Sennheiser & Neumann are seeking two members of SoundGirls to intern with the company during the 2018 NAMM show. Interns will need to be available from January 25 – January 28, 2018.
Dates and Times
Responsibilities
Anaheim Convention Center North
Booth # – 14110
Payment will be a pair of Sennheiser headphones and microphone:HD280Pro and e835. You will also receive a letter of recommendation upon successful close of the show.
You’re also welcome to join Sennheiser for dinner each evening.
Please send a cover letter of why you would like to intern and a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org
Please join us upstairs at the Mulberry Bush pub near the South Bank in central London for a relaxed social evening. Celebrate our community and meet other UK SoundGirls – and there’ll be a pub quiz with prizes! All SoundGirls members and friends are welcome, please register via the website so we can judge numbers as space in the venue is limited.
All drinks and food are self-pay, the pub has a full menu available.
We look forward to seeing you there
SoundGirls will be hosting several events at NAMM. We hope you can join us for a few. We will also be hosting a few workshops the week following NAMM and ending with the following weekend with GIRLSCHOOL (stay tuned).
In addtion, if you would like to schedule a meeting with the directors of SoundGirls email us at soundgirls@soundgirls.org and we will be happy to set up meetings.
We would like to invite SoundGirls to join us for dinner on Saturday – Jan. 27th
We have reserved the private patio for SoundGirls at
Unami Burger
338 S Anaheim Blvd,Anaheim, CA 92805
8:00 pm to ?????
Stealth Sonics (www.stealthsonics.com), a manufacturer of in-ear monitors, is looking for 4-5 interns to cover work shifts their booth # – 11248 in Hall E at this year’s NAMM Show, as follows:
Dates and Times
Tuesday, January 24 – Setup day. We’ll begin around 10 am. We’ll be setting up both the booth and our demo room.
Wednesday–Saturday, January 25-27th – Show hours: 9:30 am – 6 pm. Arrive at the booth by 9:00 am on the 18th and 9:30 am on the 19th.
Sunday, January 28th – Show hours: 9:30 am – 5 pm. Arrive at booth by 9:30 am. Dismantle starts at 5 pm.
Responsibilities
Compensation
1) $150/Day + U2 Universal IEMs ($249 value)
OR
2) C9 Custom IEMs (color of their choice, valued at $1,499)
Please send resumes and cover letters to soundgirls@soundgirls.org
Every room has its sound. Your speaker monitors should be placed at the center of the room, right next to a wall, with a small distance from it. The positions of the speakers and your ears should be at an equal distance and form a perfect triangle. The next thing you should do is adding some acoustic treatment to the room. There are plenty of ways to do that. Check online for more detailed acoustic treatment solutions.
You should have several different songs that you have listened to on pretty much every playback device, and you know how it sounds in every type of environment. This will help you understand how the room that you work in sounds and should put you on the right track toward your desired mix.
I know that you want to hear that beefy low end and sizzling highs. And that’s fine I do too. There is time for that. But in order to make quick progress, first in order is to put the right sounds at the right spots. Mixing at SPL around 79dB to 82db is more than enough. After 8 hours spent on mixing at around 82dB to 85dB our ears became useless and with every increment by 3dB, you shorten your ears’ work hours by double.
Mixing is a time-consuming job. We often spend time listening to the same 3-4 minutes for hours. And guess what happens… Our ears adapt to the sounds we tend to make better. We are getting unable to hear the things we wanted to fix or change back when we started. I cannot stress enough how important is to take frequent breaks. Trust me on this; you don’t want to start all over again the next day.
Every Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) platform has built-in plug-ins. Most often they are not the best but will help you understand how compression, EQ, reverb, limiter and other components (depending on the DAW) are working. Spend some time working and understand what they do and how they do it before investing in some expensive 3rd party plug-ins.
Those are the mistakes every beginner does. Often I hear tracks with ear-piercing highs and with squashed dynamics at the most complex parts of the songs. So my first advice is to find what stops the high frequencies from standing out in the mix. Most often you will find that the problem is in the low end. Maybe you should first try to decrease the low end, and if that doesn’t do the trick, then you should try to increase the top end.
My second piece of advice is when you want to add compression to your music, always start from the loudest part of the track. Select it and play it on repeat. Start adding compression depending on the volume, speed, and complexity of that part. And once again be gentle. For the quiet parts, automatization could work just fine.
You should listen to your mixes thru various playback devices. Of course, the first thing that you are going to listen thru your mixes are your monitor speakers or headphones. My advice at the beginning is to go switch frequently between them. Because those are the referent devices with the flattest frequency response and are build to pinpoint every unwanted sound. Then you should move to the consumer playback devices such as laptops, phones, earbuds, cars, etc.
