In our curriculum at The Blackbird Academy, we put the student’s experience high on our list of priorities. Not only will we focus on mentor-based interaction with Mark and myself, but we’ll also invite a range of pro engineer guest lecturers and recording artists into our classroom and studios. The focus will be hands-on interaction with the gear, with the benefit of having real pros mentoring all the way. This is the same way award-winning engineers and producers learned the business and something that has been largely lost in modern education. For instance, the class that just started spent a day with John McBride mixing a record for an upcoming album release, and in the first week, Tim McGraw dropped by to talk to students about his career and the business of making music.

The Red Button figures heavily into all of this because the classroom is not a cold room with desks and a whiteboard but a recording studio with an API console, patch bay, iso-booths, and 30 student stations. Each is outfitted with Pro Tools rigs driven by Universal Audio Apollo interfaces stocked with every plugin they offer.

We don’t teach recording by talking about it but by doing it right from the start. After two weeks in the classroom and studio, students will break into smaller groups of five, where they’ll move into Blackbird’s studios A, Band I for hands-on work. In the studio, we will revisit and repeat the ideas just learned in the classroom – in the same studios where the top names in music make hit records every day. Then it’s rinse, lather and repeat as we move through the program with the intention of making you the best and most employable engineer you can be.

Click here to learn more about the program.