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A Little Bit of Magic

 

I miss mixing shows. That thought has snuck up on me every week or so for the past several months. It’s always a tiny bit surprising because I knew I liked my job, but I’d never stopped to take stock of exactly how happy it made me. I know I’m not alone in that; all of us want to get back to our usual, wonderfully irregular lives. One of my favorite things about mixing is that there is always something to do. When I started in theatre, I dabbled in a few other jobs, but as an actor, I got bored sitting backstage for the scenes I wasn’t in and I’d end up helping the crew with set changes. As a sound designer, I found myself, despite a valiant effort to pay attention, inevitably spaced out in my seat when there weren’t problems to actively solve.

But mixing, that’s the best of all worlds. There’s always something to do, something new to watch, something to keep you on your toes. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen a show, there are always surprises:

When I toured with Les Mis, we were probably 30 shows into the run when my A2, Mark, started to learn the mix. We were talking through a scene with a whistle sound effect and he asked, “Do you take that off Felipe’s whistle? Or something else?”

“…. Wait, Felipe whistles?”

Sure enough, watching for him the next performance, Felipe came out, brought two fingers to his mouth for the whistle, and I had to resist the urge to do a facepalm. He wasn’t even tucked somewhere over on the side where I might have missed him. He was dead center stage and the only possible way I would have missed it was…. if I hadn’t even looked. On the upside, no one had noticed up to that point (more a testament to Felipe’s timing than mine), and once Mark pointed it out, we attached the cue to the visual and moved on with the show.

I typically evaluate audio through a cinematic lens when I’m watching a show, meaning that I always have the question in mind: Does the audio match the visual? Sometimes the answers are simple: does the actress exit the stage as she continues to talk? Alright, then her level should decrease as she disappears so it sounds like she’s moving away. Is a guy giving a whistle to alert his friends? Then maybe (just maybe…) the effect should link up with his motion. Just like in a movie, what you’re hearing should complement or even help clarify what you’re seeing. If those two senses aren’t working in harmony, the audience is likely to get confused and pulled out of the show.

These are examples of what I’d unofficially term mechanical augmentations: they’re fairly obvious if you’re looking for them, but go a long way to assist the storytelling or your actors by reinforcing their choices. The more you’re able to pay attention to these details, the better able you are to understand the director’s vision or the character choices, and based on these, you can make more intelligent mixing decisions.

During “Why God?” in Miss Saigon, Chris is lamenting the cruel irony of having found something good and worthwhile in war-torn Vietnam when he had previously been content and safe in his lack of attachments. Towards the end of the song, a group of Vietnamese men come up to him, pleading that they will give him money if he can get them visas to flee the country, until he bursts past them, dramatically venting his final frustration to whatever higher power might be listening.

Through the course of this song, Chris goes from a state of confused contemplation to angry vexation. The music has a natural crescendo, but the true catalyst to the shift in his mood comes from the chorus as they badger him. As the mixer, you have the actors already doing their part, getting more insistent and physically closing in on him as they plead their case, but you can give the scene an extra push. You’re trying to make sure there’s a logical transition from Chris being mildly annoyed to aggressively frustrated which is where (for me) the cinematic lens comes into play. The mixer can push the level of the men begging steadily up along with the orchestra so they both get progressively louder until it makes sense that Chris’s reaction is to push past them to get away from the cacophony.

In the second act of Mean Girls, Regina sings the song “World Burn” as she plots her ultimate revenge against Cady. The beginning of the song starts with Regina, all in black, on a dark, empty stage, save for the copier she’s pushing and the harsh uplight that illuminates her face. She’s pissed, but this is not a yell-in-your-face confrontational angry, this is a quiet, oh so controlled venom where you know she’s not playing and is ready to do some major damage.

Again, you follow what makes sense with the visual onstage. Having Regina’s voice booming out of the PA wouldn’t seem realistic and would jar the audience out of the moment. You want to keep them focused and immersed in the show, so the mix for this scene wants to be subtle and controlled. Still clearly audible, but exactly what you imagine when you think of the phrase “deadly quiet.”

Broadway Cast Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

In addition to those subtleties, there’s another kind of moment. These aren’t necessarily as obvious upfront, and it might take some trial and error to figure out the right combination from a mixing standpoint, but when it happens, there’s just a little bit of magic. It sounds corny, but you know these moments when you get a chill up your spine, or your breath instinctively catches, or the audience goes absolutely nuts and you can’t help but grin like an idiot.

One of the first moments I found like that was back in college on the show, Altar Boyz. Towards the end, one of the characters, Juan, receives bad news but tries to soldier on with the show. Yet, partway through his solo, he reaches a breaking point and runs away. The rest of the boys chase him down and coax him back in a musical moment that starts quietly and begins to build until it culminates with Juan choosing to step back into his spotlight and belt the final bits of the song.

If you get the dynamic bump between the build with the boys and the power of Juan’s reentrance into the song right, the audience starts cheering for all they’re worth, and it’s a grin-like-an-idiot moment. But it’s not just the fader bump that makes that moment. Part of the magic in these little snippets of a show comes from the fact that you can’t do them alone. If the audience doesn’t like Juan throughout the show, what do they care if he comes back to finish the number? There’s a lot riding on the actor himself to bring that moment to fruition. The best moments are the ones where you add a final flourish to bring it home and make the performance that much better.

Another one of my favorite moments was in Les Misérables at the end of “On My Own.” Eponine’s song builds up to this massive culmination of music and then everything cuts off, the vocals, the orchestra, everything, for just a second before she finishes the song with a soft “I love him, but only on my own.”

