Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Dot Da Genius : October 2009
In this article:
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  December 2009
Click image for Contents
Other recent issues: | Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Dot Da GeniusArticle Preview :: Kid Cudi: ‘Day ’n Nite’Published in SOS October 2009 People + Opinion : Artists/Engineers/Producers/Programmers Recorded and mixed in a modest home studio, ‘Day ’n Nite’ has made stars of singer/rapper Kid Cudi and producer Dot Da Genius.
For someone with such a self-aggrandising name who has already enjoyed major success at the age of 24, Dot Da Genius turns out to be surprisingly modest. The keyboardist, composer, engineer and producer is the studio tech-head behind, and co-writer of, Kid Cudi’s mega hit ‘Day ’n Nite’. Having enjoyed hit status for nearly two years, it will feature on Cudi’s debut album, Man On The Moon: The End Of Day, out this autumn. On the album, newcomer Da Genius will be rubbing shoulders with established hip-hop stars like Kanye West and will.i.am. ‘Day ’n Nite’ reached the top three in the US and the UK, and while Da Genius and Cudi’s original version is the most well-known in the US, in Europe it’s the remix by Italian DJ duo the Crookers that has most caught the public ear. Da Genius, real name Oladipo Omishore, explains that his professional name came from people calling him ‘genius’ when he was playing around with beats while studying electrical engineering at Polytechnic University in New York. Another nickname was ‘dot’: he tended to spell his real name O. Omishore, and the ‘dot’ bit was easiest to pronounce. Hence, ‘Dot da Genius’. His aptitude for music was nurtured by his parents from the age of seven, when his father sent him to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for piano lessons. Da Genius really wanted to play guitar, but playing keyboards turns out to be “very beneficial now that I’m doing production”. “The way everything unfolded was kind of crazy,” exclaims Da Genius. He continues by describing how he got into programming beats in 2003 at the Polytechnic, using Image Line’s Fruity Loops program. “Programming and music gear immediately had my full attention, just like any glimpse of a recording studio I would see on TV or in a magazine. But I was a broke college student, and so my parents funded my dream. My mother bought me an MXL V69 microphone, I had a custom PC built at school, and my father bought me the rest, which included Sonar software and a Korg Triton LE. Everything was installed in the basement of my crib [his parents’ home in Brooklyn], and I taught myself how to make beats and how to engineer. It took five years before I really had that down.” Banging Out Beats
We’re talking 2004 when Omishore obtained his first studio, and while he continued his course at the Polytechnic (he graduated in 2008), his studio activities gradually expanded. He met Kid Cudi in 2006, and the two immediately hit it off. In the same year, Da Genius upgraded to the gear on which ‘Day ’n Nite’ was programmed, recorded and mixed, this time without help from his parents (“I maxed out the credit cards!”). Head Banga Studios, as it is now named, includes a Roland MV8000 sequencer, Yamaha Motif ES7 and Novation X-Station keyboards, a PC with a Didigesign M Box interface and Pro Tools LE recording software, Neumann TML103 mic, Presonus Eureka preamp, Event ASP8 and Yamaha HS80 monitors, and a Mackie Universal control surface. ...
Published in SOS October 2009 
| Wednesday 25th November 2009 Dan Austin & Jez Williams  Black Eyed Peas 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. Jez Coad & Simple Minds Thirty years after their debut, Simple Minds returned to their roots as a live band and relit the old fires to record their most impressive album in years. U2 : 'No Line On The Horizon'  Producing The Way I See It Artist and producer Raphael Saadiq has channelled his love of classic soul records to create something convincingly vintage, yet fresh-sounding and alive. Ronald Prent, Darcy Proper & Wouter Strobbe: Blu-Ray Audio Few artists so far have taken advantage of the Blu-Ray format’s potential to deliver stunning audio quality. A concert film by Dutch metal act Within Temptation shows what’s possible. Recording electronica live in the studio Live performance and spontaneity are everything for Animal Collective, so capturing the magic of their unique electronic psychedelia on CD was a huge test for engineer and producer Ben Allen. Lily Allen: 'The Fear' — It’s Not Me, It’s You  Christmas In Transylvania For most bands and most record labels, trekking to the wilds of Eastern Europe to record a Christmas album would be a project that would remain filed under ‘Nice idea, but...’ Glasvegas, however, are not your ordinary guitar band. Seal: Soul 'A Change Is Gonna Come'  Lady Gaga 'Just Dance' Transatlantic number one ‘Just Dance’ was not only a breakthrough for Lady Gaga, but also for her producer RedOne and mix engineer Robert Orton. Record Producer  Rolling Stones 'Shine A Light' DVD  John Cummings & Gareth Jones Six albums into their career, Glaswegian instrumental band Mogwai decided to take the producer’s chair themselves. Oramics In the early ’60s, pioneering British composer Daphne Oram set out to create a synthesizer unlike any other. The engineer who turned her ideas into reality was Graham Wrench. Producing Almost Everyone  Matteo Scumaci & Robin Haller The task of bringing Hanggai's Chinese folk music to Western ears was challenging enough in itself. But then things started to go wrong... AC/DC Black Ice How do you capture the essence of pure rock & roll? For Mike Fraser and AC/DC, the answer was simple: get the sound right at source, track to analogue tape, and don't mess about with the results! Craig Potter: Recording The Seldom Seen Kid When they began work on The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow had no record label and no producer. Two years later, it's brought them mainstream success at last. Kings Of Leon: Sex On Fire  | |||||||
