At HBO if I sound designed or composed something I really liked or thought was exceptional, I made a 1⁄4” copy on my “master” reels. There were MANY different things on these reels for HBO, ESPN, Comedy Central, E!, etc. I then took 10 years worth (1989 – 1998) of these masterpieces home to my studio and surgically edited and removed THE BEST bits of my 10 years of work - I thru them in a huge plastic bucket. This took months and the bucket got very full and as luck would have it, my young son and his friend played “chop- chop” one day on these tape fragments in the bucket, a further unsupervised edit. I proceeded to edit and layer all these pieces together. I found myself telling little stories about creating all this sound, what it was like to be a post production sound designer/mixer day in and day out at HBO, all the things you’d hear, all the very talented people you get to record, and the memories of it all. I was blessed and I hear that in every edit I made here, piecing my masters together – MASTERPIECING. I honestly hope that this helps explain all the sound works I make today – mine was always a life of listening and striving to create the best sounds I can, sound that opened my mind.

MASTERPIECING  (1998)

John Wiggins is a four-time Emmy winning sound designer for TV and film, living in New York. His work at HBO spanned over 35 years, and in 2017 won honorable mention at MA/IN InterMedia and honorable mention in Luc Ferrari’s “Presque Rien” competition. His works have played at NYCEMF 2019 & 2021 and his CD release “The Listened To Sound”
“All my work is music concrete”. 
Using only sounds he records himself, he assembles short pieces, like films made from the sounds of everyday objects and places.

I've been fascinated by electroacoustic/acousmatic music since discovering what could be done with reel-to-reel tape in the 1960s. Nowadays I enjoy exploring what can be created with modern hardware and software.