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Small Venue Survival Guide Part 2

The sound check and gig – and what is in my bag

Welcome to part 2 of my small venue survival guide, or all the little things I wish someone had told me when I set out on this journey. The tips in this guide should hopefully help you own the small venue gig, rather than the small venue gig owning you.

YOU CAN READ PART ONE HERE

If you have followed the steps described in part 1, then you should by now have a desk and sound system that kind of works, or at least you have figured out what works and what doesn’t and have prepared a few workarounds. You have set up several mics and have sorted out feedback. There are some basic effects dialled into your desk and you have a vague idea about what number of musicians to expect on stage and with what kind of instruments. Now the bands have arrived and it’s time to sound check.

First, introduce yourself: “Hello I’m So And So and I’m doing your sound tonight”. It makes everything a bit less impersonal and helps everyone understand that yes, you are the sound engineer, not the wardrobe or the bar person or something. Get the performers’ names and write them down somewhere, that’s a nice touch. At this point, I take a moment to go over the tech specs with the band. Again. Because the riders will be wrong. Also, bands and touring engineers often seem to be in a hurry at this point. I try to avoid that and like to take the time to go over things – properly. How then do you do that? My trick is…..coffee. Or tea. It helps to keep the people in one place. Make a cup of something hot and offer it to whoever wants one, especially whoever you need to talk to.

Then, take out your input list that you’ve printed out in part 1, lay it out, and go over it point by point and channel by channel. Taking the time to go over this properly somehow helps to set a different pace for the rest of the night compared to rushing through things. That time you checked how many channels you have on your desk that work, where the dodgy ones are, and where you can’t fit your active DIs?

Now is when this comes in handy. Band shows up with a 48 channel count but you only have 18 and a half that are usable? Time to discuss whether that snare needs two mics or if everyone needs two wedges, etc. Go over it and make sure it all fits and what should be adapted. Once established keep your input list on you all the time. Take a photo of it (you’ll immediately lose it somewhere). And have some spare ones.

Once your final number of inputs and sends is decided on, proceed to mic’ing up the rest of the instruments. If you’ve come prepared as per Small Venue Guide 1, you already have some mics out, with their stands and working cables ready. Sometimes in a very small venue mic’ing up will be just kick, vocals, and whatever is electronic. Figure out what approach your venue size calls for and what the sound system can deliver. If you’ve got limited power, put the least amount of inputs through it and try to keep backline noise down. The more power you have, and the larger the place, the more you’ll be able to run through the PA. Label any cable that may be unplugged and swapped around for something else at any point in the evening. It saves you a lot of headaches.

In small venues with no clear headliner, I sometimes sound check in order of appearance. Especially if the bands share backline. Make do with whatever band members are there and just check more instruments as people arrive. I can often get away with sound-checking only one band. Also, in that case, and if bands are similar, I find it counterproductive to create a scene for each band, as often the mix gets better during the first gig and I don’t want to return to a scene of how things were left just after sound check. In that case, I work “the analog way”. I make sure everything is on the surface in one single scene, even if that means some faders are muted and unused. The one downside of this is that guitar amps may get turned up or down by different bands, which can mean you’ll have to do gain adjustments which will have some impact, see below, on monitors.

I tend to try to start sound-check with vocals and keep vocal mics open during soundcheck. Since in small venues, everything is so close together, vocal mics will pick up everything else on stage, from guitars to cymbals. Kick drum can be feeding back through a vocal mic that was not hi-passed high enough. There is plenty of reverb on the drums just from what is picked up by the vocal mics.

