Join Us

Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Audio

Join Us

My Last College Shows

This post might be a little shorter and formatted differently because I am going to list and summarize my roles as a senior sound student in my undergrad both fall and spring semesters!

Fall 2022

Slapped! 

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer

I assisted with finding and recording sounds that fit the sound designers’ vision. This show took place in a circus so a lot of the sounds were comedy-based or music! This allowed me to fight the battle of copyright and budget in live theatre which was super informative. I also assisted with the installation and strike of the sound system.

War Brides– S

Sound Designer and Engineer

This was the first show I have sound-designed on my own! Luckily the director was my best friend and wanted to turn a show that didn’t have a lot of sound elements into a show where sound helped tell and shape the entire story. It was an incredibly collaborative experience and to this day the most rewarding show I have designed.

A Year With Frog and Toad

Live Mixer

This was the first musical I had ever live mixed! It had 8 performers and the show was performed using tracks. This was a great introductory show to mixing especially since it didn’t include a live band! It made me realize how important a mix is to a show and how much I enjoy live mixing! I helped program the scenes into the board, edit scenes, and live mixed all techs and shows!

Frozen Kids

Sound Designer and Engineer

This show was outside of my university for my job with the local children’s theatre. I created and edited the Qlab for these shows as well as maintained the Bluetooth speaker system we used! The children’s theatre shows are simple sound-wise because the tracks and sounds come with the purchase of the show!

Spring 2023

Matt and Ben

Sound Designer and Engineer

This show was so funny! It was a joy to design and try to make a script that is already hilarious and funnier with additional sound effects. The show process was short so it was a little stressful but it all came together and was an overall great experience! I also had an assistant on this show which was so much fun! It really helped throughout the design process to have someone to bounce ideas off of and to have a second set of ears!

The Moors

Assistant Sound Designer

For this show, we did a lot of recording which I helped with as well as creating and editing my own sounds. The designer would give me a specific scene to work on and I would come to her with edited sounds that I thought would fit! I did a lot more on my own in this production for being an assistant and it was a super fun process!

Flights of Whimsey (dance showcase)

Assistant Audio Engineer

For this show, I functioned mainly as an extra set of ears for the audio engineer in an unconventional theatre space because this show was performed in a room of all windows. This created an interesting space to engineer for sound! I also edited and recorded some spoken word poetry to music for some dance pieces that I choreographed for the show!

Into The Woods

Audio 1 and live mixer

This was the first show that I was really hired for sound purposes outside of my theatre department. We showed up at the venue and had five days of tech before opening. I programmed the board’s scenes by myself for the most part and created my own cue script which was so rewarding. This was a large show with 18 performer microphones and an orchestra. It was an incredible experience! Plus, once you’ve mixed the opening number of Into the Woods you feel like you can mix anything!

Annie Kids

Sound Designer and Engineer

This was very similar to the process for Frozen Kids! Plus, it was in the same venue which made it even better!

Shrek Jr.

Sound Designer and Engineer

This was also similar to the two kids’ productions I did, however, we were in a different venue where I was the point of contact for the live mixer and I was running sound through a system I had never used before. This was a super cool experience because I really had to be communicative with the workers of the venue that were on our tech crew for the show about my ideas in a timely manner with people who were not familiar with the show or the cast.

Godspell

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer, Live Mixer

This show didn’t have much design aspect to it. I helped install and strike the sound system as well as programmed the board and created my own cueing script. I did the majority of the mixing on my own because it was my last college show and my designer wanted to make sure I felt comfortable! This show consisted of 16 performer microphones and a five-piece rock band pit.

Those are all the shows I worked on during my senior year! Each show brought different challenges and taught me new things about sound! I took away so much from this year and it truly makes me feel so prepared to start my career in the sound industry!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post! Thanks for reading!

Sydney Bolton Live Sound Engineer, Production Manager and Translator

Sydney is a freelance live sound engineer working out of the great Northwest. Working in live sound since 2012 and works for the Showbox / Showbox SoDo, Morgan Sound, Carlson Audio Systems,  and The Triple Door. She will be heading out on the road this fall with Gaslight Anthem as their monitor engineer.

Sydney’s interest in audio was sparked during her middle school years when she was recommended to The Vera Project in Seattle. The Vera Project is a DIY project that offers classes in audio, lighting, and studio recording and allows participants to volunteer to work their shows. Sydney says she was “always really interested in music. I actually thought I would become a musician and play in bands, I never thought I’d end up doing audio. When I was a kid I was really interested in how movies were made, and wanted to work in special effects for a while, so as I got older and started going to concerts that interest shifted to what goes into putting on a show and No one wanted to form a band with me, so I figured audio was the next best thing.”

Sydney volunteered with the Vera Project for about a year and a half before being hired full-time. At the same time, she attended the University of Washington and graduate with a degree in Electrical Engineering (focus in DSP).

CAREER START


How did you get your start?

I got my start at a DIY venue called The VERA Project in 2012, and I worked there from 2012-2016. I was a volunteer for about a year and a half before getting hired by their FOH staff.

How did your early internships or jobs help build a foundation for where you are now?

I was fortunate enough to join The VERA Project when there was a full staff of experienced engineers working at other venues, and it was those connections that really helped build the start of my career and get me outside gigs, especially once I turned 21 and was able to work in bars.

