By Andrew Ratcliffe, CEO and founder of Tweed Recording Audio Production School and The Georgia Audio Academy
My musical journey began in Atlanta, GA, in March of 1976, inspired by the music from Georgia legends Otis Redding, Ray Charles and other great soul music from Stax and Motown; all those records I still own today and play for my family.
This music drove me to create my first drum kit: setting up boxes in our basement and borrowing a broken snare drum. My parents have always been supportive, and I know as I played that used drum set, their support was tested! I spent countless hours on that kit playing with those records, cassettes and videos from MTV, teaching myself how to play and eventually joining and starting several bands.
My father’s career with the power company led our family to Mississippi, and I attended the University of Mississippi. It turns out that missing class due to touring with your band will get you a letter of suspension from said university and a conversation with my dad that didn’t go so well for me then. Still, it would end up being where my audio journey officially began.
As a musician, I wanted to record, and I wanted the recording to sound better than the live performance. That wasn’t happening to my satisfaction, and in my effort to get a better sound, I developed a passion for that pursuit.
In 1998, I founded Tweed Recording. What started as a home studio became a studio with a home in it. Like my drum education, my recording education was a lot of trial and error, but for 22 years, I spent my time there perfecting my skills in audio. In that time, I learned how to be a musician, an engineer, a producer/opinionator and most importantly, how to be a psychiatrist working with artists.
Where Tweed Recording was born out of the need for quality recording, I determined our next step was to teach quality recording and address this need for skilled engineers. I didn’t have the time to teach myself how to start a school. In what was an evolution for Tweed and me, I sought help and found John Snyder.
John was running the music department at Loyola University in New Orleans. We quickly began
to talk about what an intense school emphasizing an apprenticeship-based curriculum would look like for audio production.
Oxford was a great place for a studio, but as I thought about my goals for multiple campuses for the school, I saw limitations there. As we worked on the curriculum and a campus layout, things began to become clear that we were not supposed to be doing this in Mississippi.
As a man of faith, I remember vividly being in the backyard, getting on my hands and knees and asking for guidance on what I thought were roadblocks. I listened to a sermon in chapter 30 of Deuteronomy three hours later. The story of Moses returning home to the land of his ancestors. At that point, with tears in my eyes, I looked over to my wife Holli, who was also crying, and we both whispered, “We’re moving to Georgia.”
With my family in Georgia and my experience touring Athens and other cities in the late 90s, I started leaning toward Athens. The Georgia Theatre, Uptown Lounge and Tasty World always seemed to have a vibe and community feel like what we had built in Oxford, and Athens had a better student infrastructure.
With the help of David Dwyer, we found a building downtown: the former Lamar Lewis Shoe Store on Clayton Street, where you could walk outside and throw a drumstick to the door of the Georgia Theater. As we moved on to the shoe store, we got a call from the owner of the building next door wanting to sell.
One of Athens’s most influential music venues, the Uptown Lounge, had been in that building years before, and our physical connection with the music legacy was cemented. Like many things that have happened along the way with Tweed, this was another sign that there is no such thing as coincidence.
Then, I had to fill the building with people who could help me make this the highest quality experience for those who wanted to come here and learn these skills. In a short time, we were joined by Charlie Chastain, Nathan Nelson, Melissa Bateman, Kayla Dover, Hank Sullivant, Klark Hamilton and Anthony Aparo. Between us, we have successfully delivered our 18-week, 600-plus contact hour apprenticeship-based audio production curriculum eight consecutive times over four years.
By teaching practical skills, we deliver what the student needs to get a job or to start their own business, and we do it in 18 short weeks: one semester. However, measured in classroom and lab time, it’s the same hours as someone with a 2-year associate’s degree. Our graduates get those skills I mentioned but also gain fluency in the music business, home studio construction, life skills, audio electronics, composition and sound design, Foley, and ADR for film, video games and TV.
Where we have had the most success is learning to be an educational studio that does commercial recording; most schools are the opposite. Students’ most engaging classes are our three weeks of experiential learning, where our students work in commercial sessions and earn credits for these sessions once they are released.
Over the years, we’ve seen significant changes in the importance placed on audio:
- High schools are evolving their technology related to music. We’re seeing schools recognizing that their broadcasting programs are outdated and approach us to assist in bringing audio engineering and production into their curricula.
- Governor Kemp has an advisory commission on film, music, and digital entertainment. The governor turns to that commission for advice on key needs for the industry’s future. The commission issued recommendations that stressed the need to prepare a workforce to meet the current and growing demand for audio engineering.
- The first action from that recommendation was for representatives to meet with the Technical College System of Georgia to find ways to address the needs. We are working on a location to offer Audio Engineering and Production in their micro-credentials program.
- Audio technology is rapidly expanding in demand and importance. As I mentioned, Georgia can build on its film legacy by expanding the work we do in video capture (only about 30% of the total film process) and moving into post-production. Spatial audio is changing the way we listen to all kinds of audio. Podcasts are one of the few trends that started during COVID and continue to gain momentum. States are competing with Georgia for this work, and we need a savvy workforce to capture the $2b in economic impact.
- Tweed Recording is repositioning as the Georgia Audio Academy or GAA to assist in that effort. Tweed’s board elected to make this move to provide scholarships and find ways to ensure that any student who wants to join the workforce can do so.
- GAA will also have a certification in live production. This sector of the economy has a 30% workforce shortage as live venues, churches and others try to replace workers lost during COVID. GAA has partnered with AEG, the world’s premier sports and live entertainment company, and has offered the Georgia Theatre as our classroom to help rebuild this essential workforce. We will then expand to its other venues across the United States.
It took me nearly 30 years to come to appreciate audio. I started as a musician and became an engineer, and now I’m running a school. In our organization, we don’t believe in coincidences. And it’s not a coincidence that two things have happened in the last five years. The audio industry has evolved as rapidly as any other sector, and the new and growing areas of the industry can be done almost anywhere and do not require the massive construction and capital investment that film requires. And our state leadership has recognized the economic opportunity to build on our successes in film by vertically integrating and adding the key elements of audio and postproduction.
In five to ten years, I expect we will look back and say our journey was worthwhile, thanks to the time, effort and preparation we have put in at GAA, with our partners at the technical college system and within economic development at the state.
Please contact me with any ideas and questions; I look forward to hearing from you!
This article appeared in the 2025 edition of the Creative Economy Journal. See more from the Journal here.
