Honestly, I was originally interested in making movies, but I got sidetracked! I was planning on being a writer and director, but one day I went with a friend to a recording studio and started talking to the engineer and that began my fascination with record making.

In hindsight, I was always into recording as a kid, but it never occurred to me you could do that for a living. I would run the lights and the sound system in the school theater productions, as well as be in the plays, and I always used to mess with tape recorders, speakers and mics. It wasn’t until I went to college though that I decided record production was something I’d like to study. So, after school I did the standard internship at a big studio and went from there.

It took me a while to hone my mixing skills, and it didn’t come easy at first. I worked hard to develop my chops, but once I figured it out I realized it wasn’t really as hard as it had originally seemed.

What was the hardest thing to learn about how to mix?

That’s a good question. The hardest thing is to overcome that mind-block, where you think to yourself, "Some people can do this and some people can’t, and I might be one of those that can’t. I’m not hearing anything coming out of these speakers that sounds amazing.” But eventually, I realized that mixing wasn’t so much this grand skill you were born with, as much as it was technique. You have to know how to make the kick drum sound good, you have to make the snare drum sound good, and on and on. Once you can learn how to make every instrument sound good, you have to learn and understand about balance and automation. Once you learn about automation, it kind of clicks. The hardest thing to overcome was realizing I could actually do it.

You did mixing for Ricky Martin’s hit, "Living La Vida Loca,” as well as many of his other songs and albums. How did you work together?

I’ve been working with Ricky Martin for about eight years, since 1997. I worked on his new English album, which is inches away from coming out, and I worked on his Spanish album Almas del Silencio that came out last year. I originally worked with Ricky on his first English record, the one with "Livin’ La Vida Loca”. We worked on that album over a two year period. Ricky’s schedule didn’t allow us to work on it full time, because he was touring in support of his Spanish album Vuelve—the one with "La Copa de la Vida” on it. It was a really big hit all over the world, and because it did so well he was out supporting it for over a year and a half. We started the Spanish album and the English albums at around the same time, and then while he was out on the road promoting Vuelve, we would work on the tracks for the English , and when he would come back, he would come into the studio and sing the vocals and listen to the mixes.

How has your interest in rock music influenced your sound when mixing Latin albums?

I live in Miami, and you might not be surprised to hear I’ve worked on a lot of Latin records. But I’ve always been a rock and roller at heart and rock textures have often influenced my work. In many ways, my roots are in edgier sounds (that’s why I love using Trash!), and it’s just what feels natural to me. Even when working with Latin music my rock sensibilities will often push me towards bringing out some of the aggressive aspects of a song.

Ricky Martin’s Almas del Silencio was a completely Latin record, and it did quite well because of it. But Ricky’s first two English albums definitely had some rock influences. There’s a fair amount of guitar, and not always a lot of Latin percussion. Ricky has said, he loves rock music and that he grew up listening to it, and possibly that’s why we work well together.

What are you currently working on?

I recently finished working on Lauryn Hill’s record, which is coming out soon. And I just finished co-producing and mixing an album by a group managed by Union Management (Nickelback, Default) named Maria. They sing in English and Spanish and the music is very aggressive rock, yet with strong melodies. I’ve never heard a band do this type of music in Spanish and it’s quite fresh sounding. I also recently produced, engineered, mixed and co-wrote an album with a very talented modern rock band named Crease. I mixed an album by an awesome melodic alternative rock band named eL. And I mixed an album for an extremely cool and gifted singer/songwriter named John Ralston, who’s out touring with Dashboard Confessional right now. Currently I’m producing eL’s next record and mixing John’s next record. You can check all these bands out on my website www.charlesdye.com/music.

When did your love affair with Digital Audio begin?

Well, I started on analog boards and tape machines. The first large format consoles I worked on were SSLs and the Neves. That’s where I started to cut my teeth as a mixer, but I really didn’t get it until I was working with Desmond Child. I really learned a lot about bringing out the best from the song and artist from Desmond, and will always be grateful. His studio was entirely Pro Tools based and a bit ahead of it’s time, everyone was still using tape machines at the time, but I was determined to get the most out of this box. I started to get a feel for plug-ins, and how to get a plug-in to make the sounds I wanted it to make. I had a sound in my head, so when I started working with plug-ins, that allowed me to do different styles of distortion and saturation, that’s when I realized I could get the warmth I was looking for on a DAW.

