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An Evening with Lenise Bent

SoundGirls will be hosting An Evening with Lenise Bent in Amsterdam and New York.  A moderated discussion followed by Q&A. Bring your questions.

Producer/engineer LENISE BENT is a groundbreaker, She has worked as a recording engineer working on many iconic records including “Aja” by Steely Dan, “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp and “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac. She was also the first woman to receive a platinum album for engineering on Blondie’s AutoAmerican.

Since then Lenise has moved into post-production audio, beginning with creating the foreign music and effects tracks for the entire Disney cartoon catalog, and eventually specializing in recording and editing Foley. She has worked on several films and animated series, such as “Robo Cop,” “Street Sharks,” and “Extreme Ghostbusters.” She has traveled the world for Dreamworks supervising and producing the foreign dialogue and vocals for “Shrek,” “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Shrek 2”. This rekindled her love of recording music, and she is now engineering and producing up and coming musicians as well as seasoned artists. Currently, one of her projects, a blues/rock band called the Primal Kings, is all-analog, recording and mixing to tape and cutting vinyl.

Amsterdam – Moderated by Petra Randewijk

 

 

 

 

Money, Money, Money…

 

Money & budgeting are two things people tend to avoid thinking about too much. Sure we all like to get paid, but actually sitting down and working with the numbers, that’s the least fun part of money. It is crucial to stay on top of your finances, whether it’s your personal finances or the company you work for.

So let’s break it down together, let’s get us off on to a good start. Let’s start with our personal/freelance finances.

Income vs. Outgoing 

The two most crucial bits to financing is Income vs. Outgoing, so the money that you earn and the money that you spend.

Outgoing

So let’s look at our expenses which are crucial and that we all will have in common: To give you an example of what life in London can cost, here are some numbers.

So that is over £1k on the basics every month, not including things like going for dinner with your friends, birthday presents, etc.

So we need to earn at the very least £1,350 per month to cover our basic day-to-day living.

Income

So income is the most fun part of working and earning money, right? But it is also important that we spend our income wisely and go through our budget monthly to keep on top of things. So we know our expenses each month, so let’s look at what we can do with our profit if we haven’t been breaking even this month.

Say that we earned ourselves £2,000 this month. After having paid all of our expenses, we’re left with £650.

It would be lovely to think that we can spend that £650 on gear ( My guilty pleasure is synthesizers), but sadly we should probably not do that.

Taxes

If you are a freelancer and have your own company we need to think about taxes and putting money aside for that time of the year where you need to declare your earnings. In the UK at a basic rate, you pay 20% in taxes.

So if we earn £2k a month, that’s £24,000 a year. 20% of 24,000 is 4,800 (24,000 x 0.20). However, in the UK, the first £12,500 are tax-free, so we only need to pay tax on £11,500 (24,000 – 12,500).  So 20% of £11,500 is £2,300 a year or £192 a month.

So out of those £650 in profit (after our expenses), we need to set aside £192 for tax which leaves us with £458.

I’d probably put £100 of that into a savings account, and the rest will likely cover some miscellaneous expenses.

If you feel like you cannot handle your finances on your own, it might be worth getting an accountant.

Forecasting

Budget – SUMMARY

It is important to estimate what you will spend, that is why you forecast. It’s always good to be a bit generous when you forecast to make sure you have some wiggle room. The example above is all a forecast; expenses vary from month to month.

Actual Spend

At the end of the month, you compare your forecasting to your actual spending. Did the numbers add up? Where you spot on or way off? What can you do differently next month? Here we can analyse our forecasting, spendings, and savings.

Yearly Summary

Whether you are a freelancer or working for a company/client, it is always good to do an annual summary. Compare the months, recognize patterns, spot the quiet months, and the busy ones. There is a lot to learn from a year, and planning for the next one gives you a head start.

