SG Member Malle Kaas has returned to school. She is currently enrolled in the 12 week production training program at Britannia Row. She will be sharing with us her experiences and training this is part two.
In late 2000 I was living in Los Angeles, working for several local sound companies, when I became very ill. The doctors told me it was very serious and I would need extensive treatment. They sent me home after a couple of days, and I remember laying on my couch watching a “Tour-Diary” on VH1 on a Limp Bizkit-tour, thinking: Do I really want to be on a bus for two to three months with eleven stinky and grumpy guys and cutting my life expectancy short? Or should I return to Europe and receive treatment which is free. Was it time to do something totally different? (Just for the record: Limp Bizkit’s sound crew are actually dear friends and are neither stinky nor grumpy)
Well, I really had some difficult choices to make. I had just been offered a monitor tech-gig with Greg Dean, who was doing monitors for Moby. I eventually came to the choice that my health was more important and I sadly turned the tour down and returned to Denmark for treatment. I did not totally leave the industry, I spent about four years working in the shop for a sound company. Monday to Friday and not doing gigs, free on the weekends, no long hours. Wow, it was a completely different lifestyle. I had time to see girlfriends and family. Did I miss the live gigs? Well, if I went to a show to hang out with my old friends and colleagues, it felt odd to watch them working and not to working beside them. I was once again again watching the sound engineers behind the board and inside of me something was missing.
The years went by as I was busy with plan b and maybe that would have been it for the rest of my life – if it wasn’t for a certain situation that I’m going to tell you about next week.
WEEK TWO – Brit Row Training
Monday morning we went to the warehouse of Britannia Row Productions. Brit Row has provided sound for some of the largest productions over the last four decades and yet their warehouse is small. That however is generally the case for some of the major sound companies due to the economics. Nevertheless at Brit Row I had the pleasure of meeting not one – but five SoundGirls! It was so nice to see these women working in the warehouse, and I hope to get a pint with them one of these days.
The SoundGirls of Brit Row
Left to Right – Malle Kaas, Freyja – System Tech Trainee, Emilie – Operation Assistant (front), Ami – Speaker Inspection and Rigging (back), Charlotte – Head of Analog, and Lucy – former Brit Row Trainee and working to become a Classical Orchestra Engineer.
I also was informed by Charlotte, Head of the analog department that when the twelve weeks of training are over, every student will be invited to come back to attend workshops.
The first week at Brit Row I acknowledged how important math and physics are in sound. The second week that was bumped up a level and again our teacher Marcel was very helpful. Finally dB-scales, impedance, the need for transformers makes sense to me. Jerry Wing, Head of Tech at Brit Row discussed venue power. He explained to us that if you are doing an outdoor gig and the electricians haven’t checked the impedance of the ground spike and it is not below 10 ohms it’s not doing you any good. He took us to a park nearby, where we planted a ground spike – It was a surprising 300 ohm! That’s a lot. There are of course certain tricks, such as sticking the ground spike deeper in the ground or as Jerry suggested: “Have 10 drunken Australians peeing on the ground around the spike” If you know a little bit of chemistry and physics, you’ll know what he meant.
300 ohms & Fellow Student Martin