In the musical build-up to that peak, I would also push the vocal reverb on Eponine and, if I got the balance just right, it felt like the sound was suspended at that moment as the reverb rang out through the house. But there was a razor-thin margin for success which required precision between several different factors: how the actress was singing that night, how I was mixing, and the acoustics of the theatre itself (which changed weekly). If you didn’t push the reverb enough, you wouldn’t get as powerful an impact, but if you pushed too hard, it sounded unnatural and pulled the audience out of the story.

It didn’t happen every show, because there was no exact formula of constant variables where you could just say “x + y = MAGIC!” But that’s part of what makes the times where everything does come together so special.

US National Tour Cast Photo Credit: Matthew Murphy

As you’re working a show, you’ll learn to look for those places for little tweaks and nuances to augment your mix. It doesn’t matter if you take a show because it’s a job to pay the bills, or it’s one that’s been on your bucket list for years, finding those moments will keep you engaged and ultimately give you your favorite parts of the show. I worked on Altar Boyz well over a decade ago, and I still smile whenever I think of mixing that song with Juan. Those are the kind of moments that I miss most and can’t wait to have again when we can get back to work.

 

I Went Back To Work For 12 Hours 

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a production company.  They were doing a telethon and needed another sound engineer.  This was the first live job offer I had gotten in seven months.  I was wondering what this moment was going to feel like, and maybe because it happened so much sooner than I anticipated, I just didn’t feel mentally prepared to handle this situation.  The situation of simply discussing the details, negotiating, and then accepting or declining the offer.  I have done this thousands of times.  I did not expect my mere act of participating in the offer conversation to be rusty, but it was, I guess because I had a lot of new things to consider.

First of all, I was nervous about working at all.  I was nervous about being around so many other people.  The event was going to be outside, so that was a plus, but it would be in an outlet mall in LA on a Saturday.  Of course, I would wear my mask the entire time.  I thought about needing to get a fanny pack so I could keep my “Covid kit” on me at all times.  I was also worried about endurance and stamina.  Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t spent the entire pandemic on the couch eating bonbons, but it’s difficult to keep my step average up without a weekly 14 hour show day.  I also had to provide a negative Covid test result.  I didn’t have much time to schedule an appointment in time for me to get results back before the event, and I worried about that unknown variable—when, exactly, would I get the results.  Also, what if I was Covid positive and had to back out at the last minute?  Ok, I realize this is a lot of “ifs” but this is just a small window into how my brain processes new information.  It is exhausting, I admit, but I am rarely unprepared as a result.  So, all of this is what made me feel rusty.  There are so many new things to consider before deciding to take a live events job during a pandemic…to decide if it’s worth it.

I decided it was worth it.  I would take a Covid test, and I knew everyone else would be required to as well.  I would definitely wear my mask the entire time and wash my hands often and thoroughly.  I would social distance as much as possible, and completely “scrub in” when I arrived back home again.  Many of my friends would also be working this gig, and I wanted to work with them again.  So I took the gig and scheduled my Covid test.

I took my Covid test at Rite Aid 9 days before the event.  By the way, I totally recommend this testing method.  It’s free, and you don’t need insurance.  You can schedule online, you are given the test in the Rite Aid drive-through, and you administer the test yourself, which I did and then returned through the window drawer.  I got my negative test results three days later.  The gig was great!  It was exciting to be kept on my toes since the event was a live broadcast.  Mostly everyone was masked.  There were a few shoppers here and there that were unmasked.  My set up and check were really easy and uneventful.  I spent the rest of the day setting up backline for one of the other stages and just generally cleaning cable paths.  It was very hot, of course, I was wearing all black, and wearing a mask just made the heat worse—not that I would have ever gone without it.

The event went on with no problems.  I will say that many things about our run were adjusted or cut right there on the fly, and that was new to me, (I don’t generally work in tv) so I was on high alert the entire time.  I was definitely tense.  As soon as the event was over, I felt myself release a lot of tension, and my head immediately started throbbing.  I had the worst headache for the rest of the night.  I found myself debating whether or not to stop what I was doing and going to wash my hands every time someone coughed near me.  The load-out was 3 hours long, and I really did have a difficult time getting through it.  Pre-Covid, it would have been no problem.  Post-Covid, I had reached my limit.  I was hot and tired, and fighting a stress headache.  After load out, I drove home and arrived just before 3:00 am.  I was so sore, so tired, but also really fulfilled.

The reason I’m choosing to write about this day is that I’ve thought a lot about those 12 hours.  There was nothing extraordinary about the gig, except that we were working an event in the middle of a pandemic.  It was just weird, and I think that’s ok.  I think it’s ok that I had new anxieties and handled myself differently.  I wasn’t as strong as I normally am, and I think that’s ok too.  I was a little too excited to work again and was maybe a little overwhelmed by the whole process, and I think that we’re all going to find that going back is going to be different, and however we react will be normal, because this is new.  I also don’t know if taking that gig was the right choice.  I don’t know that it was the wrong choice either.  I’m glad I did it, and I’m happy to report that I am still Covid-free.  I think I will probably be less anxious the next time I work.  I’ve now seen which preparations are useful, and what else still needs improvement.  I was very glad to see that the majority of the public were wearing masks, and behaving cautiously and courteously.  We need more of that for us to get back to work.

