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I Am Prime 17

I don’t have a mathematical bone in my body, but a prime number for me signifies a certain setting apart from the regular, the symmetry and patterns of who we are and who we might be.  A couple of months ago, I talked about being in the margins musically and socially and I still hold this to be true without giving myself a sense of uniqueness.  I mean we are all unique in our own way, but I just feel that a prime number represents me.  And, feeling this way, an odd 17, a queer woman who makes music with noise, and a fascist prime minister in prospect, It’s all starting to feel just a little bit like discrimination.  Maybe not a good time to be a prime number; but I am valient.

To my guiding stars Truth and Justice, I am adding Liberty.  For example, I’m single and only attracted to women. However, here in Italy I can have a civil union with a woman but not marriage; neither could we adopt children.  I don’t want to marry in a church and wear white; I don’t particularly want to adopt children.  What I demand are the same rights in marriage as a heterosexual couple. If not, it is discrimination.

Getting back to Prime 17, it all started with some high-blown fantasy of starting my own record label: Hah! I’m not sure where the number idea came from but when it did, I knew that it was just right. And feeling ‘just right’ is all I ask of life. The rest is up to me…

That’s the personal bit done except to say that the queen of my country died on my birthday.  Where was I?  Here, writing the names of the 74 femicides (so far this year). About a dozen of us from Non Una di Meno were in Piazza Castello in the center of Turin, to commemorate the passing of these women.  One, in particular, moved me: Unknown woman found murdered, her body mutilated and stuffed in a suitcase and dumped in the river Po.  While I felt some sadness for the queen, who had been there my entire life, I really wept for this unknown woman.  Was I the only person weeping for her death at the hands of … it was a man since mutilation of the corpse is often the case in femicides.  Who was she, who will miss her?  Was she a someone’s mother, or someone’s sister, certainly someone’s daughter?  Who will weep for her?   I still think about her, and I think about the 22-year-old girl beaten to death by the morality police in Iran for not wearing her headscarf correctly; and of the two sisters 17 and 15 raped and hung from a tree in India; no one should care since they are low caste ‘untouchables’.  And yet my heart breaks with every hurt against women.  So here I am, saying, ‘Sister, you are not alone!’

In the preceding blogs, I’ve talked a lot about the kind of music I compose.  I’ve talked about experimental music, and I did a lot of experimenting and auditioning of sounds to use in this piece, based on The Book of Tea. However, I still see myself as a ‘Sound Artist’. So, as a sound artist, whose materials are mainly noises with no written score to follow, I want to explain how I work from airy ideas to Sound Art..

I generally work from a narrative that I visualize as loose situations in my mind and then sketch something down so that I have a starting point.  This was sketched at the pavement bar in front of my apartment in Turin in about half an hour, my ADHD creative surge fueled by an espresso coffee.

From this sketch, I begin to hear the kinds of sounds that will represent my narrative and my interpretation of it and so, I begin the first stage of finding and creating my sound (noise) samples.  When I was at the Turin Conservatoire, learning to use my experience of working with tape to create musique concrète, but with a computer, we worked in a systematic way of collecting sounds according to their character.  Not only that but we, had to spectrum filter them into lo; mid; mid-hi; hi as a minimum and then transpose them into all notes of the chromatic scale: I started this blog by saying that I didn’t have a mathematical bone in my body, but somehow, I worked out that I ended up with 48 .wav files for each sound sample:

 

 

However, these days I tend to create sound samples on demand.  For example, I wanted to create a sound wash, not quite a drone, for the first line: The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos.  First of all, ‘afternoon glow’ and Debussy’s L’aprés Midi d’un Faune came to mind, and I imagined something lyrical and modal to set the scene.  I imagined bamboo growing by the roadside and the wind catching it making them rattle against each other, and that for this movement a breeze would be needed.  So, my first task was to create a ‘breeze’.

In my distant past, I’ve played Viola da gambe; Classical, Jazz and Bass guitar, orchestral percussion, trumpet, and even flirted with the ‘misery stick’ B flat clarinet for the uninitiated.  As an aside, Puccini made great use of the clarinet in his operas but then: misery, misery, most of his heroines died, Mimi in La Bohème, and Tosca in Tosca.  Not sure about the rest but great music, though I’m sure I would have hated him.  All this just to tell you that I’d never played the flute before not even the bamboo one I used to record my acoustic sound sample for the breeze.  My lack of skills was a blessing otherwise I might have played some proper notes instead of the breathiness and slight hint of pitch.  Now the latter was useful since after copying the sample five times and then reversing it and copying those five times I had ten breathy fluting sounds of about four minutes.  Unlike many reversed sound samples which have that characteristic crescendo and then a reverse attack that ends the crescendo abruptly; this reversed clip (I’ll stick with the word clip as used in Audition rather than stem) had very little pronounced attacks but had natural spaced sounds according to where I breathed when recording.  Incidentally, I don’t have a proper microphone, so I use my Zoom H6 through my interface and generally record to Audition.

I then transposed all of them to different pitches within a two-octave range so I had a chordal cluster that would not be any recognizable chord but since I deal in noise, it suits my needs perfectly.  What is my need here?  I want to suggest a breeze, but I want to suggest a hint of musicality as well.  For this, after listening to a lot of samples, I used Spitfire Audio’s Intimate strings samples, and high violin harmonics (track 1); while below, (track 12) I generated some Pink Noise which I experimented with and, once balanced within the mix, automated the volume and panning so that the sound was shifting in and out of perspective; I later did much the same with the violin harmonics.  The illustration below shows the tracks laid out and staggered entries.  Now, remember that five of the ten flute tracks have been reversed.  in this way there are no unison sounds and any one of the individual sounds within the four minutes will occur ten times at different pitches and in different places and half will be reversed and in a different position of the stereo stage since I have also automated the panning of each track.  Lastly, each clip has two or three effects added to change the nature of each sound that makes up the whole.   In this way, there is continuous movement within the drone/wash which requires ‘deep listening’ at times to perceive the changes of color within.

 

The following Image shows the same Breeze section in the mixing view, which I find useful in the later stages so that I can listen without being distracted by looking at the clips.   One thing you will notice, however, are the effects which are pitch shifter and De noise for all the tracks plus the addition of different kinds of EQ, echo/delay, notch filter, compression with the addition of a reverb unit on a bus track etc.

 

So those are the main elements of the construction of the wash which was eventually mixed down to a wav file. I mentioned violins and I also made use of the Autoharp and the dulcimer.  But since Audition does not have MIDI, I used Reaper to record these instruments.  So, the only problem is recording the instruments separately and then render them as wavs and then take them to Audition.

I prefer to ‘compose’ in Audition for various reasons.  One thing I do, as a matter of habit, is to let the current state of a particular section play on repeat while I get on with other stuff, occasionally paying more attention if I hear something I’m not sure about. For example, on one of the tracks, I applied ‘dub delay’ which sounded quite interesting.  However, over repeated listening, it became irritating and created an expectation that Bob Marley would add a vocal… not quite a Japanese afternoon in the countryside, so I changed it.

The following image is just a collection of instrumental samples on Reaper: high violins, Autoharp and Dulcimer. Of course, it would have been better if I could have added the instruments in real-time, and maybe, once I become more familiar with Reaper, I might reverse the process: use Audition to create and process my sound files and then take them into Reaper for the compositional process; watch this space!

