Christopher Mario Testa

Christopher Mario Testa (born March 8, 1973) is an American producer, mixer, engineer, re-recording mixer, sound designer and musician. He was born in Florham Park, NJ. He now resides in Los Angeles, California.

In the late 90's Chris started his career as a drummer playing live gigs and doing sessions in and around the New York City area. In 2002 he got his first gig as an assistant engineer at the legendary, now defunct, Hit Factory Studios. He was the only person working there who didn't have any formal recording training. Even though he only worked there for a year it was enough time to work with many of rock, pop and hip hop's biggest stars such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Kanye West, J Lo, Beyoncé, and Justin Timberlake to name a few. After developing a relationship with Los Angeles producer's Jim Scott and John Fields he was convinced to make the move to Los Angeles to further his music career. He worked on many pop records working as engineer to producer John Fields with such pop artists as Pink, the Backstreet Boys, Mandy Moore and Switchfoot. Following that was a year stint at the legendary Cello Studios (the old United Western Recorders, the studio where the Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds) working with fellow engineer and producer Jim Scott with such artists as Wilco, Tift Merritt, Kathleen Edwards, and Nikka Costa.

In mid-2005 Chris, along with Jim Scott, started work recording the Dixie Chicks Grammy Award winning album "Taking the Long Way" with Rick Rubin producing. Recording for the record went well into the following year. He did the bulk of the record with Jim Scott then continued on his own with the three girls, Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Robison. The record was recorded in legendary Los Angeles studios Sunset Sound and The Village. He is credited with engineering and playing additional percussion on the record. As the record finished up the girls put him to work on preparing material for the live show, working on their back catalog of ringtones and helping organize the studio audio for the movie "Shut Up and Sing" directed by Academy Award- winning director Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck.

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