EMERYVILLE, CA -In San Francisco’s East Bay, the Ex’pression Center for New Media is busy establishing itself as the hottest place to get an education – and a job – in animation, game development, web design – and live sound.

Hani Gadallah

The $28 million facility, opened in January 1999, was totally funded by Dutch tycoon Eckart Wintzen and designed by John Storyk, one of the world’s leading recording studio designers. Its 65,000 square foot space is crammed full of the latest gear, from 20 SGI computers running Alias/Wavefront Maya to dual G-4 Power Macs and Sonic Solutions DVD authoring workstations.

The facility especially shines with its set-up for recording and live mixing. The Tascam Heptagon Studios features six independent and/or synchronized control rooms wrapped around a large accoustic studio, allowing six groups of students to record one band simultaneously.

The Mighty Hannibal

For live sound studies, the heart of the program is the Meyer Sound Performance Hall, a 200-seat 5.1 surround sound performance hall. There, musicians and bands – including the Jerry Garcia Band, Merle Saunders, Sons of Champlin, and Train – use the performance space to rehearse, while Ex’pression Center students get the chance to mix live music in a real-world environment.

There is a Crest 52-input V12 console (which emulates the Yamaha PM-4000) for the front of the house, Meyer monitors and outboard equipment that includes BSS compressors, gates and equivalizers and Lexicon PCM-80s and 90s.

“The point is to give our students the equipment they’ll be handling once they’re out in the marketplace,” notes Ex’pression Center president Gary Platt.

One of Ex’pression Center’s “claims to fame” is its phenomenal success rate at placing students in jobs: 100 percent (a week after graduation, the tenth class is so far 94 percent employed). To go from neophyte to working professional takes more than great gear and a great performance space: it takes experienced live sound mixers who have the ability to teach what they know.

The director of the live sound studies, Hani Gadallah, offers just that mix. A graduate of the Institute for Audio Research in New York and a life-long percussionist, Gadallah began his career as a mixer on a year-long car trip from New York to California, during which he stopped to work for brief stints in clubs and studios all across the country. Once he arrived in San Francisco, in 1990, he paid his dues by working in audiovisual at corporate events until he got his first club job at The Last Day Saloon.s