Music has always fascinated me ever since I was young, and I’ve never doubted for a second that it is a part of who I am. What draws me to music is its expressiveness, how you can make a connection with someone you'll never meet, even if it is centuries later. Capturing that expressiveness through recording is why I pursued a degree in audio at the University of Rochester. Whether it's a song, an audiobook, or a video game, audio is so critical to providing an outlet for people; it's critical to conveying messages or expressing artistic ideas; it's critical to making people feel and having lasting effects on others. Music isn’t just a hobby for me, it’s my passion, and I want to express myself, and help others express themselves, through audio.I was fortunate enough to learn a good deal about music and sound from a variety of different perspectives in college. Most importantly, I learned a lot about recording and editing, using DAWs such as Pro Tools, Logic, and Reaper. Currently, I'm using what I learned to edit and create sound design for a professional audiobook, and I'm recording, mixing, and releasing original music for the first time. We learned recording techniques in a brand-new studio on campus, and I even got to create a virtual model of the space and help build custom acoustic panels to treat the room. Through this and other acoustics-related projects, I learned more technical skills like how to take impulse responses and use room acoustics parameters (RT60, Early Decay Time) to create convolution reverbs, process multichannel room recordings, and more.While pursuing my master's at the University of Rochester, I developed and furthered skills in the hardware and software areas of audio engineering as well. Using LTSpice and KiCad modeling software, we designed different types of circuits from guitar pedals to class-D amplifiers and created layouts for our custom PCBs, learning how to debug audio products both virtually and hands-on in the process. Through other classes, using Python, C++, Max, and more, I gained programming experience ranging from creating a simple drum machine to getting a glimpse of how to use machine learning for more complicated tasks such as audio source separation.I am always eager to make connections with people through audio and music. If you have questions about me or my experience, or even if you'd just like to talk about anything music, don't hesitate to contact me by email at alexmancuso84@gmail.com at any time!