 

So, let’s talk bamboo, mentioned at the end of the first line. As I have already suggested, I found this passage very evocative not as a faux Japanese image either.  Artistically, I imagined the bamboo canes in movement as the result of a warm afternoon breeze. So, I began to think about symbolic representations of ‘afternoon glow’ and the sound of bamboo as light percussive sounds. Therefore, using Reaper and the Spitfire Audio LAB sound samples, I recorded: Autoharp, Dulcimer, Claves, woodblock, abstract voices, and high violin harmonics.  In the following figure, the harmonics are already incorporated, along with the pink noise in the “Breeze_section_Mixdown 1”.   So, this multi-track session is really a workspace to experiment with the midi instruments, now waveforms, and treat them and place them in a time-space to create a draft mix.  So, before placing my breeze sample in its place, on track 20, I made some preliminary adjustments of balance, which in this case is just controlling volumes since the 12 tracks making up the breeze had already been manipulated regarding panning and volume.  Once the instruments had been placed at different points, I used the automated volume track to blend the breeze into the individual instrumental entries, for example dipping the volume slightly at the entry of the dulcimer in order to give it space to ‘bloom’.  On this ‘Sketch Pad’ I had two bus tracks A and B, both reverb but A slightly drier and B with More resonance; I have to say that I like the Arturia Rev Plate 140 and its pre-sets, ‘Shy Reverb’ is great for keeping things natural.  Two were enough since I had my instruments on the drier setting reserving the bouncier reverb on bus B for the claves at the end.

Anyway, my workflow, such as it is, consists of arranging all the elements roughly where they will appear in the finished piece and then: play, listen, play, listen, and them some more.  In this case, there was too much percussion; so, by using razor edit (just like the old days of tape) I select the sounds I want and place them where appropriate. Perhaps as a throwback to the days of tape, I often put similar samples on one track which means that I cannot freely use the mixer faders just because one clip goes into the red, for example.  In this case, I make panning and volume adjustments on each individual clip.  A couple of points that are important to me when using a Digital Audio Work Station as a composition tool is to make sure that each clip has any effects and processing directly on the clip and not the track.  In this way, if I copy and proliferate the clip, it will have the processing with it and, should I move a clip to another track; again, it will keep its original processing parameters.  To create my mixdown I used only tracks 1, 20, 19, and 14.  The remaining tracks, especially 2, 3, and 4 will be used in the following section which is water-based.  These three clips are spectrum edits into hi, mid and lo frequencies of water sounds and can be further treated by looping stretching, transposing, etc.

A couple of thoughts: all my mixdown or bounced clips leave a trail of intermediary sound files which at 96000 Hz and32 bit floating point take up a lot of storage.   Secondly, this kind of composition is incredibly slow, but I was unusually rather quick with this section perhaps because I aimed for a more transparent and well-spaced texture.  I comfort myself with the fact that Éliane Radigue used to spend a year on one work.

Big changes for me.  If all goes well, by early spring, I’ll be at the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras, Morelia, Michoacán, México, where I hope to find other artists that I can collaborate with.  Until then there is The Foolishness of things to finish and I need to become functional in Spanish.

What you see on the screen in fig 6 is available on Soundcloud with the link below.

https://soundcloud.com/francesca-caston/bamboo

Soundgirls te quiero 💜  Sí, también a todas las de Mèxico 🇸🇳

Eve Louise Horne founder of PeakMusicUK and We Are The Unheard

 

Eve Louise Horne is the founder of PeakMusicUK and We Are The Unheard. She has worked in professional audio for over 20 years and graduated from Gateway School of Recording validated y Kingston University with a HED.  Eve is a singer, songwriter, and producer.

Career Start

Eve got her start in the industry at age 18 when she signed to Polydor Records in a girl group. She skipped her last year at BRIT School and instead went on tour with The Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, and Peter Andre. She has also worked with Jermaine Dupri and Andrea Martin. She would eventually join and another girl group signed to EMI in Denmark, they worked with Soulshock & Karlin (who are Danish), Diane Warren wrote a song on our album and I was super lucky to sing another song on this album that was written by Andrea Martin too.

Career Now

What is a typical day like?

My days are always different and I love it that way! I will wake up, smile, and listen to some gratitude affirmations. My 3yr old daughter comes in with her teddy and we have a cuddle and play mummy’s songs.

Then I get us both fed and ready to bring her to nursery and I come back home, have a coffee, and start either having meetings via zoom, working my way through my to-do list which could be anything from editing a podcast for a client, editing my own podcast, creating video tutorials to teach production or songwriting using Ableton or Logic Pro X.

It could be recording vocals for my own tracks, writing to briefs, writing a new track, going out to teach in schools or talk on panels and then I come back, pick up my daughter, get her fed and ready for bed and then I go back to my computer and continue to send emails or finish things up. I will then read a bit or do a bit of learning. Then Repeat! Hahaha!

How do you stay organized and focused?

Lots and lots of Post-it notes, lists, calendars, and a lot of it in my head!

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Helping people, being a role model, and raising awareness

What do you like least?

I am doing it alone so it is hard. I am very much a people person and love collaborating on everything! Especially songwriting and production! So It is hard to keep the motivation.

If you tour what do you like best?

I don’t tour anymore. But when I did, It was the tour bus and the crate of Jack Daniels, films and games, and the feeling of being free and traveling to amazing places. But the BEST part was getting on stage and performing to the crowd!!

What do you like least?

Being constantly tired!!

What is your favorite day off activity? 

I love spending time with my daughter and going to the gym

What are your long-term goals?

It depends on the discipline.  I want to start my Academy to teach women and gender minorities production using Ableton and make sure long term that participants can be supported from beginner to career, I want to help improve the percentage of women producers so we can get closer to 50% I feel it is my responsibility to raise awareness for the younger generation so that they know that production and engineering are career options and make sure they feel comfortable applying for college/university without worrying about being a minority.

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?

I feel that the barriers or obstacles have been silent ones if that makes sense.  The industry is very much about who you know; if you are not willing to act in uncertain ways, doors aren’t opened.  I also feel being a gay woman was hard. When I came out to the people around me that I thought I could trust and that they would maybe understand how I was feeling,  they used it against me and parry (pretty) much shamed me to other industry people.  This was in the early ’90s so it wasn’t as easy as it is now.

How have you dealt with them?

I continued being myself through the pain and hard times and learned to get rid of any guilt and be proud of who I am, be proud of what I have achieved, be proud of what I stand for, and speak out!!

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

Believe in yourself and make sure you surround yourself with people who are doing better than you so you can always learn and grow. Be curious and never afraid to ask questions. Help others out if you get into a position where you can. Make sure you are brave and speak out if something is not right (don’t let the fear of losing your job/position stop you from doing what is right by you). Listen to your gut ALWAYS and don’t be ashamed to ask for help. oooh and don’t man hate – educate with love 🙂

Must have skills?

Self-belief is a must!  You have to be able to communicate effectively

More on The Unheard Academy

We Are Unheard Academy is launching a funded programme! 

We are so excited to be launching the online Academy that was born from the We Are The Unheard Campaign. The Academy is funded by The Arts Council and supported by leading music industry software and hardware company Ableton, Musicians Union, Help Musicians and Why Not Her.

The aim of WATUA is to be accessible to gender minorities and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. To offer training and support from beginner to career and help improve the percentages of female-identifying producers and songwriters in the Music Industry.

The programme is completely funded. All participants are required to do it purchase a WATUA hoodie and promote it on socials to pay it forward.