What did you learn interning or on your early gigs?

I learned a lot. I think the main thing I learned was to have confidence in myself and my skills because I was a high schooler in charge of running shows on my own. I got very used to being underestimated and doubted and learned to ignore people’s misconceptions of me. I developed strategies to deal with people that were being judgmental and ignorant and also learned the importance of letting the people that did accept me right away know how meaningful that was.

Did you have a mentor or someone that really helped you?

I would say I’ve had a few throughout the different stages of my career.

Back at The VERA Project, there was one engineer in particular named Chris Gibbs who did a lot to get me to the point where I could take shows on my own. He was also responsible for throwing me a lot of the first gigs I got outside of The VERA Project as I started to outgrow it.

Kelly Berry took a chance on me while I was still in high school and working for his small audio company was my first introduction to production work. Josh Penner, Robin Kibble, Alejandro Irragori, and Ryan Murgatroyd have all been very supportive and helpful with navigating the touring side of things.

More recently, I credit Josh Wriggle with seeing my potential as a production manager, convincing me to give it a try, arguing with the right people to make it happen, and mentoring me through the whole process. Aside from production managing the occasional Showbox show I also production manage at a smaller venue and take occasional production assistant work.


CAREER NOW

What is a typical day like?

It varies a lot depending on what job and venue.

On a typical day doing venue sound, I’ll show up and we’ll load in the tour, and get them set up. When they’re ready to soundcheck I’ll hand over drive lines and open up the PA. About half the time, especially at the larger venues I work at, the tour will be mostly or completely self-contained and that is pretty much all I have to do until load-out. If I do get to mix, I’ll talk to the support when they arrive, double-check that the input lists and stage plots we got are accurate, find out if they have any specific mix notes for me or any other requests, prep everything for soundcheck so that we can just throw and go. One of the main venues I work at has a 5:00 PM noise curfew most days, so usually opener soundchecks are pretty rushed – we are lucky if we get half an hour.

Working for production companies is obviously very different since you don’t have a system to walk into and sometimes the builds are very big. Usually, we’ll show up, dump the trucks, more often than not wait for the staging company to finish building the stage. From there we organize which cases go where and layout power, audio, build towers if needed, and fly PA. I am usually patch, so once the PA is in the air I get to work laying out everything that goes on the stage – placing subsnakes, coming up with a patch plan for all of the acts, micing everything, having a plan for changeovers, making sure the A1s know the input list. Then we do the show, take everything down, get it all back in the cases, and get the cases back in the trucks.

Production managing is very different. Hopefully, the tour has gotten back to me and I have all the information I need, but that’s not always the case. I usually show up a couple of hours before venue access, in case the tour arrives early and also so I have time to print and set out day sheets, give the shopper plenty of time to get hospitality shopped, tidy up the green rooms, etc. I like to hand over any cash to the tour first thing so that I don’t have to think about it, and if there’s a runner I introduce them to the tour manager as soon as possible. After the security meeting before doors, the rest of the day is managing parking, scanning in receipts and filling out paperwork, refilling the tour’s ice, and dealing with whatever problems arise. At the end of the night, I introduce the tour manager to our house manager to settle, help clean out the green rooms once the tour has left, and head home.

How do you stay organized and focused?

When it comes to scheduling, I use a digital calendar but also have a paper one hanging by my door that I write all of my workdays and call times into. I know my limits and try to avoid working more than 5 days in a row, and I also try to keep one regular weekday off (usually Mondays) and at least one weekend day off each month. It helps keep me sane – that I can have a little bit of regularity to my schedule, and I know that there’s at least one day when my schedule will match up with friends who work regular jobs.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I am the happiest on days when I get a mix dialed in that I feel proud of, on the days that I do sound for friends’ bands, and on days when I get to work with bands that I am a fan of. Those are the days that remind me why I do this. I also appreciate the huge variety of music that I get to work with – I’ve been introduced to genres that I didn’t know existed and found out about so many great artists through work. Even if it’s not music that I personally like, enough other people like it enough to show up and keep me employed that night. When I can’t appreciate that anymore it will be time to find another job.

What do you like least?

I don’t like that no matter how tired you are, how far away you’ve come from for that gig, or how injured or sick you are, there’s probably someone that had even less sleep than you, that came from even farther away to get there, that hurts more or feels worse than you. That’s the side of our industry that I don’t like.

What are your long-term goals?

I want to tour. I was really close before the pandemic, and have had many near misses since things reopened, but it just hasn’t worked out yet.

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced? How have you dealt with them?

I’ve dealt with the usual misogyny that most women in this industry will face at some point, and I’ve written for SoundGirls in the past about experiencing racism for the first time. There are venues in town that I know I can’t work at if I want to be treated well and paid the same, and that’s frustrating but you just have to work around it. I’ve noticed too that lately it’s taken coming across some of the few other Asian people in this industry to find people willing to go out of their way to support me and give me opportunities, and while the solidarity is nice it’s frustrating that my career seems to hinge on it.

Mostly I just try to let it roll off of me. As I said above, I think confidence is key. I know that I’m a good tech and that the right opportunities for me will come along. Finding the people who support you and stand up for you, and keep them close by is also really important. I feel like I have gotten to the point where I have a really solid group of people around me, that has made a huge difference in how I feel at and about work.

