Ask the Experts – How to Produce a Podcast

There’s a lot that goes into making a great podcast beyond pressing record and rambling for a while before hitting the upload button. From strategy and pre-production, how to record a podcast, and editing, through to distribution, our Ask the Experts webinar has you covered.

We’re going to talk about choosing a name and artwork, planning your topics, getting the most out of your guests, creating a narrative and cleaning up the sound in the editing and post-production stages, how and where to host and distribute your podcast, and a lot more.

This is your opportunity to have your questions answered by Fela Davis, Larry Millburn, Beckie Campbell, and Chris Leonard.

Tuesday, March 30th at 6 PM EST / 3 PM PST

Register Here and Post Your Questions

Moderated by Laura Clapp Davidson

Laura Clapp Davidson heads up the retail market development team for Shure. She brings passion and knowledge of gear that comes from over 15 years in the MI industry. When she isn’t talking about music equipment, she’s singing or playing through it as a professional singer/songwriter. Laura lives in her hometown of Guilford, CT with her two daughters, two dogs, two rabbits, and one very patient husband.

Panelists
Fela Davis

Fela is a graduate of Full Sail University with 20 years of experience in audio engineering and inducted into the University’s Hall of Fame in 2020. Her mixing experience at front of the house position includes Ron Carter, Brian Blade, Jose Feliciano, Meshell Ndegeocello, Bilal, and almost a decade with 6-time Grammy Award winner Christian McBride, mixing sold-out shows across Asia, Europe, Canada, and America.

Currently, I co-own One of One Productions Studio and a writer for Pro Sound News and Podcast Pro Newsletter. With many of her studio clients needing home audio setup, we began selling one and two-person audio kits. One of One Audio Kits includes Focusrite interfaces, Lewitt Microphone, Wireworld Cable, AKG or CAD headphones, and a waterproof travel case! Check out One of One Audio Kits and more audio related gear at our One of One Shopify store!

Larry Millburn

Larry Milburn, Producer: Award-winning filmmaker Larry Milburn has been involved as a producer/editor on several behind-the-scenes EPK’s and DVD documentary projects for both film and commercial production studios as well as advertising agencies such as FOX, Columbia Pictures, BBDO Detroit, RSA, and BMW.

It was with great pleasure that he was asked to co-produce the film SWEET BLUES: A FILM ABOUT MIKE BLOOMFIELD, directed by Bob Sarles and part of the 2014 Sony Legacy Boxed set FROM HIS HEAD TO HIS HEART TO HIS HANDS. As a cousin of Michael Bloomfield’s, this film helps to keep the memory of such a gifted guitar player relevant and alive. Along with film, music plays a large part of Larry’s life, and when he finds the opportunity to marry the two he takes full advantage. Since 2016, Larry has been the host of the podcast ROADIE FREE RADIO, a weekly series on which he interviews the men and women behind the scenes of the music and film business. He has also produced podcasts for wide range of his commercial clients.

Beckie Campbell

Beckie Campbell is a FOH, Mon Engineer, and Owner of B4Media Production. As a twenty-year veteran of the music business, Beckie has had the honor to help mentor and train teams for several theaters, live events, and houses of worship. All while touring as a FOH Engineer for major acts and still working local hometown gigs. Beckie has had the pleasure to work with major acts such as Indigo Girls, Altman Betts Band, The Commodores, Nicole Nordaman, Firehouse, Colt Ford, Ace Freely, Julian Marley, Gary Pucket and Union Gap, just to name a few. She has also mixed at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, 30A Songwriters Festival, and does the live and on-air mixes for the City of Orlando Christmas Tree and 4th of July Live Shows. Early in her career, she was a Technical Director/FOH Engineer for two Mega Churches in Florida.

During the pandemic,Beckie has continued to find work including Producing and Training at HOW, doing installs for streaming, online training, and is one of the hosts of the SoundGirls Podcast and the Orlando SoundGirls Chapter head.

Chris Leonard

Chris Leonard has been in the professional live audio world for almost two decades, following in the footsteps of his father. As a monitor engineer with Maryland Sound International, he toured with artists like Tears for Fears, Don Henley, Disturbed,
Josh Groban, Anthony Hamilton and more.

Chris is currently Director of Audio at IMS Technology Services, where he has spent the last ten years overseeing and managing all aspects of audio for the Event Staging Division of the company. IMS is a full-scale production company providing audio, video, and lighting for special events, conferences, and conventions nationwide. A highlight while at IMS includes designing and mixing for the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl victory parade, with an estimated 800,000 + audience and the largest outdoor event in Philadelphia’s history. He has also worked on the last four Presidential Inaugurations.

Chris is a co-host on the Signal To Noise Podcast presented by ProSoundWeb. The podcast has over 70 episodes and has been downloaded over 100,000 times. The show features conversations with people from all corners of the live sound industry, from FOH and monitor engineers, tour managers, Broadway sound designers, broadcast mixers, and more. Chris’s current project, “How We Got Loud” begins with this podcast focusing on the stories of the people, technology, and passion that built the history of live sound, with many plans to grow and expand beyond the podcast in years to come.

Ask the Experts – Teching for Live Sound Engineers

The role of FOH or Monitor Tech differs from the role of system and stage techs, system engineers and crew chiefs. They work alongside FOH and Monitor Engineers and responsible for setting up and maintaining the FOH/Mon equipment. (consoles and processing). The FOH Tech is responsible for running walk in and out music, announcements, media feeds. FOH techs often fill the role of the system engineer and are responsible for or assist in the EQ and time alignment of the system and setting the rigging points. FOH Techs can be called on to record the performance through digital technology such as Pro Tools. FOH Techs often mix the opening artists. FOH Techs should have solid experience with different consoles and outboard processing.

At the other end of the snake, Monitor Techs are often responsible for In-Ear Monitoring Systems (IEMs) and RF coordination. The Monitor Tech will most likely be responsible for mixing monitors for the opening artists. The Monitor Tech should have solid experience with different consoles and outboard processing, as well as different types of monitor and IEM systems.

Both of these positions are often filled by well-established engineers. FOH and Monitor Techs often work with Artist Engineers on a regular basis and are an important part of a touring production.

This is your opportunity to have your questions answered by Rachael Moser, Krysten Dean, Trevor Waite, and Ivan Ortiz.

