ABSTRACT

Until 1997, the community of music producers and audio engineers was one of the last remaining groups without representation as a guild or trade association. To address that need, I had the opportunity to help launch the Music Producers Guild of the Americas (MPGA). Our entire industry has been very supportive of the MPGA, and it has become a well-established organization helping to “make the music better.” The Guild has organized “top down” conferences, such as 5.1 Multichannel Music Mixing seminars, where industry leaders explored the current DVD format, what it is, and where it is going. The MPGA has also presented the “Producing Success” series, which I call “bottom up” conferences for emerging audio professionals at leading schools such as USC. These conferences were designed to provide interaction between serious young people and leading music producers and audio engineers on a one-to-one basis. The goal has been to give the latest generation of recording industry students an225opportunity to interact with those audio engineers and music producers who have “made it” on the creative side of the music business.