The 135th Audio Engineering Society Convention taking place 17-20 October at the Javits Center in New York City will once again feature the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture, an event held at AES Conventions since 1999.

This year’s lecture, entitled ‘4-44 & Me – Stagnation to Transformation: The Real Future of Music’, will be presented by four-time Grammy-Award winning producer, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, George Massenburg on 17 October at 7:15pm in room 1E 15/16.

Massenburg is well known in the audio industry and has spent a career moving fluidly between different sectors of professional audio, with time spent as a record producer (Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Lyle Lovett, Toto, Little Feat), recording engineer (Earth, Wind & Fire and many others), studio designer and builder (including the ITI Studios in Huntsville, Maryland, and The Complex in Los Angeles) and entrepreneurial inventor (his GML brand of audio processors is ubiquitous throughout the world).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Sound Recording at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; and a Visiting Lecturer at both the Berklee College Of Music (at campuses in Boston and Valencia, Spain) and the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee.

In his Heyser Lecture, Massenburg will address a number of critical areas, including the responsibility of pro audio educators to provide students with a truly comprehensive educational experience that addresses, as he puts it, “the head, the heart and the guts” of producing recorded music.

Massenburg will also touch on recent trends towards improved sonic quality, such as legislation and technology that takes on Loudness Normalization. His lecture will also tackle how new technology is empowering new recording artists and producers, and how they will lead the vanguard of higher-quality sound.

“The supposedly ‘impossible’ is happening all around us, as many ‘unsigned’ artists top the sales charts of the digital music stores and sell millions of units of music,” Massenburg asserts. “It’s a great time to be in music. And, as many examples have demonstrated, people will pay if you give them a high-quality offering. ‘Good enough’ is no longer good enough. The job is to transform ourselves. Never before in history has there been an opportunity as we now have before us.”

For more information on George Massenburg and the Richard C. Heyser Lecture series click here.