Feb. 20, 2021, at 11 AM PST

Register Here and Post Your Questions

Moderated by Beth O’Leary

Beth is a freelance live sound engineer and tech-based in Sheffield, England. While studying for her degree in zoology, she got distracted working for her university’s volunteer entertainment society and ended up in the music industry instead of wildlife conservation. Over the last ten years, she has done everything from pushing boxes in tiny clubs to touring arenas and spends a lot of her life in muddy fields working on most of the major festivals in the UK. She has a particular passion for flying PA, the black magic that is RF, travel, and good coffee. Read Beth’s Blog

Panelists
Kyrsten Dean

Krysten is a touring Sound System Engineer and Crew Chief working for Eighth Day Sound Systems, but if you said Krysten on the road, most people would not know who you were talking about because everyone calls her “KD.” She has been working in professional audio for the last 17 years after quitting her corporate engineering job. She has toured with JayZ, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Earth, Wind and Fire, Drake, and Madonna to name a few. She is also an entrepreneur working to introduce more women and people of color to the technical side of the touring industry, through what she likes to call S.T.E.M.M. – Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Music.

Trevor Waite

Trevor works for Group One Limited as a technical support engineer. The company is the US distributor for Digico, Calrec, Klang: technologies and Avolites, among other professional audio and lighting brands. Prior to this Trevor was an audio technician for Firehouse Productions and Eighth Day Sound. Trevor has worked as technician, engineer and crew chief for multiple tours, festivals, and one-offs. Over the years, as both an independent and staff engineer, he has mixed monitors for countless well-known artists, including Harry Belafonte, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The Black Keys and many others.

Trevor worked for The Who (from 2007 – 2019) as a monitor tech for their two monitor engineers Bob Pridden and Simon Higgs. Trevor would take over mixing for Pete Townshend when Bob retired.

Rachael Moser

Rachael has worked for Clair Global in Nashville for over ten years as a PA Tech, Monitor Systems Tech, RF Tech, Monitor Mixer, and most recently System Engineer/Crew Chief. She has worked in audio for over 15 years and attended Belmont University, graduating from their Audio Engineering Technology program with a BS and minor in business

Ivan Ortiz

Ivan is an audio veteran, with over 18 years of experience in professional audio – gaining his education working for a small sound company that specialized in Latin acts while attending Full Sail. After he graduated he headed to the west coast – taking an internship at Rat Sound Systems and his “can-do attitude” led to weekend work with several Los Angeles-based sound companies. Ivan would go on to tour as a system tech for Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, Pepe Aguilar and toured for several years as a monitor engineer for My Chemical Romance, Gavin DeGraw, and multiple fill-in gigs for other bands as FOH or MON Engineer.

Ivan would go on to work for LD Systems in Houston Texas working the Houston Rodeo as Monitors Engineer for the event for five consecutive years. While working for LD Systems Ivan also had the opportunity to work on nationally televised events as the A1 for NCAA Final Four, NCAA Sweet Sixteen, Houston’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, before returning to Rat as shop manager and all-around Tech Master. Ivan is now the Technical Resources and Account Manager at Rat Sound Systems.

Revenge on the Nerds

Democratising education to diversify the workplace

Part 1: Formal Education

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has spent time learning during the pandemic. Even if you didn’t attempt to fit all of humankind’s knowledge into your brain just because you had a few months of downtime, you’ve probably attended at least a couple of the seemingly never-ending webinars that audio manufacturers and groups have kindly made available to us. I chose to learn how to code and found there are so many parallels with audio, both in the nature of the subject and how it’s taught. It keeps reminding me of the tiresome debates about why our workplace isn’t more diverse: for whatever underrepresented group is being discussed, it gets suggested that they just aren’t interested, they aren’t cut out for it, or the people who do well in the industry are there because they’re naturally suited to the role. The solution, if it’s seen as a problem at all, is to encourage more of that underrepresented group to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects at school. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief that it’s the next generation’s problem and they’ve narrowly avoided having to examine or change their own behaviour or the processes they participate in, and they go back to the status quo.

The people on the left are computer programmers, the people on the right are actors. Credit (left): NASA

Unfortunately, “more education” is not the panacea it’s touted to be and actually presents its own set of problems. One coding lecturer explained that he had named his course “Python for Everybody” (which I highly recommend, available for free from http://www.dr-chuck.com/) because he wanted to make computer programming truly accessible for everyone and stop it being the reserve of nerdy gatekeepers who hoarde the knowledge for themselves (I may be paraphrasing slightly). That really resonated with me, because I’ve seen it time and again in audio too.

We’ve been raised by movies and sitcoms to see ‘nerds’ as mostly harmless goofballs, born with huge analytical brains and zero social skills, who deserve to succeed because they got bullied by ‘jocks’ in school. It’s apparently inevitable that most computer programmers, physicists, mathematicians and even audio engineers are straight, white or Asian, middle-class men because the nerd stereotype teaches us they are the ones who are born to fit those roles. This simply isn’t the case and teaching in a way that only appeals to people who think like them is a self-fulfilling prophecy that they’re the only ones who can do that work. If we want to encourage and retain a more diverse workforce in every sense, we need to change how we participate in education, both as teachers and pupils.

Case study: Women computer programmers

[I apologise for the length of this example, but I found it so fascinating and it had so many echoes of audio that I had to share. There’s a tl, dr: at the end.]

Women programming the first digital computer, “ENIAC”, for the US military c. 1946. They were given no credit for their work at the time and it was later presumed they were simply models. Credit: U.S. Army photo from Getty Images.

Women have been involved in computer programming from the very beginning. Ada Lovelace, while probably not the first programmer as is often claimed (1), had a thorough and profound understanding of the potential of computing machines, even beyond their inventor Charles Babbage’s. When the first “digital computer” was built for the U.S. military during the second world war, six women were the ones who programmed it, because they were already working as ‘computers’: humans who did calculations (2). As far back as 1943, women of colour were performing calculations for NACA (which became NASA), as immortalised in the film Hidden Figures (3). They proved to any doubters that women and people of colour were perfectly capable of handling mathematical and engineering problems, efficiently and under pressure.

For the first few decades of modern computing, hardware production was seen as important, ‘manly’ work and software programming, like manual computing, was seen as menial administrative work, so was commonly done by women. There are countless instances from the time of people using traditional gender stereotypes to explain why women were naturally suited to coding, because they were meticulous and good at repetitive tasks like knitting or typing. Even Dr. Grace Hopper, a behemoth in the world of coding, said in a Cosmopolitan article from 1967 that it was “just like planning a dinner… …Programming requires patience and the ability to handle detail. Women are ‘naturals’ at computer programming.” (4).

The first women programmers didn’t have manuals to learn from, and had to figure out what to do from first principles, using paper diagrams at first because they didn’t have security clearance to enter the room that housed the computer. I defy anyone in audio to look at these banks of circuits and not see patch boards. Credit: U.S. Army photo from the ARL Technical Library.