But if it bothers you too much and you don’t want to put up with all of it, that’s totally valid too. I know that I have thought about quitting many times. In the end, I like my job and the people I work with too much, but that might not apply to everyone. It can be hard sometimes.

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

Be confident in yourself first and foremost. Until you get to venues big enough to have a separate monitor position you won’t have anyone to back you up or help troubleshoot, and there will be many times where you will need to stand up for yourself and trust in your skills.

Find the people that want to help you succeed and stick with them. Always say thank you. And once you get to a point where you can help others, try to create opportunities for those below you.

Also, don’t be afraid to turn down gigs or walk away from places that aren’t treating you well. If you are good at what you do, there will always be more work. There is a lot of pressure to say yes to everything, especially when you’re first starting out, but you don’t have to.

Must have skills?

You absolutely have to be able to keep calm under pressure. We spend a lot of time in hurry-up and wait mode but do enough shows and you will have one that goes catastrophically wrong.

You also shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions and own your mistakes. No one starts off knowing everything, and mistakes are part of learning.

Be someone that people like to work with. Technical knowledge can always be learned, but being someone that is on time and pleasant to be around will get you much farther.

Favorite gear?

I’m mostly on DiGiCos these days, and we’ve got Quantums at my main places of work. I got to try out nodal processing for the first time the other day when mixing monitors and it was pretty cool.

Translator

Knowing other languages can be surprisingly helpful too. During the pandemic, I revised Spanish translations for the plugin company Goodhertz and translated a new plugin into Spanish from scratch, which is a job I never knew existed. I speak several languages and I find it an excellent way to win over international crews (and it can also make facilitating communication much easier).

Read Sydney’s Blog

 

An Official Claim

 

I recently was asked to write an official claim for sexual harassment in the workplace. I had experienced sexual harassment before in the work environment, but this was only the second time that I felt the need to make an official complaint in writing, and the company I was working with encouraged and aided in the process. I know not everyone, especially those who do not have an HR department and understanding company will be able to take the same steps I did. I am writing this for those who might want an outline to go off of in case they decide to take similar action against the harassment they may come across.

As I mentioned previously, this was only the second time I felt the need to make an official complaint in writing, so I was more than a little nervous about any repercussions that might have come. This complaint was filed because I felt as a touring technician, the venue crew singled me out as the only female technician both on the touring crew and at the venue during my time working with them. Luckily the company I was touring with understood that what I experienced at the venue was unacceptable. I have taken names and many of the specific things said so as to keep the anonymity of everyone involved in this situation.

I wrote:

“In accordance with Discrimination Laws, Harassment is defined as creating an environment that:

In the instances following, the Touring Technician of the visiting company experienced

Consistent comments from the venue crew about the technician’s sexual life which included comments such as her supervising manager must never get bored on the road and making vulgar gestures when discussing the technician when they thought no one could see or hear them.

Pestering and assumptions about the touring technician’s skill level, including being told to simply “deal with it” because that’s not how they have done things previously.

In instances that I have previously seen, it is highly unlikely that a male technician would have had this line of questioning and commentary directed to them even with less experience and as such I felt that I was being harassed as the only female on the entire crew at the venue.

In general, the behaviour of the venue crew made the touring technician feel that her gender, personal life, and professional skill set were called into question and mocked openly. This is by no means appropriate behaviour for the workplace, especially for visiting crew.”

After the Company Manager that I was on tour with had read my official complaint (with names stated, and specific things said added in), he assured me that he wanted to sit down with both myself and my supervising manager (our touring Technical Manager) so he can have a debrief from both of us of what exactly happened and how we would like to proceed. I was again quite nervous and for lack of better terms, felt that this was almost like being on trial. This was not the Company Manager’s intent to make me feel this way, but unfortunately, it is an easy train of thought to jump on.

Now I would like to make something quite clear, it is perfectly okay to not know what outcome you want or how you would like to proceed. It is also completely understandable if you do not feel comfortable reporting such matters publicly. I knew I didn’t want the venue crew to be fired, but I also knew I wanted to be treated with as much respect as any other touring crew they would have had. But that was about all I knew I wanted. Making such claims official can be nerve-racking and can oftentimes make you question if you should have even said anything in the first place, but every little bit helps with ensuring females feel they can legitimise future reports if needed.

Should you need any more help, SoundGirls has a useful guide that helped me when I wrote this claim above. Several of the steps I had already taken without realising it.

Reporting Sexual Harassment

Loud: Tana Douglas Rocks Hard

 

At first glance Loud: A Life in Rock’n’roll by the world’s first female roadie by Tana Douglas is a scintillating look behind the scenes of some of the biggest rock bands.  There’s sex and drugs to go with the rock’n’roll as Douglas unloads juicy moments with every load out.  From a well-stocked trailer parked on the lawn at Windsor Gardens to a dog getting into a stash at an Australian after-party, there’s something for everyone.  Douglas also rubs shoulders with the likes of Paul McCartney, Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne, and Neil Diamond.  But behind the star-studded cast is the history of the modern road crew from the 1970s to the 1990s.

