About us

Audio Masterclass provides distance learning, training and education in music production and sound engineering to students worldwide. Our methods have been refined through our experience in audio education since 1986, and our online audio training since 2001.

Audio Masterclass courses include learning materials in a combination of text, graphics, audio, video and practical projects to suit the topic being studied and the type of course. Our learning materials concentrate on the real-world problems of the home studio or small studio owner who wishes to produce work that is able to compete with the work of top professionals working in well-equipped studios at the highest standards of the industry.

Many of our courses centre around a highly practical approach where the main course content consists of practical projects that the student can carry out in their own home recording studio. Learning materials support these projects with guidance, finished examples to professionals standards, examples of students' work, and examples of potential problems and their solutions. All of the learning materials are available online. Selected courses offer both online and download access.

Where courses included assessed practical projects, the student will submit their work for each module online. This will be carefully assessed by Audio Masterclass and we will return a detailed response with our judgements on all of the important aspects of the project, with advice where necessary on how to resolve problems and how to improve. Each project is graded with respect to professional standards, with grades counting towards the student's eventual success on the course and the award of an Audio Masterclass certificate.

Anyone considering a course with Audio Masterclass must already have access to basic recording equipment, which need not be complex or expensive, or even permanently set up. It is also important to have a professional attitude towards music and audio, and the determination to achieve standards comparable to those of the professional industry. Although we recognize that low-quality audio is part of everyday life, particularly on the Internet, Audio Masterclass courses work to standards comparable to high-end broadcasting, the best commercial recording studios, and the best that the media and communications industries have to offer.

Although we expect our students to work to high standards, this doesn't mean that the work is hard or painstakingly tedious. We believe that efficiency is key to successful studio operations, so that high-quality work can be turned out without laborious effort, but concentrating on the things that really matter - music and sound.

All Audio Masterclass courses are fully flexible. Students can work where and when they way and there is no time schedule for submissions, other than the maximum course duration which is always more than enough time to complete.

We hope that you will enjoy your course with Audio Masterclass and that you will go on to achieve great things in whatever field of music and audio you choose.

About Course Designer David Mellor

David Mellor is the founder and Course Director Audio Masterclass, currently residing in the beautiful countryside of Oxfordshire in the United Kingdom. He has worked in audio education since 1986 in hands-on training, lectures and online. David Mellor holds the degree of B.Mus (Tonmeister) from the University of Surrey where he studied music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

Live Sound and Recording Engineer

David Mellor worked as theatre sound engineer at London's Royal Opera House, with activities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. David Mellor toured with the Royal Opera Company to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, USA; the Odeon of Herod Atticus, Athens, Greece; the Sejong Center, Seoul, South Korea; the Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan.

Musician and Composer

Since 1985 David Mellor has had more than 1000 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music) and his own music library for which he has produced seventeen compact discs. Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Writer and Educator

David Mellor has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He has also written for magazines including Sound on Sound, Audio Media, Studio Sound, Sound & Video Contractor. He has also written four books on audio and video technology. David Mellor now specializes in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.