Miscellaneous

Always account for the miscellaneous bits, there is still something we spend money on that we do not account for. A cab ride here, servicing there, something broke, and you needed to replace it. There are always unforeseen costs that are impossible to avoid, so it is better to give yourself some slack and account for a little bit extra for those times you need it.

Invoices

Stay on top of your invoicing game. Make sure you chase your invoices and keep track of which ones have been paid and which ones are overdue. There is plenty of accounting software on the market that makes invoicing easier, keeps track of which invoices have been paid, and also makes declaring your tax easier.

Editors note: Wave Accounting is similar to Quick Books and free.

The Budget Given by a Client or Company

If you have been given a budget to work with by a company or client, it is crucial that you stick to the budget. No one likes an over-spender, and it can get you into real trouble if you do overspend.

The same way you budget for your personal or freelance finances, you can apply the same method when working with a budget that was given to you.

It is important to meet client expectations, but also to be honest and realistic with what you’ve got. If a client is asking for more than they are willing to pay for you, have to be open and honest about it. Look at different options or see if they are willing to increase their budget. Communication is key.

Money and budgeting can cause a lot of anxiety; it affects us all. But if you set yourself up and tackle it heads on, I can assure you it will be a lot easier to deal with. Set aside a day at the beginning of the month and at the end of the month where you sit down with a cup of coffee or a tea to go over your budget and finances.

If you find yourself in some financial difficulties, please seek advice from accountants and contact your bank. The sooner the better.

 

Ableton Live for Anybody – 4 Session Online Course

Ableton Live for Anyone – Online!

SoundGirls is offering a four session online course on Ableton Live taught by Elana Carroll.  Sessions will be via ZOOM.

September 17 & 18 and 24 & 25  7-9pm (PST)

$80 for the four sessions

email soundgirls@soundgirls.org if you require financial aid

Register Here

After registration SoundGirls will send you an invoice (via paypal) and after payment is complete, SoundGirls will email instructions for logging into ZOOM.  Each session will be recorded and provided to you after each session.

Class Description
Do you want to start making beats? Do you want to learn how to make your own demos? Do you want to sharpen your DAW skills so you can get over that first learning curve and really start running with your creativity? Do you want to start performing live with Ableton, but don’t know where to start?

By the end of this four session course, you will have learned all you need to know in order to really get your engines revved up about Ableton. I want to give you the tools to explore and to run as much of your show as you want to. With your newfound agility and excitement, you might even feel confident to explore parts of Ableton functionality that haven’t yet been discovered! Because that’s what creativity is all about—exploring and playing! But first, what is it exactly that you will be learning?

Sessions 1 & 2 will be all about the essentials of Ableton. What is the basic design behind this software? How do you get the sounds you want IN there, so you can edit them and play with them? How do you program a drum beat? How do you slow it down if you want to? How do you mess around with ideas and decide what parts you want to go at the beginning, the middle, and the end? How do you listen to it on your phone? By the end of the class, you will have a multi-track song that you create entirely by yourself using Ableton.
*Key items covered: time signatures & tempos, MIDI, audio, clips, arrangement view, bouncing

Sessions 3 & 4 will focus on Ableton in live performance. You will learn how to make backing tracks that are suitable for the type of performance you want to put on. Maybe you want to push play at the beginning of the set and never really look at your computer again until your last song. Or maybe you want to engage with every sound that comes out of the house speakers. Or maybe your fantasy set is something in between! We will go over different approaches to designing your live set by using your new song from day one as a template.
*Key items covered: importing tracks, deciding on a playback concept, labeling, setting up loops and automation

Equipment needed (students):
-laptop with Ableton already installed – You can download a 30-day free trial

Instructor: Elana Carroll is a songwriter, producer and performer who has been making original music for 15 years. She holds a BA in music and critical theory from Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

Elana’s interests as a writer/producer span from electronic and dance to pop and country, and she co-writes with other artists as well. Her current focus is on teaching (she will be teaching a Beats by Girlz class this fall), and her own project, Party Nails. She feels it is part of her purpose in this life to “normalize” non-males in the music business through performance, teaching, and mentoring. She is particularly fascinated with popular culture and music in the age of technology.