Getting the vocals above the band racket is usually the biggest issue in small venues. Your gig volume is determined by the loudest instrument on stage, which usually is the drums. Or, well, guitars. But guitars can be turned down – although that sometimes involves extended negotiation…. or threats. Regarding this, however, there is a good trick which is to point their cabinet right at the guitarist and raise it from the floor. I also try to send some of the guitars to monitors so that they can keep amp levels a bit lower. But, with drums, you can’t do that. (I have a trick up my sleeve and it is called… Cympads. Now these little things have saved more little venue gigs than I can think of. And sometimes even bigger ones. I can’t think of enough occasions where there would have been no chance whatsoever for anyone to hear even a hint of the vocals if it wasn’t for….Cympads. They are little rubber things that dampen and shorten the ring of cymbals so that drummers can bash away at their heart’s desire and ….magic happens … you can still hear vocals.)

In a small venue, you will also invariably be doing monitors from FOH. Here the trick is clear communication. I often tell performers how I’d like them to tell me what they want. Typically, that would be “point at what you want, and then show me whether you want it up or down”. It is also a good idea to give them a bit of monitors of what you think they’ll need before you ask each musician what they want. At the minimum, for vocalists, it will be some of themselves. Guitars often want to hear other guitars and the bassist and drummer like to be able to hear each other.

When you do monitors from FOH  one important aspect to remember is that everything you’ll do to your gains will affect what is being sent to individual monitors as well. One trick that some do is to copy some channels and make them dedicated monitor channels, with their settings. Which is sometimes good, sometimes a faff. If you don’t do that then you need to remember that every time you put your gain up volume will go up in the monitor too. And when you put your gain down, the opposite will happen. With that in mind, one thing I insist on is for keyboard players – or anything electronic – to have their master volume at least ¾ if not all the way up. I’ve had the unpleasant experience of finding out what happens if some keyboard has their master volume setting inadvertently changed from very low to very high between sound check and gig. Unfortunately, on that particular occasion, the keyboard player was also the lead vocalist and not someone buried in the mix, and … well….essentially the whole gig was about them. And chaos ensued. Trying to figure out on the fly how to compensate for the difference to the original gain setting so that it fits both your FOH mix again and what you were sending to mons while the whole band gesticulates at you and 300 heads look the wrong way… it’s not a good feeling. Tell keyboard players to have their master volume up at least three-quarters.

And finally, don’t forget that a full room will sound very different from the empty room you did your sound check. This has good aspects to it as feedback will be a lot more forgiving. On the other hand, some stuff may sound different. As your gig starts, walk around a bit to get an idea of how it sounds in other places, and …..enjoy your gig. You’re the pilot and your journey into sound is slowly taking off!

In part 3 we will talk about what’s in my bag, and all the little titbits that will keep things running smoothly, get you out of trouble, and make you the hero of the day, from Torx screwdrivers to drum keys via slow blow fuses…

Next: Small venue survival guide – Part 3: What’s in my bag

Gertie Steinacker started in live sound, after working in production for several festivals, about 15 years ago in Switzerland, attending a 2-year course and then working in local venues. Later on, music production became the priority but a few years ago she got sucked back into being behind a mixer again. Her time is now split between live sound, translation work, trying to finish a Ph.D., and music production.

You can currently find her at FOH or on monitors in various venues around London and Sheffield such as the 100 Club and the Foundry as well as working with several independent and underground promoters.

Deep Fakes, Weapon Printing, and Virtual Reality

“The sky is like a bad dream and the earth is in cahoots.” The Drones

 

I’m not talking about sound or music today because I’m scared. Here are three anxieties I want to share with you:

In 2020, Taiwanese YouTuber Chu Yu-Chen ran an extraordinary Telegram group. The group was called “Taiwan Internet Celebrities”. To join, you only had to pay an entrance fee of between 100NT and 400NT (around 10 USD). It was a boys club, rich with bad taste misogynistic Trump-flavored language, and an eerie, implicit pact of silence. Now and then, a voting poll would be issued: “Which celebrities’ porn video you want to see next?”. After the voting, Chu would get to work and deep fake the celebrities’ faces into a porn video. It took him and his business partner around a day to render realistic enough content, but they would keep the gears running non-stop with both celebrity and non-celebrity videos that you could commission for an extra fee. All of this happened without the victims’ knowledge and consent, of course, and it was a matter of time before these videos were leaked outside of the Telegram group and the victims saw them. Chu Yu-Chen was sued for it in April 2021 and sentenced to five years in prison in 2023 for the nonconsensual creation of deep fake porn videos of 119 victims. Some of the victims were celebrities, others were women targeted by their exes for revenge porn and some were unsuspecting women preyed upon by obsessed acquaintances.