If what you hear satisfies your expectations then you can try to enjoy your work on some audiophile equipment. I prefer valve amplified speakers or a good pair of planar magnetic headphones.
Now you are finished with your mix. You are happy how it sounds. You have listened to the same track for more than a hundred times. All you have to do now is to depart from it for 24 hours. Give your brain a chance to forget what exactly happening in the track. After 24 hours come back at it. It’s very much possible that you will need to make some final adjustments. Now you are done. Play it to everyone.
Back in the day when mixing first came up, it was referred to “balancing.” In my opinion, that is a much more appropriate term to describe our job as mixing engineers. Our job is a form of art, and our obligation is to put every sound right where it belongs.
Guest author: Paul Schoff from SoundMaximum. An audiophile from Detroit.
SoundGirls Presents NAMM Mentoring Session
Join us for a Mentoring Session with Women Leaders in Professional Audio
You must be a member of SoundGirls, and you must register for the event. Space is Extremely Limited. You will receive venue address (venue is in Anaheim) with your confirmation.
This event will be a casual mentoring session – where you can get advice and answers to your questions. Groups will rotate between leaders specializing in Live Sound, Recording and Mastering, Broadcast Engineering and Professional Audio Sales.
Jeri Palumbo, a broadcast engineer, audio mixer and RF (radio frequency) tech
Jeri is a broadcast engineer, audio mixer and RF (radio frequency) tech who, for the past 25 years, has specialized in working on high-profile sports shows. Jeri is a technical whiz and a regular on the frontlines of events like the Super Bowl, NBA, NHL playoffs and most recently the World Series. Jeri is part of the RF Coordination Team each year for the Rose Bowl. She has also worked entertainment broadcasts including The Oscars, The Tonight Show, American Idol and others.
Karrie Keyes – Monitor Engineer for Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder – Executive Director and Co-Founder of SoundGirls.Org
Karrie has spent the last 25 plus years as the monitor engineer for Pearl Jam. Karrie started out doing sound for punk bands in Los Angeles in 1986 under the tutelage of Dave Rat of Rat Sound, where she spent twenty years helping to establish the company. She was able to gain an immense amount of hands-on experience and technical knowledge at Rat, which eventually led to her becoming the monitor engineer for The Red Hot Chili Peppers from 1990-2000. She first met and started working with Pearl Jam who opened for RHCP on their 1991-1992 Blood Sugar Sex Magic Tour. She has worked with Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and Neil Young.
Erika Earl – Director of Hardware Engineering for Slate Digital and Slate Media Technology
From pulling out the soldering iron to setting up microphones around a drum kit, Erika Earl brings experience from all sides of the professional audio business. Her understanding of audio electronics was earned through more than a decade of experience repairing, servicing, and performing quality control for a wide range of top manufacturers, including Tube-Tech, Drawmer, Focusrite, Daking, Bock Audio, Avid, Little Labs, and many others.
She has also engineered for studios and run FOH throughout Arizona and California. Erika served as Head of Technology and Chief Technician for LA’s landmark studio The Village. When she’s not thinking through a schematic or evaluating the subtleties of a tube compressor, you’re likely to find her sifting through her collection of vintage records and rare books.
Leslie Gaston-Bird Vice President for the Audio Engineering Society’s Western Region & Associate Professor of Recording Arts at the University of Colorado Denver
Leslie Gaston-Bird Vice President for the Audio Engineering Society’s Western Region & Associate Professor of Recording Arts at the University of Colorado Denver. Leslie is also proud to chair the AES’ Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She has almost 30 years of experience in audio for film and video, music recording, and radio. She graduated from the Audio Technology program at Indiana University in 1989. She also holds a BA in telecommunications and an MS in recording arts. She has worked for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., Colorado Public Radio in Denver, as recording engineer for the Colorado Symphony and as a sound editor for Post Modern Company in Denver. She has performed soundtrack restoration on films from the Sony/Columbia Pictures archives and is one of the pioneers of a music video production style she calls “Music Video Vérité”. She runs her own freelance audio post-production company, Mix Messiah Productions, LLC. She is also a Fulbright Scholar.
Katy Templeman-Holmes is the Director of Marketing for Professional, at HARMAN
At Harman, she has held several roles including; as a Product Manager based in Switzerland, running US Sales for Recording & Broadcast, training FOH & monitor engineers taking consoles on tour, running product development for a handful of different industries, and Director of Solutions and Marketing for Hospitality and Broadcast.
