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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.

Ready to start your own Recording and Music Production Studio?

Are you thinking about starting your own business as a recording studio or music producer?

Have you recently finished audio school or interning? Have you simply been recording and producing on your own for a while, but are hesitant to go into business for yourself?

It can be intimidating or outright terrifying to think about putting up your virtual “open for business” sign as a freelance audio engineer or music producer. I totally understand! I had been teaching voice and songwriting lessons for 15 years but had only been “dabbling” in recording and production for a few years. I was terrified when I moved to a new city with no contacts and publicly announced that I was a recording engineer and music producer. At that moment in time, it was sink or swim. I had to buckle down and do it or I was going to have to go find a regular day job.

Now that my production business has been thriving for about 12 years, I’ve learned a few things! I came up with  8 tips that should help you get started today.

Create a business entity.

The easiest way to establish a business in the US is to start a sole proprietorship. Check your local city and state requirements, but it should be very simple using your social security number and home address. There are other entity options if you think you may have a more complicated situation, so be sure to check with your tax accountant to figure out what is best for you. In most cases, however, keep it simple and set it up as a Sole Proprietor and establish a “Doing Business As” or DBA. If you have a studio name or producer name you’ve been dying to use, make it official!

Establish your brand around your strengths and talents.

There are a lot of recording studios and a lot of producers. What sets you apart? What areas are you feeling really confident in? Focus on those areas and build your brand around them. Since I was a voice teacher when I started to learn how to record and produce, I started working with my students on their songwriting and creating demos to present to their producers. We did mock recording sessions to prepare them for their real recording sessions in the studio. After doing this for a number of years, I began recording the vocals for their final projects, eventually learning to edit them, mix them and do all vocal production. It was a process that took me several years but I was proficient with vocal production long before I knew how to mix a drum kit. What could be your niche? Are you a guitar player so you really know how to dial in tones? Are you an expert at micing up a drum kit? Create your niche around what you do best while you continue to build your knowledge in the areas you are less confident. As soon as you feel confident in other areas, shift your messaging and your brand to include it.

Create your client avatar around the niche you’ve established.

Now that you know what your niche will be in the recording and/or music production business, figure out your client avatar; what is their age, gender, what are their insecurities, and what are their problems you can solve? Will they all be remote or all local or a combination? All of your messaging and marketing; from your website copy to your photos should appeal to this client avatar.

Take yourself seriously.

You’ll be tempted to charge the lowest rate possible, work the craziest latest hours, and bend over backward to please clients that are never happy, just to bring in work. Knowing your value, in whatever niche you decide to focus on, and presenting yourself that way will attract people who are willing to pay what you are worth and respect your time and talent. Keep your rate competitive but shine in other areas, such as attention to detail, turn-around time, professionalism or just being fun.

Make your studio a comfortable, professional space with a vibe that makes you happy.

Do your best to present your space as professional and comfortable. Especially if you have clients coming to your home studio, make sure that it’s clean and presentable and as disconnected from “family living” as possible. I understand it’s not always possible to make a home studio feel like it’s not in your home. Believe me, I’ve had a variety of home studios and some situations were more ideal than others. Two studios ago, clients had to walk through the living room, kitchen, and family room to get down to the studio. Ugh! I hated it, but it was the only option at the time. I always kept the house as clean as possible (with teenagers….it wasn’t always easy!) And remember, this will be your “workspace” which is why you want to create a space and vibe where you are happy. If it’s adding plants, lava lamps, LED lights or whatever, do it a little at a time and make it your “happy place”.

Set up your website with testimonials and portfolio.

Marketing 101 advice is to have your own website because platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are just rentals. You do not have a direct connection with your clients or potential clients on social media. Every business should have a “home base” where people can come and get a clear picture that you are legit. Grab a domain with your business name that you’ve registered using GoDaddy. The annual fee to own this domain is relatively cheap. As soon as you have even just a few songs that demonstrate your abilities and a few happy clients, create a website (use a simple website-building platform such as Wix or Squarespace). Remember to keep the website simple. It could even be one page. Make a simple statement about who you are and what you can do for your client avatar, a professional picture, a few testimonials and a playlist widget featuring your work.

Start your email list.

This is how you connect with your audience and potential clients. Use a free email marketing program such as Mailchimp to add a “subscribe” widget to your website. Begin building this list and send updates once a month. These don’t need to be time-consuming or extravagant. What this does is it builds your authority and lets people who stop by your website know, “Oh, this person is serious.” Provide value to this audience and nurture it. Ask them to reply to questions so you can better understand them. Be real in your messages so that they feel like they can trust you.

Conduct yourself like a professional in all aspects of your life.

Keep the angry rants at your mother or ex off of social media. If your branding is political, keep it professional and “kind”. Go to networking events and shake people’s hands. If you “cold call/message” potential clients, do not spam them with copy/paste messages. If a client decides not to work with you or isn’t happy with your work, be humble and understanding. If given the opportunity, ask them what they were unhappy with and listen, rather than get defensive. Do not gossip or talk badly about others in your field.

That’s it! See, it’s not really that hard at all. I hope this was helpful and that you can ROCK your own Recording Studio/Music Production Business!

SoundGirls L-Acoustics Grants

SoundGirls L-Acoustics Grants

 

L-Acoustics is offering 4 grants for courses in the L-Acoustics Education Program. The Education Team has structured the grants to relate to certain job profiles to help the recipient advance their knowledge and skills in their respective fields:

These grants focus on offering access to in-person training via our packaged seminars. For in-person attendance of courses, hotel accommodations are included with the grant. Grant recipients are responsible for any additional travel expenses. If the recipient is unable to attend an in-person training within 4 months before the grant expiration date or the recipient demonstrates a financial hardship with attending an in-person training, the recipient will be offered online training options instead. 