After starting out in behind-the-times Australia, Douglas jumps from one mega show to the next where the cutting edge of stage shows dazzle audiences around the world.  The stories chronicle how stage lighting becomes an attraction that threatens to overshadow the bands themselves.  Through the blood and sweat of the road crews, the productions increase in size and complexity.  Sound, lighting, and rigging mature as industries and require teams and trucks.  Douglas includes the grittiness and pain of long nights and safety playing catch up to daring feats.  The drugs, and recklessness take their toll, but still, the show goes on.

How much could be packed in 350 pages?  One might be forgiven for thinking this book glorifies the roadie life from a summary.  However, Tana Douglas never forgets she is a woman in a “man’s world.”  Where Douglas bares her vulnerabilities is where this book really shines.  Her isolation, her difficulties as a child, a partner, and as a parent hits hard.  I found myself wishing happy endings for Douglas, but knowing that her truth is more common.  Loud is the perfect snapshot of the life of the roadie with all the highs and all the lows.  I recommend reading about the rock’n’roll life of Tana Douglas to anyone interested in touring shows.  Bring your earplugs.

More on Tana Douglas

Paradoxes In Vocal Editing

I tend to procrastinate recording vocals for my original songs because I get so worked up about recording my voice perfectly. I worry about making sure my recordings are high quality: I’ve minimized outside noise, gain staged properly, warmed up my voice, am conveying emotion and proper pitch, and have enough takes to work with. Keeping track of all this can be so overwhelming that most of the time when I feel ready to record, I just want to do one take and be done with it. So many singers before the age of digital recording were performing single takes, so why can’t I? Of course, if I’m not careful with my recording takes, I end up spending more time in iZotope RX and Melodyne cleaning up noise, mouth clicks, and pitch anyways. Since a lot of my music is electro-pop-based, the vocal editing needs to be clean so that it fits the production and the genre.

I can’t help but feel like a minimal amount of vocal editing gets us closer to authentic performance, and yet we have all these new technological tools that we can use to produce a perfect Pop vocal. In diving into the philosophy of vocal editing instead of actually doing it, I rediscovered a short clip of Billie Eilish demonstrating vocal comping to David Letterman, which you can view here if you haven’t seen it yet. She and Finneas O’Connell walk through editing of the lead vocal for her song “Happier Than Ever” and point out how almost each word is a separate take. They don’t use autotune and instead take extra time during the recording process to make sure every syllable in every phrase is perfect in pitch and tone and time. They do this seamlessly so that upon playback you really can’t tell that these takes are separate. Most producers do this, and the O’Connells did not invent this technique, yet I’m mostly impressed by the sheer resilience it takes to record the same word or syllable over and over again without completely losing your mind.

Another video I found, which you can view here, shows Charlie Puth recording, comping, and editing his vocals very meticulously. He splits up the recording of a two-syllable phrase just so he can use pitch shifting to sing the higher note of the phrase at an easier pitch for him. To be clear, instead of recording himself singing an octave up, he uses SoundToys Little Alter Boy to pitch his voice down and sing a lower note, which he then pitches back up to the right key so it sounds like his tone is fuller when he sings higher. He also punches each note in over and over until he gets the result he wants instead of playlisting and comping later, and he manually lines up harmony takes in Pro Tools instead of using Vocalign. He really uses the DAW itself as the editing tool instead of other plug-ins, and his philosophy is that since we are privileged to have this technology, it’s worth taking the time to make a quality edit.

I yearn to master these techniques confidently and efficiently. As someone who gets overwhelmed easily, I usually record until I get a take I like instead of playlisting. I also realize that quickly comping multiple takes in the moment of the recording process is super valuable despite it resulting in the derealization of my own voice. More than anything, I want my voice to sound like my voice, which usually takes a lot less thinking and tinkering and a lot more feeling and emotion. Still, as a low-budget indie artist wearing almost all the hats, how can I decide if perfecting the performance is a better use of my energy than mastering comping and editing techniques? I admire you if you have the energy to do it all.

I’m always reminded of how Stevie Wonder records. For Songs In the Key of Life, nothing was spliced, and takes were rerecorded instead until they were right. This seems frustrating, but Wonder’s elite musicianship made this a viable process. Four years before this record was out, “Superstition” was recorded with a world of mistakes. This is one of my favorite recordings because it’s radically authentic. The squeak of the kick pedal lingers throughout the track, and if you listen closely you can hear the brass players discussing their parts since they didn’t get time to practice.

So, I might be a little biased towards how I define an authentic recording based on how accurately it conveys emotion and how close it feels to a one-shot live performance, which is a little old-school. However, when I record and edit my own vocals, I usually end up using one or two takes. I clear out the mouth clicks with RX, I tune the important notes in Melodyne, and I try to think about it as little as possible. I know that a little extra elbow grease in each step of the process might give me a perfect result, but I completely disconnect from the point of recording when I start on that journey. I tend to view authenticity and perfection as opposites, but learning about how other producers approach this work shows me that authenticity and perfection thrive on reciprocity. I don’t know if there’s a right way to edit vocals, but I know that no one can tell you the right way to do it.

Taiya Cheng – Transforming Sound 

Taiya Cheng is a freelance Front of House (FOH) and Monitor Engineer. She grew up in Bangor, Maine, and was passionate about playing guitar with her high school bands and attending punk, hardcore, and metal shows. She remarked that these shows often sounded bad, and wondered how she could help change this. When it came time to attend college, Taiya took a general semester before making the decision to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communications at the New England School of Communications in Bangor, Maine.

