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Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Audio

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Shadowing Opportunity w/ FOH Engineer Sean “Sully” Sullivan

SoundGirls Members who are actively pursuing a career in Live Sound or Concert Production are invited to shadow FOH Engineer Sean “Sully” Sullivan.

Sully has mixed FOH for everyone from Sheryl Crow, Thom Yorke,  Beck, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna & Red Hot Chili Peppers. He is currently mixing Shaina Twain.

The experience will focus on FOH Mixing. This is open to SoundGirls members ages 18 and over. There is one spot available for each show. Call times are TBD and members will most likely be invited to stay for the show (TBD).

Shaina Twain – European Dates

Shaina Twain – Australian and New Zealand Dates

Please fill out this application and send a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org with Sully in the subject line. If you are selected to attend, information will be emailed to you.

 

Shadowing Opportunity w/ FOH Engineer Kevin Madigan

SoundGirls Members who are actively pursuing a career in Live Sound or Concert Production are invited to shadow FOH Engineer Kevin Madigan.

The experience will focus on FOH Mixing. This is open to SoundGirls members ages 18 and over. There is one spot available for each show. Call times are TBD and members will most likely be invited to stay for the show (TBD).

Graham Nash

David Crosby

Please fill out this application and send a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org with Kevin Madigan in the subject line. If you are selected to attend, information will be emailed to you.

 

Performance Anxiety

I think pretty much everyone has at least once in their lifetime experienced anxiety in one way or another. Personally, my anxiety is a good old friend I have had with me for years. It is something I always have struggled with and there is different reasons to why that is, but some reasons that stands out the most is; I am a perfectionist and I am not best friends with failure.

For a lot of people, I think it is hard to admit that you suffer from anxiety and the impact it may have on your life. I used to be like that because I felt like I was overreacting.

In my previous blog post ‘A lesson about fun & failure,’ I briefly mentioned and touched on the subject about failure. My anxiety, and probably for a lot of people, is linked to the fear of failure.

I have studied music for many years; I began at the age of 11 to play classical piano. I love playing the piano, and I learned sight-reading from an early age. I played Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and I to this day absolutely love their compositions. But, what I could not get my head around was that I could not play those pieces perfectly every time. I got so angry with myself for messing it up to the point where I stopped enjoying playing the piano because I felt like I was failing.

Throughout college, I had to go through plenty of live performances, all of which I suffered terrible anxiety attacks from. I simply did not want to be on stage; I could not deal with the pressure and the possibility of failing. The pressure I put on myself, not anybody else, I’ve realised now later in life.

This is one of the main reasons I chose to work behind the stage and what makes me love and care so much about live performances. For me, it is so important that artists feel comfortable whilst being on stage because I know what it feels like when you don’t.

Performance anxiety is so important to acknowledge and to deal with in all aspects and careers of life. We put so much pressure on ourselves, from such an early age, it affects our mental health severely. It’s good to be ambitious, but when is it too much? At what point do we tell ourselves ‘hey it’s getting a bit too much now’?. Especially within the music industry, it is a very fast-paced industry and you’re expected to be multi-talented from a young age.

Sometimes it is not about overcoming your anxiety, sometimes it is merely about becoming friends with it. Nowadays I handle it in such a way that I give myself some time and space. I analyse what is going on in my life, usually my anxiety flares up when I’ve got too many things going on at the same time and really should’ve said no to a couple of jobs. I get terrible anxiety when I am new to things, especially jobs, to the point where I feel nauseous and overthink every possible scenario that might happen. But when this happens I tell myself that everything will be ok, one way or another.

We are only human in the end of the day, and as I have learned along the way, it is perfectly normal to feel anxious sometimes. However, if you feel like you need help to improve your anxiety and mental health do not hesitate to get in touch with your GP. There are also great apps to manage and improve your mental health here: https://apps.beta.nhs.uk/category/mental_health/.

 

Missed this Week’s Top Stories? Read our Quick Round-up!

It’s easy to miss the SoundGirls news and blogs, so we have put together a round-up of the blogs, articles, and news from the past week. You can keep up to date and read more at SoundGirls.org

August Feature Profile

Karol Urban – Sound and Storytelling

The Blogs

Live Digital Audio in Plain English Part 1

Basic Sound Circuit Glossary

El proceso creativo de la Iluminación

The Creative Process of Illumination

SoundGirls News

SoundGirls Expo in Orlando, Florida

SoundGirls and Girls Rock Camp

Seeking SoundGirls For Music Expo – Nashville

GIRLSCHOOL New York 2018

Career Paths in Film and Television Sound

https://soundgirls.org/event/bringing-the-audience-closer-soundgirls-at-plasa-2018/?instance_id=1321

SoundGirls and SoundGym

Shadowing Opportunity w/Guit Tech Claire Murphy

Shadowing Opportunity w/ ME Aaron Foye

https://soundgirls.org/event/bay-area-soundgirls-sept-meeting/?instance_id=1317

Round Up From the Internet

The Time After: Dealing With Post Show Blues

Ann Mincieli On ‘She Is The Music,’ Jungle City, Drake, Alicia Keys & More

 

SoundGirls Resources

Directory of Women in Professional Audio and Production

This directory provides a listing of women in disciplines industry-wide for networking and hiring. It’s free – add your name, upload your resume, and share with your colleagues across the industry.