In 2024, OpenAI unveiled Sora and its incredible capabilities to create hyper-realistic 1-minute long videos from a text prompt with a render time of about an hour.

In May 2013, the first 3d printed handgun was fired in a shooting range in Austin, Texas. It was called Liberator and was capable of firing 8-10 rounds before breaking, but most builds exploded into pieces on the first shot. The distribution of its 3d models challenged gun control laws around the globe; if you had a 3d printer, you could print the undetectable and deadly Liberator. Since then, stricter regulation has been passed in several countries and states, but the gun printing community has only grown stronger. In 2020, the FGC-9 was released. Its initials stand for “Fuck Gun Control”. It’s an open-source, 3d printable, semi-automatic 9mm carbine developed by Deterrence Dispensed, whose alleged sympathy for the United States far-right movements like the Boogaloo Boys is hinted by the naming of some of their weapon designs (like the Yankee Boogle, an AR-15 mod that makes the all-time favorite weapon for mass shooters a fully automatic rifle). In the words of the FGC-9 creator, Jacob Duygu: “You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you’re capable of great violence. If you’re not capable of violence you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless”.

Back in the mid-90s you only saw executives and CEOs using mobile phones on the street, and as kids we would shout “Buy! Buy! Sell!” in Catalan, trying to make fun of the likely high-rise office investor and its gimmicky gadget. Fast-forward a few years and we were all sending SMS to each other. Today’s sci-fi shout-funny-things-to-whoever-wears-it tool is either the Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest Pro. Videos making fun of people wearing these headsets in public are trending on TikTok and Instagram. Fast-forward a few years from now and we’ll surely Black Mirror our way into Virtual Reality. It could be argued that we’re already there, with more and more cases of harassment and assaults being reported in virtual chat rooms and games, the most notable and infuriating being the alleged gang rape of a minor in January 2024.

The world is fast turning into a sci-fi bad dream, full of technological wonders beyond our 90s kid imagination that come with an overlooked dark side. One could argue that, for example, gun printing tools give communities a fighting chance against oppression, like Myanmar’s rebels against the 2021 military coup d’état and current Junta. But whenever I’m tempted to condone a tool created by an alleged incel like Duygu, praise Meta’s virtual landscapes, or celebrate yet another AI mastering tool… I don’t know, I get an itch a sudden need to go to a nearby forest, sit on a rock, listen to the birds, and read Audre Lorde.

Judit K. (Barcelona, 1984) is a restless musician in constant transformation with a passion for glitchy, noisy, loud and almost annoying sounds. She’s been playing keyboards with Obsidian Kingdom from 2016 to 2021 and now is the girl behind the synths in Lys Morke. She’s also a solo artist working on her second album SAFO.EXE, a reinterpretation of Safo’s poetry from the end of the world. She combines her passion for music with feminist and lgtbiq+ activism. You can find her sharing musical and political content (and selfies, bc why not) on instagram: @_juditk

In the Zone

Mental health has become a significant topic of discussion among peers in the years following the pandemic. As we gear up for new shows and tours, we must continue these conversations. It matters for getting us through long tours, and for navigating our time off the road as well. Aside from these obvious benefits, taking care of myself and developing professional routines helps me with my creative endeavors as an engineer, and ensuring I’m in prime condition gives me notable advantages to help deliver a quality show every night. I’m going to take time in this next article to highlight some actionable steps I take to feel like I’m able to achieve focus and be in the zone during a show.