During her junior year, a partnership between her school and a local television station allowed her to begin working as an audio engineer. After graduating, she was eager to further develop her skills and accepted a summer internship with PRG in Las Vegas. For Taiya, that summer was the push she needed to start her full-time career in audio: “Through this guided internship, I was learning workflow and applying what I learned in college to the real world. It all really clicked, even if I had to learn some things the hard way like ringing out monitors and frequencies.” She stayed in Vegas for three more years, primarily working as a monitor engineer at the Sunset Station Casino.

In 2017, Taiya moved back to the east coast to be closer to her family. She now lives in New York City and works for various production companies and music venues. She particularly likes working at her home venue, Elsewhere. At the end of 2019, she delved into touring. She has since toured as FOH with Madison Cunningham, Son Lux, and Overcoats, as well as monitor engineer with Sleigh Bells.

Earlier this year, Taiya opened up about her trans identity. As she transitioned as a
teenager, many of her colleagues were unaware. For Taiya, it was important to speak out on her journey in a time where so many LGBTQ+ rights are being attacked and to be open and visible in an industry that has traditionally been a cis-male-dominated space.

Maxime: What is your typical day like on tour and what’s your typical day like at a venue like Elsewhere? Are they different?

Taiya: Yeah, they’re different. When you’re on tour in a van, you wake up somewhere in the country, probably in a hotel room. You get ready for lobby call, get to the venue, and then it’s just like a typical day of loading in, setting things up, making share the PA sounds good… maybe trying to find a coffee shop nearby with good coffee. Then it’s just normal sound check stuff. I’ve found that with touring, everything is always on the go. You’re always thinking about what’s going to happen next, whether it be like the run of a show or finding coffee or finding a place to eat lunch, or maybe seeing if you have any downtime to see friends in town. Being on tour is always being on the hunt for something. You add to that coordinating with venue staff, which can be challenging, but also fun. It’s also great to be going into cool venues and seeing what the live sound community is like there. And then it’s the show, and you load out and pack the van.

Maxime: That’s a great point about cool venues because that’s how I met both you and Katie Lau – another talented sound engineer who works at Elsewhere. I think it’s always nice to go to someone else’s home venue and see how they run things.

Taiya: Yeah, that’s what I really like about working at Elsewhere, there’s a great community, it’s a queer-friendly space, and we have great acts come through all the time. And I love the familiarity of my home venue, knowing the gear, and my co-workers. To go back to your question about touring and venue work, there are some similarities. As a venue tech, you don’t always know who’s going to come through and how it’s going to be working with the band/artists’ touring crew. Then on the other side of the same coin, as a touring tech, you don’t know who the venue staff is and what their experience level might be.

Maxime: What do you enjoy most about this job?

Taiya: It would have to be the music. When you’re working with an artist you choose to tour with,
hopefully, you really like their music! When I mix FOH and tour, it scratches a more creative part of my brain when it comes to reverbs and delays, deciding which compressors or saturators to use to achieve a certain sonic characteristic. I love thinking of all the different techniques there are to achieve a balanced mix and to get it to sit well within itself. I also have a technical mind. When I work with production companies, it’s very utilitarian. It’s like a puzzle having to just make things work. Something that I love about working jobs with production companies is helping to facilitate the event even if I’m not the one behind the console. That could be from putting microphones on people to coordinating RF to being the comm tech or setting up the PA. So that scratches the technical side of my brain. I also love the travelling and adventure aspect.

Maxime: What’s your favorite day off activity, either on tour or at home?

Taiya: I’ve been trying to play guitar more often, noodling around. I love biking, I’m an avid bike rider.  Hanging with friends. Summer’s coming around, so you know hopefully going to the beach a lot, I’m kind of a beach bum.

Maxime: What are your long-term goals?

Taiya: I think it’d be cool to learn more about systems tech’ing and work towards being a systems engineer. I’d also like to teach. When I’m on a show site or at a venue and end up working with a greener tech, I love trying to get them to a place where they better understand what they’re doing. I think that’s really fulfilling for me because I’m helping them move forward in their career and in a way it’s also a form of problem-solving: trying to figure out how you can convey this concept to this person in a way where they can understand it and when you need to explain things it forces you to do your diligence and make sure you know what you’re talking about!

Maxime: Have you faced any obstacles or barriers in your career?

Taiya: Thinking I had to say yes to everything. It’s an easy thing to do in this in this industry, and then you just overburden yourself. You need to figure out your boundaries and be comfortable with saying no to things. Sometimes I think a lot of us freelancers think we have to say yes to everything because we don’t know when the next gig is coming through, or we have FOMO, but we also need to prioritize a work-life balance.

Working with grumpy sound guys is also challenging, or just being a woman in the industry as well. Having men “explain” things to me when I didn’t ask for that condescension and things like that.

Maxime: How do you deal with those obstacles?

Taiya: Well, for work-life balance, I’ve become very comfortable saying no because I know work things are always going to pop up. If it doesn’t immediately make me say fuck yes, I usually don’t do it. It’s important to have a life outside work because it’s easy for work to take over. Especially because audio work is kind of a lifestyle, right? So, it’s easy to fall into that overworking trap sometimes.

