Steve Barsotti is an educator, audio post-production engineer, and audio artist with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For more than 30 years, he has taught at colleges and arts institutions throughout Chicago, Seattle, and San Diego, sharing his passion for electronic music, sound art, and audio production. His teaching bridges the technical and the creative, encouraging students to listen deeply, think critically, and experiment boldly with the possibilities of sound.

 

As owner and operator of Ragmatic Audio, Steve has recorded, mixed, and mastered sound for podcasts, films, music, multimedia installations, documentaries, and commercial projects. His approach to audio engineering goes beyond craft—he sees it as a way to help people find their voice and share their stories with clarity and purpose. Through Ragmatic Audio, he collaborates with artists, nonprofits, small businesses, and museums to surface perspectives that might otherwise go unheard, expanding and redefining the sound of contemporary American culture.

 

Steve is also an audio artist whose work explores the boundaries between sound, space, and perception. Drawn to the expressive potential of everyday sonic materials, he composes and performs using amplified objects, field recordings, and electronics to reveal the beauty and tension within ordinary sound. His solo albums—Along These Lines and Say “tin-tah-pee-mic”—reflect this intimate, exploratory approach, while his collaboration Rarebit (with Eric Leonardson) showcases improvisations on invented instruments. His work has also appeared on various compilations and includes pieces created for festivals and events. Through these projects, Steve continues to explore how sound shapes memory, emotion, and our sense of place—work described as “cinematic and unsettling,” and as “ushering the listener across an ambient divide.”