Alex Tumay
Quick Facts
Biography
Alexander "Alex" Tumay (born July 19, 1986), is an American audio engineer and DJ from Atlanta, Georgia. Tumay is best known for recording and mixing songs for major artists across the American hip hop industry such as Young Thug, Travis Scott, Future, Kanye West, Drake and 21 Savage.
Early life
Alexander Tumay was born on July 19, 1986 in Queens, New York City, New York. He is of Armenian and Puerto Rican descent. He was raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for most of his teenage years. He learned to play piano and guitar growing up, as Tumay's father is a classical pianist, which influenced him to do so. He also listened to hip hop and heavy metal and wore a lot of FUBU clothing. He was in his high school band and in small garage bands.
Tumay couldn't find a major for college that he was satisfied with, and went through eight or nine majors total before he dropped out. He was later working at restaurant jobs. One of these restaurant jobs he worked as was a pizza delivery driver for Domino's Pizza. One of Tumay's friends introduced him to Logic Pro, a DAW program. He was interested in the program, but he couldn't figure out how to use it at the time, so one month later, he enrolled in Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida to study audio engineering. Tumay graduated from the Full Sail in 2010 with a Bachelor's Degree in Recording Arts, and then scored an internship at Maze Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, where he later relocated to, and worked frequently with another record producer "Benjamin "Ben" H. Allen III", who taught Tumay more about recording and mixing for an additional three years, also assisting Allen II on projects for the experimental pop band Animal Collective and experimental musician Youth Lagoon, before fully going into working in the hip hop genre.
Career
Tumay visited many recording studios around Atlanta with his résumé looking for another internship, and got one as a technician at DARP Studios (later renamed as UAMG Studios) through his manager, Monica Tannian, due to his work with Allen. As he was in DARP Studios often, he got the opportunity to work with major artists such as T.I., Waka Flocka Flame, PartyNextDoor and Tinashe, among others. In 2012, he met Metro Boomin at UAMG Studios, which lead to Tumay working with more artists and record producers such as Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan, Migos, DJ Spinz, Southside, TM88, 808 Mafia, Sonny Digital and many more.
Tumay is Thug's personal and most trusted recording and mixing engineer. He met Thug in early 2013, and the first song they worked together on was "Some More", from Metro Boomin's debut mixtape "19 & Boomin'", on which he also mixed most of the songs and executive produced it. Metro approached Tumay and asked him to record that song due to Thug having issues with his former recording and mixing engineer, who Thug removed from that studio session. Tumay has been working with Thug closely ever since, as well with Metro Boomin and more recently, 21 Savage, of which Tumay recently recorded and mixed their debut EP, Savage Mode.
Selected engineering discography
Production discography
2015
Young Thug – Slime Season 2
- 22. "Love Me Forever (Chopped & Screwed)" (produced with London on da Track)