Joel Harkin is on the internet.

what's happnin'?

My name is Joel Harkin. I'm a songwriter, mastering engineer, pedal steel guitarist and producer. I'm very interested in the music industry, particularly the economics of streaming, release strategy and royalty collection. I'm mad for the boring stuff.

I've been working as a mastering engineer since 2022. I really enjoy getting to work with bands and artists to do the last wee bits and pieces to get their recordings ready to be released. I've mostly worked with artists from Ireland but I've mastered a few tracks from artists based all over, as far away as Albuquerque! I like to put a real focus on audio clean-up, removing and attenuating electrical pops, clicks, mouth sounds, plosives as part of my process. I have a wee studio in an old Ulster Bank building on the Newtonards Road in East Belfast where I do most of the work from. Trying to get a wee home space sorted at the minute as well.

Pedal Steel Guitar Every Day since 2022 aswell actually. Always wanted to play it but there is a high cost of entry to being a steel player so it didn't happen for a good while, but now I'm playing in multiple bands and doing a lot of steel session work for people all over the world. I have a GFI Student model but i've got a GFI Ultra U12 on the way!

As I said I'm very interested in the music industry and it's workings, particularly when it comes to the rights of musicians and workers in general to be honest. I have written an article or two about the economics of streaming, the legitimacy of piracy and I'm also on the Scotland/North of Ireland Regional Comittee for the Musicians' Union. As well as that I do some music facilitation in three schools in Belfast, a twelve week after school program teaching young people the ins and outs of being a working musician and all that it entails!

Big fan of baseball movies, Sci-fi novels and Kingdom Hearts. I'm also really enjoying this whole html thing. I feel good about it. Thanks for reading through my site and if I can help you with anthing music related please get in contact!