Valuing Your Worth and Getting Paid

Happy New Year, SoundGirls! Let me start by saying I hope you all have a fantastic year ahead of you. I hope you get that gig you’ve been working toward for years. I hope you learn lessons that make you a better engineer, and business owner. Most of all I hope you have fun! We engineer because we love music, we love the job, and because we all want to live exciting lives! So, I challenge you this year to do all of these things.

For my first blog post, I’m going to jump right into the nitty-gritty: payment. First of all, we as women and as creatives often sell ourselves short when it comes to how much we charge and how strict we are about receiving payment. We’ve all been there. You’re spending hours on a song, an EP, an album, and you haven’t even seen half of what you should’ve made yet. I know I have spent hours in front of Pro-Tools working on a mix only to do the math and realize I have made less than minimum wage for hours invested in a project. Why does it give so many of us anxiety to charge what we deserve? I mean this is how we make our living, isn’t it?

Now, I will clarify that I engineer for more than just the money. I feel so passionate about this work that I tear up sometimes – especially when I finish a project. I love helping people bring their music to life, hold their project in their hands and share it with the world. Engineering warms my soul. It gives me a strong sense of purpose. I imagine many of you feel similarly, and this is likely the reason we have anxiety about asking for what we deserve. It’s true; we are fortunate to have such a cool occupation – one that sometimes doesn’t even feel like “work.” We’ve all had those sessions we walk away from thinking, “I had that much fun, and I get paid for it?”

However, being paid fairly for our work is still essential. It’s taken practice, but I’m better at realizing my worth and charging appropriately. I’ve also learned to make sure I see half of it up front before beginning a project. I always ensure I get paid immediately at the end of a session. I also only take projects that excite me. I’ve stopped taking projects just for the money or because I feel like I have to say yes to everything that comes my way. I’m engineering because it makes me happy, so I choose to work on the music and with the artists that make me happy. I hope that is what all of you decide to do this year, too.

So, to bring this first blog post to a close; here are some key things to have ready to bring up the next time you are talking to a potential client about pricing:

Have a contract prepared
Make it clear you expect to be paid at the end of a session
Have at least three forms of payment accessible for your client ( I recommend, check, cash, or PayPal)
When necessary, reference the contract during your meeting
Before the project begins; be sure to receive half upfront (think of this as a deposit)
If there is pushback about your pricing- be understanding. I am always willing to work with someone’s budget to a certain extent. As long as it isn’t something ridiculous like “Will you mix this song for 20 dollars with three revisions included?” (If that’s the case- walk away)
Make sure the project is one you are passionate about because THAT is when you do your best work (and when it’s the most fun)
Be confident! You’re good at what you do. That’s why someone came to YOU out to help bring their project to life.

My Love of the Guitar (Pt. 2)

Read Part One Here

I went to an early college (Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts), and while I was finishing up my BA thesis, I was also in my second year of private classical guitar lessons. I’d been playing for almost nine years already and was also playing the viola, and in two choirs, and music theory classes. I had a laptop, but this was before everything was done digitally, so I used my hands to write and edit and analyze notation in addition to taking notes, and editing drafts of my thesis. I write with my left hand, and I play “standard” guitar (which is to say that my left hand presses the frets and my right hand plucks the strings). My guitar teacher instructed me to practice a minimum of two hours a day, “but really six hours is more reasonable if you can manage that,” she’d suggested. Because I adored her, even with a full course load and two babysitting jobs, I practiced as much as I could. This usually amounted to three hours a day.

“If I could play in the morning or late at night, I could practice even more,” I told her. “But I don’t want to bother my roommates.”

“Ah yes, I remember those days!” She reminisced. “When I was in college, I would wake up at 4 am and put socks on my hands. That way, when I played, it was very quiet!” She said this with a twinkle in her eye. I looked at her gesturing hands and arms and realized they were perfectly oriented to hold a guitar. Even without one in her arms, she was ready to play the guitar. I wanted to be more like her. But socks on my hands? At 4 am?

All I could muster up was: “I’ll give that a try.”

playing my G&L telecaster on a rooftop in Brooklyn, 2013. Photo by Lisa Myers.

