At what point did you decide to pursue music as a profession?

I've been a musician since I was a kid, so when it came time to go to college I had to decide if I should go into music or do something that would pay better.

I started my college career at Boston University as an Astronomy and Astrophysics double major, but I didn't really like it. I wound up cutting physics classes to play music.

I finally decided that I might as well go into music, so I went over and auditioned at the music school and got in. At the time, I played jazz and rock guitar as well as double bass, but I wanted to play classical guitar. So I taught myself classical guitar, and switched my major to Composition. After that, I told my folks, and they weren't too happy.

So in addition to guitar and bass, you also took up the lute?

That was after I was at the Music School at Boston University. I was singing in the Early Music Collegium, and we didn't have a lute player. My instrument was classical guitar, so I spent a few semesters on lute as well.

You've worked in many different capacities in the business over the years. How would you describe what you do?

I don't even know anymore, I do so many different things. Mostly right now I teach, I compose my own music, I do sound design work, I'm mastering CDs, here and there I do some commercial compose gigs, and I'm producing some local acts. There's only so much you can do in a day, so it's mostly teaching. I'd like to get a better balance, and get back into more production work.

You came to audio engineering through composition. How does that affect the way that you approach engineering and production?

I came to engineering from a do-it-yourself attitude – I'm pretty much self-taught when it comes to engineering. Digital recording was just getting big, and these tools were getting more and more accessible. Instead of going to a studio and paying for studio time, we would rent out the studio and kick out the engineer. Or we'd rent the gear, set it up somewhere, and do the work ourselves.

I guess my composition training taught me to listen in a different way than some engineers listen. I'm always listening from a musician's perspective, as a composer as well as a player. For example, when I was doing a lot of classical music production, it was my skills as a music editor that got a lot of people's attention. It was because I had such a musical ear from the composition background.

You can get an edit to not sound like an edit, but then you have to make it sound like music. It's one thing to hide the edit, but it's something else to get all the edited segments to flow like a musical performance. Some of these editing gigs force you make something out of nothing, if you don't have a lot of good takes to work with. I've put out classical recordings that have performances that never really happened.

In any musical style, it's a handy thing to be an engineer that understands musical structure and form, knows how the musical parts relate to each other, and can converse with the performers in their language.

Also, as a producer, my composition background has helped quite a bit, for obvious reasons. In the producer's role, clearly it's important to know the music, and recognize a flawed performance whether it's Bach or Bartok or be-bop. In a pop or jazz production, it's always a powerful thing to be able to bang out a string arrangement on short notice, cobble together some loops to enhance a rhythm track, that sort of thing.

You've done some composing with CSound. Do you use it by itself or in conjunction with other applications?

There was a time when I was a total CSound junkie. When I learned CSound, it was still fairly new, and it seemed the only audio app that would do powerful things with audio on the computer. Back then, computers were slower, so you would start rendering a chunk of audio and go home. It would take all night to crunch the numbers; you'd come back in the morning and see what you got.
[Csound is a software synthesis program originally developed on mainframe computers, and is still very much in use today on both Macs and PCs. For more information, visit www.csounds.com]

Once all these powerful computers and new tools came out I thought, “Well, I could do this faster somewhere else.” So I haven't been as active with CSound lately, although I still think it's a very hip composition and sound design tool.

For the most part, my Csound projects have been self-contained. I would sometimes notate the piece first, either in traditional notation or a graphical score, and then realize it in CSound. In some pieces, I'd do the sound design in Csound, then assemble it all in Logic with further sonic manipulations, etc.

Speaking of software, have you ever used any of the iZotope products as compositional tools?

Definitely. Spectron especially. I love Spectron. When I write electronic music, my approach is to first make the “toy box” - the set of cool sounds I'm going to work with.

I start generating my sound world by taking some source material and processing the crap out of it. Then I deploy it in a sequencing application. Spectron is a big part of that process, helping me take raw materials and twist them up into all kinds of cool sounds. I also use Spectron as a real-time effect as well

I use Trash all the time, as a mix tool at least as much as a sound design tool. One of the techniques that I use a lot is parallel compression, like on a drum kit or loop. What I like is parallel distortion, so I'll hang Trash off an aux and bus some of the elements from the drum kit to it to put some teeth on it. Or I'll take a bass track that was recorded direct or from an amp, duplicate it, throw Trash on it, and ease off on the low end. It gives you a nice edge without sacrificing the clean low end, which you get from the original bass track. And I'm always dropping Trash on delay returns, since I like lo-fi delays – reverb as well.

I like all the different amp models, but I was going to complain that there's no Millis [Massachusetts] model! There are models for all the other areas of Boston, but I live out in Millis – we should get our own amp model! Something small and classy.

We heard you were using Ozone in your mastering class at Berklee . How does it help you teach mastering techniques?

The mastering class is mostly concerned with the hardware tools you'll find in a professional mastering studio. Weiss EQs, compressors, Milennia analog processing - about $25,000 worth of gear in all. But in the class, I have a section on desktop mastering, and we look at tools available to individuals and smaller studios.

We look at how you would approach a mastering gig with software tools if you don't have the money to go to a professional mastering studio. Also, we listen to how the software tools compare to the high-end gear, and they compare favorably given the price difference. For the money, Ozone is ridiculous it's so good. I'm doing a lot of mastering with Ozone these days, and the sound is excellent.

You teach tomorrow's audio engineers and producers. What is the most important part of the training?

First and foremost, it's your people skills. Being a professional, working with others, and being able to listen to people's ideas - that's always the thing. I know some good engineers whose phones ring off the hook constantly because people like to work with them. But somebody who's got great technical chops but no people skills isn't going to get a lot of work.

I suppose in this day and age, the other skills an engineer needs are diversity and openness to serendipity.

Diversity means being able to wear a lot of different hats. With the possible exception of mastering, the days of the audio specialist are over. If you're working as an audio engineer, you've got to be able to converse musically with an artist, do a little sound design for an advertising client, tweak a softsynth patch so it fits a song better, or perhaps gin up a drum loop for a composer. If you're a producer, you've got to understand the tools involved in music production, and be able to engineer if needed. And of course, these days the producer and the engineer are quite often the same person.

The serendipity part means being open to unexpected opportunities that come your way. It's good to have singular focus and determination, but you'll come across a lot of open doors that may not go directly to where you want to go. If you don't take those opportunities, it may stop you from getting to that next step. Or to places you hadn't even thought about.

At Berklee, every student is exposed to music technology. How important is it for all musicians to be familiar with music technology?

All music professionals should be familiar with music technology. Even classical musicians, who are traditionally the least involved with technology, should know some of the basics of recording and sequencing.

If nothing else, a musician should be able to participate in creating a demo of their work. If you compose for a string quartet, you should be able to set up a portable recorder and record a performance of your piece, then do a little digital editing and burn a CD. If you're a jazz saxophonist, being able to do a little sequencing can help you compose original tunes, arrange standards, or just explore new ideas. You don't have to be a technology expert, but it always helps to be familiar with these tools.