Jeff Baust

Associate Professor
Faculty Bio E-Mail
jbaust@berklee.edu
Telephone
617-747-8585

For media inquiries, please contact Media Relations

Jeff Baust teaches music synthesis and music production and engineering. A composer, audio engineer, educator, and multi-instrumentalist, he has created scores for ESPN, New England Sports Network (including music for the Bruins and Red Sox), Avid, Sony, Polaroid, Sharp, Reebok, Lotus, and others. He works primarily in his own facility, Coral Sea Music.

As an audio engineer, Baust has worked on projects for such artists as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, NBC, Andre Previn, Itzhak Perlman, Jessye Norman, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as labels such as EMI, Philips, and Nonesuch, among others. Specializing in digital audio production, he works with technologies such as Sonic Solutions, high-resolution audio (96k/24bit), HDCD encoding, and mastering as well as forensic audio and restoration tools. Baust holds an M.A. in composition from University of California, Davis, and a D.M.A. from Boston University, where his primary area of concentration was electronic and electro-acoustic composition. He has been published in Berklee Today, Electronic Musician, and various online magazines.

Career Highlights
  • Accomplished bassist, guitarist, and composer of electronic, electro-acoustic, and acoustic music
  • Composition credits include ESPN, Reebok, Polaroid, Sony, and the Boston Red Sox, among others
  • Audio engineering credits include work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Itzhak Perlman, Martha Argerich, and Dawn Upshaw, among others
  • Author of articles published in Electronic Musician and Berklee Today
  • Former member of the Lines, Angry Young Bees, and A Show of Hands
Education
  • B.M., Boston University
  • M.F.A., University of California, Davis
  • D.M.A., Boston University
In Their Own Words

"Students from the Music Synthesis Department go on to do everything from composing and producing cutting-edge music to scoring and sound design for video games, television, film, and the web to working as DJs and remixers to being musical artists in and of themselves. Some become producers and programmers for other artists as well as producing their own music."

"Our grads wind up being technologically savvy and up to date, and are capable of being creative entities in a wide variety of situations. That is critical because in this field, they'll typically get asked to wear many different hats. One minute, they're a composer or composer's assistant, then they are doing production work for an artist, and then for the next project they're doing sound design for visuals."

"The technology and tools of music synthesis are changing at an incredible speed. Berklee has been really good at making sure that students have the latest tools in their hands, both in the studios and through the Berklee laptop program. No matter what the tool, however, faculty know and impart upon students the commonalities of all of those tools. We don't teach just the button pushing for today's technology but how to achieve effective music and sound design with any set of tools. We want students to sit down at the newest synthesis software tool and say, 'I know what I'm looking for; the question is, where are they hiding it?'"