SoundGirls – Gaston-Bird Travel Fund

Letter for Trades and Manufacturers

Women-Owned Businesses

SoundGirls Scholarships 2021 Now Open

Events

Sexual Harassment

https://soundgirls.org/about-us/soundgirls-chapters/

Jobs and Internships

Women in the Professional Audio

Live Digital Audio in Plain English Part 1

Digitizing the audio

Digital audio is nothing new, but there is still a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about how it really works, and how to fix it when things go wrong. If you’ve ever tried to find out more about digital audio topics, you will know that there are a lot of dry, complicated, and frankly, boring articles out there, seemingly written by automatons. I’m going to spend the next few posts tackling the fundamental ideas, specifically as they relate to live audio (rather than recording, which seems to have been covered a lot more), in plain English. For the sake of clarity and brevity, some things may be oversimplified or a bit wrong. If unsure, consult the internet, your local library, or a pedantic friend.

So, how does audio become digital in the first place? The analogue signal travels from the source (e.g., a mic) into the desk or its stagebox, where it gets turned into a series of 1s and 0s by an analogue-digital converter (AD converter or ADC). AD converters work by taking lots of snapshots (called samples) of the waveform in very quick succession to build up a digital reconstruction of it: a method known as pulse-code modulation (PCM. Don’t worry about remembering all these terms; it’s just useful to understand the whole process. In over ten years of live gigs, I’ve never heard anyone discuss PCM, and I’ve heard some pretty nerdy conversations). Two factors control how accurate that reconstruction will be: sample rate and bit depth.

Sample rate is the rate at which the samples are taken! Not surprisingly, the more samples per second, the smaller the gap between them (sample interval) and the less information that is lost. Think of it like frame rate in film – a low sample rate is like a jerky, stop-motion video, high sample rate is like 48 frames per second fancy Peter Jackson stuff.

Bit depth is the number of bits (piece of information encoded in binary for electronic use – so a 0 or a 1) in each sample. 8 bits make a byte, and samples are set to capture the same number of bytes each time. They record the amplitude of the signal – more bits mean there are more discrete amplitudes that it can be recorded as (See figure 1), so the resolution of the soundwave becomes clearer. Bits are like pixels on a screen – low bit depth is similar to blocky, unclear footage, high bit depth is like high definition where you can see every detail. Back in the early days of computer games, there wasn’t much available memory in the cartridges, so all the sound was recorded in 8-bit. The low-resolution audio matched the pixelated video.

Figure 1: Bit depth vs. sample rate. Time is represented on the x-axis, amplitude on the y-axis. Source: https://www.horusmusic.global/music-formats-explained/ Original source unknown.

Looking at figure 1, it’s clear that the longer the bit depth and the higher the sample rate, the closer you can get to the original waveform. Realistically you can’t take an infinite number of infinitely detailed samples every second – even very high values of each produce an unmanageable amount of data to process, and costs too much to be practical. The Nyquist-Shannon theorem states that to reproduce a waveform accurately for a given bandwidth you need to take more than twice as many samples per second as the highest frequency that you are converting. If you take fewer samples than the highest frequency, an entire wavelength could happen between samples but wouldn’t be recorded. With between as many and twice as many, you still wouldn’t collect enough data about that waveform to differentiate it from all other frequencies, as is shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Aliasing. If a waveform isn’t sampled often enough, it can be confused with other, lower frequency, ones.Source: Eboomer84 via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aliasing.JPG

For music, we usually assume the bandwidth is the range of human hearing: roughly 20Hz-20kHz. Twice that range is just under 40kHz, but the Sony corporation figured out that 44.1kHz synced up nicely with the video recording equipment they already had while leaving a nice margin for error, so it became the standard for recording film audio and CDs. Later 48kHz was adopted because it worked well with new digital video recording gear, and could reproduce even higher frequencies. Most digital mixing desks work on 48kHz or 96kHz.

