MEET GIORGIO SCHIPANI: A PASSIONATE AUDIO ENGINER
This is InnovatorsBox’s “IB Backstage“ series, where in celebration of InnovatorsBox’s 6th year anniversary in November 2021, we are highlighting the stories of our incredible team members.
Giorgio Schipani is a very passionate musician. As we were giving all our music identity and story at InnovatorsBox Studios, it was crucial that we also had great audio engineers in the team who understood how to finesse the audio and do the incredible music justice. Gio is incredibly talented and amazing at his craft and we’re so glad that we’re able to work together on music while being on two sides of the pond!
Thanks to Serin’s wonderful introduction, we were able to start collaborating on our singles and started working together on most of our productions. If you have jammed into our InnovatorsBox Studios’ music, you’ve listened to Gio’s work!
In my Q&A with Giorgio, we go through a number of questions from why creativity is important to him in his career in music and audio engineering, why is mixing and mastering important in music how he thinks the music industry is changing, to where he finds inspiration, what he’s reading and listening to lately, how he likes to decompress, and more!
MONICA : How would you describe yourself in three words?
Giorgio : Ambitious. Driven. Kind.
MONICA : Why is creativity important to you?
Giorgio : Creativity is important to me because it allows me to channel my energy into something practical to come up with new solutions to any problems that I might be presented with.
MONICA : What was your favorite project, experience or memory working at InnovatorsBox?
Giorgio : My favourite project with InnovatorsBox has to be the Holiday project. In my life I had always dreamed to work on a Holiday/Christmas Record and I am ecstatic that it finally happened!
Trends about work:
MONICA : What drove your interest into music and audio engineering?
Giorgio : I started my journey in music from a very young age, first as a classical guitar and piano player, then continuing by studying a double major in physics and music composition at university in London. My passion for audio engineering started in my early teens when given the chance to watch my uncle at work, who used to be touring as a live audio engineer for over a decade with some of the greatest acts in Italy. I happen to be one of those bizarre humans that get a kick out of incredibly stressful situations and, combined with my love for music and a new challenge… Here I am!
MONICA : What makes a good audio engineer? How would they do the work of mixing and mastering differently? Why do those details matter?
Giorgio : A good audio engineer needs two main qualities, in my opinion: firstly, they need to be exceptionally good at listening. Critical listening is crucial, but not only. A good audio engineer also needs to be good at listening within the reference of their musical vocabulary and taste. Lastly, any good engineer needs to be a brilliant problem solver. In audio it’s the same thing, with the main difference that our solutions can be both technical and creative!
Mixing and mastering… I could talk about this topic for hours! Firstly, most mastering engineers are also incredibly proficient mixing engineers, but it is not often true the other way round! Mixing deals with the raw outcome of a production and recording session, sculpting the sound and often involves a good amount of creative input. With mastering, we take care of the last technical steps before a song is delivered to the audience. This means our work is mostly related to the ‘big picture’; it’s a process of sonic enhancement of a track to guarantee that it’s tonal and spectral balance, loudness and CODEC are optimised so that it can be played correctly on any playback medium.
Details are incredibly important to make sure that the final product will be of the best quality possible. At the end of the day, mastering can be considered as a technical-creative-detailed quality check of a song!
MONICA : Why is mixing and mastering important in music production in the first place?
Giorgio : I am going to respond to this question with a food analogy! A good song without a good mix and a good master is comparable to a good dish that has been overcooked or is served cold. In the same way, a song requires to be mixed and mastered in order to be in its final form. There are also other reasons, of course, that have to do with the way in which us humans perceive sound, which sounds are pleasant to our ears and which aren’t. Mixing and mastering also take care of those aspects… but as a proud Italian, I’d like to stick to the food answer for now and not bore you with anything too technical.
MONICA : How is the music industry changing and what are you worried and excited about?