Tell us a little bit about your column, "Hard Disk Life,” which was written for the first year of Digidesign’s print and online publication DigiZine.

I was asked by Digidesign about writing a column on their website. So, I thought about it and the idea came to me about teaching mixing. I came up with a proposal and an outline for 12 columns, and it became a part of DigiZine. The column lasted a year, and with the last article I gave a summary of automation. It was designed that I would try to wrap it up with automation at the end, because if I completely covered automation as well it would have been a two year column.

The response to the column was truly overwhelming. I really wasn’t prepared for some of the emails I got. I had hoped I would be able to help people learn a little bit more about mixing, but quite honestly I didn’t expect so many people to write and tell me how I had really helped them improve the sound of their mixes. It really made me quite happy I was able to help them in that way. That encouraged me to further develop the material and lead to the Mix It Like A Record project.

Tell us more about your DVD and Pro Tools session based mixing course Mix It Like A Record.

The project has been over a year in the making. First, I took the column and expanded the material further to fully cover one of the most critical aspects of mixing—automation. Then together with Jon Kagi of Kagi Media we worked the best ways to convey our message visually. Jon is very experienced at this and has done a number of training DVDs. So he was a great guide for turning the written word into the visual form that would be very educational. I couldn’t have done it without him.

With Mix It Like A Record we have basically two types of lessons—theoretical and practical. The practical lessons, where we go through the entire mix plug-in by plug-in, are best explained in the studio, and we shot at what might be the most beautiful ICON control room on the planet—Gustavo Celis’ Supersonic Studios in Miami (www.supersonicstudios.com). An amazing sounding studio with all the best analog and digital gear perfectly integrated into an extremely well thought-out hybrid design. We couldn’t have asked for a better place to demonstrate all the hands-on aspects of mixing.

But for the theoretical lessons we decided to do something a little different, since I’m discussing more abstract concepts we realized we could shoot those chapters on location against backdrops that in someway reinforce our message. Well, the idea evolved quite a bit and long story short we shot the theory chapters at the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Las Vegas, the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, the Pacific coast, and The Experience Music Project in Seattle. We had an absolute blast doing it and with Jon’s edgy MTV style it really keeps the DVD interesting and fun.

Did you feature Trash as a plug-in on your DVD, "Mix It Like A Record”?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s the bass amp. The song was a rock song and for the final mix we were going for a more aggressive bass sound than what was originally recorded. The bass was recorded direct and had a very clean sound. We needed that grit of an over-driven amp. So, we combined the clean sound of the direct bass together with a duplicate track with Trash on it as the amp track, and the combination was fantastic.

What are some of your favorite Trash-y features?

For me distortion is all about creating or bringing out harmonics that are hidden in the original sound, and Trash does it like no other distortion plug I’ve ever used. The flexibility of what Trash can do is totally friggin’ brilliant. I really like how Trash is great at doing distortion that sounds like faulty electronics. Some of my faves are "Radio Contacts,” and "Cold Solder” presets.

I love Trash; I use it all the time. Whenever I pull it up for an artist or a band I’m working with, first they get turned on by the graphical user interface. And when I start showing them the distortion options and all the things it can do, they ask my why I’ve been holding out on them! I really love it. It’s a very deep plug-in. And it’s very creative; it’s a whole new way to work with distortion. I’ve always loved distorting things—guitar, vocals, keyboards, bass, drums, and it does a great job with all of them. We also used Spectron on Mix It Like A Record, the spectral delay sounded awesome on the keyboards.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I like the fact that iZotope makes plugs that no one else is making. I would simply encourage you guys to do more of that! There are a lot of great plugs, but we could definitely use more sounds we’ve never heard before. So, please just keep up the great work!

To learn more about Mix It Like A Record visit www.harddisklife.com, and for more info about Charles Dye visit www.charlesdye.com.