To push the boundaries of what's possible in this field, an international group of people meet at Notam's spatial audio meetups once a month to explore techniques, workflows, aesthetics, ideas and sounds.
Notam's Spatial Audio meetup is a meeting place for working with surround sound for artistic purposes. Here, some of the world's leading experts and technologists meet curious artists and beginners. Together, they explore new ways of expressing themselves in broadcast formats.
Presentation March 5: Justin Gray - IMMERSED: An exploration of Music Production techniques for working with Immersive Audio
Justin Gray is a GRAMMY® and JUNO® award-winning producer, artist & engineer. His album IMMERSED won the 2026 GRAMMY® Award for Best Immersive Audio Album.
IMMERSED is a cinematic visual album featuring 38 musicians from around the world. Conceived from the ground up for immersive presentation, the project places the listener at the centre of the ensemble, with music unfolding across a three-dimensional soundscape. Every sound was composed, performed, and captured with its spatial role in mind. The accompanying film brings audiences into the studio, weaving performance with dance, visual art, and the natural world.
As an immersive audio mixing and mastering engineer, Gray has mixed and mastered for artists, producers and labels worldwide. His credits include Olivia Rodrigo, Snoop Dogg, The Tragically Hip, Brandy, Nelly Furtado, Mother Mother, Blue Rodeo, Arkells, Jann Arden, Karan Aujla, Mae Martin, Marcin, Lola Brooke, and Josh Ross.
Gray operates an immersive audio post-production studio and serves on faculty at Humber Polytechnic in Toronto, Canada, where he teaches audio production.
This presentation offers a practical framework for composing and producing music where immersive playback is not an afterthought, but the foundation of the artistic vision. In this talk Justin Gray will explore the immersive recording and production approach behind Immersed, a GRAMMY® Award-winning album created entirely with three-dimensional playback in mind. Rather than adapting stereo recordings into immersive formats, each piece on the album was conceived spatially from the outset. Every instrument was performed and captured with a defined role in the surrounding field.
While many immersive techniques originate in orchestral and concert hall traditions, this presentation focuses on translating those principles into contemporary studio environments. Through detailed breakdowns of sessions from Immersed, Justin Gray demonstrates how microphone arrays, height capture, spatial orchestration, and production design were integrated into the creative process.
Playback examples in Dolby Atmos will be supported by diagrams, session photos, and video documentation. Musical excerpts will include drum kit, piano, strings, brass, handpan, sarangi, bass veena, Himalayan singing bowls, kalimba, vocals, synthesiser, and immersive re-amping techniques ("worldizing")-illustrating how spatial intent shaped both performance and mix decisions.
These meetups are led by American artist Monica Bolles and composer Mariam Gviniashvili.
Mariam Gviniashvili is a sound artist and composer who combines electronics, electroacoustics and 3D sound with visual material, dance and performance to penetrate the physical and emotional essence of sound and space.
Monica Bolles is an artist, audio engineer and composer who utilises emerging technologies, science and design to create spaces for the exploration of human experience in an ever-evolving and transforming world. Through the juxtaposition of the organic and the digital, art and science, technology and humanity, hub continually investigates what it means to be human in today's society.
Meeting ID: 926 0674 7841
Link: https://zoom.us/j/92606747841
