Over the past five years, I’ve been interviewed a couple of times for a “day in the life”-type feature for a magazine or blog. One of the more common questions, aside from “describe a typical workday for you” is “what has been the best day of your life so far?”
The answer is always the same: one of the best days of my life to date was the day I ran the London Marathon in 2009. I finished in a pretty good time (3:38), but it wasn’t my race time alone that made it a memorable day.
The 2017 London Marathon was last weekend and watching coverage of the race; I was reminded of why running the same race eight years ago was such an important day for me.
Every day I feel surrounded by reminders of competition and comparison, and I’m sure it’s the same for many of you. You can’t be an active social media user without seeing daily updates from friends and colleagues about great gigs they’ve just worked, accolades they’ve attained and life goals they’ve achieved. It’s often hard not to feel like you’re in constant competition with your peers.
I know that what we see on social media isn’t often an accurate reflection of a person’s life, thanks to algorithms and personal curation. I also know it’s very easy to feel envious when we see people moving ahead in their careers when we feel we’re treading water with our own.
At these times, several mantras spring to mind, like “trust the process” and “you are where you are meant to be.” I’m not much of a mantra person, though I did use a slightly hyperbolic “pain is temporary, glory is forever” during marathon training, because it fitted my running rhythm, and it seemed to motivate me to keep running. Despite this, I’ve found a mantra that works for me at the moment: “you are running your own race.”
This phrase, to me, has two meanings. One, your journey is unique. Two, you should appreciate the mileage you have already done, as well as look forward to the challenges and milestones yet to come.
Comparing yourself with your colleagues won’t give you any magic answers about why they are where they are, and you are where you are because they’re not you. Maybe the friend who posted proudly about getting an enviable gig has carved out a niche in that particular area of sound, whereas you’ve worked across several sectors. Maybe the gig is the result of years of networking to get noticed. Or maybe they were just in the right place at the right time. Whatever the reason, all it means is that you won’t be working that gig this time around. It doesn’t mean that opportunity will never come your way. And by the time it does, maybe you’ll already be doing something better.
Focussing on one specific end goal, or career level, as being the be-all and end-all also ignores how much you’ve achieved so far. Making a career in sound, or in any creative field, takes sacrifice and determination. Appreciate how far you’ve come and the successes you’ve had. You don’t get to mile 26 without passing miles 1 to 25 first.
I had a friend and training partner who ran the London Marathon the year I ran it. He was a more experienced long-distance runner who expected to finish in a time under 3:30. We had both trained hard and were as prepared as humanly possible. On the day, less than halfway through, he tripped over a discarded water bottle, twisted his ankle and had to walk part of the way. He limped over the line after well over 4 hours. I had a dream run, did the first 9 miles faster than I ever expected and finished 7 minutes faster than my best-predicted time. The following year he ran again and smashed his best predicted time, and I decided not to compete altogether because I had already achieved what I wanted.
To my mind, both of us are winners of our own races. I had a great run in 2009 because I was well-prepared and nothing unexpected happened. The following year my training partner had a great race for much the same reasons. We both finished the race we wanted in the end, and it doesn’t matter much when it happened.
When I feel a tug of jealousy about someone else’s career or disappointment about my own, I remember why I trained for and ran the London Marathon and how I felt that day. I did it not to be faster than anyone else in particular, but because I had set myself a goal of running a marathon. I was ecstatic that I finished faster than my best-predicted time, but what made the day memorable was the proof that I made it happen myself.
You don’t have to compete to achieve your goals. Celebrate how far you’ve come. Run your own race.
Tour NPR West & Lunch
SoundGirl Angie Hamilton Manager of NPR West has invited SoundGirls to take a tour of their facilitates and studio. Space is limited to ten members. You must register here.
May 2nd
11:30 am
9909 Jefferson Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
Please be aware that NPR West does not have parking to accommodate us. Do not park in their lot. You will need to park on the street. There is metered parking on Jefferson.
After the tour, we will have lunch at Tender Greens. So if you can’t make the tour, you can still join us for lunch.
‘Human beings are social animals. Biological evolution equipped men and women for a communal existence, hunting and foraging in tribes of between twenty and forty people. We could never have survived this ecological niche by ourselves. We don’t have the strength, speed or agility of other animals. But we do have language. We can communicate with others, and we are bright enough to collaborate for purposes of hunting, collecting food, defense, and building shelters. A tribal group would work as a team, assigning to each member a role according to their character and skills.’
