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SoundGirls Secondary Skills Series – Tour Managing

Working in professional audio is tough in the best of circumstances, COVID-19 has made this much more difficult and impossible in live events and the filming side. (We expect this will start trickling down to the post-production side soon)

SoundGirls is launching a series of webinars to help you develop secondary skills that can help you become more versatile in the types of gigs you can take.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Wearing Two Hats.

Zoom Webinars

May 11 Basic Intro to Tour Managing

May 18 – Pre-Tour Organization, Creating a Budget and Advancing

May 25 – Day of Show

6 PM to 8 PM EST

Register Here – a link to the webinar will be emailed to you

When starting out as a Live Sound Engineer, you will encounter gigs that require you to wear two hats. The Tour Manager or Production Manager and Sound Engineer are the most common dual roles you will encounter. Being able to handle both roles effectively will make you more valuable, increase your skillset, and allow you to gain the experience you need to tour solely as a Sound Engineer or Tour Manager.

What do you need to know to tour manage? Tour managing is similar to herding cats. Why would anyone want to herd cats? It’s difficult, time-consuming, and the cats don’t like it. These days touring budgets are shrinking and the crews are often smaller. This means when you are starting your career in live sound, you will be required to do more than one job. Engineer/TM/PM is a favorite combination.  If you gain the skills to TM/Engineer, you will be paid more and make yourself more valuable.

 

Moderated by Misty Roberts – A veteran Tour Manager and Coordinator of 20+ years, Misty has been pivotal in opening up the conversation regarding Mental Health in touring.  As a leading member of Show Maker Symposium, she is helping to develop content in these times of need to assist her industry peers.  As the founding member of the Women In Touring Summit, she continues to advocate for change in the touring industry on behalf of the 1,800 members of the group.

In addition to guiding the conversation with mental health and substance abuse professionals on the I’m With the Crew weekly webinar which addresses mental resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic, Misty also hosts the Tales From Seat 4A podcast- providing interviews with industry heavy hitters in the creative fields of comedy, music touring and movie production.  Slowly she’s finding her comfortable spot being in front of the camera instead of behind it.

 

Dana Wachs is a Brooklyn based Audio Engineer, Tour Manager, and Composer/Musician. Dana started her career in music in 1994, as bass player for the Dischord band Holy Rollers, which ignited her interest in live sound, after a national tour supporting 7 Year Bitch. Her first foray into the practice of live sound began after that at the Black Cat DC, and later the infamous 9:30 club.

Dana’s first national tour was as TM/FOH for Peaches supporting Queens of the Stone Age in 2002.  Her first International tour quickly followed in 2003 with Cat Power.  Since then, touring has kept her on the road 9 to 11 months out of the year with bands such as MGMT, St. Vincent, M.I.A., Grizzly Bear, Foster the People, Nils Frahm, Deerhunter, and Jon Hopkins to name a few.

Outside of touring, Dana composes and performs under the name Vorhees, with two releases on Styles Upon Styles (Brooklyn), and is currently composing her first feature film score.

Mary Broadbent is a Tour Manager, Production Manager, and Guitar-Backline Tech who’s been in the music touring industry for 16+ years. She’s tour managed for artists such as The Mowglis, The Staves, Loote, Wrabel, Plain White T’s, and production managed/stage-managed the festival Girlschool and She Rocks Awards 2018 & 2020. In 2015 she added Guitar-Backline teching to her skillset working for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Mowglis, The Staves, Plain White T’s, and Tegan and Sara. She serves as a TM/PM mainly but pulls double duty Tour Managing & Teching when tours require it. She finished off 2019 Tour Managing for Clairo on her Immunity Tour in the US & Europe and started off 2020 Guitar Teching for Against Me!  when the industry was put on pause by Covid-19. She lives in Los Angeles, and is using this ‘ pause ‘ in the touring world to take a Mixing Live Sound Course and advancing her on-going guitar lessons.

Maxime Brunet is a Canadian freelance FOH engineer and has worked as a Tour Manager. She has toured internationally with artists such as Wolf Parade, and Operators, amongst others. She has also developed an intro to live sound class aimed at women and non-binary musicians, which she has taught in multiple cities across Canada.