Prospective candidates must be members of SoundGirls and have until September 1, 2023, to submit their application. Winners will be announced on the website and social media by September 30, 2023. Candidates can only apply for one choice of grant.

The recipient can choose to attend the courses at any time within the 1-year time frame starting from the time of being informed of their award.

System Technician Grant

This grant consists of enrollment in the following courses in the L-Acoustics Education Program:

System & Workflow 

Establish your role in the L-Acoustics ecosystem and align your practice with the latest tools and state-of-the-art workflow

K System of choice (K1, K2, K3, Kara II, or Kiva II) or L2 Training

Recognize the standard configurations of the benchmark Kx or L2 system and gain hands-on experience rigging and listening to them.

L-Acoustics System Implementation

Advance your skills in implementing a safe and functional L-Acoustics system and prepare it for calibration.

This grant aims to empower the trainee to learn how to mount, rig, cable, and connect an L-Acoustics system.

It also aims to give the learner knowledge of:

Completion of the courses in this grant includes 1-year access to the L-Acoustics Education Platform learning community and content for all the courses.

APPLY HERE

System Engineer Grant

The recipient requires prior completion or concurrent enrollment to System & Workflow, or previous completion of System Fundamentals. This grant consists of enrollment in the following courses in the L-Acoustics Education Program:

Soundvision

Learn the most advanced software functionalities for 3D venue modeling, system simulation, and line source optimization.

Drive System

Master the configuration, control, and monitoring of an L-Acoustics system from the source output to the loudspeaker inputs.

M1-P1 Measurement & Tuning

Learn how to record measurements with the P1 processor and how to perform a loudspeaker system tuning with the M1 software.

This grant aims to empower the trainee to learn how to design and calibrate an L-Acoustics system. It also aims to deepen the learner’s understanding of:

Completion of the courses in this grant includes 1-year access to the L-Acoustics Education Platform learning community and content for all the courses.

APPLY HERE

L-ISA Grant

The recipient requires prior completion or concurrent enrollment to System & Workflow, or previous completion of System Fundamentals. This grant invites the recipient to attend all the L-ISA-focused courses from L-Acoustics Education:

L-ISA Technology

Start your immersive journey with an overview of the L-ISA Technology from loudspeaker system design, object-based mixing, immersive audio algorithms to project workflow.

L-ISA Loudspeaker System

Master key system engineering steps in planning and deploying L-ISA systems: loudspeaker system design, implementation, and calibration. The grant allows access to online or onsite training for this course.

L-ISA Live Mixing

Create an immersive live mix, directly from your desk input channels or from an original left-right mix.

L-ISA Preproduction

Learn and experience the preproduction process of an L-ISA live event from the studio to the venue, anticipating the constraints of the large scale.

This grant empowers the trainee to design, implement, and calibrate an L-Acoustics L-ISA system. This grant also empowers the trainee to prepare, encode, and control objects in an L-ISA mix as well as create a mix in L-ISA when walking up to an L-ISA system with or without preproduction. It also aims to deepen the student’s understanding of:

Completion of the courses in this grant includes 1-year access to the L-Acoustics Education Platform learning community and content for all the courses.

APPLY HERE

System Expert Grant

This grant consists of enrollment in the following courses in the L-Acoustics Education Program:

Variable Curvature Line Source

Perfect your understanding of line source behavior to optimize your mechanical design and use of electronic settings. 

Loudspeaker System Calibration

Develop a comprehensive approach to calibration in the entire workflow of a project.

This grant aims to empower the trainee to advance their understanding of system optimization as well as to learn about:

Completion of the courses in this grant includes 1-year access to the L-Acoustics Education Platform learning community and content for all the courses.

APPLY HERE

Mental Health on Tour

 

More of the industry is now beginning to talk about the mental health of everyone within it, specifically those of us who are affected by being on tour. Unfortunately, even with those who advocate for it, the majority of the industry is still greatly affected by terrible mental health conditions. In general terms, the tours, the companies, etc. do not seem to care beyond presenting to the public that they have been to panels, or participated in workshops, but do not actually apply it to their team. How do we practice what we preach? How do we hold the correct people responsible?

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if mental health in the industry had a handbook or a map of sorts?

Tamsin Embleton does just that with her book Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual.

Topics Include:

Embleton clearly did her six years of research and three years of writing with over 80 interviews with other professionals in the industry. The book covers A LOT of ground: addiction, the general stress of the industry, depression of post-show/tour, the anxiety of travel days and pre-show, eating disorders and why we don’t get much nutrition while out on the road, relationships you form within the industry and outside of it, and the most common health issues we see in the industry

On the opposite end of that spectrum, however, Embleton recently made public “A call to arms from a touring friend, who has worked on the road for several decades at a high level. We need those in positions of power to carefully consider the health implications of routing and scheduling. We need systemic and cultural change.”

 

Do we need to hold the companies responsible for these conditions? Do we as the technical team need to speak up more and say “No. I’m not doing that.” when we could lose our jobs if we were to utter such a phrase? Do the artists and performers need to be more understanding when they ask for something to be done and be prepared to be told no? Who do we hold accountable? If we were to hold the companies responsible, or the artists were to be prepared to hear no, or the techies say no loudly, what would the new cost of this be, and who’s new cost would it be?

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