What's the first thing you do preparing a session? Move the chairs! Rafa Sardina talked about recording with Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Vinnie Colaiuta, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, and how to capture powerful Nylon String Guitars, drums, horns, and strings...

My guest today is Rafa Sardina a recording and mixing engineer with 5 Grammy wins, 12 Latin Grammy awards, and a total of 60 Grammy nominations during his career including winning the South African SAMA award in 2018. A Basque native of Spain Rafa started out with four years in med school before deciding to pursue his passion for music which led him to Full Sail University. 

After graduating as valedictorian he found himself at Oceanway in Los Angeles working with a wide variety of artists including the Black Crows, Celine Dion, Greenday, Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Frank Sinatra to name a few. Today he works from his own After Hours Studios where he regularly mixes artists from around the world.

Though Rafa is best known for working on pop, rock and R&B projects, he has recorded and mixed just about any genre of music you can imagine: orchestral recordings, big band, R&B, dance, gospel, soul, rap, choral, film/TV soundtracks and huge movie scores like “Any given Sunday”, “102 Dalmatians”, “Michael Jordan- To the Max”, Johnny Depp’s “The Rum Diary” and many more. 

He is also a founding member and vice-chairman of the Latin Recording Academy's CPI the equivalent to the Producers and Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy. And Rafa enjoys teaching what he knows through platforms like Mix With The Masters, Pensado’s Place and of course Recording Studio Rockstars. 

Thanks to Andris Evelis at JZ microphones for making the introduction.

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Website links: 
www.rafasardina.com
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Additional podcast editing and production by:
Brayden Stremming
Hugh Macdonald
Vlad Vasilcenko