Doing a full brand refresh on The Sync Vault and I need your eyes on it. I've got 4 cover image options. Vote for your favorite in the comments (just say A, B, C, or D). Whichever gets the most votes goes live on the group.

The mystery is over. Meet Tim Starnes. Tim Starnes has spent decades as a music editor and mixer on major film scores - credits include The Lord of the Rings trilogy (with composer Howard Shore), The Departed, Hugo, and The Aviator. He's also taught music editing at NYU's graduate film scoring program since 2007. I had the fortune of meeting him in 2021 and he was the stem mixer for 52 songs I produced for Blues Clues/Nickelodeon. He's joining us live for The Cinematic Mix Intensive. I asked Tim what trips up composers who mix their own music. We'll cover: • Gain staging and signal flow • When it's actually an EQ problem, and when it isn't • Why dumping plugins on the master bus doesn't fix what's wrong How it works: 4 cinematic and trailer composers will open their sessions live and get their mix diagnosed by Tim, plugin by plugin. Submit your track after signing up and get in the running for a live review. Not presenting? You'll still watch real mixes get broken down live and get your own questions answered in a Q&A at the end. Details: • September 28, 6-8pm EST · Live on Zoom • Free for Accelerator members · $17 general admission· Spots are limited RSVP: https://luma.com/te6u4ags

Hey, vault folks! I've been lurking for a bit and I'm going through the classroom materials this week. Figured I'd share a couple tracks from my band that I'm getting organized for pitching. It's nice being reminded how long it takes to bounce stems out of a Logic session that's almost maxing your CPU out from unholy numbers of guitar tracks and 99 instances of the same SSL 4000E plugin. Is anyone else here pitching metal? https://s.disco.ac/nurkuptiowtw

You know I love to share free alternatives to expensive plugins and sample libraries. Check out Pianobook (https://www.pianobook.co.uk/). Pianobook a community-driven repository of free, high-quality sample instruments built by composers worldwide. You’ll find experimental strings, rare percussion, and textured synths that add instant character and emotion to your tracks. In sync licensing, distinctive instrumentation is often what separates a landed placement from a skipped track. Pianobook provides organic, bespoke sounds so your cues don't blend into the sea of generic stock libraries. Best of all, most instruments are compatible with Decent Sampler (a completely free plugin) alongside Kontakt, meaning you don't need to own expensive software to start using them immediately.

I'm bringing in a guest coach for a live workshop! Here's what I can tell you. He's spent decades as a music editor and mixer on major film scores, working directly with one of the most respected composers in the business on trilogies that most of us grew up watching. His editing and mixing work has touched films from some of the biggest directors working today. He's also taught film scoring at the graduate level for almost 20 years, so he knows how to actually teach this stuff! I asked him point blank: what are composers getting wrong when they self-mix their own cinematic and trailer material? His answer...Bad gain staging and signal flow. Reaching for EQ when the real problem is often somewhere else entirely. Dumping plugins on the master bus to fix things that needed to be fixed inside the mix. (Feel called out, I know I did!) We're going deep on all of it. Live, hands-on, inside your own DAW. If you're one of the folks presenting, you'll open your session and we'll work through it together in real time, plugin by plugin, decision by decision. Format: Live Zoom, 90 minutes, hands-on Cost: Free for Accelerator members. $17 for everyone else. Who this is for: Composers and producers working on cinematic, trailer, or film score material who want their mixes to actually translate. Name gets revealed once the date is locked. Drop a "IN" below if you want a heads up the second it's live.