This an extract from a book called ‘Sick and Tired – Healing The Illnesses Doctors Cannot Cure’ by Nick Read. It’s a fascinating investigation of ‘functional illnesses’ which doctors are unable to pin down with a cure, such as IBS, chronic fatigue, depression, fibromyalgia, eating disorders and so on. Dr. Read explores the idea that, despite the fact that as a society we’ve ‘never had it so good,’ we’re sicker and unhappier than we’ve ever been, and the stressful pace of modern life and disconnection from our simple humanity is to blame.
His description of how we lived back in our caveman days struck a very loud chord with me. Twenty to forty people, living a nomadic existence and working as a team within roles according to their character and skills. Remind you of anything? No wonder we like touring – we’re basically channeling our inner caveman! I’m making light of it, but life on the road really does offer a sense of community that’s increasingly rare in modern life. We each have our roles to fulfill, which offers the opportunity for creative expression, problem-solving, and collaboration with others, and we have to do it within a timeframe, which means tangible satisfaction rather than never-ending procrastination. And our work may involve mind-boggling amounts of technology, but it also involves a lot of physical activity – pushing, pulling, climbing, lifting, standing up and walking around for most of the day – all of which means we use our bodies as evolution intended. Being away from home also provides a chance for genuine rest and downtime on days off, rather than racing around. I certainly find being on tour more relaxing than juggling different tasks back home, and suddenly I understand why that is, despite long hours and the potentially pressured environment.
This is not to say that roadies never suffer any kind of functional illness; of course, we do. There are ample temptations and opportunities to break yourself on tour as well as all this good stuff. But I think it’s interesting that studies increasingly suggest that it’s living out of sync with our caveman roots which has made us so sickly as a society. The rate of lifestyle change has dramatically accelerated since the industrial revolution, and the incidence of illnesses which have no obvious cure – despite immense, marvelous leaps in treating pathology – has accelerated alongside it.
When you think about it, it’s the least surprising thing. Take a being who has evolved for a nomadic, active, communal existence roaming in nature; who thrives on practical problem-solving, eating food hunted and gathered from the land; who derives satisfaction from doing the skills they’re suited for and not comparing themselves with others; whose body responds to threat by fighting or running for their life, and who rises with the sun and sleeps for as long as they need. Now, airdrop them into a situation where they spend most of their time static, unable to roam freely because of overcrowding; where their practical abilities and simple satisfactions have been outsourced to machines; where they eat processed chemical foodstuffs with precious little connection to the land; where they are encouraged to constantly compare themselves with others and measure their self-worth by their appearances and possessions; where they are vulnerable to artificial alerts and stimulation 24 hours a day and where, because of all of this, they’re in a constant state of stress from which they cannot run. Would we really be shocked if this being got sick? Of COURSE not!
We may not have been airdropped, but the few thousand years in which we have made these changes, in evolutionary terms, is the blink of an eye. Our physiology and psychology haven’t been able to keep up, and we’re now very bewildered space-age cavemen. So it feels good to have a taste of that more natural way of life, as we roam the world with our tour tribe. Touring doesn’t make modern life go away – heck, touring as we know it couldn’t have happened 100 years ago. But we do have some precious, crucial elements in there which I believe are a large part of the pleasure – even the romance – of touring.
Choosing Software
There are many ways to control show cues on various programmes, and exactly which programmes used are entirely dependent on what the show’s needs are.
My upcoming show in RADA is proving to be a show that has much more than just a standard Qlab and a few microphones; I’ll also be composing for the show, but the composition is very much in fitting with the almost experimental and ‘found sound’ element of said show. It’s set simultaneously in 1882 and 2011, and there should be a ‘Stomp’-esque soundtrack that is driven by the sound, music, and choreography. This presents various challenges, and one of them initially has been deciding what to run the show on. Naturally, I’ll be using Qlab as the main brains of the show. However, Ableton Live will be utilized as well as live mixing.
Qlab is incredibly versatile, and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it can deal with OSC and MIDI incredibly well. In terms of advanced programming, you can get super specific and create your own set of commands and macros that will do whatever you need it to do, and quickly. Rich Walsh has a fantastic set of downloadable scripts and macros to use with Qlab that can all be found on a Qlab Google Group . Mic Pool has the most definitive Qlab Cookbook that can also be found here (as with OSC and MIDI, you will need a Qlab Pro Audio license to access these features which can be purchased daily, monthly, or annually on the Figure 53 website).