Women make up around 20% of all musical artists, yet only 2% of women are music producers. Even though there are plenty of talented female producers creating amazing work, male producers and artists continue to increase and dominate the music industry.

WATUA aims to address this disparity by delivering an 8-week Introduction to Ableton online program.  During this program, participants have the opportunity to attend 3 in-person masterclasses/events where they can network, collaborate and connect with industry professionals.

WATUA have partnered with Veva Collect who will provide participants with a free 1yr membership, MPG  who will promote the programmes to their members and extended industry, Raw Material who are providing the space for the events and ongoing support and Flare Audio who are gifting their amazing products.

“I am so proud and grateful to be able to deliver this program to female-identifying producers. It is important  to me that I do everything within my power to help change these abysmal statistics so we can finally focus  on the beauty of creating.” – Eve Horne: Founder We Are The Unheard & PeakMusicUK

All participants attending in-person events will have childcare costs covered and those traveling from outside of London with have travel costs covered.

2hrs a week 

8 weeks via zoom 

3 in-person networking events with masterclasses with industry professionals.  

Who can apply? 

If you identify as a female, non-binary, or trans woman. Age 18+

About the Founder: 

WATUA was founded by Eve Horne. Eve is an Award-Winning Creative Mentor and Advisor. She has over 20 years’ experience in the Music Industry as a Singer, Songwriter, and Producer. She is the founder of PeakMusicUK and the UNHEARD Campaign which demands equality for women in the Music Industry.

Want more info? 

www.wearetheunheard.com

support@wearetheunheard.com

We Are The Unheard Podcast

The intention behind the We Are The Unheard podcast is to provide a platform for everybody who has ever felt unheard. Each week Eve Horne will be bringing you unapologetic, open-hearted, honest conversations and stories. Eve aims to educate the world with love, to change perspectives, and to change lives. To bring people together through the power of audio so that they can understand the life journeys others have had, listen with empathy, and be less judgmental. We underestimate the power of kindness and their ability to help others. If we all try to understand someone else’s path or their journey or their experiences, we would learn so much more about ourselves along the way and become more compassionate and have more empathy. It is Eve’s mission to help people get their stories heard and share their experiences so that we can all learn a little more and become better human beings.

 

 

New Venues

 

We all like the allure of a shiny new thing. On tour, there’s something initially exciting about being the first theatrical show in a theatre, but then you get there and realize you’re not getting to test drive a slick new theatre with all the bells and whistles. Instead, you’ve become a beta tester for a building and you’re going to find all the kinks the venue staff will have to eventually work out.

Walking into that load-in asks you for patience and to accept that things will not be happening according to the usual plan. On Phantom, we opened a venue in Orlando and it took four, maybe five, times longer than usual to do our FOH runs (cable bundles that go from the racks onstage to the console in the house), simply because the local crew didn’t know the path yet. Thankfully, we scheduled extra time for load-in because the building was brand new, so a 45-minute project turning into 4 hours didn’t completely derail things like it would have if we’d been on a normal time frame for load-in.

New construction is particularly difficult for theatrical shows because Broadway shows will test the limits of any theatre, new or old. A 30-40 person show with 2-ton scenic pieces, an 80’ wide show deck, 16 box center cluster, video walls, and mother truss structures (these are made to hold up heavy or oddly shaped pieces that need extra support, like the curved section of our video wall on Mean Girls), multiple electric trusses, automation, etc. will ask more of a local crew and space than a talking head, a stand-up comedian, a graduation ceremony, or a symphony. When you start loading into a brand new space you’re going to learn the limits of the building and the crew very quickly.

The building usually presents the largest challenge. Constructing a new venue is a huge undertaking that takes years to complete and the project may pass to multiple contractors during its progress. This can easily create a lack of cohesion across the space, especially if one contractor started a project, but another one had to jump in mid-way through to complete it or didn’t even realize it wasn’t finished when they joined the job. Maybe the first person on the project in Orlando had a plan for that FOH cable path, but someone else took over who didn’t finish that project. Either because they didn’t know what touring shows entail, or didn’t even realize that people would be running cables other than the permanent conduit.

As shows load in and out of a venue, the staff learns what the problems are and can start to solve them. The core holes in the walls so the cable doesn’t have to block open doorways, or they install motors to get cases up several levels where there’s no elevator access. When we opened the venue in Orlando, we had to carry cases up a half flight of stairs to get to FOH, but when I returned a few years later, they’d thankfully found they could use the handicapped accessible chair lift to do that heavy lifting instead. Mean Girls was in Greensboro at a fairly new venue and we were the first show that got the benefit of a removable railing and a ramp to get racks and cases down to the FOH position. Previously, shows had to lift everything over a short wall (including consoles that can easily weigh 400lbs) and the house head told his management repeatedly that it was not ideal and borderline dangerous. Even in that case, it took management coming by to watch what the local crew had to do to move the cases for them to decide that they did indeed need to make that change.

If the building isn’t enough of a challenge, personnel can also add to the complications of your load. As the road crew, you rely on the house staff to know where things go. I frame it as “I’ll tell you what needs to happen, you tell me how you do it in your theatre,” so when I say we need to get cables from one side of the stage to the other, the house head will tell me that they either run them around the pit rail, drop down through holes to run across the basement, or some other path they have to work out. When the house head is almost as new to the building as you are, they’re learning right alongside you and don’t have all those answers yet.

In some cases, the entire crew is brand new to everything: to the venue, to the job, and sometimes even to the theatre itself. When Dirty Dancing opened a venue in Sugarland, the majority of the local crew had never done a load in for a Broadway tour and didn’t know how to set up com in the spot booth. I went up, found the patch bay, and walked them through setting up headsets and belt packs and how things plugged in. Also during that load-in, I asked the crew to drop in a rope to make a cable pick for our center cluster cable (this pulls it up and out of the way so it’s out of the frame of the proscenium. One of the locals tied it off to the fly rail backstage and I had to explain that they couldn’t do that because that pulled the cable across the fire pocket, which would impede the fire curtain if it had to come in. (Fire Marshals will sometimes do walkthroughs of venues and look for things like that which violate fire code and have to be redone. So running the cable correctly at the beginning of the day means we won’t have to change it later.) Later on, during that same day, our road head electrician had to help teach the building staff how to program their house light system.

It’s worth noting that you’ll have green crew members even in older, established venues. However, on those crews, there might be one or two people who are new with the other four or so who are more experienced stagehands and can help show them the ropes. In a new theatre, especially in smaller towns, it’s more likely that a larger percentage of the crew will also be new or less knowledgeable.

So, in addition to doing your normal load in, you’re having to learn the architecture of a new building and oftentimes teaching a crew what future Broadway tours are going to expect from them. It is exciting to be the first show in a new theatre, but it also requires understanding and a willingness to teach where you can and help solve problems when you’re able. You’ll get the show in, it always happens, you just end up learning even more about what makes venues efficient (or not) in the process.

Small Venue Survival Guide – Not Even the Gig Yet

 

Small venues are everywhere and unless you are doing arena tours there is a good chance you will spend quite a few hours in these. They come in all forms and shapes, and from relatively well-kept to complete car crash establishments. One thing that will always be the same though: you will always be there alone in the middle of the afternoon, with nobody else around, faced with technology that does not always do what it says on the tin, an owner/manager that is nowhere to be found, and a phone line for emergencies that was supposed to be working that isn’t. So, in a nutshell, it’s up to you. As you move up the sound engineer ladder you will be faced with many different challenges but in a way the small venue is the litmus test for people starting out as sound techs with its way of throwing everything at you just to test you out to see if you are actually cut for this or not. It can often be a painful experience and one that is especially daunting because it is often thrown at you right at the start of your journey into sound engineering (which is pretty unfair I think). So here are a few tips that will hopefully help you own the small venue gig rather than the small venue gig owning you.