Tiffany Hendren - Dedication, Hard Work and EmotionTiffany Hendren is a full-time sound engineer and head audio tech at Del Mar Hall in St. Louis. She has toured as FOH Engineer and Tour Manager for Betty Who. She is also a co-director of SoundGirls.

 

Beginner Speaker Design 

A mix is only as good as the speakers that it is played on. That is a phrase that I have heard many times. The current global situation regarding COVID-19 has many individuals turning to crafts and DIY trends to keep from going insane. Depending upon what kind of tools and materials you have access to, this could be a helpful guide or just something enjoyable to read to pass the time.

When I built my speakers last year, I vastly underestimated the amount of woodworking experience I would need to construct the unique shape of my cabinets. It is incredibly important to be safe when working with power tools and to avoid working alone. Let someone know what you are doing and where you will be. Please, stay safe.

That being said, there are many things to know before construction. Designing speakers is a whole other beast. Before I started to design, I needed to answer questions like, what is their purpose, what kind of room they would be in, and what I would like them to look like. This allowed me to form a basis to work off of and led me to more technical specifications.

This is before I even decided between a sealed or ported/reflex enclosure. For those who may not know the difference, ported speakers have a port that provides a boost in the lower frequencies while sealed speakers do not have a port. Sealed enclosures have a better transient response and are preferred as reference speakers. You might prefer one over the other, depending upon what you plan to use your speakers for. It is also a good idea to do some testing and gathering of data about your own listening preferences to help infer your decision-making process. Good information to have maybe your preference on SPL range, a frequency response that you might need for the work you do, or even how much weight you can carry since you will be the one transporting them.

I performed simple SPL tests throughout my day while working. I noticed that I liked things quieter in the morning with a peak of around 90dB by late afternoon. As for size and weight, I lived on the top floor of an elevator-less building. I did not want to haul huge, floor-standing speakers up any steps. So I settled for some smaller desk monitors in the 25-45lb range. This brings us to my favorite part, frequency response.

This part of my technical preproduction did influence a large part of my design. I was firm about my goals regarding frequency and transient response. I designed these to be reference speakers. This means I wanted the sound that came out of the speakers to be as accurate as possible to the original source, without any coloration. I wanted a maximum frequency range for the size that they were with a tight transient response for detail work and mixing. What more could one ask for?

Well, bass. I would later come to realize you will always want more low frequency.

There was another goal that I was set on and that was cabinet shape. I wasn’t satisfied with the conventional rectangular enclosure shape. While doing research, I came across a paper by H.F. Olson titled Direct Radiator Loudspeaker Enclosures. This was what cemented my decision to construct a unique cabinet shape.

Olson called it a rectangular truncated pyramid or parallelepiped combination. My professor at the time called them the Superman badge shape. They looked a little bit like coffins to me. All of this being said, this is where I made things extremely difficult for myself.

I am proud to say that I may be an intermediate woodworker now, but before I built these cabinets I was absolutely a beginner. Special tools were needed to create the shape of these speakers and I was constantly working with small angles and precision. The somewhat curved or angled front of the enclosure is what gives the speaker a wide stereo image and smooth off-axis response. Having a smooth off-axis response allows for easy listening in many different positions in front of the speaker, not just center. I do a lot of work with spatial and immersive audio and it was crucial that I had a wide stereo image. It also minimized beaming effects that many typical rectangular cabinets have.

 

Photo Credit Christopher Plummer

I am not going to forget to mention how I chose what drivers to use. I looked over many frequency response charts, paired woofers and tweeters to see which would be the best potential matches, modeled woofers, all in preparation for the final decision. This part of the design process is difficult because you can’t get a clear understanding of what the driver is going to sound like until it is in the enclosure. It was also tough, because of the cost. Drivers can be really expensive and for the average undergrad, this was not a fun decision.

The name of my speakers are the Kitten Koffins. For anyone who doesn’t know me, I am a proud, crazy cat lady. Their coffin-like shape combined with my personal touch suited them well. They are sealed reference speakers with an F3 of about 70 Hz. This refers to the point at which the signal from the loudspeaker drops 3 dB its normal SPL output. The speakers have a flat frequency response with a few places being +2/-2 dB. There is a slight 2 dB bump from 80 to 200 Hz which I am keeping until I can build a sub for the system. The low end was something I had to compromise on, but I had a plan to later add on to my set up so that it wouldn’t be such a big issue.

