New York, NY (October 21, 2013)—The future of the music industry lies in education. At least that’s the way George Massenburg, a four-time Grammy Award winner, sees it.
In his AES lecture on October 17, as part of the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture Series, Massenburg said that while technology has made music production more accessible, it has also affected the quality of music.
“Music is constantly changing and moving in new directions,” Massenburg said. “It used to be extremely expensive to record anything with technical quality, and you needed expertise to get the best sounds. Technology has changed much, including the structure of everything in the music industry, and one thing we lose is quality control by experts.”
This does not mean, however, that you can’t find quality music produced from these home studios. Instead, Massenburg stressed that the future of music, and the key to maintaining high-quality music production, lies in education.
“Producing great music is deeply entwined with cognition,” Massenburg said. “Maintaining the quality of music requires skill.”
As an Associate Professor of Sound Recording at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, Massenburg said he constantly strives to find new methods to educate his students and provide them with tools to produce recordings of the same caliber as larger, professional studios.
To do this, educators require access to the technology, which relies on the designs of the audio companies, and access to high-quality recordings, which requires carefully honed production skills developed through training.
“They all rely on each other,” Massenburg concluded.