More often than not the small venue gig will appear out of nowhere. Someone is ill, can’t make it, or has double booked themselves. Oftentimes what has really happened is that they have found a better gig for themselves and are all too pleased to offload the small venue gig onto someone else (that’s you). The good thing about this is that there is a good chance that the small venue gig will turn into a repeat gig. And while not a fanciful location, it will give you lots of opportunities to hone your trade. Provided you are prepared. So, fear not! The following few simple steps should help you live up to the challenge.

In a way, your preparation for this starts long before you find yourself in a dingy basement behind a half-working mixer trying to mix a band. So even if you get called at short notice try to go to the venue a few days before your gig, and try to aim for a night when another gig is on. This may seem like a big-time investment, but it really pays off to not find out about all the things that don’t work when you are there all by yourself. Go there and talk to the sound tech that is there. Look what gear, mixing desk, etc. they have, and where things – mics, stands, cables, DI boxes, etc –  are stowed away. Ask the important questions: what is broken, what is unusual, what do you need to take particular care about. Know the channel count in that venue. Find out which ones do not work (there will always be some) or those permanently used by the DJ / bar staff to play their music over the PA. Take pictures of everything and take notes. Get that sound tech’s phone number if they agree. Spot any kit that is unfamiliar? Make a note. Look it up. Download the manual. And save it on your phone, print it, whatever – you may not have a reception in the venue. Ask if there is a decent start-up scene on the desk you can use. If you can stay for a bit of the gig do so. Take a mental note of what the venue sounds like, walk around, and see if the mix position sounds very different from the audience bit. Have a drink, make friends with the bar people, tell them you’ll be there next, and go home. If you really can’t go there physically try to get as much info beforehand anyway.

Next thing: Get the riders, load in times, stage plots, and backline requirements (and if they share backline or not) for as many bands as you can – email the promoter/venue manager, etc. yourself if you didn’t get any. Still no luck? Try the band’s Facebook/ social media. More often than not bands send the riders and they “get lost” somewhere in translation and they don’t mind the sound engineer getting in touch with them. And while you are in touch with them clarify all other points as above (backline, load in, etc.). And if you spot anything that the band wants that you are not sure the venue has (keyboard stand, special mic….) ask the venue if they provide it, or have at least discussed it with the band….. You may think it’s not your job to sort this out, and you are right, it isn’t. However, if the stuff is missing it will be your fault. Because you will be the only one there anyway. It will also cause unnecessary delays as you – yes that will be up to you as well – try to chase up enough empty beer crates to fashion a synth stand out of. You will run late and the band will be pissed off way before sound check even starts. You may email the venue and try to clarify and you still get no answer. But at least there will be an email trail to show you tried.

After that: Listen to the bands’ music. That fancy vocal effect? Can you do that on your desk? What kind of mix is it? A metal band with heavy guitars and double kick? Or a jazz combo with a harmonium? Think about what mixing these genres involves, in terms of mics you’ll use, how you place them and what effects you need to have dialed in on your desk.

Lastly? Do you have more than two bands? Make a festival input list. Make sure all inputs of all bands can fit somewhere on your mixer. Got five bands and a 16-channel mixer of which two are not working at all and one is not passing phantom? Plan ahead how you’ll squeeze them all in. And how to easiest bring it all together. Print the list with a number of copies (you’ll lose one immediately), take a pen to amend (the riders will be wrong). And put the vocals at the end, starting from your last channel (as the riders will be wrong). You may end up with a gap between your last instrument and the vocals but at least you won’t have vocals and then more bongos, keys and some violin after that when every band turns up with an extra musician (or two).

Ok so, the day of the gig is there. Go to the venue early and I mean early. 2 hours before the first band rocks up is no luxury as you have a lot of work to do before they arrive, as we’ll see below.

Step 1: Make sure the PA works. This may sound like a given but in small venues, it, unfortunately, isn’t. A working PA means: both sides of speakers work (usually, in some form or other), all drivers in the speakers work (sometimes), sound roughly the same (rarely), both subs work (sometimes), and the PA is plugged in the right way round meaning L is L and R is R (not always). You do this by either sending pink noise into each of your buses in turn or by plugging your phone (but be careful with phones and mixing desks, see below) into a line input and sending it to all buses in turn (L / R and matrices or delays if there are any).

Step 2: Make sure your monitors work using the same technique. Don’t be alarmed if none of them sound the same. That will usually be the case, unfortunately. I’ve often pondered if this is an issue but have decided that since each musician only hears their own, it isn’t.

Step 3: Make sure the desk does what you want it to. That show file you were advised to use? Make sure there are no fancy leftovers from others. Plug in your phone or a mic and send the signal to the FX, to the mons, to the mains. If weird stuff happens, reset the desk and rebuild your own scene. If you have an analogue desk, zero whatever can be zeroed and check all routing is correct, outboard works, etc.

Step 4: Make sure all your stage inputs work (almost never). The way I do this is I raise all faders, raise masters, put all settings (gain, EQ, etc.) at the same levels, unmute, and plug in either a signal generator, a mic, or the phone into each channel (and check channel after channel). This way I can hear from the stage if it all works/sounds roughly the same. Make absolutely sure your phantom power is off though as the 48 volts will fry audio outputs of phones etc. in a second. That’s why I do not really recommend using the phone for that. A cheap cable tester that also does test signal is the trick here.

Worse than the completely non-working channel though is the one-legged channel. It will seem like it passes audio fine (although a little quieter) but a one-legged channel will, depending on which pin is not working either pass no phantom, or no phantom and only half the audio. So how do we find out about this? This time you mute all the channels but put phantom on. Plug an active DI with a light into each channel (channel after channel) and if the light does not come on, you’ve got a one-legged channel. That does not mean you can’t absolutely use it. Oftentimes you will have to use every channel you can find. But you should not use it on very quiet sources, or anything that requires phantom, like a condenser mic, or an active DI.

Step 5: Make sure all cables work. This is where the humble cable tester is the small venue engineer’s best friend. Take 10 mins to go through all the ones you’ll use. Because if one doesn’t work it absolutely will end up being the one for the main vocal and not that second rack tom or bottom snare.

Step 6: Ring out your system: Set up your vocal mics where they will be. Don’t know how many input lines? Put them at the end (or very beginning) of your input list. EQ both FOH and monitors to remove feedback. If you have an iPad that is where it will be really useful as you can position yourself right on stage and do your ringing out from there.

Step 7: Set up most other mics before the band arrives. Get the stands out, put the mics into the clips, and cable them up. If you don’t know where on your input list the vocals get plugged in, or how many lines you’ll end up with, plug them in at the end (or the beginning). Prepare DIs with cables etc.….

And so, when the band finally arrives you’ll have a working system, that is rung out, and all your mics will already be ready to go. And most importantly you’ll have that confidence that you’ve checked it all and normally everything should work.

Next: Small venue survival guide – Part 2: The gig, and what’s in my bag

Gertie Steinacker started out in live sound, after working in production for a number of festivals, about 15 years ago in Switzerland, attending a 2-year course 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 a number of independent and underground promoters.