There is a two-inch-thick binder full of research, papers, and notes on the Kitten Koffins. I am attempting to put several month’s worth of work and information into a short article in hopes that it sheds some light on the subject for amateur speaker designers. It is a fascinating subject that can feel daunting. I promise you though, if done right the outcome is a sweet one.

If you would like to know more about Kitten Koffins, please feel free to email me at sjcalver@mtu.edu. I would be more than happy to share juicier details. Some of the reference materials I used when designing were books such as Loudspeakers for Music Recording and Reproduction by Philip Newell and Keith Holland, Introduction to Loudspeaker Design by John L. Murphy, and Sound Reproduction Loudspeakers and Rooms by Floyd E. Toole. The H.F. Olson article is titled Direct Radiator Loudspeaker Enclosures and is also referenced in the Philip Newell book. And lastly, special thanks to my professor and advisor Christopher Plummer for all the help during the design and tuning of these speakers. He is a wealth of information.

 

Meet Liina of LNA Does Audio Stuff

Liina Turtonen is an independent music producer and educator. She also runs YouTube channel LNA Does Audio Stuff. She also co-owns an organization called Equalize Music Production, where they teach Ableton Live and production for women.

Liina got interested in audio seven years ago while traveling around Europe. She ended up in Glasgow where she says it changed her life “ at that point I wanted to be an actress but got sucked into the electronic music world and music production through my new Glaswegian friends. At that time I worked in a club and every night after work, when I couldn’t sleep, I started to make funny songs for my friends back in Finland with GarageBand and a £1 microphone from Poundland.”

She grew up around music, most of her family are musicians and she went to a music orientated school, as well as conservatoire since she was five playing violin and piano. She says during her teen years she says “ I started to hate all music as I never felt it was my way to express myself (although I have always written my own songs and never stopped). But finding this new way of making music in Glasgow gave me freedom from classical music and allowed me to play sound in my own terms. I got in to study Commercial Music in Ayr, where I was introduced to proper music studios and after that, I never looked back. I still live in the UK, did my masters in production and now work as a professional music producer.”

Liina plays violin, piano, and guitar, and also sings and writes her own songs. Her debut album, which she produced and everyone involved were women, was published in 2017 and since then she has released two singles and an EP. New EP should be coming out in 2020. She works under her artist name LNA.

Liina started her YouTube Channel LNA Does Audio Stuff in February of 2019. The channel has given her visibility where people can view her portfolio and see who she is. Liina says in the beginning “ it worked mostly as a portfolio when I was searching for work, but after a while, people started contacting me for production, teaching, and workshops because they saw my channel or someone shared it with them. The job opportunities I managed to gain were all in many different areas: festival workshops, panel discussions, sound design for a dance company, etc. I feel that I am still in early career but the network of people I have gained in past years is growing and giving me faith in the future.”

LNA Does Audio Stuff now has over two thousand subscribers and features tutorials, reviews, vlogs, and fun audio challenges. The channel also aims to give a platform to minorities in the audio industry and show diversity on social media, to inspire more girls and young women into technical industries. SoundGirls recommends checking out LNA Does Audio Stuff.

We talked Liina about her career path so far.

What is a typical day like?

I really don’t have a typical day as my work changes so much each day. I make myself a list of things I need to do in that week or day and work through that. Only things I have a strict schedule for Youtube videos (I post every single Sunday) and teaching. Most days I might have meetings in the morning and then I film, plan, edit or produce/mix the rest of the day. Yoga is part of my day as well because sitting by a computer all day would otherwise kill my back.

How do you stay organized and focused? 

I like making lists and time schedules/ deadlines for myself. If something is on the list I need to do it. Also deciding to post every Sunday was really good for me as it gives me a goal that I need to obey and even if I don’t feel like filming, as soon as I start doing it I feel much happier and proud of myself.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I enjoy the freedom of doing what I want and the feeling of accomplishment when I hit the targets. The best thing is to get messages and feedback from people and especially girls and women, who have seen my videos and have started music production because of it. That is why I do it, and those messages encourage me to work harder and make more content.

What do you like least?

Editing. It is so painful to go through hours of film of you trying to articulate something to the camera. After the rough edit, the editing becomes more fun when I can put down effects and all funny clips that can make the video entertaining.

What is your favorite day off activity? 

