“As far back as I can remember I always knew I would end up doing something music-related, but it wasn't until I discovered music production and engineering that I truly found my voice. It fits like a glove, since it blends a highly creative and philosophical endeavor with a highly precise, tangible, and technical craft, and the convergence of those elements go totally in line with my personality and passions. I’m drawn to understanding people, emotions, and things, to figure out how to use and combine elements for an emotional outcome. That’s what I do in this profession: I communicate with musicians as human beings, try to really understand the emotional connection that moved them to make music, and figure out how to capture and bring out 110% of their message (and in doing so, also my own).”
"My teaching style has always been one that encourages self-reflection and discovery. I like to push my students to be self-motivated. For me, it isn't about the grades they will receive, but rather the knowledge and skill set they can build on. Assignments always have the capacity to be completed to the level the student is capable of, and by witnessing other students' work, they can see different approaches to the same task. I'm never expecting to see students complete their assignments in exactly the same way as their peers."
"I want to create, in my classroom, an environment that closely mirrors my experience in the real world. I'm a former recording artist, a producer, an engineer. . . . I've managed, I've done tour support, I've done live sounds. . . . So I want to teach my students how to survive in the music business and put them in as many realistic situations as possible. If you're going to take advantage of this educational process, you need to investigate as many of those tangents as possible. You never know when one of them might be the one that opens the door.
"I want students to be independent. In the past, if they had a song in their heads, they had to get assistance from a sighted person. But it takes a long time to dictate note by note, so the sighted people would fill in the gap. Now, they can have full control over what they write on the charts and record. So they can write for any professional writing gig or recording gig. They can be fully independent."
"I'm teaching MP-320, Producing for Records. Really, it's a full semester with one goal. The first half, they do demos of a couple of songs, and the second half, they do a full recording. That means a little detours with different songs, maybe, or trying out different things, but in the second half, they get their studio time, and they get really focused. They pick their own artist. It's got to be a Berklee song and a Berklee artist. It's all connected with the engineering class and the mix class. It's a project with three different courses involved, so they're all integrated and coordinated."
"Recording music is taking part in a kind of alchemy—you're transforming intangible, cerebral ideas into something real, something physical. It's a sort of magic. And you're working with material that is personal, emotional. Appreciating that and being sensitive to it is one of the most important things we can teach. Studio work is social. You can't do it without the technical knowledge, but you can't do it well without fostering a good creative environment. That's something I really want to pass along, because it isn't something that books can really teach, but it's the kind of thing that gets you work or not; it's the kind of thing that gets a record made well or not."
"Many of the technical tools and methods used today in the recording studio are quickly going to become obsolete, and it's important for the contemporary music production and engineering student to have an education that's going to allow them to not only change with the new technologies, but help invent them as well. I think it offers a student the opportunity to create careers in all segments of the audio industry."