The boom in computing was so great that there were far more jobs than candidates, even after men came back from the war. This opened up opportunities to people who might otherwise have been excluded. The New York Times Magazine cites a time when a young woman of colour called Arlene Gwendolyn Lee applied for a systems analytics job in Toronto in the 1960s. “Lee persuaded the employers, who were all white, to let her take the coding aptitude test. When she placed in the 99th percentile, the supervisors grilled her with questions before hiring her. “I had it easy,” she later told her son. “The computer didn’t care that I was a woman or that I was black. Most women had it much harder.” (5).

Unfortunately, those tests that allowed everyone’s aptitude to shine through regardless of appearance or background gradually came to be accompanied by personality tests, which selected for ‘detached’ people who were less likely to have home or social commitments and could therefore dedicate longer hours to the job. “The primary selection mechanism used by the industry selected for antisocial, mathematically inclined males, and therefore antisocial, mathematically inclined males were overrepresented in the programmer population; this, in turn, reinforced the popular perception that programmers ought to be antisocial and mathematically inclined (and therefore male), and so on ad infinitum.”(6). This, combined with the marketing of personal computers in the 1980s as boys’ toys, slowly eroded women’s position in the field. It paved the way for middle-class white boys, whose families could afford personal computers and would usually keep them in the son’s room, to arrive at college having had years of experience experimenting and learning to code in their spare time. Anyone else who joined computer science courses was made to feel inferior or not suited to the subject because they lacked that exposure. However, when the gender disparity in university courses was examined, “It turned out that having prior experience is not a great predictor, even of academic success”, “the pace of learning at college was so much more intense that by the end of the degree, everyone eventually wound up graduating at roughly the same levels of programming mastery.” (5).

So women, including women of colour, had been showing up and doing the work from the outset, and the research found they were just as capable as men, and yet even now biology and gender stereotypes are used to support men’s dominance in the field. A Google engineer’s 2017 memo against their affirmative action policies (7) caused quite a lot of hyperbole on each side of the argument, but it exemplified this attitude to women in tech. Despite the engineer’s bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Ivy League universities, his arguments made clear that he didn’t understand the field’s nuances or consensus on humans’ innate abilities (8) or, in fact, what it takes to be an engineer (9). Judging by the ensuing internet meltdown, and conversations I see again and again in our own field, he’s far from alone in holding those views.

Tl, dr: People have been using gender stereotypes to explain women’s involvement in computer programming from the beginning. First to justify their aptitude for it, then to justify their absence from it. Starting a course with prior experience of the topic might make a student seem more promising than others, but by the end, even students with no prior experience will have caught up.

What’s holding us back?

The case of women in computer programming covers some major points of what limits women and minorities’ participation in STEM, especially PECS (physics, engineering and computer science). A very useful Physics Today article (10) outlines worries students may have that can lead to them dropping out or underperforming, and how they can be addressed effectively. There are concerns about belonging, about being able to improve, and being respected by classmates and teachers alike. These often stem from harmful stereotypes about nerds, and opinions about innate ability. I have previously discussed how ‘fetishising brilliance’: i.e., believing that natural talent is the main requirement for success in a given field, enables discrimination and reduces diversity (11). It is particularly damaging in an education setting because it can discourage students from even trying, and educators are less likely to put the effort in to teach pupils who don’t take to a subject immediately (10).

What can we do?

The good news is there are ways to counteract these effects. For example, it is true that, on average, women perform less well on spatial reasoning tests than men. Whatever the reasons for this, potentially because boys more than girls are raised to play with toys that improve that skill, the gap in ability can be narrowed significantly with one 15 hour course (12) or even just 10 hours of playing spatially rich video games (13). This is a huge deal because many PECS courses start with activities that emphasise spatial reasoning, alienating people who are less skilled in it from the start, even though they may be perfectly competent in other areas of the subject. This can have a ripple effect on their feelings of fitting in and competence, and they are more likely to drop out of the class altogether.

Fostering a ‘growth’ mindset (“I can improve”), rather than a ‘fixed’ mindset (“I was born with a certain set of abilities”), is massively beneficial too: ‘Students with a fixed mindset who encounter a difficult problem or concept see that difficulty as evidence that they lack ability. Across many different research studies, such students tend to seek out easy problems (to prove their ability) and avoid challenging ones that would help them learn. They avoid speaking up in class or in group discussions so they don’t seem stupid. When they face setbacks, they lose motivation and turn their attention to subjects for which they feel more “natural” ability.

In contrast, students who have a growth mindset see difficulties as opportunities to learn—“I love a good challenge!” So they work harder and ask more questions, which naturally improves their learning.’ (10). A key way educators can encourage this way of thinking is to explicitly state in their feedback that they are giving it precisely because they believe the student is capable of improving, rather than trying to comfort them for their lack of ability (10).

Don’t make it awkward

Perhaps counterintuitively, these measures work best to improve diversity when they’re offered to everyone (10). Singling underrepresented groups out for special treatment can make them feel less able and like they don’t belong. It can also cause friction with other classmates who think they’re being offered an unfair advantage. Interventions like playing video games can help all students, but they tend to have the biggest effect on the people who have the biggest improvements to make, thus levelling the playing field without explicitly helping one group over another (10, 13).

It may seem strange for an advocate of Soundgirls, which is aimed mainly at an underrepresented group in audio, to recommend against targeted initiatives. Of course, I feel that organisations and fora specifically for underrepresented groups can be very beneficial. They can counteract the feeling of not belonging, and provide an understanding and supportive environment that they may not have access to elsewhere. However, it’s essential that people seek these organisations out and partake in them because they choose to, not because their school or teacher tells them they need to.

Key takeaways

Next time I’ll discuss more detailed examples of how we can help to attract a wider variety of people to our industry through teaching. Until then, the key points to remember, whether you’re learning or teaching, are:

Not knowing something doesn’t make you stupid: We all come from different backgrounds and have different life experiences. The whole point of learning is to fill gaps in your knowledge. Mocking a student for not knowing something is about as impressive and helpful as yelling from the sidelines of a Peewee game that they suck.

We’re all different, but we have the same potential to learn: Don’t rely on lazy stereotypes and cherry-picked biological research to justify prejudices.

A growth mindset is a key to learning: Viewing learning demanding topics as a fun challenge rather than evidence of unsuitability to a field results in the best and longest-lasting improvements.

Movies and sitcoms lied to you: Wearing glasses and a pocket protector doesn’t make you smart. Who knew?