Moiré patterns like this, or the weird lines when you take a photo of a screen, can be caused by the visual equivalent of aliasing. We have more in common with the video department than we might like to admit. Credit: “angry aliasing in a webgl fragment shader” by Adam Smith on flickr. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Why bother with 96kHz? No one can hear 48kHz, so what’s the point in sampling enough to cover it? It isn’t strictly necessary, but there are a few reasons to do it anyway. Firstly there’s the argument that, much like when choosing a speaker’s frequency range, frequencies above the limit of human hearing can still affect the overall waveform, and so ignoring them can change the resulting sound. Secondly, in digital sampling, higher frequencies can have a real and detrimental effect called aliasing. In figure 2 you can see that the AD converter would not be able to tell whether the points it’s recorded belong to a very high-frequency waveform or a lower one. It has been told what bandwidth to expect to see, so it will assume that waveform is the lower one, within the defined bandwidth. This causes it to be artificially added to the digital audio, making it sound… just not quite right. AD converters use low pass filters, called anti-aliasing filters, to get rid of these high frequencies but they aren’t perfect; they aren’t like a brick wall stopping everything above 20kHz (or whatever they’re set to) getting through, they have a sloping response just like other filters. Increasing the sample rate can clarify which waveform is which and take the pressure off the anti-aliasing filter, moving the highest frequency that can be accurately recognised higher than that slope. Thirdly, AD converters use complex mathematical formulae to take an educated guess at filling in the blanks between samples, known as quantisation. The more samples you have, the smaller the blanks that need to be filled and the more accurate that quantisation can be.

Increasing the bit depth also greatly reduces quantisation errors. Quantisation is basically rounding to the nearest amplitude point to smooth off the ‘pixelated’ waveform – more bits mean more options to find as close a point to the real value as possible. When this process is inaccurate, the guesswork introduces noise that isn’t present in the original signal. Increasing the bit depth reduces that guesswork, increasing the ‘signal to quantisation noise ratio.’ 24 bit, which is common in live digital audio, can give you over 120dB of dynamic range because it significantly lowers that quantisation noise floor, and so can give your true signal more space and reduce the likelihood of it clipping.

As ever, your sound will only be as good as the weakest link in the chain. You might never notice the differences between these options in a live setting as a lot of live gear is not sensitive enough to show them. This might be why there is so much more discussion about them in relation to studios. However, it helps to know what processes are at work, especially when it comes to troubleshooting, which I’ll cover in a future post.

Beth O’Leary 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 entertainments 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

Film Score Mixing with a Team

I was recently at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada to supervise the film score mix of a three-part documentary series (by filmmaker Niobe Thompson and music by composer Darren Fung). We needed to mix over 100 minutes of music – nearly 200 tracks of audio – in about a week. Luckily, we had a large crew available (over ten people and three mix rooms), so we decided to work in an unusual fashion: mixing all three episodes at the same time.

Normally you have one mixer doing the whole score working in the same mix room. Even if he/she mixes on different days (or has assistants doing some of the work), chances are the sound will be pretty similar. It’s a challenge when you have ten mixers with different tastes and ears working in different rooms with different monitors, consoles, control surfaces, etc. What we decided to do was work together for part of the mix to get our general sound then let each group finish independently.

The tracks included orchestra, choir, organ, Taiko drums, percussion, miscellaneous overdubbed instruments and electronic/synth elements. It was recorded/overdubbed the week prior at the Winspear Centre in Edmonton, Alberta. The Pro Tools session came to us mostly edited, so the best performances were already selected, and wrong notes/unwanted noises were edited out (as much as possible). Our first task was to take the edited session and prepare it to be a film score mix session.

When mixing a film score, the final music mix is delivered to a mix stage with tracks summed into groups (called “stems”). For this project, we had stems for orchestra, choir, organ, taiko, percussion, and a couple of others. Each stem needs its own auxes/routing, reverb (isolated from other stems), and record tracks (to sum each of the stems to a new file). I talk about working with stems more in this blog: Why We Don’t Use Buss Compression.

Once the routing and tech were set, we worked on the basic mix. We balanced each of the mics (tackling a group at a time – orchestra, choir, organ, etc.), set pans, reverbs, sends to the subwoofer (since it’s a 5.1 mix for film). In film score mixing, it’s important to keep the center channel as clear as possible. Some tv networks don’t want the center channel used for music at all (if you’re not sure, ask the re-recording mixer who’s doing the final mix). From there, our strategy was to polish a couple of cues that could be used as a reference for mixing the rest. Once our composer gave notes and approved those cues, we made multiple copies of the session file – one for each team to focus on their assigned portion of the music.

Every project has its unique challenges even if it’s recorded really well. When you’re on a tight time schedule, it helps to identify early on what will take extra time or what problems need to be solved. Some parts needed more editing to tighten up against the orchestra (which is very normal when you have overdubs). When the brass played, it bled into most of the orchestra mics (a very common occurrence with orchestral recording). There are usually some spot mics that are problematic – either placed too close or far, pick up unwanted instrument noise, or too much bleed from neighboring instruments. Most of the time you can work around it (masking it with other mics), but it may take more time to mix if you need to feature that mic at some point.