I love planning and filming my videos. Usually, I plan my video first step by step. Then I get ready (yoga, shower, make up) and go to my studio to film. Mostly I film alone, but sometimes I have guests in the studio. At first, I was really tense in front of the camera but doing this over a year, every single week, it started to get easier and I really have fun now doing the clips.

What are your long-term goals?

I would love to grow my channel and make more interactive content to support women in music and get more girls and women into production. I have a documentary coming out this year (done together with Music Production for Women), where we follow the journey of a female singer-songwriter to learn to produce her owns songs. This is the content I want to concentrate more on, but also make more fun and inspirational films about music production. Other dreams include producing a song for a Drag Queen and owning my own women-led studio.

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced? 

I would say my own confidence is the biggest barrier sometimes. I don’t like the moments when I feel that nothing is working and I am doubting the whole Youtube idea. I am so glad to have a partner to encourage me in those moments of doubt. In the beginning, I thought all the sexist and nasty comments under my videos would be a barrier for me, but now I think they are just ridiculously funny, and to be honest, I think they encourage me to make more and more content. Also, with more comments under a video, the better algorithm Youtube gives the video, so surely I should thank them for helping me to get more visibility.

How have you dealt with them? 

Keep on working. I give myself the time to rest and be sad sometimes, but the next day I start working again. Also giving myself deadlines make me work harder and realising that feeling like a failure sometimes is ok, as it makes me work harder, and then success feels much nicer.

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

Every idea is a good idea. You might not succeed with all the ideas, but if you don’t try you won’t know. Don’t sit and wait for the opportunities to come to you, but create your own opportunities. Then when someone gives you an opportunity, you will be ready to show what you got. Also, don’t ask for validation from people (especially your family) if you believe in your idea/dream then go and do it. As you are in charge of your own success. These are the things I have learned recently and when I started applying these ideas to my life, things actually started to happen in my career.

Must have skills? 

It’s a bit cheesy, but I think the best skill is to believe in your own skills. But if talking about audio, then I would say: become a master in using the audio manipulation features in your DAW, so that you could make a whole song just by using one sample. This skill will take you far.

Favorite gear? 

Absolutely Ableton Push 2. On my channel, I have so many videos on it and when you watch then you will know why it is my favourite. It’s just so powerful and great for everything.

Anything else you want to add or contribute

Here is a list of female and gender minority-run audio YouTube Channels, feel free to add anyone you might know.

To showcase how many amazing women and gender minority people there are running audio YouTube channels, I have created a list of all the ones I know and I’ll update it when I discover new ones: https://lnamusic.com/2020/04/15/female-audio-youtubers-you-need-to-follow/

Please let me know if you know anyone who was not on the list!

Find More Profiles on The Five Percent

Profiles of Women in Audio

You are not a unicorn: The transferable skills you already have

I have written before about the need to have a back-up plan for when times are tough What’s Your Plan B. We literally work in a gig economy and there are plenty of reasons why you might not be able to make ends meet solely through audio. Whether it’s an injury, family illness, recession or global pandemic keeping you from working, or you simply want a bit of a change for a while, knowing you have an alternative job you can fall back on (preferably one you can do in any health, from anywhere) can be invaluable.

Unfortunately, we in the live music industry like to think we’re a totally unique, ragtag bunch of misfits, who’ll never be able to stick a “normal” job. I’ve been told many times that the only way out of live audio is to move into a less physically demanding role that is still in the industry, like production management or an office job with a hire company (or death!), because our talents are so idiosyncratic and we just don’t fit in anywhere else. This exceptionalist mentality can even extend to calling people outside the industry “muggles” or even “civilians” like we’re a band of magical Navy SEALs. The bad and good news is we are not as special as we like to think. If you’re considering an alternative career or just supplementing your income, there is hope. You already have plenty of transferable skills that you can use to your advantage. Here are just a few of them:

You’re self-motivated: If you’re a freelancer, you know you need to hustle for every gig. You organise your own education and training, network like your life depends on it and keep up to date with industry news. Even if you’re a full-time employee you will still do most of these things. At work you are task-orientated, managing your time and prioritising your workflow without direct supervision so everything is ready for doors.