Switched-On Friendship – Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind-Tourre.

 

Where would electronic music be without Wendy Carlos?  Carlos’ 1968 album Switched-On Bach brought the Moog synthesizer (and electronic music) to the public eye.  It was popular enough to win three Grammys and become the first classical record to go platinum.  With her influence, the 1970s became saturated with synthesizers from disco to advertisement jingles to Progressive Rock.  The influential soundtracks of A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Tron (1982) also came from her hand.

Carlos was a pioneer in other ways too.  In 1972 she became one of the first public figures to undergo gender reassignment surgery and speak openly of it.  Gender dysphoria was something that Carlos was aware of at an early age, but it was not until 1968 that she started her transition.  The success of Switched-On Bach was both a blessing and a curse, as it made surgery available, but Carlos performed publicly as a man throughout most of the ’70s.  It was in an interview with Playboy magazine published in 1979 that Wendy Carlos finally disclosed her true self.  There was no public backlash, and Carlos’ main regret was that she had not come out earlier.

Wendy Carlos, a pioneer as she is, still relied on her friends to help her achieve greatness.  In 1966 Carlos met aspiring jazz singer Rachel Elkind-Tourre.  When she heard Carlos’ synthesized experiments of various Bach pieces, she brought forward the idea of a full album.  At the time Elkind-Tourre was working as an assistant to the President of CBS and used her influence to help pitch Switched-On Bach to the company, and later used her connections to provide studio space for Carlos.  With this first collaboration, Elkind-Tourre became a frequent contributor and producer of Carlos’ albums.

Not much of Rachel Elkind-Tourre’s private life is known.  Around the time she met Carlos, she had recently moved from San Francisco to New York City to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist.  It is this jazz background, and vocal training gave Elkind-Tourre the perspective and tools to be Carlos’ trusted co-creator.  Together they created Trans-Electronic Music Productions, Inc. (TEMPI) with Benjamin Folkman, another of Carlos’ collaborators.  In 1980 Elkind-Tourre married and moved to France, and ended the official partnership between the two.

The legacy of this friendship can be heard in the majority of Wendy Carlos’ albums.  Elkind-Tourre’s voice (through a vocoder) adds texture in Sonic Seasonings (1972), and her compositional influence is integral in The Shining.  Carlos does note that Rachel Elkind-Tourre is one to avoid fame and credit, which is a shame.  This is a story of women empowering women.  Their friendship should be celebrated, not just for the works they created together, but the barriers they overcame.

Find More Profiles on The Five Percent

Profiles of Women in Audio

Broadcasting

Audio on the 50 Yard Line

Dave Rat’s Mighty Headphone Quest

For over a decade now I have sworn by my now discontinued Sony MDR-CD3000 headphones as my trusty live sound reference point. When I wrote an article stressing the importance of having high-quality live sound cans, I failed to mention viable options for the sound engineer readers to acquire.

So, the plan is to get my hands on a nice collection of top brand headphones, give them a listen while using the CD3000’s as a reference and find something similar or hopefully superior. So the rules of the game at this point are:

Closed Back– The headphones I seek should be closed back. Seems simple enough but the fact is that many of the high-end headphones are currently open back. This is because the smallish headphone sound chambers tend to choke off the lows and cause some negative sonic artifacts. Porting the chamber to the outside world reduces isolation and porting to the inside the muff area can add low and low mid resonance. Regardless, for us live humans, we need the sound isolation though I am not holding high levels of isolation to be imperative as that would overly narrow the options and also eliminate my CD3000 reference phone. So as long as the headphones get fairly loud, preferably rock concert levels and offer a reasonable attenuation of the outside world, I will include them.

