"In the late '90s I produced a hit record with Barenaked Ladies. I took my royalty check and quit the music business, and in 2000 enrolled as a freshman at the University of Minnesota. I went to McGill University in Montreal to do my graduate work in music perception and cognition. This branch of psychology explores musical behaviors from the psycho- and neurological perspective, in other words, the what, where, how, when, and why of human musical experience. Berklee hired me to teach engineering and production, but also to help implement a more music-centric science program in the Liberal Arts department. They encouraged me to design courses in music cognition and psychoacoustics."
"I teach exactly what happens in the real world, and I'll summarize what's going on in my recording studio that week—the good and the bad. I acquaint students with the business process; how we estimate how long jobs will take, how we do bids, what the competitive market place is like; how we engineer and master audio, what equipment we use. In the summer, I have an associate's program, where I'll hire four or five extra engineers from the student body, or from qualified applicants who send me resumés. I generally hire some of those students after graduation. Out of the six engineers I have working now, five of them are Berklee grads."
"The big advantage of being here is to have the ability to try different types of technology—not only the latest one but the original ones at the same time. Not only the most expensive microphone but a cheap one and lots of them in between. The fact that I started my career in a third-world country and lived in another third-world country for several years gave me the perspective of being forced to work only with limited resources most of the time, trying to be creative with whatever you have, not whatever you would like to have."
"The ongoing goals for the Music Production and Engineering Department are centered in three critical areas: curriculum, faculty, and facilities. Every topic, class, and assignment has been evaluated for its relevance, emphasis, timing, and balance. And with 12 studios operating 22 hours per day, seven days per week, it is critical to maintain a state-of-the-art technical infrastructure."
