Based in Los Angeles, John Rodd is a freelance music recording, mixing and mastering engineer for film, TV, and video games. He has worked on film and TV projects with composers including Michael Abels (Get Out) Cliff Martinez (The Lincoln Lawyer), Frederik Wiedmann (Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox), Dave Porter (Breaking Bad) and Ryan Amon (the $120 million summer blockbuster Elysium), and
on many top video games including EA STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Mass Effect 3, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Assassin’s Creed II, and works extensively with Blizzard Entertainment on the World of Warcraft series. As a music recording engineer, Rodd describes his role as, “capturing the music just as a photographer captures an image.” Through his choices (including microphone selection, placement, and mixing) Rodd conveys the intentions of the composer. “Just as underscore can articulate narrative that the dialogue does not, my recordings and mixes must help create the right mood and tell the story for the project.”
Rodd’s love of the alchemy between music, art, and technology initially led him to film school in his native Canada, where he continued experimenting with music mixing, sampling and synthesis. After university Rodd went to work for 5 years at a recording studio in Canada, where he worked with top rock, folk, and jazz artists and film composers including Howard Shore, John Debney, and Angelo Badalamenti. After some world travels and freelance engineering work in England, Rodd relocated to Los Angeles in 1996. Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood brought him to Los Angeles where he worked with artists including Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Ry Cooder, Madonna and members of The Rolling Stones, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, P***o For Pyros, and on many orchestral sessions. The following year Rodd left to become the orchestral scoring recordist at 20th Century Fox's legendary Newman Scoring Stage on such films as I, Robot, The Last Samurai, Spider-Man 2, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Matrix (trilogy), Cast Away, X-2, Jurassic Park III, The Bourne Identity, Road to Perdition and The Sixth Sense before going freelance in 2004.
“It is my decades of experience that prepared me to face the challenges of working in this business today,” said Rodd. “As a recording, mixing and mastering engineer, one strength is that I have been a part of a massive number of recording sessions, in all genres of music, including tons of large orchestral dates, so I really know what the real thing sounds like.”
As a freelance engineer, Rodd records, mixes and masters music, working on everything from major studio feature films (Elysium) to indie films (In the Beginning), television (Breaking Bad), video game projects (Call of Duty: Black Ops II), and for numerous CDs and soundtrack recordings. While his specialty has always been orchestral projects, Rodd has extensive experience recording, mixing and mastering all genres of music. He is an expert regarding critical technical details such as frame rates, pre-records, and 5.1 surround mixing. From the solo singer to the gospel choir, from the string quartet to the 100-piece orchestra, from score to rock, electronica and jazz, Rodd is equally comfortable working with acoustic performances, virtual-instrument projects, or hybrids of the two. Rodd works at a wide variety of recording and mixing studios, and recently opened his own studio on the Westside of Los Angeles. The spacious new studio (built from the ground up, and designed by a world class acoustician) features superb acoustics, plenty of natural light, and it is well equipped with a massive collection of boutique outboard hardware, and ProTools HDX-2 for recording, stereo and surround mixing, and mastering work. Rodd is very active in the film scoring community in Los Angeles, volunteering his time to provide educational workshops and lectures for The Society of Composers and Lyricists and The ASCAP Scoring Workshop. Rodd is able to legally work in the U.S.A., the EU, and Canada without a work visa. In 2007, Rodd was nominated "Best Score Mixer" by the Film and TV Music Awards.