Just like an athlete has to visualize their success and optimize themselves for a big game, we should also take into consideration routines and activities that help us achieve peak performance. The goal is to not necessarily think about the music, but rather to feel it and jive with it, so what steps can we take to help us achieve this?

Routines

Developing personal practices to improve your physical and mental well-being can help maximize the outcome of the show.

You can start exploring what works for you by talking with your friends and family on the road and back home, and by visiting the plethora of wellness resources available to us in these communities.  It takes time to develop this skill, especially if you’re not already pre-dispositioned for the lifestyle or if you struggle with mental health.

Personal care is important. Figure out sleep routines, food, and proper care for your feet. You don’t want to feel physically or mentally unwell when they call “Go for show.” Take care of your coworkers, also. You all operate as a unit, after all.

Technical Considerations

Prep and rehearsal time should be used wisely to help you optimize your day. I work closely with the audio provider and audio team to make sure we have all the necessary tools to have the rig well-suited to what I need, accommodating for potential lack of space in some venues and maximizing efficiency. I find it best to prep my control package myself so I know each detail is at its full potential and I can roll into show day and set up with little hesitation. My workbox is sorted and my cases are well labeled. My world is also set up comfortably in a way that allows me to have access to necessary personnel during the show.

I’ve spent considerable time making sure I take time to elevate my system tuning skills and understand the jargon fluently. I include as many tools in my FOH package as possible so I can quickly tune a system; wireless units such as Lectrosonics have been immensely beneficial in letting me tune quickly in theaters and arenas alike. I’ve developed a target curve that’s appropriate for the show I mix and for my ear, and have an expectation for an SPL target every day. We’ll explore this in depth later in a future article.

Mixing can be similar to a performance. If you’re a musician, you understand how critical it is to internalize the details. If you’re in the creative hot seat, you need to know the music inside and out so you can relax and enjoy yourself, and start thinking about the music rather than the sound. We have a unique role and it’s vital for us to help deliver a seamless, distraction-free show. Learning how to master the catalog is different for everyone; I’ll also dive into this in greater detail later.

The Bigger Picture

Making sure you’ve taken steps to minimize errors is crucial. Personally, my least favorite shows are usually subjective and stem from a lack of comfort. The show always goes on, but the nightly responsibility is to always try and exceed my expectations and help deliver a stellar show as often as possible. Being timid or apprehensive during the show reflects in the mix when you miss solos or fader pushes, or are slow to resolve issues. Proper personal and technical preparation before the show can address many of these challenges.

Gender in the Workplace Part 2

A Nonbinary Individual’s Foray into Corporate A.V.

I think my boss gave up on trying to remember my pronouns.

It started about two weeks in. During the hiring and application process, as well as preliminary training, I could tell he was trying. But after seeing how my other coworkers could skirt past it, I suppose he figured he could, too.

I don’t mean any harm to any of my coworkers, I would like to point out. The two 62-year-old guys’ guys can’t be held to the same standard as I could hold a Gen-Z’er with similar political ideologies to me. I don’t hold it against them, as I’m simply chronicling my experience in this line of work. But, and I mean this from the heart, I don’t want to work somewhere where I’m not seen as myself.

My entire A.V. team consists of men, with one exception. Since my transfem coworker quit, there’s only myself and one woman who bucks the trend. She’s a 26-year-old with a music degree and left-leaning views and sees herself as on the older end of Gen-Z. As you can imagine, she’s been my light in the dark during the harder days. She’s fairly consistent with getting my pronouns correct, as well, which is encouraging, especially seeing that I don’t think anyone else has tried.

I have a pin on my messenger bag that reads, in all capital letters, “MY PRONOUNS ARE THEM/THEY.” I’m not entirely sure why the order is them/they instead of they/them, but it’s an important object to me either way. I bought it at Lancaster Pride, back in 2017. I was just figuring myself out at the time. I waited until my friends were out of sight, and then purchased it with cash while nobody was looking. There was a sense of shame about it that I don’t feel anymore. But anyway, I bring this bag with me to work every day. And, believe it or not, this has caused some issues.

