Research Seminar: Dr Pat O’Grady

‘Redefined and streamlined’: SSL SiX and masstige music production technologies

Software has been fundamental to the transformation of music production in the past few decades. Digital tools have replaced many hardware-based equipment once almost exclusively available in large recording studio contexts. This presentation examines the possible resurgence of hardware as a tool in an emerging environment and explores this process as an example of ‘masstige’. Here, brands associated with large-scale music production create cheaper hardware for mainstream markets. It considers the SSL SiX desktop mixer as an example of this phenomenon. This research argues that the hardware form intervenes in a previously stigmatised and disused tool in home production, and the prestige of SSL potentially redefines the cultural status of the technology.

Dr Pat O’Grady is a music researcher, educator, and artist. He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Music at the Australian National University, where he serves as Education Lead and convenor of the Contemporary Music Production, Bachelor of Music and Honours programs. His research focuses on how people make songs in recording studio environments. He explores the creative use of recording technologies, with a particular interest in how tools contribute to musical outcomes in ways that may remain latent – or inaudible – in the final work. His work also investigates how value becomes attached to specific studio technologies—especially those associated with historically significant studios and iconic artists. Pat is committed to developing more inclusive approaches to music production. He is the research lead at Addi Sounds, a community recording studio in Marrickville, Sydney (est. 2025), designed to expand access to recording for underrepresented groups. His first book, Bee Gees, Process and Latent Elements in Music Production, was published in 2025 by Routledge in the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music series. Pat serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Music Production Research and was Treasurer of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (ANZ) from 2019 to 2024.