References:

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.

The Financial Case for Increasing Diversity in Live Audio

Diversifying Your Portfolio

Increasing diversity in the workforce can be a divisive topic. As I covered in my last blog How to Find the Best Candidate for the Job, often the general consensus is simply that the best candidate should get the job, and a common response to discussions about diversity is that hiring someone because they are from an underrepresented group is unfair.

According to research, “if people believe that racism is no longer an issue in modern society, they also perceive affirmative action as unfair and hold negative attitudes towards affirmative action and organisations that endorse affirmative action, presumably because affirmative action is no longer deemed necessary” (1). Opposition to policies that enforce an increase in diversity, like quotas, is strongly linked to a false belief that society is purely meritocratic. For example, “a survey among Flemish politicians demonstrated that even a decade after gender quotas had been implemented in the political system, many men were still strongly opposed to them. This opposition was partly due to different explanations of the underrepresentation of women in politics. While most women stated that they felt women got fewer chances in politics, most men disagreed with this statement. In line with meritocratic beliefs, men believed that women were under-represented in politics because they didn’t fight hard enough for their positions, while the majority of women did not agree with this statement.”

Classing people according to identity politics makes me uneasy too. There is more to someone than their gender, colour of their skin, class, or sexuality. Unfortunately, there is population-level systemic discrimination throughout our society (2), including live audio, and pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. Affirmative action seeks to acknowledge the barriers people may have faced before they reach the candidate shortlist, issues that may prevent them from getting the job and reasons they may not stay in the role or even the industry. As long as people’s lives are affected by these things, we need to talk about them. Luckily, although foisting diversity initiatives upon people usually results in push back and rarely helps matters, voluntarily and consciously looking to employ and encourage people from underrepresented groups does improve diversity (3).

Employers might not be interested in reaching out to minorities in their field solely because it’s the right thing to do, but there is a growing body of evidence that it affects their bottom line: profit. Most of the research I could find on workplace diversity focuses on gender (and even then, it is almost entirely in binary terms of men and women), I imagine because it is a relatively easy metric to keep track of and quantify, but the principles remain the same for other factors like race, economic background, sexuality and age. Here is an outline of why employers should want to seek out diverse candidates, according to science:

Increased diversity is good for business

I want to get one thing clear right from the outset: increasing diversity is not an act of charity. It’s a smart business investment. “Diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits” (4). A 2005 study by consultancy firm McKinsey (5) found that worldwide, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity within their executive team were 15% more likely to have higher than average financial returns, for racial diversity it was 35%. The opposite was true for the least diverse quartiles, showing that they were significantly worse off rather than simply unaffected. Far from needing to let your business take a hit in order to do the right thing, increasing diversity is correlated with increased profits, even after taking the cost of inclusion measures into account.

The main theories believed to be factored in this positive relationship are increasing the talent pool, improving decision making, increasing employee satisfaction and strengthening customer orientation (5). These all sound a bit “corporate” and not directly related to an industry as idiosyncratic as live audio, but they really are. We like to think we’re a special breed, so why wouldn’t we want to attract the best of the best? If you’re only hiring people who are like you, whether consciously or not, you’re missing out on a huge pool of talent. If someone just doesn’t feel that women are suited to audio, for example, they’re halving the number of potential candidates right from the off. Making your hiring practises as wide-reaching and open as possible maximises the probability that you’ll find your next star engineer.

Complementary skill sets

Improving decision-making is perhaps the most widely cited reason for diversity increasing performance (e.g. 6). Think of it this way; would you go to see a heist film where the motley crew of jewel thieves was exclusively made up of eight lock pickers? Not even a getaway driver? It’d be a pretty short movie if they didn’t have a surveillance expert to scope the bank out in the first place. The whole point is that each person brings a different and complementary set of skills to the job. The very definition of motley is something made up of different and seemingly incongruent parts. A workforce made up of as many different people, not just measured by gender or race but nearly any metric, will increase their combined knowledge pool and maximise innovation. Why do you think investors are obsessed with finding the next disruptor business which will completely change their sectors, like Netflix or Airbnb? Approaching things differently gives you a major competitive edge and can result in huge profits. Teams made up of different backgrounds are also more flexible and better at problem-solving. They are more likely to focus on the facts, challenge each other’s views and process information more carefully than homogenous teams, who are more likely to be complacent and rely on shared biases to make decisions (7). Troubleshooting and coming up with alternative solutions to technical problems quickly is the lifeblood of live audio, why wouldn’t we put the best combination of people together to do that?

Happy workers are productive workers

Increasing employee satisfaction might not be as much of a priority in an industry that relies heavily on freelancers, but the principle is still a good one. Everyone knows teamwork is essential on any gig, and camaraderie can get you through the toughest of challenges. On the other hand, even the easiest job is unbearable if it’s crewed by grumpy sound techs. This atmosphere also gets noticed by the artists and management. Freelancers become the face of the audio company while on-site, so it makes good business sense to present that face as happy and engaged.

It is important to note that employee morale only improves if teams are diverse enough. The McKinsey study states that “For minority workers, for example, the boost in satisfaction kicks in when representation exceeds 15 percent of the workforce. Where diversity recruitment is a token effort, psychological outcomes are poorer.” It is not enough to hire one homosexual woman of colour and pat yourself on the back because you’ve ticked a bunch of diversity boxes off the list in one go. As someone who is often the only woman on a team, my experience is that it can sometimes feel particularly isolating, and raising issues that no one else cares about can single you out as a troublemaker. It is less exhausting and risky to your career to conform to everyone else’s behaviour than to try to bring about any meaningful change when you’re the only “different” person. The study also found that gender representation in the US had no effect on profits until women made up 22% of an executive team, after which there was a linear increase in profits in line with increased representation. Other research suggests that increasing diversity can in fact lead to increased confrontation within teams, at least in the short term (4), but that confrontation can result in decreased bias (8) and increased productivity (4, 8) overall. If teams are varied and open enough to foster an atmosphere of honesty and debate, everyone can learn from each other’s differences and improve as a result.

Closer connections with clients

Lastly, it strengthens customer orientation. Drawing on knowledge from a broad range of backgrounds will help to anticipate clients’ needs better and avoid any potential cultural faux pas. It is a natural human tendency to prefer people who are like ourselves (ingroup favouritism, (5)), so while trying to overcome that bias within the team, it could be an advantage in connecting with the client. Assigning an entire crew to match the identity of the client would be taking it too far, becoming its own form of segregation and decreasing diversity in the workplace. However, the client interacting with a range of people maximises the chances of finding someone to connect with and fosters good feeling, especially in very close and personal roles like monitors. If the audio crew has plenty of experience of dealing with people who are different to them, they can also handle cultural barriers more diplomatically than people with little experience.