You’re hard-working: You work long hours in a job that is both physically and mentally demanding and you take it in your stride. Have you ever had to sympathise with a friend who complained about having to do a nine-hour shift in retail? Or someone who had to stay in their office until 8 pm to finish paperwork? All the while thinking about the forty-five hours you had put in over the previous three days? Of course, every job has its own challenges, but long hours are not something you shy away from. Neither is lugging heavy flight cases across a field or literally getting your hands dirty pulling cables.

You’re a team-player: While you can be trusted to get on with working by yourself, you also have plenty of experience as part of a team. You’ve probably worked with difficult colleagues, in tough circumstances, and still made the show a success. If you’ve led an audio crew or worked with stagehands, you have evidence of leadership and delegation.

You’re flexible: When was the last time you did a gig where everything was exactly as you expected it to be? Channel list updates, technical faults, late arrivals, and spontaneous changes to the schedule are part of our everyday lives. Similarly, you might be patching a festival stage one day, doing FOH for a conference the next, and fitting mics for a musical the day after that. We are used to change and know how to adapt to each situation.

You’re smart!: Even if, like me, you don’t have a formal qualification in audio, you have a massive working knowledge of acoustics, electronics, and software management. If you can read a console manual and stay awake through the whole thing, let alone understand it, you’re doing better than a big chunk of the general population. It’s easy to forget that we deal with some pretty complicated topics, but we do, and often in very challenging and time-constrained circumstances.

You’re an experienced troubleshooter: This is where all that frustration over technical issues was worth it. If you can look at a setup, imagine the signal flow in your head and work through each potential point of failure, you can look at the big picture in any situation and think about potential solutions to problems. Attempting fixes in a calm, logical, and methodical way, and keeping track of what does and doesn’t work, can be a highly useful but surprisingly rare skill in many work environments.

You’re multilingual: You are so fluent in tech-speak you don’t even notice it anymore. However, perhaps, more importantly, you can also talk like a normal human and can speak client. Good communication skills are paramount in any job, and they don’t solely involve talking. Effectively listening and truly understanding what’s being said is just as important, if not more, as making yourself understood. Being able to interpret and respond to nerd-speak or a musician’s complaint that their monitors sound a bit too.. you know… green… or floooshy…, or effectively and diplomatically translating what the issue is to the non-technical end client, is an incredibly valuable talent that can be applied to countless work scenarios.

You’re calm under pressure: Gigs are some of the most stressful work environments in the world: extremely tight time constraints, expensive and complicated equipment that could ruin the whole gig if any failure occurs, and rooms full of intoxicated and excitable crowds. It’s like if someone had an hour to prepare their big presentation for corporate while being jostled by drunk people who keep spilling their beers on the keyboard. We deal with that level of acute stress on a daily basis, and we’ve learned to remain calm and think clearly throughout.

According to this Forbes article, The 7 Transferable Skills To Help You Change Careers, the seven most sought-after traits in job postings are technical skills, communication, critical thinking, multi-tasking, teamwork, creativity, and leadership. If you can solve a technical issue, work with your department to fix it, and keep your client updated on your progress while keeping soundcheck rolling, you’ve just demonstrated all seven of those traits without even thinking about it.

Whether you’re looking to change career or just diversify a little, you already have a solid skillset to help you. Listing your strengths accompanied by real-life examples can show potential employers how you’re a better fit for the position than they might think from simply seeing your job history. This article from the UK job site Indeed has good guidelines for how to adapt your resume (CV) for a change of direction. Our industry might be very unusual, but that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to become institutionalised. Of course, we’re all special and as unique as snowflakes, just like everybody else, but we can be rehabilitated to adapt to “normal” jobs. Find something that interests you and give it a go. You can always re-enlist in the magical Navy SEALs if it doesn’t work out.

Royer Labs and SoundGirls Present Ribbons 101 Webinar

Ribbons-101

Ribbon microphones “hear” sound more like the human ear than any other microphone type.

Ribbons-101 is a 90-minute class that utilizes sound samples, photos, and videos to teach WHY ribbon mics reproduce sound so naturally and will share valuable insight on how to use ribbons most effectively.

Questions are welcome at any time throughout the presentation and if participants need additional information or more audio/visual materials, the class can be extended for as long as needed.

Presenter: John Jennings is one of the owners and founders of Royer Labs and is the company’s VP.

May 7th at 4:00 PST

Register Here

Zoom Webinar link will be provided in advance of the class.