Around the Ear – Theoretically, on-the-ear designs could work but the added isolation of an around-the-ear (circumaural) design plus the typically larger sizes of the transducers in over-the-ear headphones, inspired me to narrow the field and a bit. The in-ear designs can offer excellent isolation and possibly are capable of enough fidelity and volume, though I have never heard any that sound amazing, but for a sound engineer’s reference point, we do not have the time to be shoving things in and out of our ears mid rock show.

No Internal Electronics – I have so far bypassed all the noise canceling, electrostatic and other pre-amplified headphones because I am skeptical of the added layer of complexity, dead battery issues, and other artifacts. The last thing we live sound humans need is the noise canceling circuit overloading from the rock show or some strange sound added. That said, I am not against considering electrostatics if I can get my hands on some.

Size does not Matter – Or more specifically, bigger is better. I am looking for a ‘Head PA.’ A cranial sound reinforcement system capable of accurately reproducing dynamics, wide bandwidth and high-level sound. It is not like we will be jogging with these things.

High Power/Volume – In my experience headphones blow out fairly often when used for live sound, mainly because I inevitably forget to turn down the headphone volume when I set them down. I am looking for a pair that handles some juice. I have found several models that are rated at 3000 mw.

Hard Clean Sound – There are two differing approaches to loudspeaker and headphone design. The home hi-fi approach, where the goal is to gloss the musical flaws and present the listener with a pleasing and enjoyable sound. The other is the studio monitor approach where the goal is to expose all the flaws in a harsh and accurate light so they can be addressed. I am looking for a pair of cans that just sounds like the damn instrument I am trying to listen to.

Cost is Irrelevant – Well, it’s not irrelevant, but I did not put a cost restriction on the units I am testing.

Minimize my Opinion – Since sound quality is highly subjective, I will try an reduce the effect of my opinion on the selection process. All the headphones will be tested in comparison to the Sony MDR-CD3000 pair I have. My goal is to try and match or beat the sound quality, volume, and frequency response of the 3000’s.

So let us take a look at the reference pair and growing list of contenders. I have listed a few specs. The street prices are just a quick low mid estimate, and I tried to be realistic and avoided the super cheap questionable vendors. The list price is the same as MSRP; I just used whatever I found. It is quite an endeavor getting my hands on all these cans. Fortunately, several manufacturers have been so kind as to send me demo’s plus I was able to raid Rat Sound’s headphone stock. A few I purchased and some I am still on the fence about whether to try and get them in the mix. So I listed in parenthesis the source/status.

Continued on Dave Rat’s Blog

Follow the Entire Quest

The Mighty Headphone Quest

 

 

 

 

The Mighty Headphone Quest Part 6

The Mighty Headphone Quest Part 7

 

Missed this Week’s Top Stories? Read our Quick Round-up!

It’s easy to miss the SoundGirls news and blogs, so we have put together a round-up of the blogs, articles, and news from the past week. You can keep up to date and read more at SoundGirls.org

July Feature Profile

https://soundgirls.org/maya-finlay-feet-in-two-worlds/

The Blogs

Keeping Up

Soundgirls Expo 2019

Internet Round-Up

Atlantic Records’ Recording Engineer, Ebonie Smith, Talks Amplifying the Music Industry

SoundGirls News

Mixing Music Live – Discounts Available to SoundGirls Members

Sound Particles Licenses Available

Meyer Sound Supports SoundGirls

The Ethel Gabriel Scholarship

https://soundgirls.org/scholarships-19/

Intern with Sennheiser at AES NY 2019

SoundGirls Events

https://soundgirls.org/event/bay-area-chapter-meeting/?instance_id=1567

 

 