What really makes a film score mix effective is bringing out important musical lines. So, the bulk of the mix work is focused on balance. I think of it like giving an instrument a chance to be the soloist then go back to blending with the ensemble when the solo line is done. Sometimes it’s as easy as bringing a spot mic up a few dB (like a solo part within the orchestra). Sometimes it takes panning the instrument closer to the center or adding a bit of reverb (to make it feel like a soloist in front of the orchestra). Mix choices are more exaggerated in a film score mix because ultimately the score isn’t going to be played alone. There’s dialog sound fx, Foley, and voice-over all competing in the final mix. On top of everything else, it has to work with the picture.

Film score mixing is sort of like mixing an instrumental of a song. The dialog is the equivalent of a lead vocal. I encourage listening in context because what sounds balanced when listening to the score alone may be different than when you listen to your mixdown 10 dB and with dialog. Some instruments are going to stick out too much or conflict with dialog. Other instruments disappear underneath sound fx. Sometimes the re-recording mixer can send you a temp mix to work with, but often all you have is a guide track with rough mics or temp voice-over. Even with that, you can get a general idea how your mix is going to sound and can adjust accordingly.

One unique part of this project was the mix crew was composed of 50% women! Our composer, Darren Fung, put it well when he said, “This is amazing – but it should just be normal.”

Equus: Story of the Horse will debut in Canada in September 2018 on CBC TV “The Nature of Things.” In the US, Equus will air on PBS “Nature” and “Nova” in February 2019. It will also air worldwide in early 2019.

Score Mixers: Matthew Manifould, Alex Bohn, Joaquin Gomez, Esther Gadd, Kseniya Degtyareva, Mariana Hutten, Luisa Pinzon, Jonathan Kaspy, Aleksandra Landsmann, Lilita Dunska

Supervising mixers: James Clemens-Seely and April Tucker

Karol Urban – Sound and Storytelling

Finishing the Mix

Karol Urban CAS MPSE (Grey’s Anatomy, New Girl, Station 19, Band Aid, Breaking 2, #Realityhigh) re-recording mixer, has built a diverse list of mix credits spanning work on feature films, TV series (scripted and unscripted), TV movies, and documentaries over the last 18 years. Describing herself as “part tech geek and creative film nerd” she enjoys using her language skills to work in both English and Spanish.

Karol holds a BS from James Madison University in Audio Post Production from the School of Media Arts and Design, is on the Board of Directors for the Cinema Audio Society (CAS), is co-editor of the CAS Quarterly Magazine, and serves on the Governor’s Peer Group for Audio Mixing for the Television Academy.

While she is incredibly passionate about telling stories through sound, technology, and the art of the craft, her favorite aspect of her position is “the team sport of filmmaking and television production.”

Her enthusiasm and energy for the job help her retain a high work ethic. She is known for being a hard worker in and out of the studio.

What was your path getting into sound?

I was sight impaired as a child and benefited greatly from surgery. I still, however, have problems with depth perception and naturally gravitate toward sound as my primary sense of distance and spatial location.

I studied dance, piano, and voice as a child and went to the Governor’s School for the Performing Arts for high school. It is a public, county-supported, audition-based high school with a focused curriculum on the arts.  I was fortunate to compose and record in my first recording studio there for the first time at the age of 13. I have been hanging out at one studio or another ever since.

Truthfully, I never wanted to perform. But sound and storytelling always fascinated me and held my attention steadfast.  And I have always obsessed over the movies and loved narrative television. When I discovered you could work in sound, not necessarily music, and in sound for picture, I knew what I was going to do with my life.  Every big move in my life I have made since has been to earn the next opportunity to tell a story through sound for picture.

I graduated high school a year early and went on to Virginia Tech at 17 where I took a lot of audio engineering classes. I transferred to James Madison University and majored in the School of Media Arts and Design with an audio concentration and minored in the music industry.  I left school with the clear goal of becoming a re-recording mixer.

If you had to pick your favorite type of content, role or project what would it be and why?

Personal Sound Assistant Sync

The collaborative aspect of what we do is to me the most precious, as a result, I love to be a part of larger teams as the dialog and music re-recording mixer. While it can be fun to do a single-person mix, especially if you have a very creative and collaborative producer or director, I am truly in heaven when I have a creative team behind me.  Bring in the party. I love to craft the story as a collective.

I don’t really have a favorite genre. I love action and sci-fi, and I adore thrillers. Police procedurals are fun. But comedy and drama can be amazing too. I really enjoy the diversity of genres. It widens my toolset. Basically whatever genre I haven’t mixed in a while is my current favorite. I really do love it all.

