Professional or semi-professional composers and audio producers wanted for academic research

[JohnStacy]

I am currently working on my master's degree in jazz composition. My degree is a research based degree, in addition to being composition.

My thesis material (and material for the classes) is mainly in the area of audio production. While mulling over a topic, I realized that there is not a lot of academic literature on modern audio production, and most of what I could find is far too technical to be practical for those outside of the target audience (sound engineers people working in the development side of audio).

I also found that resources on the internet for audio production are really heavily saturated. However, a lot of these are very obviously geared toward pop and rock music. You can find thousands upon thousands of pages with more detail than you ever could want on how to record and mix vocals, guitars, drums, and bass. The amount of unique material I could find on how to record brass, woodwind and stringed instruments was much less, and usually went into much less detail. Beyond that, these were shoved into the rock or pop genre as well. For example, almost all brass recording information I could find is essentially variations on how to record a pop horn (trumpet+trombone+sax) section.

So I aimed to take a stab at both.

I started to compile sources and open dialogues with professional composers and engineers to make an intro guide to audio production aimed at young composers. While it is a compilation of basic techniques and tools used to produce audio, it is also a brief look at the standards placed upon composers in this area by clients in soundtrack work and also by publishers.

My actual thesis, the big paper to graduate is a development document for an album of original music. I have composed all the music for this album, and will be recording and producing it with the guidance of several mix engineers, and documenting the whole process.

If you are an experienced composer or audio producer, I would love to have your input. I have a short, 6 question survey to answer, that can then lead to further discussion.

Please email me at johnstacy@johnstacy.net if you are interested in contributing to my research!