I woke up earlier and drove to the soundproof practice rooms on campus. I’d set up my foot pedal, cut and file my fingernails, warm up, and set up the various pieces I was attempting to memorize. After three hours I’d head over to the library and sit in my cubicle I was allotted as a senior to read my books and take notes. For the first time, I was writing a long-form academic essay on anything of my choice. It was as exciting as it was terrifying. When the sun set, I’d pack up and drive to the next town over to babysit, where I would read, take notes, and write on the couch while a baby slept upstairs. (To this day I’ve never met this particular child. Once she woke up and I entered her room, picked her up, sang to her until she fell back asleep, and then put her back down and left the room again. But it was completely dark the whole time, so I feel this doesn’t really count as having properly met.)

After half a semester of this routine, my left arm began to hurt. I tried to give it a rest, but I was doing something with it almost every waking moment. I couldn’t help it. I hoped my guitar teacher would have a solution. I’d come to see her as a sort of wise woman; an auntie of musical persuasions.

“My left arm and hand really hurt,” I said during my next lesson. Truthfully the dull hurt had started to become a throbbing pain that was now going up to my left shoulder. “I think I’m just using this side a lot. You’re left-handed too, yeah? What do you suggest I do during this time while I’m in school and need to use my left hand to write a lot?”

She didn’t skip a beat. “Learn to write with your right hand!”

She said it with a hint of condescension like I was stupid for not having thought of it myself.

“Oh. Okay, I will have to… give that a try,” I said, disheartened. She couldn’t be serious, could she? It’s not like I chose to write with my left hand. How could it be as simple as choosing to write with my right hand?

I really did try it, but it was useless. I couldn’t write a word with my right hand, let alone notes and sentences and paragraphs.

I had to keep going the way I had been.

my first electronic (read: no guitar or live instruments) performance, somewhere in Vermont, 2010. Photo by Jane Sweatt.

After I graduated, I expected the pain to subside on its own within a few weeks, but it got worse. For the next year it was so bad there were nights I had trouble sleeping. I talked to many musicians about it. Finally, a violinist who had toured and recorded for over 40 years suggested that I had nerve damage. “You have done the same couple actions so many times, and overused certain parts of your arm in the process. The only way to experience relief is to completely stop doing those actions.”

I looked down at my right hand. I had kept my fingernails long and curved for plucking for many years. My left-hand nails were always short for pressing strings onto the neck board. I was used to typing like this, used to the difference in sensation when I would use both my hands. I loved sitting down to practice and learn new pieces, even if I wasn’t planning on being a concert player.

Could I let this go? How long would I need to stop for? Would I be okay without it? Would my college guitar teacher somehow find out and call me and berate me for not following her learn-to-write-with-your-right-hand advice? How much shame could I endure?

my first time troubleshooting Ableton Live during a soundcheck, Brooklyn, 2012. Photo by Clyde Rastetter.

Eventually, the pain became so bad I had to stop playing for years. Sometimes I would forget the pain and would pick up a guitar for a little while and regret it later. I was so sad to not play as much as I wanted. But unbeknownst to me, my guitar time was being replaced by audio time. I was buying books, downloading programs, going to classes, and spending hours upon hours learning the ins and outs of digital audio technology. I was starting to create sounds I had never heard before, using them to create soundscapes I’d never interacted with before, and writing lyrics and melodies I’d never think up before.

Unknowingly, a new world was opening up to me.

An Underwater Recording Adventure

I recently began work on a new show, and luckily it has already presented tons of new challenges. At Boom Box Post, we like to consider sound design challenges as creative opportunities. So, when I spotted an episode in which the characters travel via microscopic submarine through a human body, I was excited. Each exterior shot of the submarine illustrated it moving through a viscous plasma-like liquid. I wanted to call upon the tried and true sounds of a submarine for the vehicle itself, but I wanted to do something unique for the sound of it moving through the plasma. This was the perfect opportunity to get creative with some recording!

This presented an immediate challenge: we do not own a hydrophone. I looked into buying one, but they are somewhat expensive, and our underwater recording needs are pretty slim. It didn’t seem worth the investment. I considered using one of my current mics and wrapping it in a water-proof casing, but that struck me as pretty risky. So, I settled on buying a couple of inexpensive contact mics, a pack of condoms to act as waterproofing, and some heavy duty duct tape to put it together.