When I’m dealing with grumpy sound guys, I just stay confident. I try not to cave in, I stay confident, and that usually helps. Whether that teaches that guy anything is another story, but as far as trying to get through my day, I try not to let that person bother me because of who they are.

Maxime: Do you have any advice for young people who wish to enter the field?

Taiya: Be confident in what you know, but also don’t be afraid to ask for help. Know that it’s okay to ask for clarification. Always stay curious, and watch a lot of educational videos – YouTube is a great resource for audio knowledge.  Learn to hang out, absorb information from other techs around you but also to be social. If you’re going to be working with someone for fourteen-plus hours a day, you want to be able to be social. being social.

Maxime: What are some must-have skills to become an audio engineer?

Taiya: Knowing how to troubleshoot is a big one, and knowing how to stay calm under pressure is very important. Being proactive. Asking the right questions for clarification on things. Thinking ahead, and signal flow. Good old signal flow.

Maxime: Do you have any favourite pieces of gear?

Taiya: I really like Digico consoles. For hardware, the SSL Bus Compressor, the SSL Fusion, and the Neve Dual Diode Bridge Compressor. I also love Beyer Dynamic microphones.

 

After Graduation

After a couple of months of not writing I am back and ready to catch you all up with what has been going on in my life!

First, I graduated in May from college with my bachelor’s degree in Theatre so that is super exciting! I decided to stay with my family for the summer but that doesn’t mean I am not working! Currently, I am located in Phoenix! I am working on some certifications that I need to be better prepared for my job in the fall!

Speaking of my job in the fall! I will be a Teaching Intern for the theatre department at Phillips Exeter Academy! I am so excited about this opportunity and the team I am working with! I will be on as a sound designer and engineer, as well as helping out their theatre program wherever they need me! The students and faculty I met there were just incredible and I can’t wait to join their team!

So today I am going to talk a little bit about what I am going to do in order to prepare for this job. Since it’s not just a one-show contract it looks a little bit different especially because I will also be teaching about what I am doing along the way to high school students!

So, my first step in preparing for this job is doing research on their system. They have a Dante System so I will be doing my Dante Certification as well as some additional research in order to feel better equipped. The school I graduated from didn’t have a Dante system, except for one show that I had worked on separate from the theatre department. Because of this, I want to do as much research as I can to ensure I know at least the basics of the system before getting on site.

I also asked their technical director for the name of all the sound boards they have in their various performance and rehearsal spaces. This allows me to do research on how to program these boards if I have not used them before. This I feel is especially important for the position I am going into because I want to make sure I am able to teach the students properly.

Next, I asked for any information they can give me about the shows I would be designing! They were able to give me some information about them and this just gives me a chance to maybe read the shows or if I know a production is going on near me maybe go see it! This doesn’t mean I start designing that is crucial! I don’t have the director’s vision yet or know what space it is going to be in so I am not going to start designing I am simply just getting a feel for the plot and overall vibe of the show, especially if it is one I am not familiar with.

During my first week, I will have a meeting with the technical director where I will get to know the ins and outs of the system and ask him any questions I might have starting out!

While these are all important and vital steps that are going to hopefully set me up for success this fall, the main thing I am focusing on this summer is resting. I have not had more than a few weeks break in a very long time and during the last month of my college experience burnout was on the horizon. I decided to rest more this summer because I want to be able to give my all to this opportunity I have in the fall because I am beyond passionate about what I do.

This time to rest has already allowed me to be so much happier and get more work done in a shorter time because I am not consumed by it like I was during college. I have been able to set aside hours of the day when I want to get work done but allow myself to stop once that set time is up knowing that I have gotten enough if not more done in that time than I expected.

As I start preparing for specific shows I will write about my process for different shows I am designing and engineering. I would also like to say that I am not the most experienced nor is my way the only or best way of doing things! I am simply writing about the process that works best for me when prepping for a new job and the job I am preparing for specifically.

I hope you all enjoyed this post! I promise I will be writing more regularly now and again! Thanks for reading!

5 Sound Design Sketches 

Sound design is as much of an art form as painting, sculpting, acting, dancing… insert any of the visual or performing arts here. One could argue that sound design is totally a performing art! Effects, ambience, and music all have a huge impact on how a  story lands for an audience. It is the sound designer’s job to manipulate all the parts so they interact with each other appropriately to have a profound emotional impact.

In the same way that actors will do readings or visual artists will sketch for practice, we sound designers also need to practice our craft independently. This article contains ideas to make sound design a consistent, self-motivated practice. Rather than

going into technical how-tos, the following ideas assume the reader knows the basics of audio engineering and thus focuses on creativity and inspiration instead.

Record everything.

This is perhaps the most accessible exercise you can undertake as well as the most practically useful. Through a consistent practice of recording, sound designers tune into the world around us while building our sound effect libraries. Handheld recorders are not that expensive, or in the worst-case scenario, you can even use the voice memo app on your phone. Ideally, you have a handheld recorder and are capturing in stereo at the minimum.

Take your recorder everywhere. Start by grabbing ambiences. Really tune in and listen to what is happening in the world around you while you are recording and do not stop it until there is a lull in the action. (For example, it would be unfortunate to stop a  recording of a street in the middle of a car passing by.) When recording ambiances that stay pretty consistent such as walla, some nature ambiences or even room tone, grab no less than one minute – and that may even be too short sometimes. Capture any less and future loops will be tricky to edit or sound boring.

