Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Dylan ‘3D’ Dresdow : July 2009
Ben Allen  Mixing R&B  Babydaddy • Dan Grech-Marguerat The Scissor Sisters' first album, recorded in a Manhattan apartment, sold 3.5 million copies worldwide. The follow-up sees them expanding their horizons, while keeping their DIY ethos very much intact. Artist/Producer  Writing & Producing With Robbie Williams Despite his best efforts, Stephen Duffy's solo work never quite made him a superstar — but it did get him one of the best co-writing gigs around. Producing Kasabian & Arctic Monkeys  Yellow Magic Orchestra goes Latino Yellow Magic Orchestra helped pioneer the use of electronic instruments and sampling. Now Uwe Schmidt, aka Señor Coconut, has used the same techniques to render their greatest hits as Latin dances, with contributions from all three original YMO members. Recording Morph The Cat  Folk Music For The 21st Century The idea of bringing folk music up to date is not a new one, but few people have taken it quite as far as Jim Moray. His material may be traditional, but his approach to music technology is as modern as it gets. Andy Jackson David Gilmour's chart-topping solo album was recorded on his own Astoria houseboat, a floating slice of studio heaven. Engineer Andy Jackson describes the making of the album. Mike Elizondo  The Current State Of Affairs What can we, as engineers or musicians, do to prevent our recorded legacy being lost? Record Producer  Richard Aitken of Nimrod Productions  Writing & Producing in LA The success of Avril Lavigne's debut album Let Go catapulted The Matrix to the front rank of songwriters and producers. Since then, they've moved in ever wider musical circles, culminating in their work with nu-metal pioneers Korn. Producing Hip-Hop Miami is now a hip-hop centre to rival New York and LA, and Cool & Dre are two of its most active beatmakers, songwriters and producers. Craig Bauer Craig Bauer has been part of Kanye West's career from the beginning, and as a mix engineer on the smash hit Late Registration album, he had to marry West's artistic perfectionism with his own technical standards. Roy Thomas Baker  John Fryer  Harry Gregson-Williams  November 2009
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| Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Dylan ‘3D’ DresdowArticle Preview :: Black Eyed PeasPublished in SOS July 2009 People + Opinion : Artists/Engineers/Producers/Programmers For their fifth album, The END, Black Eyed Peas main man will.i.am took the band — and their long-serving mixer Dylan Dresdow — in a new direction, with stunning success.
A stylistic departure from a band known for chart-friendly hip-hop, ‘Boom Boom Pow’ nevertheless became the Black Eyed Peas’ first US number one single, selling one and a half million copies there in five weeks via downloads alone. It also made it to the top in the UK and Canada. The studio magician responsible for nailing its hit potential is Dylan ‘3D’ Dresdow. Formerly from Florida, like many other US top mixers a graduate of the Full Sail University’s Recording Arts programme, and now a resident of Los Angeles, Dresdow cut his professional teeth at Enterprise Studios in LA, and subsequently benefited from a one-year master class assisting the legendary mixer David Pensado. ‘3D’, who owes his nickname to the fact that he has three ‘d’s in his name and to a talent for spatial mixing, has been independent since 2000. In 2006 he founded his own studio, called Paper VU, and his credits include Ice Cube, Missy Elliott, Wu-Tang Clan, Michael Jackson, Nas, Common, Chris Brown, Usher, Flo Rida and, of course, Black Eyed Peas. Dylan Dresdow’s association with BEP and their producer will.i.am goes back to 2000, when Pensado and his then apprentice mixed the quartet’s second album, Bridging The Gap. Dresdow went on to co-engineer the band’s third and fourth albums, Elephunk and Monkey Business. He also has mix credits on all will.i.am’s solo efforts, and new album The END sees him promoted to sole mixer on a project with a money-no-object budget: “For this project we had the opportunity not to cut any corners, and make sure that we made a record that will stand the test of time, and that will hopefully sell very well at a time when records aren’t selling as well.” Beginnings Of The END
The END was recorded and mixed primarily at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, on an SSL 9000J, but Dresdow brought in his own Pro Tools system, Lynx Aurora 16 converters, and some other bits and pieces from Paper VU, and sometimes took the sessions back to Paper VU to make use of esoteric outboard that wasn’t easily transported. By the time Dresdow arrived at the Record Plant to mix the album, most of the material had been recorded by will.i.am and engineer Padraic ‘Padlock’ Kerin. “The songs were presented to me as if they were ready to be mixed,” Dresdow recalls. “There were no plans to do any additional recording, but then, whatever I did would influence Will to come up with a great new part, or a great new section, so Padraic, Will, or myself would do additional overdubs. We jumped from song to song in doing this, because we really wanted the songs to make sense as a whole, and have the sequence correct. While The END is not a concept record, the idea is that you listen all the way through. Jumping from song to song gave us the ability to make sure that all the songs were a cohesive whole and matched up from a sonic perspective. That would have been harder to do had we mixed the songs linearly, like start with song one, and then song two, and so on.
“I think Will’s main vision is for The END to be a little like a DJ spinning records in a nightclub. DJs don’t stop in between songs, they keep the music going, non-stop. So The END is sequenced in a certain way, with short or no spaces between the songs. Will also was really adamant that he wanted it to be on a par with many of the electro-influenced sounds that are out there now. The main bass in ‘Boom Boom Pow’ is an 808, for instance, there’s no bass guitar or keyboard bass. As a mix engineer, I had to treat some elements in very unique ways. And Will also enlisted the [French DJ and producer] David Guetta to work on some of the songs. Will wanted to break the mould and push to the forefront.” When Dresdow received the song files at the Record Plant, supposedly ready for the final mix, he noted that, unusually for the Black Eyed Peas, the vast majority of the tracks consisted of synthesizers. “They were called ‘bubble synth’ or ‘air synths’. As far as I know there were no software synths used on the album, it was all hardware synths, played without MIDI cables. When Will records synths, he’ll play and record the keyboard several times until he hits a section he likes, and he’ll then grab that section in Pro Tools and edit his performance as audio, because it’s easier to drastically manipulate than it is when working with MIDI. In addition to the synths and 808 drums on the album, there were also programmed 909 drums, drum loops, real and sampled basses and a few guitars [though these three were not present on ‘Boom Boom Pow’]. ...
Published in SOS July 2009 
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