Recommendation for music production course

[matt m]

I am currently doing a 10-week course in mixing, mastering and production at London's City Lit. It's taught by Andy Diagram (trumpet player with James, The The and various others 80s luminaries). It's good stuff, I'm learning a lot.

[Dominic]

It's taught by Andy Diagram (trumpet player with James, The The and various others 80s luminaries).

Not to mention The Diagram Brothers:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-giUkfscmeE[/youtube]
http://www.myspace.com/diagrambrothers

[Charlie]

I am currently doing a 10-week course in mixing, mastering and production at London's City Lit. It's taught by Andy Diagram (trumpet player with James, The The and various others 80s luminaries). It's good stuff, I'm learning a lot.

This is an answer to a question posted by a spammer, whose post I have deleted. The info is useful, so it stays.

The Diagram Brothers made some good records that I played on Capital back in the early 1980s in a show called Undercurrents

[matt m]

Andy rather cheekily shaved off an hour from last week's class to go to see the Sun Ra Arkestra playing in Dalston, though we are assured the time will be made up...

Probably the most useful lesson this course has taught me is the idea of having a 'reference track': having a well-produced professionally recorded song with similar instrumentation, similar arrangement, similar tempo that you admire cued up in the background of a mix you are working on.

It's hardly a profound idea, but it's amazing how it ups your game. For the most part I'm mixing fairly simply stuff - acoustic guitar and male vocal - and it's really salutary to flick between a mix of my song, and a song from the late Johnny Cash's Rick Rubin-produced sessions.

Suddenly the track I thought sounded really good sounds tinny and totally lacking in warmth by comparison. When you're mixing in music software (Logic or Cubase say) it's really easy to toggle back n forth between several different songs.

I'm also using a couple of tracks off last year's debut album by Johnny Flynn as reference tracks. I don't even like the music that much, but it's a beautifully well produced album.