
Tim Jessup and Director Peter Pardini with Chicago after winning the Best of Festival award for “Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago”.
Music Mixdown, 5.1 Film Sound Design, Cinema Mix, and Film Scoring with Tim Jessup
Tim Jessup is a 40-year veteran of the recording industry. His heritage is decidedly analog ~ vintage old school, but Tim has been editing music on the Mac computer since MIDI was first introduced around 1986, and recording in Digidesign’s Pro Tools since it was called Sound Designer in 1992.
His career began as a staff engineer for some of the world’s most legendary recording studios: Kendun Recorders in Burbank, Artisan Sound Recorders in Hollywood, Olympia Studios, Munich, Germany, and Bearsville Sound Studios in New York, working with artists such as Quincy Jones, James Ingram, Christopher Cross, DeBarge, The Gap Band, Devo, Sheryl Crow and many others.

“The Rig”, developed by Jessup, allows Chicago to tour and record simultaneously, truly where the recording industry is headed today.
Old School Rock Meets New School Tech (Huffington Post)
What do you do when you have spent nearly the last half century touring the world as one of the greatest bands ever assembled and you want to put out a new album? If you are the seminal band Chicago, you develop possibly the most advanced mobile recording studio ever created.
Nicknamed “The Rig,” Chicago’s high tech mobile studio is a high-end combination of Magma ExpressBox and Avid Pro Tools that is as sophisticated as any popular in house studio setup. As Robert Lamm, the group’s keyboardist, singer and songwriter tells it: (read more)
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Currently, Tim is the engineer/co-producer for 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees – Chicago, handling both the audio mixes for the band’s film projects as well as their music production. After graduating from The College for Recording Arts in San Francisco in the 1970’s, Tim cut his teeth as an assistant engineer for some of the world’s most respected recording engineers, such as Joe Chiccarelli, Barney Perkins, Chet Himes, Taavi Mote, and Bruce Fairbairne.
By the 1990’s, Tim’s focus shifted to the art of Post Sound for picture. His clients included national advertising agencies such as BBD&O, McCann Erickson, Young & Rubicam, Leo Burnette, and Saachi & Saachi, as well as film and television producers such as Disney, Buena Vista, Fox Animation, Viacom, Paramount, Stephen J. Cannell Studios, NBC, USA Network among others. In addition to sound design and music editing, Tim is also a composer & multi-instrumentalist, and has produced a wide variety of themes for both advertising and film score over the past 20 years.
Examples spanning two decades of music composition can be found on this website. His work as a composer and sound designer has also netted hundreds of awards, such as the CLIO, Addy Awards, and Telly Awards. Tim strives always, to exceed the expectations of his clients.
In 2013, Tim designed and built a post sound studio for Chicago in Sedona, Arizona. Nestled among the beautiful red rock formations, the mixing facility is set-up for both large scale music mixes with hundreds of audio tracks, or up to 64 tracks at 192 kHz 32 Bit in HD, as well as 5.1 Cinema mixes that translate perfectly onto any of the large THX mixing stages in Hollywood. The Sedona mix room is Dolby calibrated and custom tweaked specifically to match the reference level playback at Deluxe (formerly Todd AO and Glen Glenn) in Hollywood. The soundtrack and 5.1 mix of Chicago’s new 2-hour documentary “Now More Than Ever, The History of Chicago” was produced in the Sedona studio.
When Tim and director Peter Pardini brought the mix to Deluxe for final mastering, the film’s translation to the large mixing stage was seamless. For music production, Tim prefers to use the mastering services of Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine. Bob is a legendary hit maker, and has mastered a number of Tim’s mixes over the years, including Chicago’s latest “Chicago at Symphony Hall” featuring members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Tim’s career has taken him full circle, from Grammy Award winning music production, to film sound design and back again. Thank you for taking the time to explore the information presented on this website. For further information or inquiries, please reach out to us through the contact information provided below.