To get Qlab to talk to Ableton is relatively straightforward – again, it’s all MIDI and specifically Control Change. MIDI is incredibly useful in that per channel, we can achieve 128 commands, and each channel (which is up to 8 output devices in Qlab V3) can be partitioned off for separate cues (i.e. Channel 1 might go to Ableton, Channel 2 might go to Lighting, 3 might be Video, and so on). Couple the Control Change with both Ableton’s MIDI Input Ports and its MIDI Map Mode, and you’re on your way to starting to control Ableton via Qlab. Things can get as specific as fade up/down over certain times, fade back up over certain times, stop cues, start loops, and generally control Ableton as if you were live mixing it yourself. The only thing to be wary of at this stage is to ensure that all levels in Ableton are set back to 0db with a separate MIDI cue once desired fades, etc. are completed – Ableton will only be as intelligent as it needs to be!
Using both macros/scripts and sending MIDI cues to Ableton are all features that I will cover in a separate post, only because they deserve their own post to understand all of the features.
So Ableton can do a lot, regarding controlling a show, and it does give us the flexibility to work, but artistically it also opens up a whole new world of opportunity. In RADA we are fortunate enough to own several Ableton Push 2’s, and they’ve very quickly become my new favourite toy! Push is useful as a sampler at its core, but there is so much flexibility that will be incredibly helpful during this next show. I can create loops, edit times, effects, sample rates, and can load any plugins simply; for me, it’s completely changed the live theatre game. I can react in real-time in the rehearsal room based on the choreography and can load new sounds from a whole suite of instruments and drum packs.
I’ll let Ableton themselves tell you more about the Push and what it can do – I’ve only recently started to use Ableton, so it’s as much as voyage of discovery for me, as I’m sure it is for you! More can be read on their website.
I primarily also use Pro Tools for editing any SFX and dialogue; this is because it’s a programme I’ve come to know very well and find that it is dynamic enough for what I need to do. I can again, load plugins quickly, it’s versatile and can load hundreds of tracks, and can talk to external hardware simply (such as the Avid Artist Control which we have in RADA’s main recording studio).
I also sometimes use Logic Pro as well, although I would only use this for music editing. This is because I prefer its ability to quickly load time signatures and is elastic enough that whenever a new track is loaded, it quickly adapts to the time signature on imported audio, and often comes pre-loaded with a vast amount of samples and plugins as standard.
With Ableton edging its way in, however, I might just have to choose a favourite soon because for me Ableton can often provide more realistic sounds, greater flexibility in drag-and-drop (wildly editable) plugins, auto-looping, and can be easily controlled in a live setting.
Often with software though, as with hardware, it’s more about what the sound designer or musician is comfortable with using and what the desired outcome is for the show.
Australia Mentoring Opportunity
Sound Engineer Gil Eva Craig will be touring Australia with The Pink Floyd Experience in June and is welcoming SoundGirls members the chance to shadow her for the following shows. One member per show. If you are interested please email soundgirls@soundgirls.org with the following info.
Name
Number
Email
SoundGirls Username
1st show you are interested in
2nd show you are interested in
Adelaide: Thebarton Fri 23rd June
Melbourne: Hamer Hall Sun 25th June
Sydney: Riverside, 29th June
Sydney: Enmore, 30th June
Queensland: Gold Coast Arts Centre 6th July
Brisbane: Q Pac 8th July
Speak Up and Record It!
Voice Recording and Spatial Audio as Tools for Empowerment
I am a Brazilian SoundGirl from Rio de Janeiro that moved to Berlin, Germany, in 2013 to study and work. During my first year in this new city, I started to feel alone and disconnected, like I was watching life passing by through a window: I was there, but I was outside. I would like to share here some of my experiences with you, and explain how I used audio as a tool for empowerment while dealing with my own feelings of alienation. I believe that many of us have gone or are going, through similar experiences. I hope I can bring a bit of encouragement, as well as proposing another point of view on using our knowledge as a weapon to overcome challenges.
In facing my feelings of disconnection, I found comfort in technology. I started to exchange voice messages with a close friend that was also living abroad. Speaking on the cellphone in my mother-tongue, while wandering through the streets of Berlin, helped me feel I was no longer an outsider. I was somehow functioning in that society. The streets were mine, as I walked through them. I was re-appropriating that place and contributing to its soundscape, by bringing my private discourse into the public space.