This webinar is limited to 30 people.  We will offer additional webinars for people on the waiting list.

Using OBS for Content Creation

OBS

I wanted to share some of my tips and setup for digital video recording since I have been utilizing it a lot in the past couple of months. My students have been moved online for the past couple of months, and I had to find a way to still have them produce content with what they had available, usually just a laptop, interface, and a microphone at best.

OBS Studio – Open Broadcaster Software – is free open-source software that I have been using heavily for both recording my desktop and cameras as well as live streaming to YouTube. I have been using it on my MacBook Pro, but it works for PC as well. It has allowed me to set up many scenes, similar to how I would TD something with a video switcher. Graphics, video playback, transitions are all supported within the platform. You can use this to generate so much content, especially if you want to voiceover while working with software and don’t want to do extensive editing later on – this allows you to live switch or simply set up a picture in picture scene.

When you download OBS, it will walk you through an auto-configuration wizard that finds the best settings that will work for your computer. If you are working on a Mac, you will also need to download drivers that allow you to capture the computer sound.

Once configured, you will have a blank slate – just 1 scene without any sources. Work through your signal flow, you will need to add each source individually to start.  Once you have a few that always work together, you can group them or make a scene with your standard setup.

 

Scene 1

Click on the + under sources to add your first source – this will be your microphone.

Click on the + under sources to add your second source – your Display Capture. This is how you will capture the keynote, website, software, whatever it is that you will want to capture for your recording. You will need to grab the red edges of the screen capture to resize it.

Scene 2

Create Scene 2. Select the Audio Source from the first scene and paste it into your Sources for Scene 2. Add a different video source – your camera. This can be your built-in FaceTime camera or any webcam. Resize it.

 

 

Scene 3

Create Scene 3. Select your audio & video sources from Scene 2 and paste them into Scene 3. Copy and paste the Display Capture from Scene 1 into Scene 3. You should have 3 sources now! Resize your Display Capture to make room for your camera, this will be your Picture In Picture scene!

Switching Between Scenes

In the bottom right, select STUDIO MODE. This will allow you to preview what scene is coming up next. You can set up shortcut keys, or just use your UP/DOWN arrows to switch between the scenes. Leave it on the PIP if you want to keep it simple. Select Start Recording, notice the record time in the bottom. Full-Screen your presentation, software, whatever you are using, and do your thing. You may need to trim the beginning and end off, but you can do that easily within Quicktime or even within Youtube.

There are a lot of amazing controls within this software, including graphics and transitions. I hope this tutorial helps clear up any confusion when first getting started with OBS. I would love to create more tutorials in the coming months once you’ve gotten aquatinted and are ready for the advanced features.

 

Choosing the Right DAW

 

Your Digital Audio Workstation – or DAW for short – is the noble companion to every producer’s life. Having the correct DAW can have a major impact on your workflow so it’s essential to choose the right one for you.

There are many great DAW’s to choose from like Pro Tools, Logic Pro X, Ableton Live, FL Studio, Garageband, Cubase, and many more. In my opinion, it’s vital to do some research and narrow down which system meets your needs.

To aid this, I’ve broken down my experience with some of the major players Pro Tools, Logic Pro X Ableton, and Garageband to try and compare my experience using each one.

Garageband – Beginner Level / just starting out 

Garageband was the first DAW I used and it really helped me fall in love with producing music. I believe Garageband to be very user-friendly and the basic layout and features make it easier to understand if you’re just starting out. If you don’t have an Apple computer, I believe audacity is a great start for windows users.

Logic Pro X – Bedroom Producers / Ideal for singer-songwriter-producers

In my opinion Logic Pro X is the best bang for your buck. If you’ve come from using Garageband the layout is very familiar and you have the option to show or hide some of the advanced features. It comes with a wide range of software instruments and plug-ins that make it ideal for bedroom producers that don’t have access to live musicians.

Pro Tools – Great for recording / Industry Standard

To quote my sound production lecturers ‘it’s the industry standard’. If you want to make producing your profession and you dream of working in different studios, Pro Tools is the DAW to learn. In my experience, the learning curve is quite steep and sometimes can be a bit fiddly in places. However, once you find your way around, it’s great.

Ableton Live – You want to play live what you produce

Ableton is great if you want to make music and then perform it live. Its capabilities are incredible and I love that you can just create a beat on the spot and then add in melodies on the fly.

