The Pyramind Team

In 1997 Greg was asked to develop the Digital Audio curriculum at SF State University’s multi media studies program and in 2003, with partner Matt Donner, Greg expanded Pyramind Studios to create a music and audio production school, Pyramind Training. Greg is a certified Ableton Live trainer and oversees and teaches the Ableton certification program at Pyramind. He also teaches the Planning For Success Classes where he acts as both instructor and moderator. Greg is the driving force behind TestPress (the international electronic music competition in association with Beatport, Soundcloud, Native Instruments and Ableton) and the executive producer and mastering engineer of the Testpress compilations.

Greg graduated with honors from SFSU with an interdisciplinary major in music, business, and audio & video production. In 2007 he was awarded the “Established Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Renaissance School of Entrepreneurship where he received certificates of recognition and merit from State Assemblyman Mark Leno, San Francisco City Treasurer Jose Cisneros and California State Senator Carole Migden. He is a 20+ year voting member of The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (The Grammys) and a former Trustee and current Governor for the San Francisco Chapter.

Matt quickly became an award-winning Regional Technical Director for Guitar Center, and the Studio Installation Lead for the Cutting Edge Audio Group where he served the likes of Joe Satriani, Metallica, Benny Reitveld (Santana and the SF Jazz Fest) as well as hundreds of private studios including Wally World (N’Sync, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion). A crowning achievement during this period was to install, troubleshoot, deliver and support 50 Pro Tools workstations for the legendary Skywalker Sound during production of Star Wars Episode 1.

In January 2000, he and Greg Gordon began working together exclusively at Pyramind and has served the company as Chief Engineer, Senior Producer/ Composer, Chief Technical Officer, Vice-President and now Chief Academic Officer. He has mixed/mastered a hundred or so records (including his own released in 2002) as well as publishing several magazine articles. Matt has also written two texts on Pro Tools (Pro Tools Overdrive V 6.9 and V7 for Thomson Press) as well as having authored and managed a 3-book deal with Alfred Press, now available at Amazon.com. He’s also given many talks on the subject including having joined the highly lauded Game Audio Education panel at AES here in SF.

Matt teaches hundreds of Pyramind students every year focusing on Producing, arranging, Applied Music Theory, Scoring for Games/ Film and Audio Production and Mixing. He manages Pyramind’s Online School and serves as Chief Operating Officer, Subject Matter Expert, and Instructional Designer for Pyramind Training.

He also engineered the sessions for the orchestral recordings for Iron Man 2 the video game. Steve’s expert skills in the studio also include his production and mixing of the newest Bill Ortiz (Trumpet Player for The Santana Band) album as well as recording the dialog sessions and mixing the animated series for Halo “The Return” for Waypoint on XBox live.

Before becoming a full time staff member at Pyramind, Steve was the co-founder of Digital Art & Music: a recording studio specializing in hip-hop/rap and alternative rock music. A seasoned producer and keyboardist, Steve has worked on numerous albums and loves adding to that number. Steve has also written and produced music for live theater, film and corporate video.

Steve also co-authored the highly respected “Pro Tools 7 Session Secrets: Professional Recipes for High-Octane Results” for Wiley publishing, a book that brought numerous insider techniques to light for anyone using Pro Tools. Steve recently added his insight as a writer and designer to the upcoming Pyramind / Alfred publications “The Pyramind Training Series”.

His first professional studio experience came working outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a local independent studio tracking local bands and burning as many hours in the studio as humanly possible. Shortly thereafter, he invested in his first home studio (remember ADAT??) and recorded six solo records before enrolling with Pyramind in 2005.

Hired by Pyramind in 2006, Bryan has gone on to gain Pro Tools Operator Music, Operator Post, and Expert Certification in Versions 7, 8 and 9. Now the Director of Education, Bryan teaches several classes a week and continues to record, produce, mix and master as much music as possible. Additionally Bryan has contributed guitar work to both the Iron Man II and Halo Anniversary video games.

Dheeraj’s formal education as a financial management graduate from Hillsdale College, MI. and his work as a financial analyst at Price Waterhouse & Coopers helped pave the way for his placement in the business division of Pyramind. Dheeraj’s deep understanding of analytics, web development, budgeting, and the current climate of the rapidly changing music industry now helps guide the marketing and events produced at Pyramind.

An early Pyramind student, Hideki has since graduated to become Pyramind’s IT Administrator and Assistant Technical Director. Deks works hard to maintain the technical infrastructure at both the 880 and 832 Folsom St. facilities, and the rigorous scheduling and technical requirements of a multi-room studio complex.

Additionally, he serves as Lead Videographer and Content Editor within Pyramind’s creative team, working to generate production content as well as regularly documenting Pyramind’s myriad events in the SF music community. When not cutting videos and wrangling video content, Charles enjoys producing genre-blending musical works with classical, acoustic and electronic influences. You can get a taste of his music on Epiphyte Records’ Evolution One and you can view his video work on Pyramind’s YouTube profile, PyraTube.