I’ve had three different coworkers try to “debate” me about my gender identity like each man somehow knew better than I did.

Those conversations were weird, to say the least, and deeply uncomfortable. The first of which was with an anti-mask climate change denier, so you can imagine how that went. His father and grandfather before him were upper-class white rural farmers. There was a disconnect in the way we were raised, and I think that that makes conversation with him trying at times. Mainly because he’s a man who doesn’t listen to science, not unless it supports his already deeply ingrained beliefs. In all his wisdom, he told me there are only two sexes, like this was somehow news to me. It was as if he genuinely believed I’d gone through over twenty years of life without knowing about chromosomes, and that they were the only basis of gender identity. I mentioned intersex individuals, and then he proceeded to ask me if I was one. Since I am not, he told me that I must be a woman.

The second conversation was with an intelligent guy from Baltimore, about in the same age range as the first fellow I mentioned. We were sitting in a Vietnam War memorial service and luncheon, held in the event center we work at. He and I were stationed at a tech table off to the side. I always really respected this coworker, as he’d had the most experience in the A.V. business. We were talking about history, and eventually, that conversation evolved into talking about the history of race and gender in the Vietnam War era. He is a black man, and he was specifically talking about the terminology used at the time. He mentioned that African American wasn’t a term they used at the time, and he expressed his distaste for it, seeing as he’d never even been to Africa. He was simply American, and he was black. The intersection where those two adjectives met is how he described himself– an intersectional identity.

He then brought up how the way he wore his hair, at the time, drastically changed others’ perception of him. On this topic, I mentioned that I felt the same. People didn’t readily assume I was nonbinary until I cut my hair. I enjoyed wearing my hair in long blonde curls, but it was easier to be nonbinary with short hair. People were able to clock me as queer, and it made the constant coming out a lot easier for me. That’s one thing to note about nonbinary identities– there’s a constant need to come out to be recognized. Hence the pins: it’s a way to be seen and respected without having to constantly address my identity. It’s a good thing, too, because that gets old quickly. My coworker then mentioned the pin on my bag and asked me what being nonbinary meant to me. I was taken a little aback by this, but given the deep nature of our conversation, I answered.

“To me, gender is a protest,” I said, trying to boil down years of study, a complex understanding of gender constructs, and Western societal tradition into one simple sentence. “I was told that, due to something about my body that I can’t change, I had to fit into a certain mold. I had to only spend time with girls, I had to worry about hiding my acne with makeup constantly, and I had to dress a certain way that identified me as a member of a certain sex. Girls were taught in school that they must hide their shoulders, lest they cause a man to stumble. Girls were told they should stay in the kitchen and live to serve men. It’s been less than a century since women were granted the ability to work, and even now wages don’t line up. We are all people, all the same, and I reject the idea that our anatomy somehow makes us inherently different. I believe, deep down, that we’re all the same species, and that our genders aren’t as important in our lives as society has taught us to believe.”

He then changed the topic to religion, and how his religion separated men and women. I felt my eyes gloss over as I listened to the same argument I’d heard a million times, that somehow, the creator made women the submissive, subservient sex. And you know what? I just don’t think that’s true. But agree to disagree, right? It was hurtful, but I wasn’t going to refute his opinion on the “debate” of my identity. He has worked here for over a decade. I’m not going to lose my job over this.