Grace Royse – Live Sound Engineer and Production Manager
Grace Royse is a Live Sound Engineer and Production Manager with 11 years of experience in world touring.Clients include Sublime with Rome, Fitz and the Tantrums, Maintaining a background in studio productions, business management, and artist development, she has mentored several young men and women over the years, all successfully working within the industry today.”
Vanessa Silberman is a National DIY Touring Singer (playing over 330 shows in 2015-2017), Guitarist, Songwriter, Record Producer-Engineer-Mixer, Independent A&R and has an Artist Development Label called A Diamond Heart Production (Down & Outlaws, The Punch) from Los Angeles. She was also the founding member of the LA band Diamonds Under Fire (2002-2013).
Jett Galindo Audio and Vinyl Mastering Engineer at The Bakery
Jett Galindo is an audio & vinyl mastering engineer from The Bakery, located on the Sony Pictures Lot in Culver City. With credits spanning different genres and legendary artists (Bette Midler, Nile Rodgers, Colbie Caillat, to name a few), Jett carries on the legacy left behind by her late mentor, mastering legend Doug Sax of The Mastering Lab.
A GRAMMY Voting Member (P&E Wing) & Latin GRAMMY nominee, Jett is also an accomplished soprano who specializes in choral ensemble music. Jett also devotes part of her time writing for SoundGirls and volunteering for Berklee College of Music as an Alumni Ambassador.
Ali “A MAC” McGuire has worked worldwide on albums, International/ US Tours, and charity projects alongside internationally recognized artists. Ali required recording, mixing, production, and live sound skills through a combination of experience and certification. Ali has worked with such artist as Fetty Wap, Post Malone, Hed PE, Big Daddy Kane, Dick Van Dyke, Whitney Peyton and more. Ali recently moved from Philadelphia to LA to take her business, Amaculent Entertainment LLC, to the next level. Ali is currently working out of a few great studio’s and venues in LA; recording, mixing and producing for the next generation of artists and more.
Sara Elliot VP of Operations and CoFounder of VUE Audiotechnik
With more than 20 years of experience in professional audio, Sara has held strategic marketing and operational positions with numerous sound production companies including Burns Audio, A-1 Audio, and PRG. Sara also served as Director of Marketing and Sales for Live Sound International Magazine and ProSoundweb.com, two of the industry’s most respected news and technical information sources. Sara brings to VUE Audiotechnik a wealth of industry relationships and a deep understanding of business operations.
Fela Davis Sound Engineer and Owner of 23db Productions
Fela Davis is a co-owner at 23db Productions based out of New York City. She’s a graduate of Full Sail University and has over a decade of experience in audio engineering. Her past experiences include working with industry powerhouses Clair Broadcast and House of Blues. When she’s not mixing or mastering songs for 23db Productions, she’s mixing front of house engineer for the 5-time Grammy award winning jazz artist Christian McBride, and Grammy-nominated Ottmar Liebert.
Claire holds a Bachelors degree in Music Technology from Hertfordshire University in the UK. She has 8 years of professional touring experience as both guitar/backline tech and as Tour Manager. She now lives in Los Angeles, having relocated from London and tours exclusively as a guitar tech. She has a business in the UK providing storage for bands and local companies in London, and previously provided rental sprinter vans.
Catharine Wood Recording – Mix Engineer – Owner Planetwood Studios – Catharine is a Los Angeles-based composer/producer/engineer with a recording studio in Los Angeles. With a background in audio post-production for commercials, Catharine engineered on the first iPhone commercial among hundreds of national and international campaigns – including the Geico Caveman and Priceline Negotiator spots. As a mix and mastering engineer, she has engineered on over 300 commercially released songs – including her own custom compositions which have aired on NBC, ABC, BBC, ESPN and more – both nationally and abroad. She is a GRAMMY® Voting Member and Producers & Engineers Wing member. Catharine currently holds a position on the LA Recording School’s Recording Arts Program Advisory Committee and is the former Director of Southern California for the West Coast Songwriters organization. She is a voting member of the Society of Composers and Lyricists, a Board Member of the California Copyright Conference and longtime professional member of NARIP and AIMP. Her company, Planetwood Studios, LLC (parent company of Planetwood Productions, established 2002) specializes in producing singer-songwriters and providing engineering, production and composition services to the TV, Film and Recording industries.
Tiffany Hendren Live Sound FOH and Monitor Engineer
Tiffany Hendren is a monitor engineer at The Pageant in St. Louis and the House Engineer for the Del Mar. She tours as the FOH Engineer for “A Silent Film.” She has been involved in sound professionally for around seven years, full-time about five. Tiffany is the Co-Director of SoundGirls.Org.