 

Approaching Acoustic Mixes

Recently, I mixed the song “Being Seen” by Ariyel after the song received many views on TikTok. The tracks consisted of guitalele (hybrid of acoustic guitar and ukulele), lead vocal, and a supportive humming vocal. I want to walk through my process for this mix even though it was fairly straightforward and the artist was really aiming to highlight her raw and vulnerable performance. I really enjoy listening to soft acoustic songs to balance the loads of electronic-based songs I listen to regularly, and I believe it’s important to take good care of the mix no matter how simplified.

If you’re a Bake Off fan, you might recognize that whenever a contestant decides to do a “basic” loaf of sourdough bread for example, Paul Hollywood warns the contestant that everything must be perfect because there is less to judge. I think of acoustic mixes like this since there is less going on when stacked up against songs in a playlist with fuller arrangements. Since the guitalele and vocals were recorded in a home studio, I started my basic sourdough recipe with iZotope RX 9 to de-click and de-noise the tracks as much as possible without creating artifacts.

Since only two instruments are commanding the whole frequency spectrum of this song, I found it most effective to EQ the guitalele and lead vocal track at the same time, moving through one frequency band at a time. This process kept me from overloading certain frequency bands with both instruments. For example, I really liked the warmth of Ariyel’s lower register, so I had her voice fill up more of the mid-low frequencies and reduced the guitalele in that area. I also included compression plug-ins on the lead vocal and guitalele tracks, but I kept the settings subtle for overall smoothing without too much audible effect. I like using McDSP’s 6030 Ultimate Compressor for this style of compression because the simple UI and fewer parameters prevent me from overthinking this mixing step.

 

 

For the time-based effects, I wanted to reintroduce a sense of singular space since I removed a lot of that with RX, and I also sought out a small, fleeting ear candy moment with delay. I used a default 1.2-second plate for the guitar reverb and used this sparingly, but I made sure to send a little bit of the vocal to the guitar reverb as well to blend the instruments in the background. To keep the lead vocal as the stand-out instrument, I also used a longer (nearly 4 seconds) plate reverb for the lead and supported humming. This added an ethereal aesthetic to the song and also gives the listener moments to sit in the rawness of the vocal as it rings out. For the added ear candy, in the humming section of the song, I sent the vocal reverb instead of the dry vocal to a soft triplet delay.

 

 

Because there are a lot of short moments of silence, I made sure to automate the reverb levels lower during those times to make sure those moments stayed authentic to the recording. During one of my favorite classes at Berklee, an analog mixing class, I became really diligent with level and send-level automation. Now, I automate nearly all tracks in a mix all the time, and I think it is especially effective for sparing acoustic mixes. It can sometimes be a pain (especially if you’re on a laptop using a mouse pad like me), but I believe it is very worth the extra time to take a few quick passes and smooth everything out.

 

 

Whether you’re a sourdough pro or you’re just getting started on your mixing journey, I hope my process shares some insight and inspiration for your own methods. The best part about stripped-down mixes like this is that it’s all about the performance. I feel that our role as the mixer is to support the performance as it transcends a live TikTok and enters the streaming realm.

The Way We Hear

 

Immersive sound, 3D sound, Surround sound… Let’s talk Psychoacoustics

Lately, all these concepts have been gaining popularity in the sound field, many manufacturers have started to increase their innovations for the audience to experience even more realistic immersive sound. But what’s the theory behind it?

Immersive sound, 3D sound, and Surround sound are all referring to the same thing and it is basically how sound can be manipulated to recreate real-life sound on speakers and headphones, making it closer to a 360 experience. These manipulations are based purely on how our brain tricks us to hear things, It is all related to the way we hear.

The way our brain processes the information we receive in our ears defines the way we hear. Meaning that additionally to the physical shapes of our body and the mechanical characteristics of the sound waves, it is actually the brain, combining this information, creates the perception of sound. There have been studies about it and the theory behind those studies is called Psychoacoustics.

Starting with the human body, there have been several studies that defined very accurately the physical structure of our ear and the role they play in the process of hearing:

The external ear, where sound waves hit the eardrum and make it vibrate

The medium ear where the small bones transfer these vibrations from the eardrum to the internal ear (malleus, incus, and stapes)

The internal ear where these vibrations reach the Cochlea, in which interior millions of hair cells vibrate and produce signals sent to the brain

Once the brain receives these signals, it processes them according to its properties

  1. Pitch characteristics
  2. Distance-related properties – Interaural level difference
  3. Time-related properties – Interaural time difference

Here is where psychoacoustics plays a role and explains with different phenomena how we can perceive sound depending on different properties of the sound and the way our brain is programmed. There are many concepts and explanations about how our brain behaves when listening to sound:

 According to pitch characteristics:

Physically each region of the Cochlea acts as an amplifier to mechano-electrical transduction that gives “hair cells” an electromotility property which gives selectivity and sensitivity to the frequencies we hear by areas.

One common disease related to this is tinnitus, at least 20% of the population is affected by it, where despite the existence of an external sound, the person can hear phantom noises due to age-related hearing loss, an ear injury or a problem with the circulatory system

Ghost fundamental:

This phenomenon happens when a signal containing all harmonic elements but the fundamental is detected by the brain who identifies the pattern of the signal and tricks us to hear that fundamental frequency that is not present.

Robinson-Dadson curves: 

The Ear has a specific response to what we hear, meaning the higher the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) is, the flatter the response is in our ears, i.e., we tend to hear frequency range more evenly with a higher SPL. If the SPL is lower, lower frequencies are more present in our hearing

Masking:

For each tonal frequency, there is an associated masking threshold with a critical bandwidth, where any signal reproduced inside this bandwidth and below that threshold will not be heard. For frequencies around 20Hz and 400Hz, this bandwidth varies between 100Hz<BW <400Hz, behaving logarithmically on the raise. Meaning our brain processes most information within the lower frequencies, a concept utilized in audio compression such as mp3 to removed frequencies masked on the higher frequencies range

Not perceptible frequencies:

There have been findings showing that even if over 26KHz frequencies cannot be heard, they can be detected as brain activity in MRI images, causing different responses in individuals such as pleasure, tranquility, and dynamic appreciations

According to Interaural time and level difference:

Source Location:

It has been determined that the way our brain deciphers the position of a sound is determined by high frequencies. Because the wavelength at high frequencies is comparable to the dimensions of our body, it can let the brain understand what the position of the sound source is in reference to our bodies.  However, lower frequencies can also help to determine the sound source by measuring phase differences between signals perceived by each ear.

Hass effect: 

When two sound sources with the same distance and SPL to the hearing person (stereo) will produce a ghost image in the middle of the sources. If one of the sources is attenuated or delayed (5ms or -18dB), the ghost image will move from the center closer to one of the sources. Here is where concepts like time difference and level differences between audio signals are the key for most professional audio applications

HRTF. HPTF: 

The Head Related and Head Phones Transfer Functions are mathematical equations that explain how our head, torso, and ear shapes affect the way we hear, meaning how the distance between our ears, dimensions, curves, shapes, bones reflections, and bones resonators affect each frequency of a sound wave defining the sound perception for each specific individual. These anthropometric measurements are used to define personalized HRTF and HPTF.