Y’know, this sort of thing doesn’t happen when I’m working in theatre. Before this A.V. gig, I was working at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival as a sound engineer, just outside of Allentown, PA. It was such an eye-opening experience as to what the workplace could be. We were on a tight schedule, but my coworkers and I were always on the same page. I was left in charge of things once I felt comfortable, and there were always other LGBTQ+ individuals not too far away. I felt like a respected and responsible member of the team. It’s weird how something like respect can significantly alter the work environment. Here, in the A.V. position I hold now, I don’t feel as confident or self-assured. When working with coworkers here, I am talked over and talked down to, as if I don’t understand the things I studied at a collegiate level. I am very infrequently scheduled onboard op positions, despite that being my strength, as there’s always a guy “manning” the board. Even though my female coworker is in a managerial role, she’s still treated as if she were at the bottom of the totem pole.

So, I beg the question, is sexism the root of transphobia? In my experience, well. It’s starting to seem so.

Gender in the Workplace – Part 1

A Nonbinary Individual’s Foray into Corporate A.V.

Being nonbinary in central Pennsylvania provides a unique set of challenges, to say the least. I’m very proud of my identity as an enby, and have been out for over half a decade. That doesn’t necessarily mean that things have been easy, though.

I graduated college in Selinsgrove, PA last year, and it was very fascinating the difference in treatment I received across different departments. I was a very dedicated and busy student. I worked four jobs at one point in my college career, mostly in the realm of sound. I was known as “The Sound Guy” around the school. When I was working sound for the theatre, respect for my gender identity was a no-brainer. I remember introducing myself to a professor as the sound guy, and immediately he asked me my pronouns. Everyone was accepting, and in fact, all four of the other sound engineers in the program identified as nonbinary as well—go figure! It was always easy to be myself, and the professors were always respectful of their students in this manner. Music, however, was a different story.

I went to a classical music college, and the vast majority of my education followed the history and musical literature of old, Christian, and largely successful white men. (Shoutout to Hildegard von Bingam and Clara Schubert for bucking the trend, but they were the exception, not the rule.) I feel like this male-centric mindset really purveyed into the minds of faculty and students, even if it was subliminal. This old-school classical mentality meant that there were very few professors who really cared to respect my pronouns, no matter how many times I gently corrected them, or signed an email with (they/them) under my name. It didn’t change. To them, if I looked like a woman, I was one.

I remember when I first started at my job in Hershey. Much like my college experience, I was living in central PA and was still trying to find a workplace that was accepting of my gender identity. When I began, HR and management were very open to using my pronouns correctly, at least during the hiring process. That being said, I’m not a person who’s completely committed to correcting every misgendering slip I hear. I’m aware of the negative stereotyping surrounding that, and I’d like to avoid it at all costs, thanks. Yes, I’ll take the time to inform those whom I care about and to gently remind those whom I see on a regular basis. However, when it comes to other departments or guests, I’m not going to make a scene. (Heaven forbid someone makes an “I identify as an attack helicopter” joke, or a “Did you just assume my gender?!” joke. I don’t think I could take that lightly.) When I began my work there, however, I realized quickly that my A.V. colleagues could not care less how I identified. The hiring and onboarding training, preaching LGBTQIA+ and diversity acceptance, had seemingly been a guise to protect the company from potential lawsuits, rather than an actual company policy.

I wasn’t the only trans person in the workplace. A coworker of mine was (read: was, as she has since quit) a proudly-out transgender woman. She wore makeup, was on HRT, had long nails, and spoke in a high-pitched voice. By all accounts, she was recognizable as a woman, as far as the Western gender binary and all of its stereotypes decreed. As soon as I interacted with her, I knew she was a woman.

Maybe I was the only one who thought that way, because every member of the fifteen-person team (except myself and the one cis woman on staff,) referred to her as a man, and consistently with he/him pronouns. This caught me off guard.

Within the trans community, there is a wide berth of experiences to be had. There are those of us who are within the binary and choose to transition. Some of us don’t abide by the binary and transition, too. There are people with different means of gender identity and expression, different backstories, and different upbringings. We vary in economic class, race, and age. There is no right or wrong way to be trans, but rather a variety of experiences and hardships we face. This being said, if my cis male coworkers couldn’t understand a binary trans person’s experience enough to respect her identity, how on earth could they even begin to grasp mine?