Far from being a costly and miserable exercise in political correctness, diverse workforces increase profits, improve workflow, foster innovation, raise employee morale and strengthen customer relations. What’s more, the company benefits from the kudos that comes with being seen to be “doing the right thing” for equality. It can be tough to justify anything outside of the essentials of a business in the current economic climate, but when it comes to increasing diversity the old cliche really rings true: it isn’t whether you can afford to, it’s whether you can afford not to.

You Can Find Resources to Increase Diversity in Your Applicant Pool Here

Quotas and Targets: How do they affect diversity progress? Chartered Institute of Progress and Development Policy Report, 2015. https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/quotas-and-targets_june-2015-how-affect-diversity-progress_tcm18-10824.pdf
The Truth About Anti-White Discrimination, Payne, 2019. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-anti-white-discrimination/
Why Diversity Programs Fail, Dobbin and Kalev, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
Does Diversity Pay? Herring, 2009 (https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Apr09ASRFeature.pdf)
Diversity Matters, Hunt, Layton & Prince 2005 https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/organization/our%20insights/why%20diversity%20matters/diversity%20matters.pdf)
How Diverse Teams Produce Better Outcomes, Beilock, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sianbeilock/2019/04/04/how-diversity-leads-to-better-outcomes/
Why Diverse Teams are Smarter, 2016 https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter
Standing Up for a Change: Reducing Bias Through Interpersonal Confrontation, Czopp, Monteith and Mark, 2006 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.138.462&rep=rep1&type=pdf

How to Find the Best Candidate for the Job

There’s been a lot of talk about equality, equity and diversity recently. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of a diverse workplace in my next blog (spoiler: they’re mainly pros), but first I want to tackle an idea that shuts discussion about diversity down before it even begins: “It should just be the best candidate for the job.” Of course, I am 100% in agreement with that sentiment, but unfortunately, as is so often the case in live audio, the theory does not match up with real life.

Is live audio a meritocracy?

In my experience, it is widely believed that our industry, and indeed our society, is a meritocracy. That is, “outcomes such as wealth, jobs, and power are distributed on the basis of hard work, strong motivation, and personal ability.” (1) Or, that the best candidate gets the job. While that may be the ideal, and some companies might be very conscientious hirers, it is not what’s happening on an industry-wide level. If you’re feeling philosophical you might like to read this article about the origins of the term and the arguments for why a true meritocracy is unsustainable. The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve? (2). From a more practical angle, just think about how most of us get new clients: word of mouth. By its very nature, a network based on word of mouth and personal recommendations is an enclosed system. Would you trust a government that was only ever appointed by other members of that government? There are definitely advantages to hiring people who have been recommended by respected colleagues, but it is a system particularly vulnerable to biases and personal preferences, with little opportunity for scrutiny.

I have heard of people getting gigs because a parent-owned the company because they worked for a favoured artist and the hire company wanted to “keep them sweet” while they weren’t touring, or simply because they were in the warehouse when a project manager was filling their crew lists. Often, these people are genuinely very good at their job, but it can’t be argued that those are fair or transparent hiring practises. It’s also statistically unlikely that they were the definitively best choice for the job.

Meritocratic beliefs actually result in more discrimination

It sounds counterintuitive, but if someone believes they are part of a fair system (when they aren’t), they are more likely to act unfairly. “The more individuals believe that Meritocracy exists, the more likely they are to deny economic inequalities and discrimination and to overestimate racial equality and less likely to have support for policies designed to reduce those inequalities” (1). In other words, if you believe that with enough hard work and talent anyone can achieve anything, then you don’t believe discrimination or even luck are significant factors in people’s lives (3). The people who aren’t successful simply mustn’t have worked as hard or be as talented as the people who are. Members who benefit from the system happily believe that it is solely down to their work ethic and aptitude, while those who do less well blame themselves for being incompetent or lazy. When this belief is widespread, it further reinforces the stereotypes about the high-status group (often white men) being innately better than the low-status group (e.g. women and/or people of colour).

A 2010 study found “When merit was emphasized, research participants provided, on average, higher rewards to a male employee over an equally qualified female employee (in the same job, with the same supervisor, and with equivalent performance evaluations).” It concluded that “Ironically, working in an environment that highlights meritocracy might make individuals believe that they are fair and objective, and as a result, make them more likely to display their biases” (4). If someone feels they are already egalitarian, they’ll go with their gut instincts rather than examining what is driving their decisions, and those instincts are often biased. The rags to riches fairytale, which is so central to the American Dream and so countless movie plots adored worldwide, actually justifies the unequal status quo. It “serves as a social glue, holding the status-based hierarchy, and importantly, making inequalities more acceptable, hence promoting stability within a stratified social system” (1).

“Fetishing brilliance” reduces the pool of candidates

A report published in Science in 2015 found that academic disciplines that fetishise brilliance, i.e. where practitioners in that field believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, are likely to have fewer women and African Americans than those that don’t (5). This results from a trend of white men being more associated with being ‘gifted’, while women and African American men “are stereotyped as lacking innate intellectual talent”. Tellingly, Asian Americans, who are not stereotyped in the same way, were not underrepresented in those fields. Emphasising the need for brilliance can both put women off, who often feel they don’t possess that quality and make employers less likely to choose women or African American men even if they do put themselves forward. The study found no evidence to support the theory that these groups are truly less likely to be naturally brilliant, as some had suggested, or that men do better because they work longer hours (which they didn’t).

We are obsessed with the idea of innate talent in audio. How many times have you heard people say that you have to have a musical ear for mixing, or you have to have the knack with technology? You’ve either got it or you don’t? Throughout music in general, skill is far more highly valued if you’re born with it. If you have to work at it, it’s almost embarrassing. When someone claims that to shine in audio requires skills that just can’t be taught, they’re subconsciously contributing to the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in the field.

The limitations of word of mouth

If meritocratic beliefs and fetishising brilliance are two common factors in the industry, which have been shown to reduce the likelihood of success for large proportions of the population, why do we think the best candidate for the job is someone we already know? It’s not even a case of needing more diversity; how does an enclosed system recruit the best talent (innate or learned), regardless of identity? I understand that it is very difficult to judge aptitude for live audio just from a résumé. There are a lot of skills that can’t be measured by qualifications, résumés are vulnerable to exaggeration and finding a good personality fit for a team can be as important as finding someone with the right knowledge. The freelance, last minute and temporary nature of the industry also make it less suitable to recruitment methods used in more “corporate” settings. If you need eight people to work for just one week, starting 4 days from now, it isn’t practical to mount an advertising campaign for the roles then rigorously review each candidate and fact check their résumés.

