Andrew Dawson (record producer)

Dawson began playing piano at the age of 5, studying jazz and classical piano at a private music conservatory until the age of 16. During the last few years of high school, Dawson interned at a Minneapolis recording studio and during the summers did live sound mixing for outdoor concerts.[5] Dawson then attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in Music Production & Engineering. While living in the Boston area Dawson worked at Lexicon - a company famous for manufacturing digital reverb units including the 480L.[6] In 2001 Dawson moved to New York City, where he worked as an assistant then later became a staff engineer at Sony Music Studios.[5][6][7] Dawson prefers to work on projects that have meaning, due to his passion for music, and work with artists who are equally as passionate about their records.[8]

Dawson currently works and lives in North Hollywood, California.

In 2003, midway through the recording and producer sessions for Kanye West's The College Dropout, Dawson was called to try for the position of Kanye West's engineer. The rap artist and producer Kanye West had gone through a string of seven engineers, all of whom were fired.[9] Dawson was able to impress the rap star and maintained his position. Since then Dawson has worked as Kanye West's primary audio and mixing engineer. In a period spanning almost 9 years, Dawson has been directly involved in all five Kanye West studio album releases, totaling in sales of over 11 million records[10][11][12] and four #1 US albums.[13]