As mentioned before,  all these concepts are being applied in Professional sound applications based on psychoacoustics theory:

References

Oohashi, Tsutomu (1991). High-Frequency sound above the audible range affects brain electric activity and sound perception. AES 91st Convention. NY

Sunder, K., Tan E., Gan W. (2014) Effect of headphone equalization on auditory distances perception. AES 137th     Convention LA.

Novatech & Adelaide Symphony Orchestra Present Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in L-ISA.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VMfMA1i-hY

What is AMBEO Immersive Audio by Sennheiser? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIpVM4-3tV4

Binaural Audio Recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGt9DjCnnt0

ASMR 3D Tingles | Zoom H3 VR Mic Test (No Talking). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrf87AdR3Eg

Woo Lee, G., Kook Kim, H. (2018) Personalized HRTF Modeling Based on Deep Neural Network Using Anthropometric Measurements and Images of the Ear

 

Ashley Lambert: Voice Director, Voiceover Artist, and Singer

Ashley Ann Lambert is an actor, vocalist, and partner with R.A.W. Voice Casting out of Los Angeles, CA. She describes herself as “passionate about sound and all of its forms.” In her role at R.A.W., she uses her well-trained ear for acoustic direction and sound mimicry to cast accurate sound-alikes, direct voiceover actors individually or in groups, and lead ADR sessions to hone many of the performances we hear in our favorite big and small budget films. A professional voiceover actress herself, at times you can even hear her own voice among them. With remote work having risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, she is now busily working from home as well as in the studio.

Ashley and I spoke via Zoom in August of 2022. Her responses to the following questions have been edited for length and clarity.

What was your earliest inclination that you may have a future working in sound?

I think I did my first school musical, when I was, like, six. And I had a solo, and it really spoke to me. I got “the bug” early, I guess you could say. I always loved singing or saying lines, reading out loud for the class, or whatever. I loved speaking. And I actually ended up booking when I was 10. I started booking voiceover work, and language learning books for a Japanese tech company (I did all of their English learning series, which I guess would be sort of like the Rosetta Stone today), and I did books on tape. It had always been a part of my life. And then I also started taking singing lessons very early on, because I loved it so much. I started training in opera when I was 12, studying classical music.

Talk about some other experiences, educational or otherwise, that prepared you for your current career.

Classical training was huge. You understand it’s so technique based. Particularly with voiceover, and now that I do a lot of voice direction one-on-one, understanding the mechanics of the mouth and sound placement is huge. If you understand it yourself, you can then understand how to explain it to someone. And then I went to NYU Tisch. In Tisch, you have [courses in] voice and speech, breath work, projection, so I feel like I got conservatory training at NYU. And I went to RADA, which is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. They had a very intensive program. I performed Shakespeare, so again, it’s about diction, accents, and being able to really understand and control your voice. We studied the phonetic alphabet. So, understanding that has been huge, and, I would say, my music background and, just, love of music. I have nearly perfect pitch, and being able to hear, when you have a group of actors working together, [if] one thing is off, has been very helpful in directing large groups, to be able to pick up the one thing that just isn’t working.

What skills have you cultivated that set you apart at your job?

I would say, funnily enough, the link of being a conductor. Either I do sessions one on one, which is more about the technical voice placement, being on-voice/off-voice, or I direct sessions with 20+ actors in a room together, doing group sounds and single sounds. When I work with a group, being a conductor is not how everyone approaches it, but I really do approach it that way – where I find what your strength is, and that’s what I’m going to have you do. Maybe you think you’re good at one thing, but maybe I need to kind of gear you back towards what your voice should be doing. I approach things as a conductor, to make a tapestry of voices really work to support a project instead of it being a little mismash that people are going to have to edit later. That’s what I like to lead with. I want the product to be perfect for right now, and you’re not going to have to be like, “Oh, I’ll fix it and make it okay later.” Especially when you’re in a recording studio, and they’re like, “Well, we have three decent takes, and I’ll edit all three together and have it be fine.” I want that one take to be great. And then I would say, I also am a really great communicator. A lot of Hollywood is being able to take what the producer wants, take what the actor wants, take what the people behind the scenes want, and figure out how to be a single voice giving the direction to the artist that isn’t going to stifle their performance; to figure out a way to describe what I mean technically, but also still give room for creative freedom. I’m very good at being that. I’m like a translator, a conductor of a translator! And underneath that, I’m respected because I also am a good voice actor and musician, so I’m not speaking from a place of not knowing. I’m speaking from a place of having been there and wanting to make it the best. And I think everyone I work with knows that the goal is to have the best product.

Can you describe a typical day? Are there certain routines that help you to get into a flow?

Yes. I’ll do a couple of different options. If I have a one-on-one session with, like, a high-profile talent, I definitely show up having prepped the script. I like to be action based when we’re working on performance, so I’ll look at each scene and know the emotional action base that needs to be behind it. But on a day where I’m going to direct, like, a four-hour session for a video game or something, I come with the script prepared, I come with my notes for knowing vocal performance (what’s loud, what soft), paint some visuals so they can creatively get in the space. Then we just kind of dive in and plow through it, but I feel like having a little map of where I’m gonna go is huge for the one-on-ones. The group sessions… they’re crazy. I just kind of show up – again, prepared, I have my notes, I’m ready to go – but I pre-assign who’s going to do what to the best of my ability. Because I cast it, I know what my troupe is for the day, so I do a little pre-assigning, but then I just go. Coffee. Coffee is my number one prep source. Just have a really good cup of coffee, and then be ready to go. When I’m recording, I do like to try to get in a little five-minute meditation. If I’m singing ever, I do a full 30-minute vocal warmup – I like to return to my Italian roots, do a little Italian aria warmup – and be extremely hydrated. I mean, those are very technical things, but three different categories. [Laughs.]

I hear you on the hydration for sure.

Very important! And it’s amazing, some days will go by and I’m like, “I had one glass of water.” But if you are hydrated? Oh! Huge difference! When I do a voice for a video game or I’ve been cast for something, I just have to keep hydrated. Your mouth starts making weird noises if not. It just gets weird. Chapstick: another good secret. Have a good amount of chapstick so your lips don’t make noise.

Beyond the essentials (you mentioned your notes), which tool do you find most helpful in the context of a typical workday?

Well, again… coffee. No, I would say if I’m doing a remote session, the sound equipment, and the headphones are everything. I use Bose headphones that I just love. They’re great. I actually have a mic on the go that I bring with me, the Shure MV88, which has been such a little gem. You just plug it into your phone and the sound quality is great. That’s been a good little secret weapon. And then I also use the Hype MiC that I just love. For my home sessions, you can kind of soundproof any room, but I work in my closet. My gowns really pad it well, you don’t need to do much. When I’m doing a remote session: good internet, good headphones, good mic. That’s it. When I’m in the studio, they take care of the technical. I’m on a giant soundstage, it’s more just have my water and have my wits about me. That’s it.

“Have my water and have my wits about me.” That’s the quote.

That’s the quote. That’s it. “Water and wits.” When I do large group sessions, it’s all improvised work, very rarely scripted lines. For loop group, or adding voices to a movie, they don’t script stuff for us. So you have to be on your toes. And like, if it’s a scene with reporters, we get the gist of what we need to be asking about, and it’s like, “Go. Come up with questions. Go.” So wits are very essential. Lately, having had a baby, I’m only functioning at like, 60%, so we’re doing our best. [Laughs.]

Eventually, that’s going to make things even more interesting, because he’s going to start to inform your whole process and your language mentally. And you’re just going to have [laughs] these little phrases in your head that come from him and your life.

