Customer Reviews

The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production by David Gibson

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

That was a painful watch, boring at best. David Gibson may know his chops but he definitely doesnt know how to teach them effectively. He spends half the time explaining what the video is supposed to teach as opposed to actually teaching it. The video begins with a tune by Thomas Dolby- Blinded me with science...which plays over and over till you are bored to death, and the tune sucks. Then Gibson gives an intro to the video about the subsequent chapters as divided into 3 parts. Then he goes over the details as to how panning, volume and equalisation; and effects are used by engineers all over the world to create GREAT MIXES. Now that is and illusive concept, but he doesnt even try to deliver the basics. How to use eq is supposed to be an indepth subject with much disscussion as with compressing and limiting. But he just repeats the very-very basics over and over till you're done. No discussion or indepth analysis. And the video transitions and layout is so damn cheesey, with boring music interludes and some really funny and boring video sections with various people commenting over the subject. You have a professor, a hip hop band, an alien guru and a very stupid dancer; they all come and go in between the video sections just to give some awkward comments. They are meant to provide entertainment but end up looking as a very low quality production effort, and thats a real shame.
Overall, one could skip this dvd,and instead go for much more substantial and excellent multimedia alternatives like PRODUCTION, MIXING AND MASTERING WITH WAVES by Anthony Egizii, you get the session files with the book, and indepth concepts are explained as to why rather than just how.

I learned a lot about what is possible, but very little on the nuts and bolts of how to do it. So as long as you understand that this is not for someone trying to learn how to run sound, or how to EQ, or how to tune a system, but rather for someone who wants to take it to the next level.

I have read the range of comments posted. David Gibson is an innovator that developed an original way to image sound and music in a mix. In the first section, Gibson explains how he developed the original images on a black and white Mac--a museum piece by today's standards. Though we can always find more up-to-date musical examples, the nature of sound is a constant in our universe and we still use use tonal and harmonic systems of music described by Pythagoras as handed down from more ancient Vedic traditions. Though most of us use Pro-Tools or a similar digital program to record and mix music, we should not forget that the computer plug-ins that we use are modeled after the vintage equipment that Gibson uses. (While we're at it, I would also reccomend Adventures in Modern Recording with Eddie Kramer, Les Paul, others. Gone but not forgotten, if you do not know and understand the contribution made to recording by Les Paul, you shouldn't even be allowed near a multitrack device.) The take-away is that the work of David Gibson and others forms a significant part of our fundamental history of modern recording technology.

I read mixed reviews and was unsure whether to make the purchase. I'm very glad I did. I think it was originally done in 1999, and obviously technology has jumped leaps and bounds since then, but I found this dvd very informative and it did not put me to sleep, as almost every single instructional video has. I have purchased several instructional videos over the years for a variety of instruments such as guitar, drums, keyboards, bass and recording, and I think this has definitely been the most watchable, thus probably most useful. Is some of it a bit corny, sure, but I'm sure there was no million dollar budget to make it, either. I feel they put a lot of work into it to make it a little offbeat and mixed humor with information. The information was very very helpful.

Again, I highly recommend it and am grateful to the producers of the dvd.

Failed execution. The DVD is repetitive and the ideas are basic. If you are beginning, this will help you (if you have the patience to sit through 2 1/2 hours of redundancy). Of all I watched, I came out with about 4 (8.5" x 11") pages of notes. Not much of worth here. To be fair, I grasped some things - I gained clarity on visualizing sound, a more accuracte perspective on mixing, i.e. sound has only 3 aspects: volume, amplitude and time, and all equipment manipulates these three aspects. He also pointed out some great mixing engineers and musicians (but his list wasn't diverse) and gave wise quotes, such as his explanation of dynamics. However, he does not go in details as to how to use equipment to accomplish mixing. If that's what you want, don't waste your $12. As others have said, the actors were terrible, the music was sometimes amateurish, the graphics extremely annoying, and the script was corny and cheesy. I will say that Gibson has some good mixes on the DVD, though 90% of the songs suck - credit to him there. Overall, I will say this could have been 30 minutes long if he got to the point and stopped wasting our time. I am insulted. VERY INSULTED.

I find the dvd useless. It does not provide in-depth look at anything related to mixing. It only tells one idea, which is not bad, and then repeats, and repeats, and repeats...

I would kill the people trying to be funny if I could, also... They just make me get severely unmotivated to keep watching the dvd.

This DVD was a big disappointment - It was silly, stupid and I learned nothing.