The creative problem solving and technical aspect of cleaning and repairing dialogue is enjoyable, but I also love the subtle use of dynamics, reflections, and frequency details in dialogue mixing which can help you feel as if you are eavesdropping on a secret or hearing someone lose their composure. It is sneaky in that good dialogue mixing is rarely noticed while it is being most effective.

I also studied classical piano, voice, and composition for many years. I love music. Being able to craft the music into the final mix is a real honor and joy.

That’s why the dialogue/music re-recording chair feels like home.

A lot of people in post-production sound specialize in a single role (like dialog mixer, sound designer, etc.). How has it helped your career to not focus on one particular niche? Or, do you think there is an expectation now to be versatile?

I began my career in the mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast.  There are people who work in post sound are often asked to perform all the roles (Foley recording, narration/ADR recording, Foley/ADR cueing, dialogue editorial, sfx editorial, and re-recording mix).  Even if you were not working on a project as a single person, you and your team would often change roles to suit the schedule or client preferences. It is a different market for sure.

But, when I first got to Los Angeles, folks would advise that being a jack of all trades does not make you qualified to be a master of anyone. When I looked inside myself, I found that I was truly a dialogue-centered individual and macro thinker. I am an extrovert.  I also love the subjective discussions and explorations that occur on the dub stage. All these aspects helped me excel as a dialogue and music re-recording mixer.

But, over the last eight years, I’ve noticed that the ability to diversify is becoming more valued in LA. In this way, I may have chosen the perfect time to come to LA, with a clear, specific goal on what I prefer to center my focus on, but enough diverse experience and knowledge in multiple fields of post sound to be usefully skilled. I gladly switch roles when needed; a change is often good for perspective.

Can you talk about transitioning from working in DC to Los Angeles? Since you didn’t have a job lined up in LA, how did you decide it was time to move?

I am a true believer in the concept that knowledge is power. I had reached a point in DC where I was feeling a little stagnant.  I wasn’t learning as much, wasn’t experimenting as much, and wasn’t challenged enough. I was struggling to find opportunities where I could make myself wonderfully uncomfortable with a challenge. I was searching for mentors.

I found a short, small contract in LA and left a job of 10 years with crazy benefits, paid vacation, and a very decent salary to seek out the challenge. Finding a gig, even one as short as a 3-month contract, while on the other side of the country seemed like a sign.

At the time I was frightened that I wouldn’t be capable of competing in such a large and complex market.  But I knew I would never stop wondering “what if.” Once a few months passed, and I took a couple of professional punches to the face, I recognized I had learned a ton and began noticing a difference in my work. I got excited. There is no other option other than success. Moving to LA has proven to be the most wonderful adventure I have ever had in my life. I love it here. I love the market, the challenges, and the ever-changing, seemingly endless possibilities. There is so much to learn and grow from here. I am grateful.

Can you walk us through an average work week for you? How many hours are you working, spending outside the studio on other work-related demands, etc.?

The amount I actually mix depends on the projects I am on. Sometimes it is 16 hour days and six-day weeks other times it might be two days a week for 9 hours a day. Production schedules move erratically and the day is not over when it is scheduled to end or when you are done… it is over when the client feels whole, and they are done.  My life is a continual game of scheduling Jenga. The terrain is insane. It is awesome and exhausting.

When I am not in the chair mixing, I am still working. Mixing is only part of the job.  I try to be a resource for others as much as possible. I give back to my community through volunteer service in the MPSE, CAS, & TV Academy, edit the CAS Quarterly publication, meet with industry folks new to town, and of course, establish new relationships in the community.  It is a rare day off when I don’t meet up with someone, watch a tutorial on new technology, or volunteer on a project. I keep an ear open for any industry positions available and try to recommend people in my network that I know can tackle the duties and forward their careers.  It is all-encompassing, but I love what I do and I simply never tire of the hustle. Don’t get me wrong, there are days or weeks where I am truly exhausted, but I never dream of doing anything else. I want to be the best I can be, and I feel like I have incredible joy ahead of me in that I have much more growing to do. I am not even close to done.

What are the differences between mixing documentary/reality and scripted?

Depends on your project and your client.

There are certainly workflow and logistical differences, and there also tends to generally be a larger expectation of detail and desire for the school of perspective mixing in scripted media. But the core of what I do is really only made different by the client’s desires and the needs of the film/project.

I certainly will repair, clean, and fit the spec. But the true value in having a re-recording mixer is that you have a professional who is a life-listener and skilled craftsperson. We study and develop sound as a storytelling tool that can steer the minds of the viewers. I certainly have had projects of all genres that demand and expect narrative storytelling in their mix.  I have also had many projects of all genres that look to me for technical audio triage and to emulate their temp track. It is less genre-specific than project-specific.