To conclude, all of these DAW’s are great for making music and I really recommend trying a few out to see what feels right. Most of the DAW’s mentioned come with free trials so take advantage of that and see what feels right.

Be Resilient

 

Wow, have things been tough lately! Significant sections of our industry came to a screaming halt in a matter of days, if not hours. All of it out of our hands, as we wait for the day we are allowed to gather in large groups again. Sadly, at this point, we just have to sit back waiting to see what happens, though we all know it will come back one day. Our industry is about community between concerts, lectures, outdoor movies, festivals, and more. We bring communities together and when this virus has passed, communities will be stronger than ever. For now, we must wait out the storm, which is easier said than done for most of us since we all have concerns regarding paying bills, staying engaged and employed, being able to buy basic life needs, remaining mentally healthy, physically strong, and so much more.

Barring a global pandemic as individuals we encounter different issues and problems throughout our careers and life. How we choose to deal with this rollercoaster is extremely important. We must be resilient. We must be able to bounce back from the lowest of lows the industry has seen, but we must also be able to bounce back as individuals when faced with hard times.

When setbacks happen it’s ok to get upset. Be upset and work through the feelings you are having.  It is healthy to work through your emotions and know many of us are feeling the same. Believe it or not, we are working through the seven stages of grief which are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance.  Now I am not going to go in-depth with the concept, but if you are struggling, look into this model and see if you can work through the process because it is important to process your emotions so you can move forward.

To move forward we need to work through our options. Some more favorable than others, but for each individual, it will be different. Options could be finding a new career path, finally opening your new business as you have desired for the last 10 years, and/or learn new skills and expand your horizons. Anything to move forward.  Get out of the rut that has occurred and pick yourself up because things will return to a new normal and we all will be a part of it in some way or another. This could look like a day of planning for your future, taking new classes, processing your long-term plans and taking steps to achieve them, reaching out to folks regarding new opportunities, and/or all of the above.

Most of us are between the phases of being upset and moving forward. We will likely stay this way until the government and society reset after this pandemic. Once we do it is very important to continue to process everything that is happening and to dive into the new.

Shut the door on the negative emotions and put everything into practice that you have done to be resilient and move forward.  Start putting your new plans into place. Open a storefront, teach the next generation about our industry, work that shows you’ve always wanted to, eat at your favorite restaurant, be within 6 feet of someone that’s not your family and so much more! (Ok maybe extended personal space is good) Take steps for yourself to gain back your momentum so you begin to reach your new goals. Before we know it, everything will feel right again. It is important to not get stuck in anger and grief.  We all have setbacks and although right now it is a global setback, there is still your individual impact and how you react. That is what will set you apart from everyone else. So be resilient, by processing the emotions you are experiencing, plan, learn, and change for what is to come, and dive in headfirst when this pandemic has passed.

 

Theater Production Webinar Now Online

SoundGirls and Modern Projects, Inc. presented an online panel of Theater Working Professionals where we discussed career trajectories, obstacles, access, success stories and more. The panel was moderated by Leslie Gaston-Bird.

If you missed it you can view it here

Panelists include:

Adrianna Brannon – Assistant Sound Engineer for HAMILTON US National Tour And Peggy Company
Anna-Lee Craig – Assistant Sound Engineer for HAMILTON Broadway
Mackenzie Ellis – FOH Engineer for DEAR EVAN HANSEN US National Tour
Tony Gayle – Associate Sound Designer for DEAR EVAN HANSEN London and TINA London, Hamburg and Utrecht
Em Gustason – FOH Engineer for BANDSTAND US National Tour
Rachelle Hough – Assistant Sound Engineer for HAMILTON US National Tour Philip Company
Anthony Jones – FOH Engineer for HAMILTON US National Tour Angelica Company
Jessica Paz – Sound designer for HADESTOWN, Associate Sound designer for DEAR EVAN HANSEN
Nevin Steinberg – Sound designer for HAMILTON, DEAR EVAN HANSEN, HADESTOWN, and TINA: THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL
Emma Thomson – FOH Engineer for DEAR EVAN HANSEN London
Connor Wang – Assistant Sound Designer for THE CHER SHOW Broadway
Z Worthington – Assistant Sound Designer for TINA: THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL Broadway

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