Oh, my God. Totally. Already, some of those things have come out where I’m like, “whoa… I just… sorry about that!” [Laughs.] I fully volunteer myself for any mom cue. I’m like, “I will do a great voice for this. It’s authentic.”

Yeah, you’ve got it down. It’s gonna take your skill set and your art in a whole new direction.

Yes.

So what qualities do you seek in collaborators in the audio world? And this can go for casting as well.

I like people who are going to get in the trenches. In terms of the production side, and actually, for artists, it can be long days. I want you to be someone that has a pleasant attitude, that’s going to get in the trenches, knows your talent, and knows to not get your feelings hurt if you’re not the right one for it. To be collaborative is huge, right? Like, sometimes, I want you to bring your ideas to the table, but not get offended if your idea doesn’t get used. And I try to foster an environment where that’s what we’re doing, we’re all throwing ideas up. But at the end of the day, I’m the one that’s going to make the final say, or the producer in the room is going to make the final say, and I don’t need to deal with ego. I would also say I like people who are collaborators and willing to try something out of the box and do that not begrudgingly, because sometimes you can come up with great things, and sometimes we all have a good laugh that it was a disastrous idea. So yeah, I think that that’s the biggest thing, being collaborative. And also having a high standard for the quality of work. I think that we all work really hard. And I like to work with people who want to work really hard, but also want to make it a great day. Because it doesn’t then feel like hard work. I want us all to be proud of what we’ve done at the end of a session.

Whose mentorship has been most crucial to your current work? And what was the most important lesson you gleaned from them?

I have a couple. My business partners who I run my company with Wendy Hoffman and Ranjani Brow, they really taught me. They took a chance on me, when I was like 24, to just start running things basically, to start directing actors. They saw I had a skill for talking to people and being very direct, and they just threw me up there. But within that, they really taught me how to finesse the politics of it all, and how to have the right wording to command respect even though I was young. And, I mean, they threw me in, but always had bumpers on the side. I feel like they really taught me the world of voiceover direction and large group collaborations. They gave me sort of a guidebook by watching what they did, and then they would give me gentle notes on how I could do things better. But they were both people I looked at and was like, “I want to be able to dial it in as they do.” And then, in my personal music career, my singing mentor who is still my mentor to this day is a man named Val Underwood. He has brought my voice back from the dead. He always has amazing training, voice therapy, and encouragement. And he’s known me since I was 14. He’s been incredible and has always been like, “Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Your voice will continue to grow. Keep doing it.” He’s been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement that’s just amazing. And he works with the coolest artists, too. He’s been with opera divas and pop singers. It’s so cool to hear his stories and want to make my own.

What great people to be surrounded by.

Yeah.

So what do you wish others knew about the work that you do?

I wish people knew how hard we work for the group recordings. People don’t know a lot about it, first of all, but I think sometimes people think it’s very easy to do. They don’t realize it’s improv. You have to be on your toes. Sometimes they’re eight-hour sessions, where you’re just constantly using your brain, using your voice, changing your voice up. There’s a technical aspect, to understanding the technical parts of how you record in that environment and to still sound natural. It’s such a skill that not everyone has. I have so much respect for the actors I work with because it’s basically like they play 100 characters in a day in that environment. And you would never know it. I think people are like, “Oh, you’re just coming to do a couple of reporter voices or whatever.” And I’m like, no, they’re doing, like, a reporter, a kid, a little old lady at the grocery store, they’re speaking five languages. I think there’s a lot of credit owed to voice actors. People don’t know how talented they are. And I think also, on the side of more the one-on-one, people don’t understand how the tiniest adjustment to your voice can either take away from the emotional performance or add to the emotional performance, like the difference between saying, “I love you,” whispered versus fully on-voice versus shouted. Those are three entirely different characters, three entirely different motivations. And it’s so powerful. I think it’s not that I wish people knew it, but I think sometimes there’s a moment of pause that people could have. Performance can be so finessed with the voice. You give away so much when you have your face, your eyes, and all the things, but if it’s just the voice, there’s really a lot of unpacking of emotion that can be done just based on volume and, again, being on-voice or off-voice. There’s more finessing than just hopping up to a mic. It’s nice to take a moment and actually think about it. I rarely do, like session to session, but I’m very passionate about sound. I think it’s a little bit of magic art.

This is Angela Piva

 

Angela Piva was at a holiday party many years before Covid was ever a thing. This holiday party was a who’s who of audio royalty. A circle Angela was privy to, but yet… at the end of the night, someone decides to take a group photo – a photo of all the engineers. As she walks up, someone jokes “hey, no wives!” Someone comes to defend her, “She’s an engineer!” The echo reverberated in slow motion throughout the room. “I started laughing, because, you know, you have to laugh at those things because you can’t get mad, you can’t get upset… not cry…Like, Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening. [My friend] pushes me up there and I’m like, going up there anyway.”

AES Heroes Dinner

 

Today, I reiterate the importance of knowing the women who came before you. And so I’m dedicating this blog to the one and only Angela Piva. You may have heard of her. You may not have. But I guarantee you’ve heard some of her work. Her credits span from Michael Jackson, Run DMC, and Naughty By Nature, to Color Me Badd, Mary J. Blige, Ronnie Spector, and more. She broke into the business at a time when you really just didn’t see women in the game. So here’s (some of) her story.

When Angela walked into Berklee College of Music, the program was just getting started. In 1982, the school had this fancy new Mac Plus and had invested in state-of-the-art gear. She started college young and had a particular interest in synthesis but was also open to trying lots of different things. “I was like, well, let me try this and see what happens because I have plenty of time to change gears and maybe do something else. But if I don’t try it, I’ll never know, you know?” And so Angela set herself apart. She landed a job as a work-study overseeing the recording studio and then quickly got an internship at Mission Control in Boston, a studio owned by Michael Johnson and Maurice Starr. Yes, the producers for New Kids on the Block. This studio had an SSL console, which at the time was a big deal, and Angela got to learn the ropes.

These ropes would eventually lead her to Unique recording in NYC. Unique Recording Studio was a five-room studio in Times Square that ran from about 1978 to 2004. Anyone from Madonna to 2pac to Quincy Jones could be found there on any given day. It was owned by a married couple, Bobby and Joanne Nathan, and Angela says having a woman co-founder really made a difference. She says, “They were very open. There was no discrimination of any kind, you know, whereas there was at other studios and that was blatant at that time. I mean, there was one studio manager that literally told me to my face he would never hire a woman.”

Angela quickly moved up to assistant engineer. Since Unique was a 24-hour facility, she found it was a good training ground for an engineer. “You got tons of experience nonstop and the number of sessions I was on just as an assistant with well-known people, artists, and session musicians. It was so not just learning about technology, but the art of recording production. And it really trained me to be a good vocal coach for a lot of the sessions,” says Angela.

Unique’s specialty was MIDI equipment and programming. This is where Angela carved out her niche and became an asset. “I really worked my way in as an engineer through synth and MIDI programming, so we didn’t have the kind of libraries, etc. that you have nowadays…we would sample. We had drum machines and things; we used the 808, 909, you know, Kurzweil and other things. But you know, I was always working on it and synth patches. So a lot of clients had to try to hire two people. So by doing those two jobs, which I loved anyway… creating my own library and being valuable in that way too, is how I worked my way in.”

