:23.6 | My promise is to give your music its best Sonic performance, not simply change it. |
| 1:28.3 | You work hard on your mix, and I always want to respect that. |
| 1:31.8 | My goal is to help you realize how great your mix can be, and I'll work hard to make sure it succeeds. |
| 1:37.7 | I don't just master. |
| 1:39.1 | I help your mix sound the best it can. |
| 1:41.5 | Contact me for a free mastering demo at soundporter.com. |
| 1:46.8 | I've got two words for you that will help you make your best record ever and not lose it. |
| 1:52.2 | Storage and backup. You want fast drives for composing and recording and reliable drives for |
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