New Jacobs faculty member brings passion to position

The Jacobs School of Music will open its doors to four new world-class faculty members this fall. Among the new faculty is a seasoned sound recorder, Mark Hood,  who brings celebrity and real-world experience to share with his
students.

But Hood, head of Echo Park Recording Studios, is no stranger to Bloomington.
He has worked in the Jacobs School of Music since 2005 as a visiting professor. Starting this semester, Hood will work as a tenured, full-time assistant professor
of music.

As an assistant professor at the Jacobs School of Music, Hood will be working directly with the recording arts studio. He will supervise students and assist them in recording musical productions.

Chairman of the Department of Recording Arts Konrad Strauss and Lecturer in Music Michael Stucker will be working with Hood and other faculty members to improve IU’s recording arts.

“All of my experience has been in the workplace,” Hood said. “I come with a large background in the real commercial world, which I will now bring to the academic world.”

Hood has collaborated with a number of artists, including Bob Dylan, Diana Ross and John Mellencamp. He has also done sound design for musicals such as Blast!, Shockwave, Cyberjam and Music in Xtreme.

The preservation of historic audio formats is Hood’s primary research interest at IU. From 2008 to 2011, he worked as chief engineer of the IU Archives of Music’s Sound Directions project.

The goal of the project was to digitize and preserve its collection of deteriorating
audio formats.

“Those archives contain rare recordings that were never mass produced,” Hood said. “Over the years I have learned to digitize these recordings so they can be enjoyed by
everyone.”

Hood also explained that the ability to preserve sound has only been around since the late 1800s.

“Cavemen could write on walls about the things they saw, but no one knows what sounds they heard,” he said.

— Derrick Naylor