An Essential Reading List for Classical Music Recording

 

Classical music recording is quite a niche area of the audio recording world that can take time and experience to build skills in. Fortunately, there are some excellent books out there by audio engineers who have been perfecting their craft for years, to aid and inspire us in our ongoing learning journeys and the quest for capturing compelling classical recordings. Several of these have become go-to references for many classical audio engineers.

Classical Recording in the Decca Tradition

By Caroline Haigh, John Dunkerley and Mark Rogers

Written by three highly experienced tonmeisters who have worked for Decca and Abbey Road Studios, this comprehensive guide offers detailed explanations of recording techniques (such as the Decca tree) and useful diagrams and photos. It covers all kinds of formats from solo instruments to large ensembles, orchestras and operas.

Recording Orchestra and Other Classical Music Ensembles

By Richard King

Another comprehensive exploration of recording techniques, written by a Grammy award-winning recording engineer and professor. It also has useful sections on the role of the producer, productions with video, and multi-channel recording as well as “Quick Start Guides” labeled by ensemble type.

New Stereo Soundbook

By Ron Streicher and F. Alton Everest

A guide that delves into stereo perception and recording, exploring what it is, how it works, and how to use microphones to achieve stereo effects – knowledge that is central to classical music recording. It includes a glossary of terms, basic principles of stereo microphone techniques, binaural techniques, multiple-mic recording, the early history of stereo techniques, and how to optimise listening environments.

Recording Music on Location: Capturing the Live Performance

By Bruce Bartlett and Jenny Bartlett

Classical recording more often than not involves recording on location in different venues, and this book provides lots of information on recording outside of the studio, including a section on classical music. Other useful chapters include gear and pre-production, and in-depth explanations of stereo and surround recording techniques.

Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture

By Leo Beranek

Called the “definitive work on the architectural acoustic design of classical music spaces”, this book is an illustrated guide to 100 concert halls and opera houses throughout the world. It explores how architectural features affect acoustical aspects such as reverberation time and frequencies, and how this relates to classical music of different periods. It also features comments from conductors and musicians on how acoustics affect their performances.

SoundGirls Living History Project – Jamie Angus-Whiteoak Interviewed by Leslie Gaston

 

 

Jamie Angus-Whiteoak Is Emeritus Professor of Audio Technology at Salford University. Her interest in audio was crystallized at age 11 when she visited the WOR studios in NYC on a school trip in 1967. After this, she was hooked, and spent much of her free time studying audio, radio, synthesizers, and loudspeakers, and even managed to build some! She has worked in both industry and academia in diverse fields from integrated optics and acoustics to analogue and digital signal processing. Her expertise ranges from valve (tube) circuits to the applications of esoteric number theory in signal processing. She has pioneered degree-level courses in both music technology and electronic engineering in the UK. She is the inventor of; modulated, wideband, and absorbing diffusers, direct processing of Super Audio CD signals, and one of the first 4-channel digital tape recorders. She has done work on signal processing, analogue circuits, and numerous other audio technology topics. She has been active in the AES for 30 years and has been the paper’s co-chair for previous conventions as well as a judge for the student project and Matlab competitions.

She has been awarded an AES fellowship, the IOA Peter Barnet Memorial Award, and the AES Silver Medal Award, for her contributions to audio and acoustics.

AES Awards In 2004, James Angus was presented with the AES Fellowship Award for achievements in research and education in electroacoustics, particularly for pioneering work on sigma-delta modulation.

In 2019, Jamie A. S. Angus-Whiteoak was presented with the AES Silver Medal Award for a lifetime of important contributions to audio engineering and instruction. Non-AES Awards & Award Nominations Peter Barnett Memorial Award in Electroacoustics from Institute of Acoustics Education Background 1973-1974 University Of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada 1974-1977 University of Kent Canterbury, England, BSc 1st Class hons in Electronics 1977-1980 University of Kent Canterbury, England, PhD in Electronics, Thesis, “On the design and implementation of a general purpose digital signal processor”

SoundGirls Seeking Online Mentors for 2024

Mentoring the Next Generation of Women in Audio.

