Mark Wingfield

Mark Wingfield is a guitarist and composer based in the UK. Most of his output is rooted in jazz, but he is also active in contemporary classical music. Mark has a parallel career as an award-winning mixing and mastering engineer.

Bio

Mark cites jazz, rock, Indian, Japanese, African, and classical music as influences and has written over 100 compositions. Recording mainly on the NYC label MoonJune Records and the Boston Based Greydisc, Mark has released 18 albums as bandleader to date. As a mixing and mastering engineer Mark works primarily at his own Heron Island Studio in the countryside an hour north of London.

Musician's on albums he has mixed or mastered include: Allan Holdsworth, Tony Levin, Chad Wackerman, Gary Husband, Nguyen Lee, Iain Ballamy, Gilad Atzmon, Asaf Sirkis, John Marshall, Jimmy Haslip, Carles Benavent, Bob Mintzer, Theo Travis and many more.

“Mark Wingfield is undoubtedly one of the greatest guitarists of recent years worldwide…. His languid, plaintive, spiritual sound, ambient and personal.” TOMAJAZZ

These words are confirmed by the multiple awards he has received as a musician and an engineer:

As well as composing music for his own albums, Mark also composes music for classical musicians. Mark recently composed a solo piano piece for pianist Kathryn Stott, known for her many collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma but also as a premier concert pianist with orchestras around the world. Mark has also composed a number of solo pieces for renowned harpsichordist Jane Chapman, as well as works for Pianist Kate Ryder, Mc Fall’s Chamber, Elaine Funaro, Geoffry Burgess, string quartets and other ensembles.

As guitarist:

All About Jazz Best Albums of the Year

Downbeat Magazine's Masterpiece Album of the Year

As engineer:

Three Downbeat Masterpiece Albums of the Year

Two All About Jazz Best Albums of the Year

JazzWise Best Release of the Year

Hi-Res Edition Favourite Release of the Year

Quotes

Voxessor

Voxessor is a great plugin for processing spoken voice. I found it so quick to set up and the results were as good or better than my usual chain of plugins which take ages to set up and tweak. The fact that it does levelling and compression, as well as de-essing all in the same plugin, is a real time saver.

Orbitron

I think Orbitron sounds beautiful. The quality of the modulation algorithms and filters is sonically wonderful. Like with Hyperspace, the programmer Jason has some magic in his coding fingers. I can already see this will become be my go-to plugin for modulation.

MorphVerb

MorphVerb is very nice for sound design. Great for creating ethereal pads from vocals for example. It has the rare quality of being able to sustain the actual pitch of the note played into it, especially in the settings between the cathedral and infinite.

Expanse 3D

This really does add 3D depth to a sound. Used subtly its perfect for positioning instruments in a mix. But you can also make them sound larger than life if you choose to. It's one of those plugins where when I bypass it to see what it's like with out, I immediately want to switch it back in.

UniChannel

This plugin sounds fantastic, rich, creamy and vibrant. Each preamp, EQ and compressor brings something special and different to the table and the fact that you can mix and match them is just amazing!

Cyberdrive

I love the sound of Cyber Drive, and it brings a lot of new things to the table. I try pretty much every new distortion plugin that appears, and they usually fall into one of two categories, "nothing new" or "harsh and digital". Cyber Drive stands out because it contains a lot of distortion algorithms I haven't heard before, yet it doesn't sound harsh and digital (unless you want it to).

Plamen

This thing sounds fantastic! Within a few moves, my master sounded significantly punchier and richer on the low end and silky smooth on the top end. It's quick to dial in yet there's a lot of detailed control here if you want it. The key to this plugin is that the different saturation types you can choose form all sound really great. Each type is useful and unique, some add punch others add smoothness or richness, it's a great sounding selection of saturation tools. The fact that you can choose a different one for each frequency band makes Plamen an amazing tool for sculpting your master or individual instruments.

Hyperspace

JMG Hyperspace is one of the best reverbs out there in either software or hardware form. To my ears, there is only a handful of reverbs in existence that can really produce a realistic sense of 3D space and Hyperspace is one of them. But it also excels at sound design and is capable of creating otherworldly and wild soundscapes I've never heard from any other reverb as well as beautifully pitch sustained ethereal pads. It has the deepest control of the reverb algorithms and other parameters I have ever seen, yet despite this is one of the easiest and most intuitive reverbs to program. It has become one of my go to reverbs."

FireCobra

I was working on a mix which had many layers of acoustic guitars. We needed one particular guitar track to stand out, but making it louder got in the way of the vocal. Using FireCobra on this guitar track I was easily able to bring it out from the other layers and make it easier to hear without actually raising the level of the track. The result was very pleasing sonically. The various controls give you a range of flavours for doing this sort of work without things sounding distorted or muddy, which is often a problem with other saturators. I can see I'll be using FireCobra a lot to help separate elements of a mix.

Pluralis

In delay one plugin I can instantly get what used to take a complicated routing of a number plugins. Great for creative delays and I really like the way the modulation, saturation and dispersion sound