About Contact Mics

If you’ve never used a contact microphone before, they are wonderful things. Sometimes called piezo (pronounced pee-EH-zo) mics, they are what is used for the pickups on electric guitars. You can buy them as a standalone version, and either tape them to the object you are recording or use the adhesive on the mic itself, thus turning any everyday object into an electric whatever (i.e., electric cello, electric rainstick–the possibilities are endless!) But, keep in mind that they work differently than all of the other microphones in your mic locker. Normal microphones pick up subtle changes in air pressure as an audio wave passes the microphone. Conversely, contact mics pick up the vibrations of physical matter and transduce those vibrations into an electric signal which can be transduced again into audio.

Thus, contact microphones have no sensitivity to the audio waves passing through the air. This makes them very unique as recording devices (and sound designer tools!) because you don’t need to worry about ambient noise that must be removed later. A great example of this is that if you were to, say, turn on an electric beard trimmer and skim it across the surface of a cymbal, a traditional microphone you would pick up not only the awesome sound of metal on metal but also the whir of the trimmer’s electric motor. If you, instead placed a contact mic on the surface of the cymbal, you would only pick up the sound of the trimmer skimming the metal cymbal, because it does not transduce sound waves traveling through air, only those through the physical object itself.

Now, would this particular technology lend itself to recording underwater? That was a tough call. Would the pressure differences in the water as the mic moved through it be extreme enough for the contact mic to pick up the physical change? I acquired all of the necessary parts: contact mic, tape, condom (for waterproofing), recorder, and headphones, and then filled a small metal tub with water to find out.

The Trial Run

I learned a lot from this initial experiment. Dragging the submerged contact mic through the water did not result in any audio. However, turning on the faucet and letting the water hit the contact mic did. Unfortunately, that audio did not have the sound that I was looking for. It was crackly (think: rain drops landing with hard splats on a plastic surface), not watery. From there, I tried submerging the microphone near the point of entry of the running water and found that I got a great bubbly sound. The water pressure was changing constantly as the faucet poured into the basin, but I wasn’t getting the hard hits of the water slamming against the mic itself. I brought those sounds into Pro Tools, and while they were definitely in the vein of what I wanted, the size just wasn’t there. They sounded too small.

The Final Record Session

So, I took the recorder home and did my final session in my home bathtub. I submerged the mic and recorded steadies at the point of entry of the water, and then ran the mic back and forth over that area for the submarine bys. The contact mic, being that it records physical vibrations, picked up fabulously unique splatty sounds for these–just what I was looking for!

Editing the Material

I brought everything into ProTools again and then was faced with an additional technical issue inherent to almost all contact mics. Because they consist of small capacitors in series, they function at a much higher impedance than a regular microphone. When connected to a typical line input, this creates a high pass filter, thus cutting out any low end from your recordings. I was aware of this issue and had set up my session with this in mind. I separated the files I wanted to work with, then ran them through a low-pass filter EQ, pitched them down an octave, and also applied both tactics to each file to see which approach brought the sounds closest to what I was looking for. In the end, I bounced some of each. Here are a few samples:

The Sounds

You can hear the final product here

Kate’s Gear Recommendations

Sony PCM-M10 Portable Linear PCM Voice Recorder with Electret Condenser Stereo Microphones, 96 kHz/24-bit, 4GB Memory & USB High-Speed Port

Neewer Piezo Contact Microphone Pickup for Guitar Violin Banjo OUD Ukulele Mandolin and More

Gorilla Tape, Black Tough & Wide Duct Tape, 2.88″ x 30 yd, Black

Trojan Non-Lub Latex Condoms, Enz 12 ct – 4pk

This Blog originally appeared in Boom Box Post Blogs

Girls Can’t Do That! Robin Kibble – Live Sound Engineer

Robin Kibble

Robin Kibble is an independent live sound engineer taking the reigns of both FOH and Monitors. Based in Seattle, she has been working in live sound for the past 12 Years. She has a wide variety of live experience between touring and freelancing in town with The Showbox, Carlson Audio, The Neptune Theatre, Morgan Sound – to name a few. Robin has toured as FOH Engineer with Julia Holter and TR/ST, The Knife as an audio tech, Tenacious D as a monitor engineer and more.

Robin’s interest in live sound started when she was told “it was something that “girls” couldn’t do, and I was confident it was a language I could learn to understand – especially coming from a music background. Then I started to do it and fell in love with it.”

She would enroll in a live sound workshop at the Vera Project. VERA is an all-ages volunteer-fueled music and arts venue that engages participants at all levels of music production and community organizing. Vera’s programs are always all ages, with a focus on young people ages 14 to 24. Vera offers programs in music concerts, audio engineering, visual art exhibits, live and studio recording, leadership training, silkscreen printing, event production training, and internships.