How it Works:

SoundGirls Members are invited to sign up for online mentoring and be partnered with a mentor for three online sessions. The sessions will focus on a project or goal you are working towards.  Sessions will be conducted through Zoom, Skype, etc.

If you would like to volunteer to be a mentor please apply here

5 takeaways from SXSW Sydney 2023 relevant to the Entertainment Industry

I had the privilege to attend SXSW Sydney in October last year, and here are my top five takeaways that affect the entertainment industry

Tiktok has changed how young people listen to music.

In a panel titled TikTok soundscapes, WPP House gave the participants blindfolds and headphones and played us a series of narrations with soundtracks. That was a good way to demonstrate how music elevates storytelling by augmenting emotional connection. It also shows how pairing songs with narration can completely alter the meaning of the song, bending it to the storytelling. In a way, that’s what the platform does, especially with its audio trends. You know, those bits of audio that consist of a song or voiceover, and that users can add video to. Musician Ashwarya mentioned that if she heard a song first on the platform, she would tend to associate it with the mood of the videos using it, even if that wasn’t the original intent of the songwriter. And everyone who’s been on Tiktok long enough will agree.

Licensing and sync are currently some of the best income streams for working musicians 

Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire, who recently purchased Bandcamp, told us how his platform uses AI to scan audio files and extract data points like bpm and genre to determine who is the best target audience for that track. More than that, they use that data to match these tracks to brands looking to evoke a specific feeling in their customers. With streaming platforms paying pennies and physical media sales dwindling due to the cost of living crisis, it’s smart to explore every revenue stream available. Oh yes, he also reassured us he has no intention to change the experience that Bandcamp offers their users, so indies out there can breathe a sigh of relief.

Science-based marketing gives us the chills

No, literally. Speaker manufacturer Sonos teamed up with Eric J Dubowsky and creative agency Amplify to design a track specifically to elicit physical responses like goosebumps, chills, elevated heart rate, and I get butterflies in my stomach. Campaigns like this aim to grab our attention in an increasingly noisy landscape, using a scientific approach to make them impossible to ignore. And with spatial sound becoming more ubiquitous, their impact is greater. It’s fascinating but also a bit dystopian if you ask me.

Check it out here.

VR and AR are still very niche but growing steadily

There was a special section in the expo for VR exhibitors and there was a lot of competition to get to a headset. People are excited about these technologies and I particularly didn’t test any experience that had immersive sound, which in my view would elevate the experience exponentially. An interesting take on the possibilities of VR was given by artist Lynette Wallworth, who creates interactive experiences in partnership with indigenous communities to translate their worldview to Western minds. She says that the new technologies open space for new ways of working with them, and producing for them. That makes them more flexible to work within different cultures. An Amazonian shaman told her that VR headsets work just like Ayahuasca, changing your perception to deliver a message, and afterward, you come back to your reality.

AI in music is more a partner than a threat

One of the highlights of my SXSW was the panel on AI in Music production, by Justin Shave and Charlton Hill from Uncanny Valley studios in Sydney. Both have been at the edge of the intersection of Music and Technology for decades; and have been involved in projects such as Music of the Sails, a generative piece made for the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House, and developing their own AI Music Engine, Memo. Their argument is that generative AI tools like DDSP, Lyrics generators, Voice replicators, Musicgen, Source separation, and others are to be seen as tools instead of competition. They use synths and Napster as examples of technologies that disrupted the music industry and stirred fears that they would end it, but in the end date didn’t. Playing with any of the above-mentioned, it becomes clear that they are useful resources; but if they might one day replace a skilled human, that day is still far away.

 

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