When you get back to work, if you feel anxious or different or nervous, just know that I did too.  I’m sure others are too.  It’s ok.  Just take one minute to breathe and center yourself.  We are who we are because we can adapt easily—figure out how to work with what we’ve been given.  It will get easier each time.  We will have “normal” again soon.

The Beauty Lies In The Fractals

A Story by Arica Rust

When I walk down the street, I sometimes stop to look at plants or trees that I pass by. A tree above me in the autumn daylight lowers its branches to allow closer inspection of the maple leaves hanging from its limbs. At the end of the bow, its limbs divide into another set of branches nearly identical in number to the ones stemming from the original limb. Then yet again the branches divide into twigs each festooned with maple leaves fading from red to green as the older, larger leaves begin to darken to red with the coming cold weather. The new green leaves look like copies of the larger red ones: children of themselves like when I stand in front of the bathroom mirror with another mirror at my back and see many reiterations of myself stretching out to infinity towards the horizon. Inside each leaf, I see a memory.

In 1807 when Jean-Baptiste Fourier published his memoir On the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies [1], he described what would become known as the Fourier series wherein one can recreate a complex waveform by adding together its component waves.

The other night, I was lying in my hotel room with my headphones on, listening to one of my favorite tracks. In the silence of the mostly empty hotel, I closed my eyes and let my mind’s focus move from each instrument. I pulled forward the electric guitar, then the bass guitar, then the tom rolls, then the lead vocal, one-by-one, to the forefront of my mind like picking the petals off a flower. Then when finished, I lay each petal back into the mix to reconstruct the song in its wholeness like the semblance of the flower.

For a very long time, this listening process has been the closest I come to meditation. It brings me a sense of calm to hear a song this way, much like looking at a painting in a museum then stepping forward to look at each individual brushstroke. I hear this way in my everyday life if I shift my focus.

I am walking down a new street in a town I have never been to before that reminds me of everywhere and yet nowhere. I hear the reflections of cars whirring about, bouncing off the glass buildings. Then I shift my attention to the shuffle of my feet against the rough concrete, then shift again to hear the two people I pass by as they talk over coffee, and shift and shift and shift until the people talking sound like they are singing, the reflections off the glass buildings sound like striking bells, and my feet sound like a drunk drum beat. The world around me becomes an urban orchestra twisting and reconstructing itself in its own enveloping rhythms. Inside each sound, I hear a memory.

I reach above my head, brushing the sweaty hair poking out of my rock climbing helmet off my face. I forgot to pick the cable with a spanset to the cable bridge before we started going up to trim, and now I had to fix it. Standing on top of the motor distro I reached out to choke the cable with the spanset.

“What does it say on your arm?”

I turned my head around to see my friend but also my boss standing below me with his laptop in hand staring up at the Dune tattoo scrolled across my left forearm.

“What?!” I said. I was so fixated on trying to wrangle the cables in a hurry that the words went straight through my brain.

“Your arm. What does it say on your arm.”

I smiled, “ ‘Fear is the mind-killer.’ It is a quote from the book Dune by Frank Herbert.”

Instead of responding, he pulled up the t-shirt sleeve on his same arm to reveal a series of words written in Latin on his upper arm.

“We have the same tattoo,” his words grinned.

Maybe it was only for a split second, but in that second, I thought of the leaves on the trees spiraling off the branches identical to the ones that came before it, and inside each leaf was written one of the letters from the tattoos on our arms. Inside them, I read a memory.

Seven days into this show, the A1 and I had become friends talking about professors that we had in common from San Francisco State, but in different time periods. Some teachers and mentors last through generations like that. He always offered to buy me coffee during his morning excursions after our beginning-of-day checks were complete and walk-in started rolling. Come to think of it, he even had the same classic white-haired, “sound guy” ponytail that our professor had.

And the branches diverged yet again.

I had thought about something ahead of him in anticipation of something I knew he would think but had not yet thought and then when he thought it, he laughed in surprise and gratitude.

“You know, you are gonna make a great husband one day.”

My heart smiled, and in each word I heard a memory.

We had just finished dumping the truck and pushing all the cases into the dark theater. I finished helping with what I could on deck so now it was time to make my way towards FOH to see what we were working with today.

The FOH engineer was already there beginning to pull things out of the utility case to place them on top of his console in what was becoming our daily base configuration of the setup. An old man sat in a chair next to the house console, we had met earlier during introductions, and he told me he was the house tech.

After getting ourselves situated and ready to begin our verification steps, I began our daily procedure of moving systematically through the system du jour to check where we were at.

“We just had the [insert Manufacturer’s Name] guy come in to check the tuning a few months ago,” the house tech said.

“Oh, it’s all good, this is just part of our procedure every day,” I said cheerfully.

I moved the measurement microphone at the transition point between one side of the main hang and one side of the in-fills. There seemed to be a time difference present.

“Hey, do you mind if I see the tablet for a sec? It looks like there is a slight time offset between the mains and in-fills,” I said.

“I can’t give you access to the tablet. It has to be run by a house technician. Also, that seems impossible. This was just tuned.”

I just stared at him.

I went back up to the stage to grab something, or so I told myself.

“Are you OK?” the stage tech asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just having a hard time getting this guy to help me.”

“Dude, he came up to me earlier when we were loading in and started asking me all these questions and I was like, ‘Man, you got to talk to her, she is our crew chief’ and he said, ‘Oh, that little girl over there? She is your crew chief?’” he told me.

