Maria Elisa Ayerbe on music production: "I don't conceive any mix without Waves"

Maria Elisa Ayerbe could not only boast of being a Latin Grammy-winning engineer and producer, and arguably being the go-to producer in the world of Latin American musicians, but she is now the star of HBO’s A Tiny Audience. Headliner chats with the Miami-based studio extraordinaire about her incredible career that has seen her work with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, and why she has loved using Waves plugins since the early 2000s. 

A fascinating aspect of Ayerbe’s career is that, although she had to leave her native Colombia to further her music career in the mid-2000s, she nonetheless is undoubtedly one of the biggest engineers and producers in Latin American music, despite being based in Miami, where she works with Latin American artists in-person and remotely.

“I first moved to Tennessee to further my studies and expand my work in the US, but I kept mixing for Colombian and Latin American artists,” she says. “I moved to Miami and I met a multi-Grammy and Latin Grammy winning producer by the name of Julio Reyes Capello, who's also Colombian, and he invited me to be part of his studio. 

"I worked for him for about two years or so. Then I was able to open my own studio and become independent. I also started my own independent label, which is Miami-based, but it's for Latin American alternative music."

A wonderful new feather in Ayerbe’s cap is her featuring on HBO’s A Tiny Audience, in which chart-topping Latin musicians reveal personal secrets to audiences in intimate settings. “I'm one of the hosts,” she explains. 

“It's based on very informal interviews, where, for example, if I'm hosting the show – with me being a musician and audio producer myself – I'll sit down with a renowned Latin artist, and we will have a pretty open and formal conversation, but solely revolving around their music.”

“They have to choose four songs,” she furthers, “and those songs will be performed live for a tiny audience. So we have an audience of fewer than 25 people sitting right in front of us, and the artists will be performing with the house band in a 100% acoustic format. In between each song we talk a little bit about their lives and how they got to write or perform those songs.”

Ayerbe is a big proponent of Waves plugins, having used them throughout most of her career.

“I remember using L One back in 2003,” she recalls. “I remember using R Verb, R Compression and R EQ. I was using that line back in 2004 for sure. Waves have been a big part of my audio engineering career. I don't conceive any mix without Waves, because I know how it sounds and how reliable it is.

“I remember when the LL3 Multiband stuff came out and how it changed mixing and mastering forever because it opened up a new world of possibilities. You could limit per bands, you could actually control threshold, ratio and attack and everything per band. If everything else fails, Waves is there and you’ll get it right. It's just so reliable.”

In terms of her most-used plugins in her arsenal, Ayerbe says that “there's not a single project that I won't have L1 [Ultramaximiser] on. I adore L1. I'll use it to clip very subtle kicks and snares. I'll use it for vocals as well, because I know how that automatic attack and release function works on the L1. I've been using it for so long, so I know how to use it on a vocal. The CLA package overall: the 76, the CLA Vocals, Effects, Unplugged, Guitars. It's just an added thing that will always brighten the music up.

“I've become highly attached to Torque, especially for hip-hop productions where you have a constant hammering hi-hat. I use Torque to change the pitch a little bit in different sections of the song and I love that. And a plugin that totally changed my life is the H EQ which was one of the first MS plugins that I knew.”

Ayerbe has a wonderful playlist of her most notable work you can check out, which also reads like a who’s-who of Latin American music, and is a testament to her brilliant career so far.