Our Educational Partners

Educational Partners

One of Pyramind’s greatest strengths are our industry partners – all of whom are indisputably industry leaders. Many provide industry certifications and others sponsor our curriculum. Still others are simply the best at what they do and we integrate their technology into our curriculum as de facto industry tool standards and production best-practices. All of our partners bring incredible technology and creative tools to the table and we are proud to be partnered with all of them

Apple

As an Apple Authorized Training Center (AATC), we offer Logic Pro certification, beginner and advanced (for the record, we were training in Logic before Apple owned the program!!) as well as Final Cut Studio. We are oftentimes host to the AATC Training sessions when Apple comes to San Francisco during Macworld, and we are proud of our close relationship with this giant in technology and media.

AVID

The de facto industry leader in DAW’s, we are proud to offer Pro Tools Operator Certification in both Music and Post production, as well as Expert training in Music. All students taking certification courses with Pro Tools Certification (the Core, plus all advanced Certifications) have the ability to purchase Digidesign gear at radical student discounts (40%) through Pyramind. As an Avid Certified Training Location (DCTL), Pyramind has direct access to the massive knowledge banks at Avid and can solve most technical problems that students run into. We’ve been doing this since 2000, which is the same year AVID started their training program. We were the 4th school in the world to offer it. There are now 120 schools offering this training. Our instructors have authored several articles and books on the subject to critical acclaim.

Soundcloud

SoundCloud is a sound platform that enables anyone to upload, record, promote and share their originally-created sounds across the web, in a simple, accessible and feature-rich way. Its open platform that supports a wide range of applications built on the SoundCloud API, enabling everything from mobile voice recording, online mastering, sharing to Facebook artist profiles and iPad music making SoundCloud offers free accounts to sound creators, with more advanced users able to upgrade to premium accounts for advanced features like statistics, controlled distribution and custom branding. In addition, Soundcloud also provides premium accounts for our students.

Alfred Music Publishing

Alfred Music Publishing is the world’s largest educational music publisher. Alfred produces educational, reference, pop, and performance materials for teachers, students, professionals, and hobbyists spanning every musical instrument, style, and difficulty level. In addition to its own titles, Alfred distributes products from over 50 companies, including Belwin, Daisy Rock Girl Guitars, Dover Publications, DW Drums, Faber Music, Highland/Etling, Kalmus, National Guitar Workshop, Penguin, TASCAM, Ultimate Support, and WEA. Alfred is also the publisher of our new 9-book music production series. (More info about the series and its release dates coming soon.)

M-Audio – a division of AVID

M-Audio makes some of the most powerful and affordable creative tools out there, and they are one of our sponsors. Their deepening relationship with their owners, AVID and Digidesign, only showcases the growing power of the hardware and software offerings available through M-Audio. We use M-Audio keyboards exclusively, and we fully believe in the power and quality of their line, which includes recorders, monitors, software, and microphones. M-Audio has chosen Pyramind as their sole partner for their M-World dealer training tour stop in San Francisco and has maintained this exclusive status for 7 years running.

Propellerhead

It is safe to say that Propellerhead changed the face of software synthesis. Propellerhead’s Reason made software synthesis both affordable and powerful. This incredible music creation tool contains many different forms of sound synthesis and sequencing and is the music production platform of choice among the top names in hip-hop and dance music. Its power is limited only by your CPU, which makes it more powerful now than ever before. We’ve been teaching Reason since version 1, and we’ve got the posters to prove it.

Ableton

New to the DAW pack, Ableton has turned the industry on its ear with its incredible tool LIVE. Pyramind has been teaching Ableton for years and we’ve published training videos on Ableton’s website. We host two Certified instructors and were host to the Certification testing performed in June of 2009. Ableton are sponsors of Epiphyte Records’ Test Press, as well, which featured tracks from five Pyramind graduates and instructors.

PreSonus

PreSonus Audio Electronics has become known for delivering professional quality audio products at affordable prices to audio professionals, musicians and hobbyists around the world. The PreSonus staff in the sales, engineering, and customer service departments all have years of experience in professional audio as musicians and sound engineers which brings passion for music-making to every facet of the company. PreSonus is a sponsor of many of our events, including the Flux Summit and our masterclasses with the audio teams from Sony PlayStation and Valve. And their Marketing Communications Manager Steve Oppenheimer is a good friend at Pyramind, a frequent guest, and occasional commencement speaker, as well.

WAVES

Makers of some of the best plug-ins around, Pyramind is an authorized WAVES training center. We have been offering the WAVES Certification A program since its inception, have recently added the Gold Certification program, and expect to offer all of their programs as they unveil them. Every student walks away with a collection of WAVES tools upon entry to The Core.

MASSEY

Massey Plugins is a small 3 person shop: Steven Massey & Todd Hodges, both former Digidesign software engineers, as well as the new guy, a former Rocket Scientist, Kevin Weber. Massey Plugins is built on a few core design philosophies. Firstly, sound is more important than numbers. Numbers on knobs have little meaning in the context of artistic creation. They are simply symbols to help mark your way. Secondly, less is more. More controls on a piece of gear does not inherently make it better. Whittling away superficialities of a product is more important, and much more difficult, than throwing another control at the user to cope with, themselves. And lastly, form and function are inseparable. Research has show that attractively designed things work better. A pretty, virtual faceplate on an audio plugin is not just marketing. It help forms a important emotional bond of usability between your brain and the functionality of the product.

McDSP

McDowell Signal Processing makes some of the best sounding DAW plug-ins on the market. Pyramind is pleased to feature them in both our labs and in The Vault and HD Icon suite. Our students have access to student discounts on McDSP product directly through the manufacturer as well.

Sonic Faction

SonicFaction creates virtual instruments that sound amazing, are instantly playable and will have you addicted right from the get-go. The unique software instruments and interfaces we design are made by musicians for musicians. We meticulously record and program all of our instruments and interfaces using revolutionary tools like Ableton Live and Max4Live. SonicFaction is currently collaborating with industry geniuses to bring you the next level in interactive music production.

GCPRO

Guitar Center’s Pro audio division has been helping Pyramind students with great discounts on the gear Pyramind isn’t set up to sell. Find out more about how you can get in some of the great deals by speaking with our admissions team.

Glyph

It’s easy these days to just go buy the cheapest firewire drive out there for your Sound productions as there are many available. They all work great – until they don’t. No one thinks about the drives they use until they fail and have to spend hundreds of dollars in the hopes of recovering their data. The worst is when they can’t recover any of it. Glyph is the industry leader in media storage, and every student coming to Pyramind gets a professional hard drive to work with. Each drive comes with a three-year warranty, advanced replacement within the first year, and free (yes, FREE) data recovery attempts within 2 years. The good news is that these tanks almost never go down and when they do, you’ve got your back covered. You just don’t get that service or professional treatment with anyone else.

Native Instruments (NI)

Often referred to as the Mercedes Benz of software synthesis, NI is the industry leader in software synthesis tools. Pyramind uses these tools regularly and use Native’s highest-end tools FM8, Absynth and Reaktor as the basis of our advanced synthesis classes.

NARAS

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is the group that brings you the Grammys every year. We are proud members of the Academy and work closely with the San Francisco chapter.

G.A.N.G.

The Game Audio Network Guild (GANG), is the largest game audio community in the world. We are proud members of the Guild and support its mission to promote networking opportunities and job creation in the professional world of game audio.