During this process, I noticed that I enjoyed playing back my recordings. I could listen to what I just said from a new perspective, and this was helping me reorganise my thoughts. I started to experiment with that, but without sending my recorded messages to anyone. In other words, I decided to talk to myself through the phone, and listen back to what I just said. This turned out to function as a fun (and reflective) practice, that I had developed spontaneously to deal with my issues of feeling disconnected.
This whole experience led me to develop a method for artistic research in the Masters in Sound Studies, at the University of the Arts (Universität der Künste) in Berlin. Through this method, I researched my own sense of self, while feeling “I don’t belong” – either to a place, to a group of people, or to both at the same time. This work culminated with the creation of an immersive installation, which I called ‘This Alienness and Me’.
I would like to talk a bit about this process, both technically and conceptually. The research project was initiated in December 2015 and lasted until February 2017. The installation was exhibited on 7th February 2017 at the Wave Field Synthesis Studio, at the UDK.
Installation: ‘This Alienness and Me’
In the installation, I used spatial audio to juxtapose my personal voice recordings, made with a cellphone. The process of composing the sound for my installation was executed by using object-oriented audio. Through a Wave Field Synthesis system (WFS), I was able to position sound objects and organise them spatially, around different parts of the studio. According to Brandenburg, Brix & Sporer (2009):
“Wave Field Synthesis is a method to recreate an accurate replication of a sound field using the theory of waves and of the generation of wave fronts…WFS controlled loudspeaker arrays reproduce wave fields that originate from any combination of (virtual) sound sources like an acoustic hologram. When driven properly, the system recreates wave fronts approaching perfect temporal, spectral and spatial properties throughout the listening room.” (p.1)
WFS Studio at the UDK
I will explain later how and why I used low-quality recordings in a high-end technology system, as well as talk about my experience with composition and mixing in the WFS. At the same time, I would also like to open a dialogue concerning the sense of self and female discourses. I believe, that through the use of our knowledge, we are able to shift perspectives on how we see ourselves and how we are seen by others.
Inspiration
The main problem I have faced in the few last years is to realise that the way I perceived myself – and what I understood as my identity – was different and disconnected from the ‘images’ of myself that I perceived through the eyes of others. I felt for example, that my personal history was not important (or almost worthless) to the new people I met. Conversely, the categories I would be put in as a first impression – woman, foreign, chubby – seemed to be overestimated. Another example concerns my auditory reality. My efforts to communicate were aggravating those feelings. I heard myself talking imperfectly in two different languages, neither my mother tongue: English and German. The situation was complex because it was surrounded by different issues related to self, identity, perceiving others, listening, talking, language, speech, communication, different kinds and degrees of relationships, and new and strange environments.
I had started to find some comfort in speaking on the cellphone – in my mother tongue – while wandering through the streets of Berlin. I felt empowered as if I had a secret weapon to deal with my problems. In 2014 I suggested to a friend, Fernanda Sa Dias, that we exchange mobile voice messages as an act of mutual comfort and ‘free self-analysis’. Fernanda is also from Brazil and was living in Bremen. We would record ourselves talking about our lives, experiences, insights, feelings, and send these recordings to each other. Further, we listened to each other, not specifically giving advice, but commented freely and gave emotional support if necessary; and we listened to our own voice messages. This was an agreement that we made as friends, to see if this could help us emotionally.
The writer and theorist Gloria Anzaldúa (1980), in her essay ‘Speaking in tongues: a letter to third world women writers’, writes “our speech, too, is inaudible. We speak in tongues like the outcast and the insane” and calls on third-world women writers to speak up: “Because white eyes do not want to know us, they do not bother to learn our language, the language which reflects us, our culture, our spirit” (p.165). For Lydia French (2014), professor of English and director of Mexican-American/Latino Studies at Houston Community College-Central, Anzaldúa brings attention to “social invisibility and inaudibility for [those women]” (p.3). For her, Anzaldúa is emphasising “how some in positions of power implicitly ‘close their ears’ to the voices of women of colour, voices frequently cast as unmeaning noise” (p.3).
Additionally, while analysing Bose’s noise-canceling headphones, Mack Hagood (2011), a researcher in digital media, sound technologies and popular music, discusses how mobile technology can act in favour of objectifying the sound of women’s voices into noise. According to Hagood, “voices – particularly women’s and children’s voices – are referenced in reviews [of Bose’s noise-canceling headphones] almost as often as the sound of the jet engine [of the airplane]” (p.584). For the noise-canceling headphone buyer, there is no difference between the noise sources: all of them are unwanted and unpleasant noise. Hagood takes into account both Bose’s commercials and the users’ reviews on the product. According to him, in male-written newspaper pieces, women’s voices are perceived as “emotional, distracting, and annoying – generally too young, feminine, and irrational to silence themselves” (p.584).