However, we need to acknowledge that word of mouth and personal networks really limit the available talent pool, especially when it comes to newer people trying to make it in the industry. What are the odds that the best person possible for a job went to the same school as you? Knows a friend of yours? Goes to the same church as you? Or the old favourite, happens to be in the same room as you? If we can acknowledge the limitations of this approach we can start to do something about it.

Take control of the pipeline

Live audio is so highly competitive that it might seem like there’s little incentive to bother seeking candidates out rather than letting them come to you. Even if you get to the bottom of your call list, there’s always a pile of résumés waiting in your emails, right? It’s still likely that those résumés are from people who are already in the industry, often friends of people who work for you. You might be expanding the number of candidates, but they’re still likely to have quite similar attributes, especially if you’re looking for people who will “fit in well”. There’s a growing body of evidence that having diverse teams, not just measured by gender or ethnicity but a diversity of thinking improves performance (6). According to research discussed in Scientific American in 2014, “Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working.” (7) I will revisit this in more detail in my next blog but suffice it to say it is good to work with a wide variety of people, both from a company perspective and as a freelancer.

More “traditional” business sectors understand the importance of nurturing talent well before candidates reach the interview stage. If you want to attract the best of the best, you’ve got to see recruitment as an investment. I don’t know about you, but any career advice I’ve ever had was awful. There were about five jobs on their list, and none of them was “sound engineer.” The best engineer of the future might not even know the role exists. You could go into schools (not just your own) and do demonstrations, hold open days at your premises, have an active online presence where anyone who is curious can learn more about the industry and your part in it. Offering work experience and internships can help both parties assess each other, and you can teach potential employees good habits before they have the chance to learn bad ones.

As for finding candidates who are already in the industry: treat maintaining your freelancer pool as a year-round task. It’s easy to not see it as a priority when you’re busy with more immediate concerns, but if you leave filling positions to the last minute, you’re highly unlikely to find the best candidate. If you’re in a rush you won’t be thorough in your considerations, and to be frank, if someone’s available at short notice, they’re unlikely to be high quality. When reviewing cover letters and résumés, try to focus on objective things like qualifications and experience, and avoid making snap judgments based on less relevant aspects, like names or age.

Freelancers benefit from less homogenous working environments too, so it’s in our interests to help expand the search for coworkers. If you’re asked for recommendations, bear in mind that it’s natural to suggest people who are like ourselves (8). Make the effort to think about who would actually be the best fit for the role. If everyone you know is like you, get out more! Interacting with a wide variety of people benefits your professional and personal development anyway (more on that next time). Companies, employees and freelancers can all work to foster environments that value differences of opinion and experience, not just to attract but also retain and develop the best people in the industry.

So, if you’re looking for the best candidate for the job, I hope I’ve convinced you that our current methods are not enough to find them. Our industry is not a romantic comedy where the person we needed was right there in front of us all along. Idly believing that the best people should get the job is not going to change this. The good news is there are plenty of ways to find great techs and increase your competitive edge, productivity and profits in the process.

Primes and Consequences: A Systematic Review of Meritocracy in Intergroup Relations. Madeira et al., 2007 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6761281/)
The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve? K. A. Appiah. 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/19/the-myth-of-meritocracy-who-really-gets-what-they-deserve
A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you. C. Mark, 2019 https://aeon.co/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you
The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organisations. Castilla & Benard, 2010 https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/paradox-meritocracy-organizations
Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Leslie et al., 2015 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6219/262.full
Why Diverse Teams are Smarter. Rock & Grant, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter
How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Phillips, 2014 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/
Word-of-mouth recruitment isn’t the best path to top research talent. ResearchGate, 2019 https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-recruitment/blog/post/word-of-mouth-recruitment-isnt-the-best-path-to-top-research-talent

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.

Beth O’Leary – Baking a Cake on a Moving Tour Bus

Beth O’Leary is a freelance monitor engineer and PA tech based in the U.K. She has been working in the industry for 11 years and is currently working as a stage and PA tech on the Whitney Houston Hologram Tour. She has toured as a system tech with Arcade Fire, J Cole, the Piano Guys, Paul Weller, a tour featuring Roy Orbison as a hologram. She recently filled in as the monitor engineer for Kylie Minogue and just finished a short run for an AV company in Dubai.

Live Sound was not her first career choice, as Beth was originally attending university for zoology. Although she has always been passionate about music. She remembers the first festival she attended “I remember the first festival I went to (Ozzfest 2002 – the only time they came to Ireland), and the subs moving all the air in my lungs with every kick drum beat. I thought that was such a cool thing to be able to control. When I heard about the student crew in Sheffield it made sense to join.: Join she did and it was there she learned “ everything about sound, lights, lasers, and pyro in exchange for working for free and letting my studies suffer because I was having too much fun with them.”

Her studies did not suffer too much as she graduated with a Masters’s in Zoology, but she would go on to work as a stagehand at local venues, eventually taking sound roles at those venues as well as a couple of audio hire companies. Even though she had no formal training, she would attend as many product training courses for sound and few focused on studio works. She says at the time “real-life experience was more important than exam results when I started, I think it’s changing a bit now. But, it’s still essential to supplement your studies with getting out there and getting your hands dirty.”

By her mid-twenties, she wanted to expand her skills and start working for bigger audio companies. After a lot of silence or “join the queue” replies to her emails asking for work experience from various companies, she met some of the people at SSE at a trade show. She would learn that they are really busy over the festival season and said she was welcome to come to gain experience interning in the warehouse. She remembers arranging to intern for three weeks “I put myself up in a hostel and did some long days putting cables away and generally helping out. A week in, they offered me a place as stage tech on some festivals. I’m pretty sure it’s because one of their regulars had just broken his leg and they needed someone fast! I then spent most summers doing festivals for SSE. After a few years I progressed to doing some touring for them. I now also freelance for Capital Sound (which became part of the SSE group soon after I started working with them!) and Eclipse Staging Services in Dubai, amongst others.”

Can you share with us a gig or show or tour you are proud of?