Tune in to the world around you for singular things that sound interesting close up too. Maybe a crosswalk signal makes a unique sound or you have a loud washing machine; get right up to it and record it.

Go beyond spontaneous recording and also make time to create noise. Breaking

celery can make a great sound for breaking bones; a suitcase latch can be a safety mechanism on a pistol; squeezing cooked mac and cheese in your hands could be a  basis for gore sounds. There is so much magic in recording an everyday object and making it sound like something else.

Do a sound design for a video clip.

The only way to get better at sound design is to do it as much as possible. Going back to our visual artist analogy, sound redesigns are to sound designers as pencil sketches are to painters. It’s our artistic exercise when we are not actively working on a  paid project.

A video clip can be from anything that excites you, such as a movie or a  playthrough of a video game. Try to find something that is not too current, as people who see this clip may have expectations for how it sounds based on their recent memory. The cool thing about this exercise is that the end goal can be whatever you want it to be. Once in a while, you should do a thirty-second to one-minute clip that is a  full sound design as a portfolio piece; but the real practice comes in taking even just a five-second clip and digging into one element, whether you focus on weapons, foley,  sci-fi, vehicles… When you focus on one element of a video clip, it is important to record, process, and otherwise create all the sound effects from scratch. Do not throw in sounds from a library unless there are elements that are impossible to create on your own or they are being used in a layer within a sound effect; the point of the exercise is to practice creating sounds from the ground up.

To level this exercise up, create redesigns for different genres to the same clip.  What do the objects in the video sound like if they are in a rom-com? Then, what if you took the same clip and designed it as a psychological thriller?

Sit down and play with a new plugin or piece of gear for 30 minutes.

To put it bluntly: there is no point in having five analog synths or fifty reverb plugins if you are not familiar with any of them. You can learn a lot by penciling in a set amount of time to learn something specific. Your work becomes so much stronger when

you adequately know your tools, and it is so much more effective to have a few plugins that you know well than a bunch that you do not know how to use!

Create a sound design prompt with ChatGPT.

Type in, “sound design prompt” – literally. ChatGPT will spit out a suggestion that has a ton of detail, or maybe even not that much at all. Hit “generate” until it gives you something inspiring yet challenging. Then, time-block this exercise too. Give yourself between two to four hours and go nuts. Approach it how you want; work in a new DAW,  or don’t; record sounds from scratch, or don’t. Really treat this like a “sketch” and make something detailed and unique. And see what you can come up with in just a few hours.  Give yourself an added bonus by purposefully integrating something new as discussed  in the previous “sketch.” Perhaps you aim to use a feature or keystroke in your DAW,  dig into a plugin, or try a new recording technique.

Listen.

An exercise many new sound designers take for granted, and perhaps one everybody fails to do in our fast-paced existence. Really listen. Tune in and take mental or written notes. Here are some considerations, and this is by no means an exhaustive list.

In real life: What do you hear around you at any given moment? Where are different sounds coming from?

When watching movies or television: How are different elements balanced in the mix? Can you identify the low, mid, and high-frequency layers of sound effects and how do you think they were made? What do you think the editors used for different effects?  How is sound used as a thematic and storytelling tool?

When playing video games: all the same things for movies, and even more. How does music change when you enter a new room, have low health, etc.? How are things spatialized? How is sound utilized to give players feedback? How did the sound designers keep events that play over and over from sounding boring?  When listening to podcasts: When is scoring used? How are scenes built with

sound? How is sound used to transition from one place to another?  When listening to music: Can you pick out all the instruments? When are individual instruments not playing and when do they come back? How are instruments panned? What effects are used? Zone into one instrument and pay attention to what it does for the whole song. And – how does the song end?

Take any one of these ideas and do a little bit every day. You would be surprised how many projects you complete and how much you improve over time! As with anything, the hardest part is getting started. Remember that the Mona Lisa was not painted in a day, and each “Star Wars” movie took months or years to sound design and mix. Leonardo DaVinci and Ben Burtt practiced their art their whole lives leading up to and past those accomplishments. Start now, and give yourself permission to just practice without expectations, experiment, and have fun along the way.

Recording an Orchestra

 

Recording an orchestra, whether for a live concert or a studio recording, can be a thrilling experience, as you have a huge range of instruments, sounds, textures, and dynamics. Your aim is to capture the orchestra’s natural sound and the surrounding acoustics and to optimise it for the listening experience. Orchestral recording is of course something that takes time to learn and obtain good results from experience. Here’s an introduction and overview of some basic aspects that are useful as a starting point.

Pre-production

It’s important to know the space that you will be recording in, as the size, shape, and acoustics of the hall or room will affect the sound and your microphone choice and placement. It’s very helpful for planning if you can find out any details in advance from the orchestra about the pieces, instrumentation, and player seating information such as stage diagrams. The type of music will also inform your microphone setup, as the sound you aim to produce will vary depending on whether it’s a concert recording, film scoring session, album recording, early music with period instruments, contemporary music with unusual instruments, etc. Getting copies of the score will be helpful to examine the instrumentation, follow along and make notes during the rehearsals and recording, and aid in editing later.