In the beginning, she assisted a lot of the big sessions, but as she says when you’re just starting out, you don’t get the top of the line. This changed over time. She developed a reputation for her programming and engineering abilities. She did a lot of indie records and one of her first radio-friendly records was with Heavy D, Somebody for Me. This then landed her a session with a little-known group at the time, Naughty by Nature who we all know would become a Grammy Award-winning hip hop trio. “They liked the work that I did with Heavy D a lot, and so they met with me and they played me some of their stuff. So I ended up engineering their first record, and O.P.P.,” says Piva.

 

The Show Documentary (Russell Simmons)

At the same time, Angela got a gig with another “unknown” group. Angela’s colleague and friend, Dr. Freeze were producing them. “I had worked with him a lot, and he wrote the song I Want to Sex You Up. So I recorded that with him and Color Me Badd.” Color Me Badd went on to sell over 12 million records, but back then, Angela says they had never been in the studio before. So she worked with them to teach them how to sing on the mic. Recording both at Unique and Quad Studios, the vocal sessions would last all night long starting at midnight.

Both Naughty by Nature and Color Me Badd’s albums went on to be double platinum in the next year. Angela remembers what that moment was like fondly. “I kept watching Billboard every week and then watching it rise. I remember being out in the street and just hearing people blasting out of their cars. [Then later] I remember once going to a club on the Upper East Side a long time ago. And I saw like a couple of hundred white people dancing to O.P.P., you know, and I almost fainted. I’m like, wow. … That was kind of the moment everything kicked off. Everything sort of changed a bit. And I was gaining more notoriety. A lot of folks contacting me, and starting to do different things. I started to work with other groups. But that really gave me the jumping point to kind of go from there.”

Angela eventually struck out on her own to begin engineering her own clients. While it was hard at first, it was a necessary move since assisting didn’t pay much, so going out on your own was necessary. She found people were really supportive. Angela says, “Run-D.M.C. was very supportive of me. When they saw me start to become an engineer, they’re like, you know, ‘Angela, you made it. You were just the little assistant. Now, look at you’… You know, for minority folks, too, like they know what it’s like to be discriminated against. So I think that’s why they were pushing for me…It felt good, positive, and uplifting when that happened when people see how far you’ve come. It’s hard to get acknowledgment from your peers.”

As the years rolled on and the economy changed, Angela began to diversify her portfolio. “If you want to be in this kind of field, you may have to wear different hats a lot. So you have to be versatile and kind of skilled in different areas.” She worked in audiobooks for a while, voiceovers, and got into the podcasting game before it was cool. While it can be difficult to break into these gigs when you start out in music, Angela says having good contacts and good recommendations really helped her. She had a colleague at Harper Collins get her first gig.

Eventually, in 2011, she landed her current position as part of the staff and faculty at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema@Steiner Studios – part of the City University of New York. “I teach advanced recording and mixing techniques and a lot about music production. I like to teach about techniques in general and how to apply them to different situations. Because I feel like, you never know where people are going to end up, what they’re going to love or what opportunities they’re going to get.”

Angela paved the way for many of us. I asked her about any challenges she faced as a woman, but she said while things weren’t always easy, she was always respected because of her work ethic. Hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and discipline are words that Angela has lived by in her decades-long career. “Being different gave me an edge. It helped me. I think it was more helpful than it ever was hurtful. Maybe there were people that didn’t work with me because I’m a woman, but I’ll never know because they didn’t really tell me. [But more importantly], don’t go where you’re not wanted. You need to be in the right place in order to get to the next level… If you love something, if you work hard, if you put a lot of energy into it, positive energy, you’re going to find your way somehow. The path will keep leading you somewhere.”

 

Angela Piva is the current president of the New York Section of the Audio Engineering Society and was also recently elected Vice President of Eastern Region, USA/Canada.

Make sure you get to know the people who paved the way for the rest of us. You will inevitably learn from them, be inspired, and also maybe make a new friend! Cheers, Angela!

 

 

 

A Walk Through of My Soldering Station

When working on electronics it is important to keep a tidy, and safe workspace.  I thought I would show what my bench looks like as an example for others who are just starting out on their tinkering journey.

Desk & Chair

I recommend a desk that is at a comfortable working height, that is clean and resistant to static & fire/heat.  An adjustable padded chair, such as an office chair, that can keep your knees at 90 degrees and help maintain good posture is key for avoiding long-term injuries.

Soldering Iron

I have both a cheap RadioShack soldering iron and a decent Weller adjustable temperature iron (WLC100 Soldering Station).  It is okay to start with the cheap one until you can upgrade.  The basic requirements are an iron that is at least 25 watts.  Most come with a conical tip (useful for small joints), but wedge tips are better for maintaining heat, which is better for good soldering joints.

Solder & Flux

Even though Leaded solder is toxic and not used in commercial products, it is still the go-to for electronics hobbyists in the United States due to its low melting point and ease of creating good soldering joints.  Lead-free is available and recommended from a safety standpoint.  Solder with 60% tin (often called 60/40) is seen as the best solder, due to its lower melting point.  Flux-core solder, as the name suggests, contains flux, often rosin/resin, which aids in creating good solder joints.

Helping Hands

Circuits and components get hot when soldering, so helping hands are a must.  There are several styles depending on your needs and budget.  I recommend one with alligator clips and a magnifying glass as a bare minimum.  Upgrades include a mirror with a light, a fan attachment, and different style clips.  There is even a silicone connector holder called a Hot Holder that is a must-purchase for anyone creating a variety of custom cables.

Fan & Airflow

A fan is a necessity in order to avoid inhaling fumes from the heated solder.  Airflow must be directed away from the working area, which means there must be at least one open window/door in addition to the fan if you are working indoors.

Light

I recommend an adjustable desk lamp for any soldering project.  I inevitably find myself in rooms with insufficient light and a desk lamp is key for inspecting tiny soldering joints.

Wirecutters & Strippers

Generic wire cutters are so important, that one might even have multiples, like angled wire cutters for circuits in a small housing.  While some use pocket knives for wire strippers (to trim the plastic coating off wires), I prefer having a multi-gauge wire stripper.

Sponges, solder suckers, scrapers, wicks

Over the course of soldering, the solder coating the tip of the soldering pen will discolor and become ineffective.  To clean the old solder one can use a small wet sponge, it often comes with the soldering kit, or a brass wool solder scraper.  I use both.  Solder suckers and solder wicks are useful when one accidentally uses too much solder on a joint and bridges two wires together.  Solder wicks are copper braids that soak the excess solder, while solder suckers are retractable pen that sucks a small chunk of solder.

Other Helpful Tools

With tiny components, fingers are often too clumsy or too large, that is why I have tweezers and needle nose pliers in my kit.  I also keep cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to clean up my finished board.  Multimeters are useful to double-check connections within the circuit.  If there are any accidental shorts or missed joints, the multimeter should find them.

Safety notes

Wear safety glasses to protect your eyes from flying wire fragments and hot solder.  Use a bubble wand to find out if the airflow of your work area is directed away from your face.  If the bubbles are floating towards the open window, you are all set.  When the bubbles just hang in the air, it is time to add another fan or open another window/door.  Take regular breaks from the soldering and take a short walk.  It is not good for your overall health to work in a fume-filled and cramped position (even when trying to maintain good posture).  If you have a drink in your work area, make sure that it is covered (to prevent contamination), and wash your hands before handling any food or drink after soldering.  Overall it is good practice to wash your hands after soldering.

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