Alex is a lecturer teaching on the Music & Sound degrees. He teaches various aspects of music production including recording studio fundamentals, advanced recording techniques, mixing, mastering, sampling & synthesis, as well as audio for multimedia post-production (ADR, Foley, 5.1 mixing, location recording)
Alex joined Staffordshire University in 2014 after working as a music technician, DJ and freelance orchestral recording engineer in Cambridge for 7 years. His passion for music production started out behind the decks in the DJ booths of local bars, nightclubs and illegal raves in the late 90’s and early 00’s. As a teenager he spent most weekends gigging around the west midlands, cutting his teeth in venues that he wasn’t old enough to enter as a punter!
In his late teens and early twenties Alex had various DJ residencies and guest appearances where he performed at some of the finest venues across the country, including… V Festival, The Sanctuary, The Custard Factory, The Buttermarkets, The Q Club, Bar M, Strawberry Fields & The Junction. In 2003 he was a semi-finalist of a national DJ competition ran by Mixmag (a premier electronic music industry magazine of the time).
Alex eventually migrated from the stage to the studio where he became obsessed with music production. Subsequently he has written and produced music that has been used on Channel 4, Channel 5, Nickleodeon, Major League Baseball Hall Of Fame and The Discovery Channel. He has also had works publicly performed by the Orchestra Of The Swan and principal harpist of the Royal Opera House.
Alex has also undertaken lots of freelance music work including live sound engineering (EMI records, Mawkin), recording engineer (Soundhouse Studios, Ropeadope, Hills Road Records), mastering engineer (UH recordings, Shilton Productions), mix engineer (Ear RationaL Music, Shoot This Media, Hills Road Records), sound designer (Barnet, Hemmingway In Paris, The Devil Takes His Pension).
Professional memberships and activities
Apple Certified Trainer for Logic Pro X (Apple)
Academic qualifications
MSc Audio & Video Technology (Anglia Ruskin University)
BSc (Hons) Music, Composition & Technology (University of Hertfordshire)
Apple Certified Trainer for Logic Pro X (Apple)
Apple Certified Master Pro for Logic Pro 9 (Apple)
Pro Tools Certified Operator in Music (AVID)
BTEC National Diploma in Music Practice (Stratford Upon Avon College)
Enterprise and commercial interests
Alex currently co-runs a small electronic dance music label Big Red Rabbit Records where he releases music professionally. Previous releases have been signed to multiple ‘VA’ compilation albums and been supported by leading international DJ’s such as Paul Van Dyk, Markus Schultz, Giuseppe Ottaviani, Suzie Solar, John Askew, Manuel Le Saux, Lee Hemstock (of Hemstock & Jennings) and Aimoon.
https://www.bigredrabbitrecords.co.uk/
https://soundcloud.com/bigredrabbitrecords
Teaching
Undergraduate:
Recording Studio
- Recording studio technologies
- Digital audio theory
- Microphone techniques and technology
- Digital effects processing
- Mixing techniques
- Remixing
- Synthesis
- Sampling
Digital Audio Workstations/Software
- Logic Pro X
- Pro Tools
- Ableton Live
- Native Instruments Komplete
- McDSP
- UAD
- Waves
Sound To Picture/Multimedia
- Postproduction workflows & DAW configuration
- ADR
- Foley
- Surround sound configuration and 5.1 mixing
- Sound design
- Location recording
DJ’ing
- Beatmatching, scratching & live performance
- Vinyl & digital control surface-based mixing
- DJ’ing for nightclubs vs DJ’ing for radio
- Creating podcasts and live streaming
- Creating DJ jingles, idents & branded DJ drops for broadcasting
Postgraduate:
Recording Studio
- Advanced recording techniques
- Analogue mixing techniques in a digital world
- Large scale professional mixing techniques
- Creative signal processing
Publications