I baked a cake on a moving tour bus once, I’m very proud of that…

Apart from that, I used to run radio mics for an awards show for a major corporate client. Each presenter was only on stage for a couple of minutes, but the production manager didn’t like the look of lectern mics or handhelds, so everyone had to wear headsets. Of course, we didn’t have the budget or RF spectrum space to give everyone a mic that they could wear all night, we needed to reuse each one three or four times. I put a lot of work into assessing the script and assigning mics in a way that would minimise changes and give the most time between changes. I then ran around all night, sometimes only getting the mics fitted with seconds to go. I always made sure to take the time to talk to the presenters through what I was doing (and warned them about my cold hands!) and make sure they were comfortable. I did the same show for about five years and was proud that the clients, most of whom were the top executives for a very large corporation, were always happy to see me, and asked where I was by name when I couldn’t make it. Knowing that the clients appreciate you is a great feeling.

Can you share a gig that you failed out, and what you learned from it:

I was doing FoH on a different corporate job, the first (and last) gig for a new company. I had terrible ringing and feedback on the lav mics. It was one of those rooms where it will still ring, even if you take that frequency out wherever you can. I worked on it all through the rehearsal day, staying late and coming in early on the show day, trying to fix it. I did most of the ringing out while the client wasn’t in the room, so as not to disturb them. I asked the other engineers in other rooms for advice, and probably followed my in-house guy’s lead a bit too much. I figured he knew the room the best of anyone, but in hindsight, he wasn’t great. The show happened, and the client was smiling and pleasant, but it definitely could have been better.

Afterward, I got an email from the company saying the client had complained to them about my attitude. I was devastated. I had worked as hard as I could, and I pride myself on always being as polite as possible! I realised too late that from the client’s point of view, they saw an issue that didn’t get fixed for a long time, and they didn’t see most of the work I put in or know what was going on. I learned that it is so important to take a couple of minutes to keep your client in the loop and let them know you’re doing your best to fix the issue, without going overboard with excuses. It can be hard to prioritise when you’re so focused on troubleshooting and you don’t have much time. I still have to work on it sometimes, but it can mean the difference between keeping and losing a gig.

What do you like best about touring?

The sense of achievement when you get into a good flow. So few people realise how much work is involved. For arena shows, we arrive in the morning to a completely empty room, we bring absolutely everything except the seats. We build a show, hopefully, give the audience a great time, then put it all back in trucks and do it all again the next day.

What do you like least?

When the show doesn’t go as well as it could. There’s no second take if something goes wrong that’s it and you can’t go back and change it. It’s quite difficult not to dwell on it. All you can do is make sure it’s better next time.

What is your favorite day off activity?

I love exploring the cities we’re in. My perfect day off would be a relaxed brunch with good coffee, then a walk around a botanical garden, a bath and an early night. Rock and roll!

What are your long-term goals?

I need variety, so I’d like to stay busy while mixing it up. Touring and festivals, music and corporate shows working with different artists and techs. I’d also like to get to a position where I can recommend promising people more and help them up the ladder.

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?

I think one of the major barriers in the industry is people denying any barriers exist. I was told I needed a thicker skin, to toughen up, everyone has it rough. Then after years of keeping my head down and working hard, I saw how my male colleagues reacted to words or behaviour that didn’t even register as unusual to me anymore. Their indignation at what I saw all the time really underscored how differently they get treated.

Thankfully I have done plenty of jobs with no sexism at all, but it can be frustrating to get told I don’t understand my own life. Just because you don’t see what you consider to be discrimination, doesn’t mean it never happens. It can be particularly disappointing when young women are outspoken about how sexism isn’t a problem, ignoring the groundwork set by the tough women who came before them.

I have also struggled a lot with a lack of self-confidence, which can really put you at a disadvantage when you’re a freelancer. You need to be able to sell yourself and reassure your client they’re in safe hands, so I’m sure the self-deprecation that comes naturally to me has held me back.

How have you dealt with them?

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. Whether I misunderstood their intentions or they’re honestly mistaken, or they genuinely don’t want to work with a woman, all I can do is remain professional and courteous and do my job to the best of my ability. A lot of the time we get past it and have a good gig, and if we don’t I know I did all I could. I take people’s denial of sexism as a good sign, in a way. It shows it is becoming less pervasive and I hope the young women who are so adamant it doesn’t happen are never proven wrong.

I’m still working on my self-confidence. I try to remember that the client needs to trust me to relax and have a good gig themselves. I aim to keep a realistic assessment of my skill level. I used to turn jobs down if I wasn’t 100% sure I knew everything about every bit of equipment, for the good of the gig. I then realised that a lot of the time the client wouldn’t find someone better, they’d just find someone more cocksure who was happy to give it a go. Now I’m experienced enough to know whether I can take a job on and make it work even if it means learning some new skills, or whether I should leave it to someone more suitable.

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

Be specific when looking for help. If you want to tour, please don’t ask people “to go on tour”. Pick a specialism, work at it, get really good, then you might go on tour doing that job. When I see posts online looking for “opportunities in sound”, I ignore them. What area? Live music? Theatre? Studio? Film? Game audio? What country, even? Saying “I don’t mind” will make people switch off. People looking to tour when they don’t even know which department they want to work in makes me think they just want a paid holiday hanging out with a band.

Most jobs in this field are given by word of mouth and personal recommendations. Networking is an essential skill, but it doesn’t have to mean being fake and obsequious. The best way to network is to be genuinely happy to see your colleagues, and interested in them as people. And always remember you’re only as good as your last gig. You never know where each one will lead, so make the effort every time.

People who run hire companies are incredibly busy, and constantly dealing with disorganised clients and/or very disorganised themselves. Don’t be disheartened if they don’t reply when you contact them. Keep trying, or get a friend who already knows them to introduce you so you stand out from the dozens of CVs they get sent every week. Make it easy for employers. You are not a project they want to work on. Training takes time and money. They don’t want to know you’re inexperienced but eager to learn. Show them how you can already do the basic jobs, and have the right attitude to progress on your own.

Must have skills?

Number one is a good work ethic. You can learn everything else as you go along, but if you aren’t motivated to constantly pester employers until they give you a chance, turn up, work hard and help the other techs, all the academic knowledge in the world won’t help you.

Being easy to get on with is also essential. We can spend 24 hours a day with our colleagues, often on little sleep, working to tight schedules and people can get grumpy. Someone who can remember all the Dante IP addresses by heart but is arrogant and rude won’t go as far as someone who can admit they don’t know things, but is willing to ask questions or just Google it, then laugh at themselves later.

Staying calm under pressure, communicating clearly and being able to think logically are all needed for troubleshooting.

Anyone who tells you that having a musical ear is determined at birth is just patting themselves on the back. Listen to music, practise picking certain instruments out and think about how it’s put together. Critical listening can be learned and improved, even if you have to work at it more than some others.