Inspired by my experience with mobile voice messages, I decided to explore this ‘talking out loud to myself on the phone while feeling alienated’ as part of my research. At the same time, I aimed to reconceptualize the sound of my voice into the soundscape of an immersive environment, which would function as a medium for communicating the results of my research to others.
Recording, Composing & Mixing
During the time of my research, I produced a total of 24 recordings with my cellphone. In all of them I’m describing my feelings of alienation in different conditions: different places, different times of the day, either moving through the city, sitting somewhere or laying down on my bed. Later, I used those recordings in my immersive environment, by further mixing them using the WFS.
Through the Wave Field Synthesis System, I was able to position sound objects and organise them spatially around different parts of the studio. To begin with, twelve different recordings were being played. The use of object-oriented audio allowed me to find a space in the room for each sound source. I mixed the audio by spreading the sound sources around the space, and focusing both on the macro and micro level simultaneously. It means that I should be able to produce an ‘acceptable cacophony’, where sound objects superpose each other, but have also their own space inside the room. Sounds happening in the micro environments should be more or less independent from each other, by telling different stories in different places of the room, at different moments. At the same time, the macro environment should still be reasonably perceived as a whole system.
During the compositional process I was able to hear myself speaking about my feelings of alienation and play with volume automation. I increased the volume in the moments where I felt I was saying something important and decreased the volume of the recordings where I was saying something not so relevant. This helped me guide the listener into the ‘acceptable cacophony’ mentioned above. Although the listener, most of the time, had the feeling they could choose what they heard inside the installation, those choices were limited through my mix. I guided the listener through my intimate thoughts, by choosing carefully what moments I would like to raise more awareness of.
Next, I included some voice recordings I made while reading written descriptions of my feelings. These were also recorded with a cellphone but, instead of walking through the streets, I was on my bed, in my room. Spatially, the sound of those recordings weren’t fixed in the studio room, as I worked circularly with the localization of these sound objects. I felt that the circular movement was providing a clearer way of continuing to ‘tell the story, without drawing the visitor’s attention to the technology and equipment.
Installation: ‘This Alienness and Me’
The composition needed to be so that the visitor could choose what and how they wanted to listen. They could also choose to listen to the environment by focusing more on sound quality, colours and movement, and less on spoken words. The idea was that the visitor should be free to make those choices. The audio was played in a loop and the visitor could move inside and outside the room at any time.
“If it is only through the other that we know who we are, then interacting with others is always a presentation and renegotiation of the self…” (Hagood, 2011, p.578)
Conceptually, and following Hagood, the idea was that the visitor would need to reassess themselves over and over, either by interacting with the installation – and, in consequence, being confronted with my voice and my words – or with other visitors inside the installation. Every time they made a decision to move inside the room, stay, leave, or even of changing their awareness from some mode of listening to another, they were responsible for how and to what they listened, as well as for which images of themselves emerged while inside the installation.
Additionally, a dialog between private and public was taking place. On a macro level, the cacophony produced through the superposition of my recordings was inspired by the cacophony present in urban spaces. Depending on the visitors’ interactions (either through movement or shifting auditory awareness), this was slowly intercalated with the private: the intimacy of my personal recordings happening in the microenvironments. Temporally, the composition also slowly changes from the macro-level to the micro, more interiorised level, when the recordings made in the streets stop, and the audio I recorded on my bed start to play. Visually, I decided to include some personal objects in the room: carpets, lights, a cushion. The contrast between my personal objects and the studio room was also contributing to this dialog, by bringing my private world into the university’s studio.
In the installation, the lights are spread out around the carpets and one chair is positioned in the middle of the room, while seven other chairs are positioned in the circle peripherally, facing the chair in the middle. On the chair, the visitors found glasses with a tag that said “Try Me”. Each chair brought the visitor to a particular perspective and a new approach to the environment. The glasses had mirrors that pointed to the floor. If the visitor chose to sit on the chair and put on the glasses, they could see themself seated, while the lights made interesting reflections back to their eyes. If they decided to walk around and/or sit on one the peripheral chairs, then according to their own perception, awareness and movement inside the room, they were able to interact with the space in different ways.
Anzaldúa (1980), facing an imposed silence, calls women to speak up. She speaks up through writing. She is compelled to write, “[b]ecause the writing saves [her] from this complacency [she] fear[s]. Because [she] ha[s] no choice. Because [she] must keep the spirit of [her] revolt and [her]self alive” (pp.168-169).
