Emily Magpie is a Mastering Engineer and recently launched Emily Magpie Mastering. Emily has been working in audio for the last seven years and attended dBs The Sound & Music Institute where she was tutored by Josh Hills (mastering engineer for Sony, EMI). Based in Bristol, Emily works as a producer + musician and her work has been championed by BBC 6’s Tom Robinson, The Line of Best Fit, Mahogany, Earmilk and amassed over 90,000 plays on Spotify. Emily is proud to be part of the growing 2% of women working as music producers and care deeply about supporting others in their journey.
Emily has always had an interest in music and audio “I’ve always loved music. I began writing, singing, and playing various instruments and could always hear a world around my songs in my head and wanted to explore creating that through production. I was always determined to keep learning, growing & exploring.” During her teenage years, Emily performed as a vocalist for a jazz orchestra. This experience gave Emily a foundation for arrangement, improvisation, and the joy of music. Emily has been performing and producing her own music experimenting with sounds in her bedroom and learned the music production process from other talented producers and engineers. This encouraged Emily to head back to school and formalize her experiences. She recently graduated from dBS The Sound + Music Institute, where she studied DJ + Electronic Music Production.
Career Start
What did you learn with internships and mentoring?
Clarity + communication at the start saves so much time later!
Did you have a mentor or someone that really helped you?
In the early days, a friend of mine Anuj Robin taught me so much about production. The support + kindness of others like that in the industry still makes me feel in awe.
Career Now
What is a typical day like?
Doing some yoga + having coffee, getting back to mastering inquiries + other bits of admin then diving into working on mastering for other artists + producers.
Some days I’ll work on production for my own music too and have band practice some evenings. Every day is different and full of music in all different forms!
How do you stay organized and focused?
I have a paper diary + many to-do lists in my notebook. I write everything down and decide when I’ll work on each job. As a mastering engineer, you can be working on a lot of different projects so organisation is key!
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
I love hearing such a wide range of music and figuring out how to make it sound its best. It’s really fun hearing the artist + producers’ vision for their tracks and helping them achieve or exceed that. I get a lot of satisfaction from my clients being excited about their final masters.
What do you like least?
It does mean a lot of time on a computer but I try to balance that with exercise and doing fun things outside when I’m not working!
If you tour, what do you like best?
I have been lucky enough to play a couple of sold-out socially-distant gigs with my own music over lockdown which have felt really special. I just love connecting with an audience. It’s nice to get up on stage and perform as well as spending time absorbed in musical worlds when producing- I love the balance of spending time in internal + external worlds.
More on Emily
https://emilymagpiemastering.co.uk/
emilymakesmusic6@gmail.com
Instagram @emilymagpiemastering
