Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
106 M PS E . O R G Graeme Stewart The Interview I recently had the opportunity to ask one of the UK's busiest music editors about his career, his process, and his long association with composer Jonny Greenwood. I hope you will enjoy my conversation with Graeme Stewart: BY PERRY LA MARCA MPSE PERRY LA MARCA MPSE: I see from your bio that you came up through what is essentially the "record industry"—including your involvement with the legendary band "Radiohead." Would you please share a little about your background and what led you to the field of music editing? GRAEME STEWART: I came into engineering from a musical background rather than a technical one, although I was a kid who loved programming a computer back in the '80s. I came up through an English cathedral chorister background before studying a lot of music at school and then a music degree at university. My dad was a producer for BBC Radio, my mum a piano teacher, so there was a lot of music around, and I remember being fascinated watching the two-inch tape go round and round when I'd go to my dad's work, and thinking it was amazing that you could record 24 different things simultaneously. At university, a friend and I would spend as much time as we could in the music department's studio, messing around with an 8-track ½" machine and an EMAX 2 sampler, writing rubbish songs and trying to be creative. After university, I played in a couple of bands and really got the studio bug by going in and recording demos, working for a while making tea at a small studio before getting a proper assisting job at RAK Studios in London. There I got to know Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's producer, and he got me involved with the band as they had started to record Kid A Mnesia and they had got their own studio and he was looking for someone to help out. From there, I began engineering/co-producing Jonny Greenwood's scores, which were a side project at the time. The first we did was a film called Bodysong, then There Will Be Blood for Paul Thomas Anderson. I was recording and mixing rather than music editing at this point though—I didn't really realise that music editing was a thing. Until Paul asked me to music edit his next film that Jonny scored, The Master. So I kind