Favorite gear?

Gadget wise, I love my dbBox2. It’s a signal generator and headphone amp in one and produces analog, AES and midi signals so it helps with so many troubleshooting situations and saves so much time.

I use my RF Explorer a lot to get a better idea of the RF throughout a venue and can use it to track down problem areas or equipment.

As far as desks go, I don’t have loyalty to a particular brand. They all have their advantages. I still have a soft spot for the Soundcraft Vi6 because that’s what I used in house for years. DiGiCo seems pretty intuitive to me and has a lot of convenient features. I spent most of the last year using an SSL L500. It sounds fantastic and has a lot of cool stuff to explore.

Parting Words

It can take a long time to break into this industry. I had been doing sound for nine years before I went on a tour, and then didn’t do much touring again for a couple of years after that. You have to be tenacious and patient. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you aren’t progressing, or the work environment is toxic, leave. As a freelancer, you shouldn’t rely too heavily on one client anyway. And that’s what they are: clients. When a friend pointed out these people aren’t your bosses, they’re your clients, it really helped me to change my approach. I now rely less on them for support, but I’m also free to prioritise favoured clients over others. Live sound can be rough around the edges, but there’s a difference between joking around and bullying. There’s a difference between paying your dues and stagnating. If you’ve been in a few negative crews it can be easy to believe that everywhere is like that, but it isn’t. Keep looking for the good ones, because they do exist.

The SoundGirls Podcast – Beth O’Leary: Freelancing, blogs, and sexism

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Gain Without the Pain: Gain Structure for Live Sound Part 2

In my last blog, I outlined the basics of gain structure, and how to get to a good starting point for your mix. This time I want to discuss a few situations where you might take different approaches to how you set your gain, and why.

I like to think of gain as a tennis ball growing out of the mic if it’s omnidirectional, or a peach for cardioid mics, with the stalk-socket (is there a word for that?) at the point of most rejection. Bidirectional/figure eight mics always remind me of Princess Leia’s famous hair buns in Star Wars. Whatever you imagine it as don’t forget that the pick-up pattern is three-dimensional. There can be a bit of a subconscious tendency to think of pick-up patterns as the flat discs you see in polar plots, so don’t fall into that trap! The main thing to remember is that as you increase the gain, you’re expanding the area in which the mic will pick noise up in every dimension, not just in the direction of what you want to amplify. This will be more of an issue in some circumstances than others, so they can benefit from different approaches.

Quiet singer, noisey stage

My first example is the one I encounter most often and causes me the most issues. You have a loud band on a reverberant, noisey stage, and you’re trying to get the vocals audible, or even nice! This can be a bit of a challenge even with a strong singer, but a quiet vocalist can seem impossibly lost in the mix. Thinking back to my previous post, the problem in this situation is that the other instruments, the crowd and everything reflecting back off the walls is keeping the noise high in the signal-to-noise ratio. Turning the gain up will just bring more of that noise into your board and muddy the mix. Upping the gain for monitors will increase the likelihood of frequencies in the monitor mix being picked up by the mic, which feeds back to the monitor, which feeds back to the mic… which creates feedback!

In an ideal world, the other players would set their instruments at reasonable levels, and the vocalist would sing loudly, close to the mic. This would increase the signal-to-noise ratio naturally. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen for one reason or another, and you need to fix it at the board. In these situations I try to keep the gain as low as possible while still picking the vocalist up. I use high and low pass filters to get rid of the unnecessary noise in ranges away from the vocalist’s frequencies. I might EQ a few bits out of the vocal channel where other instruments are being picked up more than the singer, and might EQ out some vocal frequencies from other channels to give them some more space to be heard. I then try to have the fader as high as possible while still leaving some headroom. Setting your master fader or monitor mixes at +5 instead of 0 can give you the extra volume you need, while keeping the gain as tight as possible. I very rarely find myself needing to turn an entire mix-up mid-show, and if it comes to it I can just turn up all the sends from the channels instead. There are plenty of other tricks to get vocals to stand out in your mix, but that is beyond the scope of this post.

Wandering keynote speaker

On the other end of the noisey gig spectrum is the classic corporate speaker who won’t stay near the lectern mic. I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of live sound by people outside our industry is that the mics pick everything in their field up, in every direction, whether the sound is intentional or not. For example, I had someone loudly shuffle their notes and bang them on the lectern, cough and say something privately to an assistant right by the mics as they were supposed to start their speech. They then fully wandered the 20 metre (roughly 60 feet) wide stage, talking at normal conversational volume, expecting the mics to pick them up perfectly, no matter where they were. Quickly muting the channel when it’s apparent the speaker is still preparing solves the first issues, but there’s not much you can do about audibility when they’re metres away from the mics. This is an extreme example. However, it is very common for people to stand at a lectern but talk quite far away from the mics, turning their heads repeatedly to gesture towards their presentation.

Hopefully, the stage at a conference isn’t as noisy as a rock band in a club, and the audience are mostly quietly paying attention rather than screaming and cheering. It’s less common to have stage monitors, and with any luck, the PA is quite far away from the mics. In this case, you can get away with turning the gain up, to catch more of what they’re saying. Just remember to add a pretty strong compressor for when they inevitably lean in and suddenly talk loudly, directly into the mics. This can also help if you have several people using the lectern without soundchecking. You can set the mics to as high a gain as is stable, so even if they’re quiet you’re covered. If they’re loud you can always turn them down.

Popping lavalier or headset mics

You don’t always want your sound source as close to the mic as possible. Plosives in speech; the consonant sounds made with a burst of air, like p’s and b’s, can sound horrible on sensitive mics like lavaliers or headsets. These mics can also pick up too much sibilance. In these cases, it’s best to move them slightly further away or off-axis (by a matter of millimeters) so they aren’t in the firing line of the speaker’s breath, then turn the gain up to compensate. You might have noticed that lavaliers are often attached completely upside down for recording or TV. This stops the mic capsule being battered by those plosives and reduces sibilance, and the recording engineer can turn the gain up as much as needed without worrying about feedback because there are no speakers in the room.

I hope these examples have helped you to see how gain structure is just another tool in your mixing bag of tricks. There are good rules of thumb to follow for getting a decent signal-to-noise ratio quickly, but they aren’t written in stone. If you need to move the balance around or adjust different aspects of the channel strip to make your particular situation work, just try it (gradually if the show is already live!). It’s easy to talk about what the correct approach is in a textbook situation, but real life is very rarely ideal. Do what you need to do to get it working. If it sounds good in the end, that’s all that matters.

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