Robin then would go on to volunteer with Vera and would start interning at a mid-size club in Seattle, where she gained experience by trial and error, observation, and The Sound Reinforcement Handbook. She would get a break one day when the venue did not schedule a monitor engineer and the touring act that was booked required one. Robin was thrown into the hot-seat and survived. This caught the attention of the house production staff, and from there she started getting paid shifts. From there the opportunities just kept growing.

Robin’s education in audio was all hands on, on the job training. She was fortunate to work with Josh Penner, whom she considers a mentor. ” He invested in me and improved upon my training. He answered any questions I had thoroughly from the simple to the complex and never made me feel stupid for being curious or needing more information. He answered a lot of the “whys” behind what I had discovered through trial and error. ” Robin believes this was the best education saying “that if you’re starting out, interning at a legit audio company is a great way to go about it. I say this because some of the best in the biz that I’ve met come from that background.”

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?

I have dealt with sexual harassment in our field. An example of this would be being taken off of a schedule because I didn’t want to date my boss. I have been paid less at a venue, while having dramatically more qualifications, than a guy working there. In more than one environment, being assertive and standing up for myself when my needs haven’t been met has been met with a resistance that I genuinely feel I wouldn’t have encountered in the same way if I was a guy.

How have you dealt with them?

I see even these obstacles as opportunities because I don’t want to work with people that will demean me, or diminish my quality of work. I feel like, in starting out, it’s harder to say no to potential work experience, but if it’s at the risk of damaging your integrity and self-respect it’s not worth it. There will be jobs where you are treated well and will find great mentors. The industry is changing (in a positive way, I believe) from when I started, and there are real support systems in place now. Like SoundGirls!!

Advice you have for other women and young women who wish to enter the field?

It’s both who you know and what you know. Learning and knowing you’re not always right is a power skill. Say “yes” when you’re provided with the ability to learn and thrive and say “no” otherwise. Trust your gut about what’s best for you, Communicate with others about what you want to achieve. If anyone tries to throw you under the bus because of their insecurities, try not to take it personally, and learn what you can from any situation you encounter, even if you feel it’s negative. You will meet good people along the way (most people in this industry I’ve met are).

Some of the best advice I’ve received regarding touring was learning how to pick tours. The advice involved paying attention to three things:

If you like the music,
If the money’s good,
If you like the people.

If two out of those three things are a match for you, the tour will fit. If not, move on. I’m human, so with the knowledge, I’ve had at the time, I have made good and bad decisions on this front, but it’s a good starting point for choosing work.

Must have skills?

Good communication, a positive attitude, patience, self-care, and resilience. Understanding signal flow is also crucial.

Favorite gear?

For the any case scenario: my Skeletool Leatherman, a click mic for talkback, gaff tape.

Favorite monitor wedges are L’Acoustics 115XT HiQs. I also love an L’Acoustics PA.

Favorite console would be a Digico for the sound.

For IEMs, I’m currently on Ultimate Ears.

What do you like best about touring?

Learning new things, traveling to unique places I may never see otherwise, the connections made with band and crew, the food.

What do you like least?

Lack of sleep tops the list. And sometimes I get a bit lonely. I miss my friends, family, and bed.

What is your favorite day off activity?

Exploring a city for good restaurants, cool sights, etc. And naps.

What are your long-term goals?

My long-term goal is happiness, and professionally for me to achieve that I’ve been focusing on being selective about the work I take. Although money is of a course a factor, my dream is to work exclusively with badasses that are kind, fun, and good at what they do – both in band and crew capacity. I’m also always stoked to learn new things. I’m grateful for those challenges. I see them as opportunities. A good example of the kind of tours that met those long-term goals was with The Knife. It was a pretty much flawlessly organized tour, and every single person, artist and crew member alike, brought something great to the team. I feel like I became a much better tech on that tour as well (shout out to Laura Davis, our monitor engineer, for being such a stellar work companion on that ). It was also really heartwarming to be surrounded by such positive, inclusive energy on tour. Every single person cared about what went into that show. It’s something I felt super proud to be a part of. I also wanna give a shout out to other workplaces and tours, because I’ve had a lot of great experiences actually, but that was next level stand out.

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Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Audio

Valuing Your Worth and Getting Paid