Jessica Berg – Tour Manager and Live Sound Engineer
Jessica is a freelance TM/FOH/MON engineer and is currently touring as the TM for Phoebe Ryan. Jessica is SoundGirls.Org’s Director of Development. She is honored and excited to be volunteering with a growing organization and community that is achieving its mission – to help empower the next generation of women in audio, expanding opportunities for girls and women in the audio and music production fields, and sharing resources and knowledge through cooperation, collaboration, and diversity.
Daniella Peters – Head of Sales and Management Team at Rat Sound Systems
Daniella has been with Rat Sound for over 15 years building their sales dept from a concept to a multi-million dollar part of their business. She started off her career working for an international cosmetics company doing their live event production. She then transitioned to HHB Audio and Ashdown Music, Emap Performance (Kerrang and Q magazines) in London and now with Rat Sound.
She is passionate about women’s issues and spends a good portion of her spare time using her production skills to produce and host music and fashion fundraising events for various women’s non-profits.
Mary Broadbent is a Tour Manager and Backline Tech. Mary is the Tour Manager and Backline/Guitar Tech for The Mowgli’s and The Staves. She’s also worked with Chris Isaak, Fitz and the Tantrums, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Most recently she jumped behind the soundboard for the first time on tour with Wrabel as TM/FOH.
SoundGirls is a non-profit dedicated to empowering the next generation of women in audio. SoundGirls has grown to over 4,000 members worldwide and we could not have done it without the support of our community. We thank all of our members who have supported us for the past five years. We hope you will consider us on #GivingTuesday.
For every tax-deductible donation of $15 or more, you will receive a SoundGirls button and sticker. Make a donation here
Kelly Sayer, the young and passionate recording engineer at KIDinaKORNER studios, discusses who inspires her to keep striving for success in a male-dominated industry
Who can aspiring female engineers look up to?
Every engineer has role models that they can aspire to be like. And as a Berklee College of Music graduate who works for a Grammy-award winning producer, I’ve been lucky to learn directly from some of my own. The trouble is that, since there are so few females in this industry, it’s no surprise that most of our role models are male.
Aspiring female engineers need successful female role models
Since women seem to need to work twice as hard to prove ourselves as we start to break through the prejudices of the engineering world. So I want to give praise to two of my own greatest inspirations, in the hopes that their successes might inspire some of the other determined women out there.
In an interview with Tape Op in 2002, Leanne explained that music is an emotional art that desperately calls for the participation of more females. With over 30 years of experience as both an engineer and a producer, Leanne’s remarkable discography prove that women can break the mold.
She is best known for the seven albums that she produced and engineered with Leonard Cohen as well as having worked with Laurie Anderson, The Temptations, and Tom Jones, to name just a few.
As my professor in college, Leanne encouraged me not to connect every struggle I face in the studio with being a girl. She reminded me that there would be difficult sessions and difficult people, who might even be equally as difficult towards a male engineer, but at the end of the day, it is going to matter most that I can believe in myself and be proud of the work that I create.
Susan Rogers: Another highly successful woman in the industry, Susan is internationally recognized for her work with Prince on albums such as Purple Rain, Sign o’ the Times, Around the World in a Day, Parade, and The Black Album.
From establishing herself as a tech in Los Angeles to solidifying her reputation as one of the most successful recording engineers in the world, all the way to acquiring her doctorate in music cognition and psychoacoustics, Susan has not let the bias’ of the industry slow her down for even one moment.
When seeking production advice from her on an EP that I produced earlier this year, Susan told me to let the song drive me – the arrangement has to serve the song (and often, the vocal), not detract from it. Her philosophy also reminded me that if you keep your focus on the music (which is what drew most of us into this line of work, to begin with), everything else falls into place. When you are making good music – music that you love – that’s what really matters and prejudices that might usually get in the way of the creative process become irrelevant.
These two incredible women are both examples that show how we as women can defy the odds and make a name for ourselves as successful engineers if we set our minds to it. And there are many others like them. So I encourage you to go out and seek female role models, whether you know them on a personal level or not, who can inspire you to keep pushing boundaries and persevere they way that they did.
“I like to approach engineering from the eye’s (and ears) of a musician. Having trained as a singer myself, it has been invaluable for me to know what it feels like to be on both sides of the microphone”.
To Find More Role Models and Inspiration Check Out SoundGirls Profiles on the 5%
Kelly Sayer is a passionate audio engineer, songwriter, and vocal producer. Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, she is currently based in Los Angeles, where she is employed as head engineer for platinum-selling record producer Alex Da Kid.