Alan Meyerson (record engineer)

Alan Meyerson (born March 19, 1958) in an American audio engineer who is one of the greatest movie scoring mixers of the modern era. With 200+ credits on IMDb and double that amount on AllMusic.com, he has an unparalleled wealth of experience in engineering and mixing in general, and scoring mixing in particular. He has worked with leading film score composers like James Newton Howard, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Danny Elfman, and has a particularly long-standing working relationship with the great Hans Zimmer that continues to this day.

Biography
Meyerson’s credits as a scoring mixer include blockbuster movies like Man of Steel, Iron Man, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Inception, The Dark Knight, Kung-Fu Panda 1 & 2, Despicable Me] 1 & 2, The Last Samurai, Gladiator (film) and Hannibal. In addition to this, Meyerson has a number of high-level music mixing credits dating mostly from the 1980s, including Bryan Ferry, New Order, Etta James, and OMD. During that time Meyerson also worked with some of the great New York remixers, like Arthur Baker and Shep Pettibone, and his background in rock and club mixing means that he has a unique reputation in Hollywood as the go-to man for a tougher, more aggressive film score sound.

Meyerson’s career trajectory has involved several major switches. He started out in the 1976 as a classical music major at Brooklyn College, studying trumpet, but, he recalls, “It immediately became clear to me that I did not have the skills or desire to play the trumpet professionally. Walking down the hall at Brooklyn College I discovered its sound studio, and instantly felt like I had found a home. I ended up working at that studio for a year.” In 1977, Meyerson got a job at a commercial studio in Manhattan called Counterpoint, where he helped record commercials and jingles. Belgian-Armenian song-writer and producer Marc Aryan passed through on the 4th of July, 1979 and invited Meyerson to work at his studio near Brussels in Belgium. Comments Meyerson, “The most magical thing while working there was that I ended up recording and mixing an album for Chet Baker.”

Meyerson returned to New York after half a year, in 1980, and went on to work in several studios, amongst them The Hit Factory, A&R Recording (Phil Ramone’s studio at the time), and eventually Arthur Baker’s studio. “Arthur liked what I was doing and offered me a job, and I ended up working with big names like Bob Dylan, Diana Ross and Carly Simon, doing loads of remixes and club mixes. During this time I also mixed six songs on Bryan Ferry’s Bête Noir album, which was the first really prestigious album project I’d worked on. It set off my career.” Meyerson moved to LA in 1987, and worked as a free-lance engineer and mixer with many high profile names, but “when hip-hop started the music industry changed and I lost interest. I stopped working and trained to become a chiropractor.” A chance meeting in 1994 provided another major shift in his life. “I met Hans Zimmer and did a small session for him, and he really liked it, and asked me back. And here I am, 200 movies later!”

Personal life
Meyerson rents a space Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions studio complex in Santa Monica. His mix room contains, he explains, “a Euphonix System 5 digital desk, a bunch of Pro Tools systems, ATC monitors, and some analogue gear, that appears to decrease every year. It’s a very comfortable room and a great mix environment. There are three mix rooms at Remote Control, and they all have the System 5, so they are interchangeable. You can start a mix in one room and continue it in another without a glitch.” Regarding Meyerson’s reputation in Hollywood as having a tougher, more aggressive sound, he explains, “All these years of doing rock and dance and pop music really tightened up and hardened my sound. That went over pretty well with the people that like a tougher sound, and it allowed me to find a niche. I have, for example, over the years built up a collection of microphones that have been modified to make them a little more aggressive and in-your-face sounding, and am not afraid to use compression and other effects on the orchestra.”