I didn’t understand. I looked at him while he spoke and the words fell apart into their individual components trying to form themselves into a complete thought. Crew chief. She. Little girl. Man. None of these words made sense. They were not talking about me. The words fell out of his mouth and clanged onto the floor like a rigging shackle falling out of someone’s pocket.

Inside each word, I saw a memory. Leaves branching off of a trunk further and further and suddenly the jukebox in my brain flipped on and I started hearing The Beatles in my head:

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together….” 

And the focus shifted, the CD skipped, the record flipped to a new song:

“I am just a copy of a copy of a copy…” 

And the focus shifted again, spiraling out like leaves slowly fading to red on the branch of that tree and I could hear each word dripping off them like the sound of water droplets falling into a bigger pond. Then suddenly without warning, the orchestra surged with energy, gathering up into a great crescendo. I was walking backward and falling upwards and reading texts from a book forwards:

“I will face my fear. 

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. 

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. 

Only I will remain.”

And I’m inside my own memory.

Standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom of my childhood home where the door to the bathroom held a full-length mirror and swung inwards. When I stood in front of the mirror I saw myself reiterated out into infinity: a complex form split into its component parts.

Who is this that stood before me?

It seems that I keep being told who I am, but only I get to decide who I am…

Right?

When I open my eyes, I’m standing under the tree. The sunlight gently warms the outside of my face. My face. The wind begins to pick up, rustling through the leaves, and I pick their decisive sound out amidst the complexity of the orchestra.

Then they begin to fall.

One by one the tree sheds its leaves.

Returning to the dirt to be decomposed, eaten, and returned as food to feed itself to grow for the next spring.

“Fear is the mind-killer.”

A Note From The Author:

Once upon a time, before I focused on audio (and sometimes while), I was a writer. I published a collection of poetry in 2016, but haven’t written much since. It seems that in this time of uncertainty, we need art more than ever. I usually write technical blogs to focus on education in the audio world, but art and science exist to both love and hate one another. A historically bittersweet romance. Yet the beauty of this world lies in its complexity in each individual. Much like the Fourier transform, a complex world is the sum of its many individual parts. 

Citations:

[1] https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201003/physicshistory.cfm

Quotes from Books and Music:

Dune by Frank Herbert (https://dunenovels.com/)

“I Am The Walrus” by The Beatles (https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/i-am-the-walrus/)

“Copy of A” by Nine Inch Nails (https://www.nin.wiki/Copy_Of_A)

The Problem with Being Called Bossy

 

I was recently listening to an episode of The Guilty Feminist podcast titled ‘Being Bossy with Carrie Quinlan.’ It is quite possible you are already rolling your eyes due to the use of that awful B-word. Every woman and young girl has been called bossy at some point in their life, and the connotation that comes with it is not a good one. I love this podcast and this particular episode piqued my interest. Being too emotional was also brought up, which might evoke a second eye roll from some readers.

I want to get straight to the point on why these kinds of terms and phrases are awful and damaging. The word bossy and leader are two very different words. Each elicits different feelings, have separate definitions, and can be seen as opposing. You want to be one and not the other. Although, if we look at these words through a feminist lens, we can see a problem. Though these words are different, they are often applied to people who are synonymous. Men are rarely called bossy, while most female-identifying people can attest to being called it at least once in their lifetime. I don’t want to make any blanket statements. The word bossy is often reserved for women and girls who are exhibiting leadership characteristics.

It is incredibly discouraging, and I have been labeled it so much more with each leadership role I have taken. Six-year-old Sarah was bossy, and sometimes twenty-four-year-old Sarah can be a bit hot-headed. However, when it comes to my work as a designer and engineer, I try my hardest to represent myself in a confident and professional manner. When I am told I am bossy or overbearing, I take it as a blow to my work ethic and how I am managing my role as a leader or project manager. This is simply not the case.

Then there is you are being too emotional phrase. I am going to share a personal story of why this phrase is detrimental. Especially to those who work in an artistic industry and are passionate about what they do.

A few years ago, I was presenting design work I had done for a play that I felt a deep connection to. It had female lead characters that represented power and inspiration. Which are all the things I love in a story. I felt confident about the work I had done, but when it came time to present, I was overly concerned about appearing too emotional and being seen as unprofessional. This was the first time in my educational career where this idea and fear had materialized. I was finally able to show my feelings and connections for my work and the script, but I had not gotten over that fear that momentarily held me back. It is devastating that I perceived my emotions for my work to be unprofessional and therefore felt like I could not be myself and represent the design that I loved.

This is a problem. Being told you are too emotional is a problem. These are words and phrases that have no place in a professional or educational setting. It creates pitfalls for our young professionals who will have to deal with this for the rest of their lives. It is sad, it is discouraging, and it can also be sexist. Women can be leaders, men can be emotionally invested in their work, and vise versa. I implore you to consider this as a participant in the music and audio industry. I beg you to think about those who these phrases affect and how they stifle ambition and creativity. I ask that you leave these words at the door.

This is a brief commentary on my feelings in regard to these issues, but the conversation does not end here. Having these discussions and the ability to talk about concerns and experiences like mine helps our industry become stronger, more inclusive, and more supportive for its members. Organizations like SoundGirls and W.A.M. are wonderful resources when it comes to looking for a sense of support and community where you can have these kinds of conversations. I would also like to extend my email; sjcalver@mtu.edu; if anyone wishes to continue this conversation with me personally. I have a narrative project in development surrounding issues related to female-identifying people and one small portion of that narrative will talk about being bossy and too emotional.

