Mark Erickson

Winner of his high school’s ‘Louis Armstrong - Outstanding Jazz Performer’ award, young Mr. Erickson was also a budding audiophile, owning rare electrostatic headphones, a moving coil phono pickup, and numerous audiophile recordings in a passionate quest for better and more realistic sound reproduction. Playing both Sax & flute, he decided to double major in Jazz Performance & Sound Recording in college. After a few years it was clear to him that it was the technology calling him. He graduated cum laude from the University of Miami in 1985 with a BM in Music Engineering Technology.

Shortly thereafter, he moved to Houston where he started the state’s first associate degree program in sound recording at Houston Community College. His students were making a name for themselves with companies such as NASA and Solid State Logic. After seven years, this brought him to the attention of (then) Southwest Texas State University where he began teaching as an adjunct professor on weekends.

Eventually hired to start the state’s first baccalaureate program in sound recording technology, Mr. Erickson worked as faculty member and program administrator, while also performing the maintenance/installation, mastering, and studio management chores for the recently purchased Fire Station Studios in downtown San Marcos. This fully functional commercial facility became the cornerstone for this program’s success.

Mr. Erickson’s early experimentation with digital multimedia helped his students land jobs with CD-ROM developers, game developers, and interactive designers, such as: Microsoft, Acclaim, and Midway.

More recent forays into computer science and digital audio have led to the development of technical ear training software for Mac OSX, Windows, iOS, & Android devices (available from AuriculaOnline.com). Students benefited too, landing gigs as iOS developers or with software developers, such as: Audiofile-Engineering.

Mr. Erickson is currently the Director of Recording Arts and an Associate Professor of Music at Texas State University in San Marcos.