Sound Engineer

I specialise in recording and live sound engineering for contemporary music, particularly involving electronics.

Recording Engineer

Recently I have been asking big questions of my recording practice, for a long time I had subscribed to the assumption that classical music should be recorded to sound like it was recorded in the ideal hall, in roughly ‘Row C’. There are lots of engineers who can capture really beautiful sound in this kind of style, what I’d like to tell you about is what I’ve become interested in and the kinds of projects I really enjoy working on.

Working so closely with The Night With… who host performances in far from ideal acoustics has caused a shift in my thinking. Matthew Whiteside wanted to find out if we could get recordings of a good enough quality for them to release on the TNW Music label. Matthew was hoping to create ‘as live’ disks that might be a bit messy but that everyone could feel good about. We were both pleasantly surprised to discover that the dingy basement venues where The Night With… hosts performances turned out to give much better results than we expected. The first album we did tried to recreate that kind of ‘concert hall’ experience, and what I realised later was that really suite some tracks, but didn’t reward others in the same way. When we came to do the second retrospective album we pushed the material much harder, using a mixing style that is closer to contemporary jazz and traditional music, using compression, creative uses of reverb, more adventurous dynamic shaping. Again, this really suited some of the tracks, and less so others.

Where I’ve arrived is to try and throw assumptions about recording and mixing styles to one side, and to listen to the music and the way it is performed and respond to that. This seems so obvious but having spent so much time trying to make sure all the pieces on an album sound like they were recorded in the same room it took me a while to figure this out. Now when I’m recording and mixing I trust that I’ll be able to figure out how to combine the tracks when they get mastered. Until that point I focus on each piece and performance, working to make them sound as special as they can.

So my pitch to you is that I absolutely can create that pristine classical sound, and I love working in beautiful acoustics and working towards that idealised classical sound. But if you have a project that you want to be more creative, on the fringes of styles then those are the projects I’m really interested in.

Live Sound Engineer

In terms of live sound, I am experienced in planning and rigging multi-channel sound systems and have performance pieces using various software/hardware systems. I can perform live electronics parts, on-stage or positioned in the audience to balance the sound.

Particular expertise:

Music editing

Chamber music recording

Mixing classical music

Amplification and live electronics for classical music

Microphones:

Microtech Gefell M300 x4

Microtech Gefell M320 x2

Microtech Gefell M950 x2

Line Audio OM1 x2

Recording System:

RME UFX+ audio interface with backup recording system