You should find out if you can hang microphones from the ceiling or if there is an existing system of hanging mic cables. There might be limitations on where you can place mics and stands if it’s a concert, or if there will be video recording. If it is a concert recording, find out if there are any other elements such as spoken presentations on handheld microphones or video projections that should be recorded. Think about whether you’ll need to move or adjust microphones between pieces. For a studio recording, a talkback system should be set up to communicate with the conductor, and you should be ready to carefully mark your takes and write notes on the score. As you’ll often be working with a large number of microphone channels, creating an input sheet is essential. For a location recording, making a list of gear to bring could be very helpful. An orchestra recording often requires 2 to 3 people, one of whom might take on a producer role to follow the score, make musical decisions and communicate with the conductor and musicians.

 

Instrument sections

The sections of the orchestra are as follows, and the number of players will vary depending on the piece:

The positioning of the instruments might vary depending on the piece, the stage, and the conductor’s preference. Below are a couple of examples with two common strings setups, one with the cellos and basses on the right, and one with the second violins on the right.

 

Microphones and placement

Generally, an orchestra is recorded with a set of “main” microphones positioned high above the head of the conductor and the front of the orchestra, plus “spot” microphones positioned closer to certain instruments that need more detail, and often an ambient pair of microphones further away to pick up the acoustic of the space. Often microphones with quite flat frequency responses are used to capture the natural sound of the instruments. Commonly used microphones include Schoeps’ Colette series, DPA instrument mics, Neumann’s KM, TLM and M series, the AKG C414, and Sennheiser’s MKH omni/cardioid mics. Options for smaller budgets could include Line Audio, Røde, Oktava, SE, and Lauten’s LA series.

For the main omni microphone set, an AB stereo pair or a Decca Tree (or a combination of both) hanging or on a tall stand will capture a lot of the sound of the orchestra, with closer detail in the strings at the front. Two Omni microphones high on the outer front edges of the orchestra, often called “outriggers”, will pick up more of the outside strings and help to widen the image. Spot microphones in cardioid or wide cardioid could be placed on individual instruments that have solos, on pairs of players, or on groups of players. A spot mic list might commonly look like this: violins 1, violins 2, violas, cellos, double basses, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns (2 to 4 mics), brass (2 to 5 mics), timpani, percussion (2 to 10 mics), piano, celesta, soloist(s). A pair of Omni microphones could be placed or hung higher or further away in the hall to capture more of the hall’s natural reverb and the audience applause.

Note that depending on the acoustics of the space and the purpose of the recording, you could use very different combinations of hanging omni mics or spot mics, and you might need fewer or more microphones. The best is to use your ears and make decisions based on the sound you’re hearing!

Below are examples of hanging microphones and spot microphones on stands.

 

 

Mixing

The purpose of having the main omni set, spot mics, and ambient mics is to create a good balance between the acoustic of the room and the orchestra as a whole, and the closer detailed sound of individual instruments and sections. It’s a good idea to listen to reference recordings of the pieces and to hear a rehearsal of the orchestra beforehand so you can hear the conductor’s balance of the instruments and how it sounds in the space. Compared to mixing other genres, less processing is used as you’re trying to capture and enhance the natural sound and balance of the instruments, and orchestral music has a huge dynamic range. Commonly used processing includes EQ, subtle compression on some mics, a limiter/compressor on the master channel (especially if being a live broadcast and the overall level needs to be raised), and reverb to enhance the natural acoustic. Some reverbs favoured by classical engineers are Bricasti, Nimbus, Altiverb, and Seventh Heaven. Some engineers measure the delay between the spot mics and the main mics and input it into the DAW to time align the signals – you can decide whether this improves the sound or not. If doing a live mix, following the score is useful to anticipate solo parts, melodies, and textures that would be nice to highlight by bringing up the level of those spot mics. A fader controlling all mics could be used to subtly bring up the level in sections that are extremely quiet, especially if for broadcast. If mixing in post-production, automation or clip gain can be used to enhance solos and dynamics.

Surround sound and Atmos mixes are now being explored by many orchestras and audio engineers, often with the addition of specifically placed surround mics or sometimes as “up mixes” using the existing stereo microphone setup.

 

Editing

Unlike many other genres of music recording, editing a classical recording is done linearly on your timeline, cutting, pasting, and moving all tracks together. For a studio recording, you’ll likely have many takes to piece together. For a concert recording, some orchestras might request that the best parts of several concerts or rehearsals are edited together. Commonly used DAWs for orchestral recording are Pyramix and Sequoia, which have features convenient for large track count recording and editing. Source-destination editing allows you to easily listen to several takes and select the best parts to send to a destination track with a separate timeline, using in and out points. When editing several takes together, it’s important to use crossfades to make edits inaudible, and make sure the tempos (speed), dynamics, and energy of the music match when they are edited together. Some conductors and musicians like to schedule a listening and editing session with the engineer after a first edit has been made, while others like to receive an audio file and send back a list of feedback and suggestions for edit changes.

 

Further learning

If you’d like to go deeper into orchestral and classical music recording and mixing, a great resource is the book Classical Recording: A Practical Guide in the Decca Tradition. The DPA Mic University website also has useful articles about orchestra and classical instrument recording.

Photos were taken by India Hooi.

X