In Conversation with Daniela Seggewiss

SoundGirls Opportunities

SoundGirls and SoundGym

SoundGirls Resources

Spotify and SoundGirls Team Up – EQL Directory

SoundGirls – Gaston-Bird Travel Fund

Letter for Trades and Manufacturers

Women-Owned Businesses

A More Inclusive Industry

Events

Sexual Harassment

https://soundgirls.org/about-us/soundgirls-chapters/

Jobs and Internships

Women in the Professional Audio

Member Benefits

Soundgirls Expo 2019

This July the SoundGirls Orlando Chapter, along with B4 Media Production and Mainline Marketing, hosted our second annual SG Expo at Full Sail University. The expo was intimate; we had panel discussions and presentations followed by everyone filling the lobby to network and explore the vendor tables. The people who showed up were eager and enthusiastic, some were thrilled to bits that this organization existed and we welcomed them right into our community. Beckie Campbell, the Orlando Chapter Head, and owner of B4 Media Productions got the band back together with Willa Snow – the Austin SG Chapter Head and Laura Davidson with Shure.

Beckie Campbell has been on tour this summer as a FOH Engineer for the Indigo Girls. She found her way back to Orlando to host the expo. Beckie gave expert advice on live sound, production management, and being a small business owner.

Laura Davidson represented Shure at our expo for the second year in a row. Her RF presentation enlightened those new to using wireless microphone systems. Her RF Basics discussion is integral to any new engineers exploring the wireless in live sound production. She also shared some of Shure’s new wireless microphones, which had some impressive features. Shure’s rechargeable rack-mounted station was a favorite of mine. Having worked in live sound for over 15 years, changing batteries took up such a large part of my day when we had 20+ cast members with IEMs and belt packs. The ADX1M micro body pack transmitter was one of my favorite new items, the compact size was impressive (and adorable).

Willa Snow presented for Allen & Heath, giving us some insight on their new firmware updates and iLive family of consoles and accessories.  She also contributed to our panel discussions, giving our attendees a bright and refreshing attitude on mixing live music in Austin, TX.

Mainline Marketing, another amazing local company, supported our expo by bringing some amazing equipment for our guests to demo and get hands-on experience. Michael, Michael, and Zach provided us with expert knowledge and experience. They also brought along the fabulous Shure Jeep, which was a huge hit.

Some new players this year included Kaysen Thurber with Inearz, a local Central Florida company who are passionate about preserving hearing for musicians and Wesley Devore, the Documentation Manager for Presonus Audio Electronics.

Inearz is a Central Florida family-owned company. Kaysen’s father, Kim Fisher. Kim has been building IEM drivers since the 70s. He started his own company in 2003 and has kept it in the family ever since. Kaysen has been working with her father since she was 15 and continues to represent the brand passionately.

Wesley Devore braved a hurricane in her home state of Louisiana to join us in Orlando. Wesley writes the manuals for Presonus; her presentation featured Presonus’s Studio Live console and their scaleable ecosystem of products. Presonus’s NSB Stagebox was a beefy addition to their line of consoles, a stagebox that behaves as an I/O router with gain compensation down the line. Each integrated system would have control over its gain, so nothing is set by any one part of the system, in turn giving the operator complete control.

Featuring these women and providing a platform for them to be passionate about their products and experiences is the main reason we present this expo. We had several students from local colleges, including some who traveled over three hours to attend. Many of these women echoed the same stories we’ve heard over and over, being passionate about music and technology while feeling pushed aside by men who think their passion is more “serious.” Referring them to SoundGirls, including the scholarships that are offered and resources provided on the website was exactly what they needed to hear. Screw gentle encouragement; we can push these women into their dreams. Empowerment is in our tagline for a reason; we can equip these young ladies with the education and confidence necessary to succeed in their career of choice.

 

Intern with Sennheiser at AES NY 2019

Sennheiser & Neumann is seeking one member of SoundGirls to intern with the company during the 2019 AES NY show. Interns will need to be available from Oct. 15 – 18, 2019

Dates and Times

Responsibilities

AES NY takes place at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center

Payment will be a pair of Sennheiser headphones and microphone: HD280 Pro and e835. You will also receive a letter of recommendation upon successful close of the show. Travel expenses are not included.

You’re also welcome to join Sennheiser for dinner each evening.

Please send a cover letter of why you would like to intern and a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org

 

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