I will say it again in case anyone did not hear it the first time. Women can be leaders, men can be emotionally invested in their work, and vise versa.

 

Pandemic Fatigue 

 

 

With 12 million event industry professionals out of work, everyone is pivoting as fast and as much as they can. With COVID, plus the election, searching for work, physical distancing, zoom call upon zoom call and so much more this has created a new kind of fatigue. Pandemic fatigue.

Many of us are used to extremely long hours, physical labor, and having to adapt on the fly, which means many of us don’t know how to stop, slow down, or how to wait it out; especially having to do it for 6 months plus straight.  Some days I feel more tired than I ever did on a 5-day show run. Self-care in times like these are extremely important.  I know I’ve written about self-care before, however, as 2020 drags on self-care continues to look different for everyone and becomes even more important.

Maintain a routine if you can build a new one if you need to.  I had to build a new routine, otherwise, I found myself not getting dressed and watching way too much tv. A few of the things I have added to my routine are volunteering, cooking/baking, reading for fun, and hanging with my nephews more. Other things you could add are journaling, a new exercise routine, DIY home improvements, or exploring your city.  Build a routine to avoid depression and anxiety. At the same time, it’s ok to give yourself a break and let yourself off the hook; there is a lot going on.

This new routine is about finding a new balance. We are on an informational and emotional roller-coaster. Take a mental break from the news and social media – re-read your favorite childhood book series or start a new one. Explore that park you always drove by, but never stopped at.  Find folks to socialize with who understands what you are going through. Find people who understand you may be emotional. That you might need to adjust the days’ plan due to how you’re feeling or an opportunity you need to follow up on. People who will support you in any way you need. A support system or network in these times are very important and so are the people you lean on when you need to. Find a balance in your routine that provides motivation, but allows you to adjust if things just don’t feel right. Develop your support network too.

Also, if you’re like me you’re on a new and very tight budget.  I had to redo my budget to cut out any ‘frivolous spending’ aka anything extra and fun. Maintaining my living expenses have become a huge concern and point of stress. I probably went a little overboard, cutting anything not needed right away which took a lot of fun activities off the table early. Now that I have rebalanced my budget ensuring I can make ends meet I find I desire to put some of the fun items back in all the while thinking I have to make sure I’m filling my rainy-day account because who knows what unexpected expense could pop up. Luckily my support network reminded me it’s ok to treat myself once in a while too. It is ok to buy that one dinner out or get that new piece of gear.  Try that new food truck that opened down the block. Buy the new shoes you’ve been needing but avoiding.  Yes, the budget is tight but again self-care is important. Find a balance that can be maintained and develop your routine around it.

Develop a routine that includes self-care and a support network. We’ll need to continue to prepare for the long run as we all know our industry will not open up overnight. This is going to take time, patience, and a lot of support.  Find joy where you can, stave off the fatigue, anger, and fear as needed. Rely on your network and your routine to make it through this because we will make it through and we will be stronger as individuals and a stronger industry once we get to do what we love again.

Also, a little PSA

Don’t forget to look for and utilize your local resources for help, many counties and states have assistance programs in place – food shelves, health insurance help, budgeting assistance, or even resume creating and job finding support. Use these systems, they exist for this specific reason and there is no shame in using them to make it through.  These resources can help relaxed financial or job worries and help bring peace of mind during these times.

And take care of your mental health.

 

 

Get Your Head in the Game

Gamify your mental health to get through the tough times

For any number of reasons, our mental health can take a hit from time to time. It can sap all our motivation, and toxic productivity culture (What Is Toxic Productivity and How Do I Avoid It?) and social media crafting (Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy) can exacerbate our feelings of inadequacy. Just keeping on top of daily tasks can feel impossible. However, there are ways to readjust our approach in order to help us feel better about ourselves and still achieve plenty without being overwhelmed.

Mental health is health

We have come a long way in being able to talk openly about mental health, but the attitude that it is separate from physical health, or not real because “it’s all in your head” is still out there. Your brain is an inextricable part of your body. Mental health is health, and there are varying types of illness, levels of severity and various ways to treat it. I like to think of the advice in this post as similar to physiotherapy: it might cure mild symptoms, alleviate more serious ones, or just take the edge off. It can work in conjunction with medication but is no substitute for professional help. I am by no means an expert. These are just methods that help me and hopefully will help you if you need it. Much like physiotherapy; if it makes you feel worse, stop and speak to a medical professional.

We’re all a little disappointed that we aren’t Beyoncé

The most important thing to bear in mind is, as the above Wait But Why article outlines, happiness = reality – expectations. When your mental health is suffering, you need to strip everything right back and start again. The key to happiness (or at least contentment in this context), much like the unofficial motto of some venues I’ve worked in, is to “lower your expectations”. If you’re trying to take over the world but you can’t even bring yourself to get dressed, you’re just going to make yourself feel awful. Be honest with yourself about what you can achieve. Yes, you have the same number of hours in the day as Beyoncé, but you haven’t had a small army of people working for you since you were sixteen. Shut that hustle culture noise down, now is not the time for it.

Stop comparing yourself to others altogether. Your hyper-productive friend won’t know if you mute their Facebook feed about the qualifications they’re getting, the sourdough they’re baking and the Arabic they’re perfecting. Most social media feeds are biased towards the better aspects of life, so you’re comparing your every day to their highlights, and it’s toxic. However, being kind to yourself doesn’t mean you should take the rest of your life off. If you truly can’t get out of bed, ok, try again later. If you can and you just don’t want to, you’re only cheating yourself. Self-care doesn’t always mean indulging yourself. It also means doing the challenging things that you know are good for you.