Giorgio : We have seen a general trend in the last few years in which people (and audiences, especially the younger ones) are looking for instant gratification in life. This is true even when talking about music. These are exciting times to be making music because everyone nowadays has more or less access to tools that allow them to create music and make it easily available to the public. My personal concern is that we shifted our focus from creating timeless masterpieces, to wanting to make music to go ‘viral’ which will be forgotten in two months’ time. On the positive side though, we have been granted this immense gift of being able to get in touch with musicians from any culture, and we can easily collaborate with people who live across the world from us. This is what I am most excited about: multicultural music and people expanding their knowledge of the world through music.
MONICA : One tip you’ll share to those who are starting off their career in audio engineering?
Giorgio : My personal advice to someone starting in audio engineering would be to really put a lot of time and effort into learning the basics. Audio engineering is not putting plugins on channels. It is not just a creative profession. It requires extensive knowledge in many topics: electrical circuits, electronics, acoustics and psychoacoustics… especially because nowadays we are asked to interface with both the analog and the digital world. So my advice is study, study and study more. Oh, and listen to a lot of music too!
MONICA : What are you worried and excited about how the pandemic changed how we think about well-being and leadership development in the startup?
Giorgio: I’m excited that employees have the ability to work remotely more of the time. I’ve seen this greatly benefit people who are neurodiverse, have families, and/or have plans to move out of big cities. I think this trend towards the ability to work and live where you’d like is fantastic for society.
What worries me is that employers are using this time to try to cut wages or haven’t sorted through the minutiae of how to keep everyone in the organization engaged, productive, connected, and contributing. There will be a long road ahead of us to sort through the finer details of a hybrid or work-from-home culture in the long-term.
Don't worry so much about other people’s opinion of me and to just keep doing, feeding those dreams and ambitions.
Getting to know Gio
MONICA : What advice would you give your younger self?
Giorgio : I’d tell my younger self to not worry so much about other people’s opinion of me and to just keep doing, feeding those dreams and ambitions.
MONICA : What is a book that you couldn’t stop reading?
Giorgio : Great question! I am a bit of a bookworm, so it is also a very difficult question ha! I’d probably say anything that Tolkien has written. Big Lord of the Rings fan here.
MONICA : What are you watching lately that you are enjoying?
Giorgio : Do sports count? I follow Formula One religiously and lately it has been incredible, the fight for the world title this year is ridiculously close!
MONICA : What is your favorite way to decompress? Why?
Giorgio : I have to say that nothing beats a nice dinner date, cooking with my lovely girlfriend! If not, I love hiking, swimming and reading in parks!
MONICA : If someone is visiting Spain for the first time, where would you recommend they go, eat, or do?
Giorgio : Even though I have lived in Valencia for two years, I would personally recommend they go visit Madrid hahaha! A personal favourite of mine is El Tigre, a really bizarre bar without seating, where you can order a drink and receive a huge plate of spanish tapas that you can enjoy standing outside with your friends!
MONICA : I also heard you recently moved! If someone is visiting Paris for the first time, where would you recommend they go, eat, or do?
Giorgio : Yes! I moved to Paris towards the end of September! I would suggest going to visit all the tourist spots if you haven’t been to Paris before, because those are important, but after that my personal favourite would be to go explore some cool neighborhoods. For example, I live in the 10th arrondissement and we have a very multicultural scene with plenty of live music bars.
MONICA : If you could travel anywhere and do anything, where would you go and what would you want to do?
Giorgio : I would absolutely love to go to New Zealand and just hike for a month!
Thank you, Giorgio, for bringing your energetic self in the work that you do, the love you have for your craft, and for sharing some insight into the journey that you are on! We’re thrilled to have you on InnovatorsBox Studios team, and we look forward to working with you for many more days to come!
About the Author
Monica H. Kang
Monica H. Kang, Founder, and CEO of InnovatorsBox® and Author of Rethink Creativity is transforming today’s workforce through the power of creativity. She helps companies rethink culture, leadership, and team development by making creativity practical and relatable regardless of industry or job title. She has worked with clients worldwide including Fortune 500 companies, higher education, government, and nonprofits. Monica’s work has been recognized by The White House, Ashoka Changemakers, National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), and Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). Prior to InnovatorsBox®, Monica was a nuclear nonproliferation policy expert. She holds an M.A. from SAIS Johns Hopkins University in Strategic Studies and International Economics and a B.A. from Boston University.
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