Music and engineering are at the core of my life and education since I was a teenager. I started recording and producing sessions on a four-track tape machine, while I was studying piano, guitar and bass.

I pursued an Integrated Masterʼs Degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Bologna. It meant six years of analog and digital signal processing, circuit design, amplification technology, data transmission systems and, at the same time, bands, music and concerts.

I included among my subjects applied acoustics, which was mainly focused on architectural acoustics and measurement systems. This further nurtured my passion for music production; it fed my curiosity about the physical locations where music is created, reproduced, recorded and, most importantly, heard.

I then started a European PhD program. My research focused on analog-to-digital converters, lossless data compression and innovative high quality music formats, including and surpassing the Super Audio CD standard. Some of the findings were presented at an AES convention in Paris, where I luckily met my future mentor, professor Angelo Farina.

During my PhD years I also enjoyed working at Maserati where I held the post of Sound Quality Engineer; this experience naturally left me strong communication skills, team work principles and the foundations of quality processes and procedures.

At the end of my PhD I decided to improve my self-learned mixing and mastering skills, and I attended a professional training at Fonoprint Studios in Bologna. This is one of the largest Italian recording facilities where artist in the like of Ramazzotti, Pausini, Zucchero have produced part of their catalogue.

After this long and diverse educational experience I started to work as teaching assistant of analog and digital oscillator design at the University of Bologna. This period during which I could practice both sound engineering and teaching was possibly one of the most rewarding moments of my life.

I had the chance to share my passion for music, innovation and technology with students and researchers inside and outside the academic context.

After that, I started a professional collaboration with Magneti Marelli as a research associate, with the tutorship of professor Farina. This eventually snowballed into my career in the audio industry.

MUSICAL EDUCATION

I started playing music very early and when I was about ten I started to enjoy it. At the beginning it was classical piano, but in a few years that wasn’t surely enough. I strongly felt the necessity to take the instrument on me and play together with other people, to play outside.

In the summer of 1994 I started tinkering with a guitar and by September, when I was due back to school, I started taking lessons. All of a sudden music wasn’t any more about reading and learning by heart Schuman, Bach or Beethoven; it was all about scales, keys, modes, fingering, chords and, more importantly, improvisation.

Pandora’s box was opened and not to be closed again.

By the end of high school I was regularly playing with two bands: one was covering my coveted King Crimson, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd (and many more!), and the second one was the playground for composing and fixing on tape original ideas.

Together with Giampaolo Capelli (guitar) and Michele Zanzani (bass and guitar) we wrote Trio (pt.1 and pt.2) between 1998 and 1999. This is how the first seeds of my original repertoire were planted.

By 2002 I was also studying bass with Ares Tavolazzi (who was a myth because he played with Area in the ‘70) and double-bass with Prof. Grazzini of the Comunal Theatre Orchestra of Bologna.

Those years were hectic: I played rock and hard rock, I performed jazz live with a quartet, quintet and even sextet, I recorded the core of my composition and explored what I truly believed were my musical roots: classic composers and European jazz

When in 2013 I moved to Glasgow, Scotland, to start a new job as senior acoustic engineer at Tannoy. I faced a new phase of my musical rearing.

I was really eager to put together a new band, but I shortly realized an important truth: being a musician in Glasgow makes you a professional. In my mind I was not, and I wasn’t able to see music as part of my profession.

I have to thank the many great players who helped me to “come out”, and a special word of gratitude goes to Al Fleming and Jim Kelt from the Blues Jam Session at The State Bar, and to Charlotte Marshall, Fraser John Lindsay, Pete Parisetti, Alan Anderson, and Fraser Speirs.