Can you explain how a 2-person mix works?

 

Karol and Steve Urban on the movie BFFs

There are many ways to work. It depends on the team, the technology, and the project’s scheduled mix time. In the end, however, the goal is to make sound decisions and become four hands and two minds working with the singular focus of intensifying the story through sound. It really is a wonderful way to work.

On a 2-person mix, what are the challenges of working with a mixer you haven’t mixed with before?

Sometimes you don’t know the perspective or tastes of your partner when you are newly paired or the tempo at which they need to work. You have to learn the sensibility of your partner as soon as possible.  Luckily most folks who mix in multiple-seat dub stages are very collaborative and have the ability to morph to the style that works with the team and serves the director or producer. I have certainly been made aware of other ways of looking at things that ended up being the right choice for the project and client at the end of the day.  This difference of perspective can be a complexity and/or a gift.

You’ve mixed over 100 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. What are the challenges?

We suffer from a lot of set noise as there is a lot of busy scenes with lots of background action…IV stands, gurneys, and of course, paper medical gowns.

You have a reputation for having an incredible work ethic, drive, and energy level. How do you maintain that level of focus? How do you not burn out?

Wow.  That’s a crazy question.  It blows me away that I have a reputation at all. I just keep swimming.

I have had a very specific and pointed goal for a very long time to be a re-recording mixer. It started as soon as I knew the job existed. I knew it was what I was supposed to do. I never took a lot of electives in school or tried a lot of different things professionally because this goal was what I knew I wanted specifically.  I knew it was competitive and I knew I wouldn’t generally look like or come from the same places that a lot of my peers would. I grew up in a town that simply doesn’t have a substantial market for this craft. I knew it was a different world and I was going to have to break in.

Practically every extracurricular activity, club, or group I have participated in has been focused on trying to be in this world. Sound makes sense to me and communicating by putting people in sound spaces is pretty amazing and evocative. I am always trying to make myself worthy and valuable to the opportunity in front of me.

What skills are necessary to do your job?

You have to be at least mildly obsessed with detail, technology, and storytelling. Our jobs are not sprints; they are marathons. You will watch a reel or episode over and over and over again for days, sometimes weeks.  You must remain present and have the ability to fall back into the perspective of a first-time viewer but also switch quickly to the mind of a mixer. You have to be able to see (and feel and hear) the effect of what you are doing while also seeing possibilities.

It is also very helpful to like people and have no ego. It can be hard sometimes because you have to emotionally experience something in order to create and having that emotional response rejected can feel personal. But in the end, you are completing the vision of your director or producer and creating their film/show. You should understand that a person may be inspired by your suggestion at times but may also feel something completely different. Notes are not criticism. They are opportunities.

What are your favorite plugins?

I am loving the Pro Fabfilter Q2 and De-esser right now.  I also love my McDSP SA-2 and NF575. I am still a sucker for Audio Ease’s Speakerphone, and PhoenixVerb is pretty amazing.

What technology are you excited about right now?

I love the new immersive formats. I really feel a naturalness when I hear an environment in Atmos.  And I love the panning precision and full-range reproduction.

What have been the challenges for you as a woman in the field?

It is getting so much better. I have definitely found myself in moments of overt creepiness and absolute inappropriateness. But as the years have gone on whether it be because we as a society are becoming more progressive, other women have paved the way, or because I have become more established, it has gotten much, much better. I just keep forging ahead. I don’t give that crazy a lot of focus. The best thing I can do for equality is to be successful as a woman and be a force for equality by treating everyone around me the way I would want to be treated.  I try to lift others up who share the love of what we do, and I take no mind in their gender, race, or creed.

I still have to discuss my gender as an anomaly from time to time, almost always on a new job and have to occasionally educate people on my knowledge and fandom of a diverse range of genres such as action, horror, and sci-fi. Because as a woman I am often thought of as a strictly romantic comedy or drama person.

But I do have to take care to go out of my way to get to know my co-workers and let them know they can be comfortable around me and that they can be confident that I am an assertive individual. People don’t walk on eggshells around me because I will let someone know if I am uncomfortable or disagree. I hold no grudges and pull no punches. I have been set straight once or twice in my life when I have said something I thought was harmless that had no presumptions behind it that accidentally affected someone in a negative way. We all need to be open to learning from one another without fear or pride. I do believe most people are intrinsically good.

It is paramount to respect your coworkers (male and female alike). While I am aware of situations through the years where I have not been hired because I am a woman or where criticism has been very blatantly gender-biased, I know I am also here in my dream job because of all the wonderful folks, the majority of whom are male, who have given me a shot, had confidence in my abilities and welcomed me into the fold.

It is a weird landscape, ladies.

What advice would you give women in our field?