Plan ahead

Being told to plan ahead might not sound like the most useful advice if you’re already struggling, but if you can, do it. Humans are bad at making good decisions in emergencies. Paradoxically, a cocktail of hormones shut down the brain’s higher functions during the fight or flight response and 80-90% of people freeze or carry on like nothing’s happening during life-threatening situations (What not to do in a disaster and How to survive a disaster). It’s very difficult to form new neural pathways during this response, so the people who do the best are ones who have visualized a plan for what they would do in case of emergency and can fall back on that memory. “Typically, survivors survive not because they are braver or more heroic than anyone else, but because they are better prepared.” This is why I always, always, consciously think through the path to my closest emergency exit every time I board a plane, and why it’s good to have a plan for when you might struggle with your mental health.

Of course, bouts of mental illness are less immediate and longer-term than something like a plane crash, but we are still undergoing stress and operating at reduced capacity. Add in the decision fatigue that our always-on, infinite-choice culture causes and our willpower can disappear. Putting coping mechanisms in place beforehand can help you to deal with it better from the start. I highly recommend everyone read up on cognitive behavioural therapy, whether you experience mental health issues or not. It can really help you understand your mind’s processes and take control of your thoughts and beliefs and could help you to help someone else who is unwell.

You can put together an emergency kit, with vitamins, healthy food with a long shelf life like tinned fish or frozen prepared vegetables, mementos from happy times and anything else that will get you through the day. If you can, automate your recurring payments and put plenty of reminders in your calendar for appointments, deadlines etc. so you don’t have to worry about remembering it all. Knowing you have everything you need to get by will leave you with more energy and focus for the important stuff when things get difficult.

Come up with a list of default decisions, so you don’t have to agonise over inconsequential things when brainpower is at a premium. If you don’t want anything in particular for breakfast, it will be cereal. If you don’t know what to wear, make it jeans and the t-shirt that’s at the top of the drawer. You don’t have to go full Steve Jobs on this (Steve Jobs Always Dressed Exactly the Same. Here’s Who Else Does), but if you don’t have any strong feelings about something, just do the default until you do. There are more important things to think about.

Make a Scotty schedule

“Find something small that you can control, and put steps in place for a positive outcome that you can look forward to. Artist: JM Nieto”

I’m a big fan of the Scotty Principle, especially when it comes to dealing with clients at work: named after the engineer from Star Trek, the idea is you generously overestimate how long a task will take, for example finding a fault in a signal chain. This allows extra time for any unforeseen complications or further issues, and if it is a straightforward fix you seem like a miracle worker. I don’t see it as dishonest, just realistic. People are much happier about a twenty-minute delay if they thought it would take half an hour than if they were promised ten minutes. You can even do it to yourself: instead of trying to smash through your entire to-do list in a day and feeling like a failure when you don’t manage it, really think about how long each item takes, then allow 50%-100% more time. If you finish early, great! More time for something else. If not, you’ve still achieved what you set out to do. If you continually find yourself falling behind, just increase your estimates next time.

Following on from the default decisions approach, make a loose default day plan, but don’t worry if you don’t stick to it. If something comes up you can still be flexible, but it’s much easier to do something if it’s already scheduled in than if you have to think about what you should do and persuade yourself to do it. You’re more likely to go to the gym on a Wednesday morning if Wednesdays are gym days than if you wait until you spontaneously feel like working out. If you’re anything like me, that day might never come.

Break it down

Once you’ve laid the groundwork, you can take each day as it comes. Treat it like a game to keep yourself motivated: give yourself points for every single thing you achieve. Start with the absolute basics. Are you still here? Good. You’ve already won the game for today. Anything else you do is a bonus. If you ever feel that you might not be here tomorrow, talk to someone. I know it’s hard, but it will help. Take your friends who keep posting those “I’ll always listen” statuses up on their offer. You might think that they don’t mean you, or you’d just be wasting their time, but I guarantee you they do mean you and you are worth their time. If you don’t know anyone you can reach out to, call, or message a mental health charity or suicide helpline. Talking to you is exactly what those people want to do, that’s why they’re there.

Next are the bonus rounds. There’s a technique in weightlifting called “training to failure” you keep doing reps of a challenging weight until you can’t lift anymore. Used in moderation, it’s one of the most effective ways to build muscle and improve strength. Using a weight you can lift comfortably will only ever maintain your current strength, you need to keep pushing yourself to grow. The nice thing about this technique is that failure is not only expected but an integral part of the approach. You just see if you can do one more rep, and if you can’t you’ve completed the exercise successfully.

So when it comes to your daily life, break everything down to the smallest components possible. Getting started can be the hardest part, but it’s much easier if the task is tiny. Don’t tell yourself you’re going to do all the admin that’s been building up, don’t even aim to clear all your emails. Start with sorting one email. Then see if you can do another, and keep going until you reach your limit. You might be surprised by how much you can trick yourself into doing. Break your time into smaller chunks too. If you wake up feeling terrible, don’t write the whole day off straight away. Leave it an hour then try again. If you can’t face a task, do something else and come back to it maybe twenty minutes later. If you find your energy dipping, put on some inspirational music like this playlist, look at some cute kitten photos or whatever you need to give yourself a boost, then try again.

