Gebre Waddell

Gebre Waddell
Gebre Waddell at JUCE Summit, London
Born	(1981-11-28)November 28, 1981
Occupation	Mastering Engineer, Author, Software Developer
Notable work	Complete Audio Mastering, Refinement, ReasonRhodes

Gebre Waddell (born November 28, 1981) is an American author, audio engineer, and software developer from Memphis, Tennessee.

He is best known as author of Complete Audio Mastering: Practical Techniques published by McGraw-Hill,^[1][2] and for audio mastering work for musical artists, including Ministry, Lil' Wayne, Rick Ross, Public Enemy and The Bar-Kays.^[3]

Early life

Waddell was born in Memphis, TN, his father was a self-taught civil-rights era sculptor, who was photographed during his career by noted photographer Ernest Withers.^[4] Waddell attended the University of Memphis, earning a degree in Business and Music.^[5]

Career

Audio Engineering

In 2003, Waddell established a mastering studio, Stonebridge Mastering, located in downtown Memphis, TN.^[5]

He received his first breaks with a project produced by John Tesh in 2005, and Public Enemy in 2006 on their album, "How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul".^[1][4][5]

Waddell created a printed frequency chart in 2010 that displays the frequency energy of common musical instruments with standardized spectrograms. The spectrograms were created from carefully edited recordings of each instrument playing each note of their range. The print, titled The Frequency Domain is now found in studios and institutions including Stanford University, Harvard University, and in the office of audio icon, Rupert Neve.^[6]

In 2013, "Complete Audio Mastering: Practical Techniques", authored by Gebre Waddell was published by McGraw-Hill Professional. Waddell became one of the youngest McGraw-Hill authors on engineering.^[3]

In 2014, he mastered the classics of songwriter hall-of-famer, David Porter, including his most successful Stax Records songs.^[7]

He was elected to the Grammy Board of Governors in 2016, and became the co-chair of the Producers & Engineers Wing.^[8][9]

Audio Technology

Waddell released a multi-sampled software instrument named ReasonRhodes that mimicked the classic Fender Rhodes piano. ReasonRhodes was featured on the cover of Keyboard magazine in 2006, together with a story that covered Waddell's work in creating the instrument.^[5][10]

In 2013, Waddell developed Refinement, an audio processor for controlling the sensation of harshness in audio signals, and licensed it to Brainworx and classic audio brand, Universal Audio.^[11][12] bx_Refinement was released in 2014 as the first audio plugin simultaneously released across all available plugin platforms.^[11]

In 2016, he became founder and chief executive officer of Soundways, an audio technology corporation based in Memphis, TN.^[13]

References