Be assertive, persistent, and consistent. Respect the contributions of everyone around you from the valet service to reception to account management to your engineer. Show respect and act respectfully. Expect the same in return.  Be humble but also speak and act with confidence and kindness. Some folks really do not recognize what they are saying. Some are uncomfortable or culturally insensitive without knowledge of their actions. Ignorance does still exist. Some folks lack perspective and understanding without intending ill will.  Many people who are considered notoriously challenging that I have worked with were not an issue with me at all because if I had an issue, I stated the issue, explained my issue, asked for a change in behavior, and then dropped it from my memory and became a friend and advocate to them. And while I am not so ignorant or smug as to say it doesn’t matter what others think or do (There is real malice in the world.), I do believe social transformation happens individual by individual. We can be seeds of change by keeping our decisions untarnished by the poor actions of a few and giving each new individual in our world the opportunity to be wonderful.

I believe in equality.  I can’t wait to work in a world where we don’t have to support each other as minorities but we can just support competent, talented artists and craft people and diversity will naturally take place.

If you were to guide someone trying to get into post-production today what advice would you give? What would you advise to find work and build a career?

Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to do what you want to do.  Even if it is for little or no money, get in there. Until you have a professional-level skill to offer, you need to be doing what you can to acquire it. Participate in your community, seek mentors, seek other folks coming up, collaborate, create, rise, and lift up others. Remain open to life lessons. The universe has a lot more opportunities to reward you with when you put yourself out there and participate.

 

Three Ways to Ruin the Call

In my opinion as an experienced hiring manager, there are three ways someone could quickly ruin their chance for work with an organization.  Someone could even ruin their chances before the event start. So, as you may be looking to get a new gig or join a new crew, I advise not making these three mistakes.

No call, no show

If you no call, no show – it is a clear sign to a hiring manager that you cannot balance your schedule and you’ve proven to be unreliable. You won’t be hired back. Plus now you’ve just left the team in a lurch, one person down.  If you can’t fulfill your commitment, let your contact know immediately. Also, make sure that you communicate in advance if you know early enough and even consider providing contact names of others who might be able to fill your spot. Most of all, if it is short notice when you’re unable to get to the shift, make sure to have a strong reason as to why.  The hiring manager could consider you again in the future if you have a valid reason and are apologetic regarding the situation. If they never hear from you, you’ll never hear from them again.

Negative attitude

If you arrive at a first gig with a company or group and immediately are negative, you are stepping out on the wrong foot right away. It takes a lot of energy to create a crew and negative energy even from one person can bring everyone down. Being negative is a way to not get invited back. We all know events and production is tough work, and the schedule rarely allows for enough time to get it done reasonably. Adding a negative air to the situation does not help.  Approach a new environment with a positive go-getter attitude. Take a minute to analyze how the crew works together and see how you fit into the program. This will help you connect with the crew as well as be remembered as a positive force and someone the crew would love to work with again.

Don’t act like a know-it-all

Acting like a know, it all can also ruin the call. Face it – no one likes a know-it-all, so don’t be that person.  If you can offer advice or experience to help with problem-solving a situation, by all means, contribute your ideas. However, as a new person to the crew, you are not going to know it all, and these actions can be off-putting to the existing crew.  Offer advice where you can and make sure to ask questions along the way. Each crew will do things slightly differently, so if you aren’t sure, there is no harm in asking. Especially if it is going to save you and the crew time in redoing something later.  You’ll also develop relationships with the crew faster by communicating and working with them, then trying to prove you know everything.

Each person has earned their spot on the crew, work with them to earn yours as well. Make sure to show up on time, be ready for what the day will give you, and ask questions along the way.

 

 

Vocal Production 101

When I listen to my older productions, some of my first recordings on Logic, one thing that sticks out a lot to me is the vocal. This happens a lot when I listen to “young producers”—people interested in making records and being in charge of the record making process, as opposed to those that make demos and want to find a producer to collaborate with. The vocal rarely sounds as good as it could, and it often goes unnoticed.

Before continuing, I want to mention a few things, even if they seem obvious to some. First, not all music is vocal-centered. There is music with no use of voice at all. There is music with the use of vocal samples which are treated as a riff similar to how one might treat a guitar part. There is music where the voice and instrumentation are treated as two parts with equal status which weave in and out of each other.

I would also like to acknowledge that the approach to recording vocals varies greatly according to the style of music and production. One would approach recording the featured soloist of a choir very differently from how they would approach recording a singer and her acoustic guitar, and differently still is the approach one would take to recording the vocal for a pop song…and even in pop, there is a big difference between a Selena Gomez vocal and an Adele vocal. When I say “recording” here I am referring to both the engineering process (type of microphone(s), mic placement, use of compression and EQ) as well as the vocal production process (type of performance from the vocalist/s, approach to comping, approach to tuning*, approach to layering, i.e., how many Selenas are we really listening to in the verse versus the chorus; are they singing the same notes or are they harmonizing; are they all natural or are they effected in different ways and playing more autonomous roles? etc.)

