Campus News Spotlight Issue - October 15, 2001

The many sounds of Manny
UNM’s sound recording engineer hears it all

By Mary Conrad

Manny RettingerReally this story should be a “sound bite” instead of a “spotlight.” Because that’s what Manny Rettinger is all about – sound. The Music Department’s sound recording engineer, Manny has immersed himself in the sounds of music since he was a teenager playing the electric guitar in a 60s rock group. And he can’t imagine his world any other way. “Music is my whole life,” he says.

Manny’s world in the UNM recording studio is dominated by a mixing board, a video monitor, duplicating machines, and computers of various configurations. Squeezed between technical components, Manny, student employee Liz Rincon, and students, record and reproduce a CD of every faculty, student and staff recital, giving a copy of each to the Fine Arts Library. A recording of the UNM orchestra’s performance with Bernard Zinck plays in the background as he talks about his work.

When Manny came to his job four years ago, he brought his equipment with him. Since that time, the studio has earned enough money – through fees, mastering CDs and making outside recordings – to buy its own equipment, most of which is state-of-the-art, Manny says proudly.

“We try to make it a real professional place. Like a professional studio. Students don’t goof off here. It’s a creative job. If there’s downtime, there’s always more to learn.”

Since his days as a frustrated music student, the UNM music department has changed its attitude toward electronic sound, says Manny. “There may have been some kicking and screaming, but the department now acknowledges the new world, the new technologies, the new ways of making music.”

Manny comes from a generation of self-taught sound engineers, most of whom started as musicians. “As technology came, we started getting little machines. It was a way of making money—next thing I knew, it was a studio.”

In Manny’s case, the studio—and for a while, the label—was called UBIK Sound, after a Phillip Dick science fiction novel in which the characters go into different dreamlike realities. A spray called UBIK enabled them to leave each reality.

“I guess I live in a Phillip Dick universe, with a lot of realities going on at the same time,” says Manny.

Interested in all sorts of music, Manny played for a time with a Zimbabwean band, “Thomas Mapfumo and The Blacks Unlimited,” a group whose music mirrors the struggles of Zimbabwe and Africa. Manny co-produced their most recent CD, “Chimurenga Explosion,” winner of the 2001 Association for Independent Music Indie Award for Best Contemporary World Music.

He has also mastered a collection of music, titled “Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea,” collected by Steve Feld, and produced by Smithsonian-Folkways.

After 20 years in the field, Manny is about to realize a dream as he builds a new studio attached to the Outpost Performing Space. Opportunities there, including recording bands and voice-overs, complement Manny’s work at UNM.

Leaving the studio, Manny runs his hand over his sets of windchimes. An imagined breeze tickles the studio’s still air.

“It’s all sound,” he says.

The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico USA
Copyright ©1998 The University of New Mexico.
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