When you’re done, don’t berate yourself for not doing more, congratulate yourself for how much you did do. I find keeping a “done” as well as a “to-do” list much more motivating than just deleting stuff from my to-do list. It helps to keep track of everything you’ve achieved instead of it disappearing into the ether, leaving you disappointed by how much is left on the list. Much like training to failure, you shouldn’t push yourself to your limit for every single task. Use it in moderation and combine it with rest periods where you go a bit easier on yourself. You’re in this for the long haul, you don’t want to burn yourself out. Don’t forget that there is absolutely no shame in asking for help, too. Your loved ones will probably be glad to have something practical that they can do for you.

Points mean prizes

Ms Pac-man, by NES–still-the-best.

Gamification is a very effective tool for making things more fun and engaging. Earning points can give you little dopamine hits throughout the day and motivate you to make progress you might not otherwise have made. Apps like Zombies, Run! and Superbetter turns exercise and mental health improvement, respectively, into games to help users, but you can make your own one up tailored to your situation. Set yourself small short-term goals and larger long-term ones, while remaining realistic about your capabilities. When you reach a goal, reward yourself accordingly. If you finish your day’s tasks on time, give yourself an hour playing a video game. If you get a month-long project done, treat yourself to a night at the movies. Try to base your rewards around things you have healthy relationships with. If you have an emotional dependence on spending money don’t promise yourself a shopping spree because it will just make you feel worse in the long run. Pre-portion your incentive (one ice-cream, $20, one hour watching TV), and then enjoy it guilt-free, because you know you budgeted for it and you’ve earned it. Having something to look forward to is a great motivator too, and can make you feel better about the future.

Keep going

When you’re playing a game, it’s tempting to compare your current score to your personal best and try to beat it. If you have the drive to do that today, that’s great, but you shouldn’t expect to earn a higher score every single day. Rest is an integral part of growth and just as important as pushing yourself. Getting fewer points than usual doesn’t mean you aren’t progressing. If a car slows down it’s still getting closer to its destination. Don’t get overwhelmed by the situation and give in. You don’t have to be better than yesterday, you just have to be better than now. And if you can’t do that now, you can try again later. You will get there just the same.

An introduction to FlexPitch in Logic Pro X

A great way to make your vocals stand out is to make sure each note is in pitch and the volume is consistent throughout. A simple and inexpensive way of doing this is by using Logic Pro X’s built-in Flex Pitch and Time.

To start with click on the show/hide flex when your vocal is opened.

Once you’ve enabled Flex you want to select Flex Pitch from the list of options.

Once this has been selected you will now see the vocal take appear as a range of blue rectangles which corresponds with the note being sung or played. To make sure the note is in perfect pitch double click on the blue rectangle. If you want to make sure multiple notes are tuned at the same time highlight multiple sections and double click on a note.

With Flex Pitch you not only can adjust the pitch of a note but its Gain, Vibrato and Pitch Drift. You can do this by hovering the mouse over a note and dragging up or down on one of the circles that appear above and below the note.

The Gain adjustment in particular is a useful tool. For instance, if there is a note/word that is quieter in a phrase than the others you can easily adjust the gain to make that particular note louder.  See examples below.

Once you have tuned your vocal to your particular taste, hopefully, you will now be able to hear a smoother, more in tune vocal performance. Flex Pitch is a great tool if you have limited time to record perfect vocals but still want that precision in the take.

 

 

The Lowdown On Mixing – Re-recording mixer Jacob Cook

DIALOGUE

When we mix an episode of animated TV, we always start with the dialogue. I usually start by setting reverbs for each scene, then mix the dialogue line by line to get it in spec and sounding natural throughout the show. Any panning, extra processing or additional reverb is also added at this time. The dialogue serves as the anchor for the rest of the mix, so it’s very important to get this locked in before adding any other elements!

MUSIC

Next, we add in the music and ride the levels throughout the show. I’ll dip it for dialogue when necessary and boost it to help keep the momentum and add excitement.

BACKGROUNDS/AMBIENCES

Then, I’ll mute the music again and mix the backgrounds and ambiences. By mixing these without the music we ensure the scene will sound natural when the music isn’t playing. Then I turn the music back on and foley is next, meaning footsteps, hand pats and movement tracks. Like music and backgrounds, the levels will vary show to show and client to client depending on preference. I’ll set an overall level and ride faders when needed throughout the show, adding panning when necessary.

SOUND EFFECTS

Lastly, I bring in the rest of the hard sound effects.  These are organized into food groups such as mono effects, stereo effects, whooshes, toon, etc (shown in the photo below). Again, how these are mixed varies show to show. This is an oversimplification of the process, but this is the basic sequence I follow.  I usually wrap up with a few watch downs in 5.1 and stereo to make adjustments and take one last look at mix notes from the client.

Screen+Shot+2020-09-16+at+3.13.46+PM.jpg

What do you look for in a good mix?

It is important that the mix supports the style of the show. Something with a lot of action should feel exciting and have a dynamic mix. An educational preschool show needs a mix that will help direct the viewer’s focus correctly and highlight the information being presented. I also think a good mix supports the story and doesn’t distract the audience. It is important that the sound is helping support the narrative and storytelling style.

Do you have any technical/creative prerequisites you think would be helpful for a mixer?