I have yet to come across any reading or class that goes into depth about these styles and processes, which is surprising because it is something all listeners of music experience. We know quality when we hear it, and I think most musicians are genuinely interested in the record making process. Even if they would rather be playing, they understand it is to their advantage to know something about making records. I’m sure there are Tape Op articles about people who specialize in vocal production, and there may be a class in a university somewhere that touches on vocal production in all of its complexity (let me know! I’m curious to learn how they cover the topic!) Mostly though, I think many producers and engineers learn it by way of doing, which is fine. But what about those of us who aren’t assistant engineering (yet)? Can we study this as a subject and not as a specific recipe?

Here is a basic overview of vocal production. Depending on your level of experience, it may be worth watching a few YouTube tutorials on comping and tuning in your specific software. Vocal production is super fun, but it’s also tedious. It’s not for everyone, and it takes lots of practice. I hope with this jump start you are encouraged to give it a shot, dig in deeper, get some new skills under your belt and create dope vocals!

Step 0 is basically, decide what kind of vocal you are going to make. If you are recording a group of vocalists, decide if you want to record them together or separately, ask yourself why (sometimes the answer will be obvious). If you are recording a solo singer with some layers and/or background singing, it helps to do a little research and have a few existing recordings to use as a reference for the sound you are going for. It rarely works to have only one reference; it is more useful to have a few and create something from a place of cross-pollination. I’ve noticed that after years of being inspired by others’ vocal production techniques, I often don’t need to listen to be using something as a reference in order for it to be playing that role—it is just part of my tool belt.

Step 1. Use the best mic and preamp possible.

Step 2. Listen to who you are recording.

What is interesting about their voice, from a sound perspective? Is it booming and loud? Does it crackle on certain vowels? Adjust your EQ and compression settings to best capture these elements you want to emphasize.

Step 3. Now listen to them again from a performance perspective.

Does the way they inhale before this one phrase feel intentional and emotionally compelling, or is it sloppy and distracting? Do you believe what they are singing? Is there consistency in their intonation/pronunciation, and how much consistency do you want there to be, AND WHY?

Step 4. Record the parts you need in a space that sounds good.

Get as many takes as you need to composite a solid main vocal. Do the same thing for a double of that main. It’s nice to have a quality double on hand for when you might decide you want to use it. Grab an octave down or octave up from the main if possible. If it’s not possible for the singer, but you want the option, grab another double. You can use a pitch shifter in your DAW to fake an octave up or down (or to play with and effect in other ways, such as a vocoder sound tucked away behind the main vocal for some added texture). Grab any background vocals you want, and remember that sometimes its fun to record these with the vocalist/s further away from the mic than they were for the other parts. Grab any harmonies you want. Record harmonies until you have too many harmonies recorded. You can take some away later. If you want, record your vocalist singing ad libs through the entirety of the song, at least one time through (three is the magic number here).

Step 5. Make good comps.

A good comp contains the best moments from all of the takes. It checks all the boxes of a good vocal recording—quality in fidelity, quality in performance, a lens into the singer and their ability to use their voice as an instrument and/or story-teller.

Step 6. Tune with integrity.

Don’t knock it ’til you try it!! Tuning with integrity adds a beautiful glistening sheen to a vocal, and is absolutely necessary if you want to make pop records. Yes, even the best singers of today are tuned, but with integrity. What does this mean? It means we use tuning to emphasize the things we worked on in steps 2 and 3. If a vocalist sang a word in a way that was so amazing that you want to use it, but is off-pitch in a distracting way, you can adjust that specific word. Take care of those instances, and then treat the rest with a light setting.

Step 7. Create a rough mix (or a real mix if you are a mix engineer too!)

Your references will come in handy here as you will want to communicate the desired final result to whoever is mixing your record.

Get your relative volumes in order. How loud do you want your harmonies to be in relation to your main? Get your textures in order. Are there any effects like reverb or delay that you would like to add? Are there some harmonies that you thought you liked, but you realize now the song sounds better without them? Compare yours to your references. What work do you still have to do to make it stand up next to them? Do what you can. Push yourself. Then save up for your next piece of gear so you can make even more music!!

*There is quite a bit of literature on the history of Autotune, it’s relation to the vocoder, and how artists like oft-cited Cher and Kanye have used extreme settings for specific effects. What we don’t see as much of is a practical, reasonable description of the role tuning plays in the record making process for many, many producers who do NOT use it in extreme ways. I guess the latter isn’t all that interesting for people who don’t work in music…

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