You definitely need to be an expert in Pro Tools. Understanding all of the ins and outs of writing automation through all the various parameters is essential. A strong basis as an editor is a good start here, but it helps to push into the mixing workflow and familiarize yourself with things like preview mode, latch prime in stop, surround panning, VCAs, grouping and plug-in automation. The best way to learn about these is get your hands dirty. Read the manual or some tutorials and start mixing.  You will quickly learn where you can speed things up and the benefits of the different automation modes.

Creatively, the best thing you can do to prepare is to watch a pro work and learn how they approach each mix. I learned all of my mixing skills and techniques from watching Boom Box Owners Kate and Jeff mix and adopting their methods. Once I understood what they were doing and why I worked to get faster and developed my own techniques and style!

Referencing other shows and films is also a great way to get ideas and help your mixing improve. Critically listening to a mix on TV or in a theater can really surprise you, and I would recommend paying close attention to how the music and sound effects levels change throughout a film.

What do you wish you would’ve known before becoming a mixer?

Probably that it’s OK to not be able to hear EVERYTHING all of the time. It took me a while to really understand this, and it’s definitely fundamental.  It’s important that the mix doesn’t sound cluttered through the whole show with an abundance of unnecessary sound. Editors cut for complete coverage, but as a mixer, it is your entire job to decide what sounds or music are most important for the audience to hear at each moment, and not overwhelm them with sounds that don’t support the story the filmmaker is telling in a scene.

Also Latch Prime in Stop, which lets you write automation without playing back. When I first started mixing I probably wasted a lot of time writing panning and volume automation in real-time that could have easily been done in a half a second when stopped.

What would you say the hardest obstacle is when it comes to mixing?

As I mentioned in the previous answer, the hardest obstacle is determining where to direct the viewer’s attention and how best to accomplish that. It can be extra challenging when you consider how much time, effort and creativity went into each sonic piece. The sound effects editor may have spent all day creating an amazing glowing steady for the magic orb in the background, but if the characters are having an important story conversation, it is not the time to feature those sound effects. You may really love the cello melody in this particular scene, but you know the audience needs to notice the distant explosions that draw the character’s attention off-screen. You make hundreds of these types of decisions during a mix and learning which direction to take things can really make or break the final product.

Hopefully, Jacob’s insight gives you a better understanding of mixing! If you enjoyed this post, you should also check out Jeff’s mixing post about the technical side of mixing:

DEMYSTIFYING THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF MIXING

WRITTEN BY JACOB COOK – RE-RECORDING MIXER, BOOM BOX POST

 

Escapism in Entertainment

 

For the past several months I have had trouble with writing blogs or creating anything at all. We even took a short break from recording the podcast. I thought we’d be done with this by now, but I see that was an optimistic viewpoint in my pessimist attitude. I feel like Americans have let the world down with collectively selfish behaviors. For those of us who have been staying at home, wearing masks, avoiding others it feels like it was all for nothing. My logical mind tells me that if we didn’t try, it would have been far worse, but it is so bad with so many dead that it’s hard to imagine. This blog is more of a self-reflection than the posts that I try to make with helpful tutorials or access to resources. Forgive me for that, and hopefully find comfort if you empathize with me that you are not alone. For nearly 100 years Americans have turned to films to escape a dismal life, and with this pandemic and the closures of movie theaters, I have found little comfort aside from watching movies at home.

I have always been a fan of disaster, apocalypse, post-apocalypse, and general horror films. Having lived through an actual scenario of a global pandemic has shuttered the fantastical ideals. I found myself putting on films like Outbreak (Petersen, 1995) and Contagion (Soderbergh, 2011) the first weekend that we were home from work back in March. While putting it on I think “why are you doing this to yourself?” We seek guidance when there is so much unknown, and even fictional stories can help process real-life events. Some of us are smart and logical enough to understand fiction from reality, but others are susceptible to paranoid stories with little backing.

I remembered seeing Contagion in theaters and enjoying the methodical research that was presented. I was home from working overseas having just traveled to 11 countries in 6 weeks. I was in so many airports, hotels, buses, taxis as well as working on a cruise ship. Just weeks before I was a FOH engineer mixing for 1200 people every other day and this movie felt far-fetched. We were smarter than that. The film stayed with me for a while after seeing it but what resonates now is a subplot about a conspiracy-theorist blogger in the film that I recall feeling out of place. The conspiracy-theorist blogger feeds paranoia by posting videos promoting a “cure” (hydroxychloroquine, anyone). His viewers flock to a pharmacy to stock up on homeopathic forsythia and even have altercations after the stock runs out. I still have trouble understanding how seemingly competent people can get caught up in fake news and end up hoarding toilet paper and taking random medications, but they showed it almost 10 years ago in this film (minus the TP, that’s a 2020-special). It took almost a decade and a pandemic between viewings before I realized just how powerful it was.

We’ve survived summer and this is still going strong into autumn while the country opens more public spaces. Many people are still out of work. I hope that the public will see the impact that our industry has on the economy. They’ll remember going to live shows and going to the movies fondly. When it’s open, will they still come? I have to be (cautiously) optimistic about the future of the entertainment industry. I can’t imagine a life permanently without music, movies, plays, musicals, drag shows. Drive-in concerts and movies are cute and all, but I live in Florida and air conditioning is necessary year-round. I look forward to future films. Some of the best films ever made were developed during times of strife. Consider the 1970s following the Vietnam War, when horror films redefined the genre: The Exorcist, Suspiria, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jaws, and Carrie, to name a few. Historically, this brutal time will inspire writers and producers to create. We will have work and our entertainment industry back.

I don’t want a zoom movie, please. We’ve suffered enough already.

 

 

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