Facing my feeling of alienation, I also decided to speak up. I spoke, recorded, and turned each narration into a sound object inside the studio room. I layered, organised spatially, and played back all tracks containing my voice. My secret weapon to deal with my issues of disconnection was being upgraded to a new level.
I talked about my feelings on the cellphone while wandering through the streets of Berlin, or while in the comfort of my room. I brought my low-quality intimate recordings to the public through the use of hi-end technology. The mixing possibilities provided by the WFS enabled me to create a sound piece in which my cellphone recordings were reconceptualized into high-quality audio processing. Through this work, I could resignify the noises of my alienation into speech, by juxtaposing discourses and reshaping them into the soundscape of my created environment.
In the end, it was not only about myself. I hope to encourage Sound Girls into using their knowledge to feel empowered and motivated to speak up, reclaim acoustic space and reconceptualize their own notions of self.
References:
Anzaldúa, G., 1980. Speaking in tongues: a letter to third world women writers, in: Moraga, C., Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Persephone Press, Watertown, MA, pp. 165–175.
Brandenburg, K., Brix, S., Sporer, T., 2004. Wave Field Synthesis: From research to applications. Presented at the 12th European Signal Processing Conference, IEEE, Ilmenau, Germany.
Hagood, M., 2011. Quiet Comfort: Noise, Otherness, and the Mobile Production of Personal Space. American Quarterly 63, pp. 573–589.
I’ll be developing and presenting these ideas further at the Symposium Sonic Cyberfeminisms in May 2017, in Lincoln, UK.
Mariana Bahia is a sound artist and researcher in digital media and audio technology. She is particularly interested in understanding the sense of self through sound recording and audio reproduction. She likes to explore the intersection between hi-end and low-quality technology, from cellphone recordings to spatial audio. Her work is based on composing sound pieces and installations using superposed voice and self-designed instruments. Mariana is a research assistant in immersive audio in the TiME Lab at the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut and is finishing her Masters in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts (UDK), Berlin. www.marianabahia.comwww.sifonics.com
Post-Production Audio: Promo Mixing
One area of the post-production industry that goes under the radar when looking for jobs or career paths is advertising and promos. A promo is a form of advertising used in media/broadcast to promote a program or event. You’ve probably seen these a million times and never thought much of it. “Coming up next on the Simpsons!” or “Tuesday night right after the Voice!”
Mixing a promo is not terribly complicated. There’s usually voice-over, dialog, sound fx and music. The content is short – generally, you are given a “spot” which is 30 seconds (but could be other lengths). Then, there can be “cutdowns” of that spot – shorter spots that are usually derivative of the longest one. For a 30 second spot, the cutdowns might be 20, :15, and :10. Here’s an example of a 30-second spot and a basic cutdown version:
Once you mix the:30 it’s often a matter of conforming your mix/tweaking or applying settings from the original mix to the cutdown versions.
The main thing that makes promo mixing difficult is organization and file management. For one spot, you might have 3 cutdowns (4 mixes in total) plus “versions.” Versioning is taking your mix and changing the tag – the VO at the end of the spot that identifies the show, time, date, network, etc (“The Americans. All-New Next Tuesday. Only on FX”). Your average tv show that has a promo for next week’s new episode might have the following tags: Next Wednesday, Wednesday, Tomorrow, Tonight, Next. If they’re running a spot early there might be tags like “This summer,” “coming in May,” “premieres May 5.” Sometimes it gets specific like “Next Wednesday at 8” or “Wednesday at 9/8 Central.” There might be promotion across networks or platforms, too. For example, a mix I do for the cable network FXX might also air on FX, Fox, On Demand, and online streaming (FXNow). Some promos are also on the radio or play at movie theaters.
This basic Protools session shows tags for a :30 spot and 3 cutdowns (:20, :15, and :10). The three versions for each spot are “Starts Today at 3,” “Starts Next” and “Continues.” Sometimes it’s easier to do the mix and tags in separate sessions.
If you have a bigger session – say 10 tags for a spot and 3 cutdown versions – that means 40 total you have to edit voice-over (and mix), output and name files, double-check the file names match the mix and spot check the mixes. You may be asked for similar named versions like “premieres next” and “premiering next” so naming files correctly is very important. This is just one promo and you might be doing multiple in a day! This is why people who are detail-oriented do really well in promo.
Voice over script with many tags
As a promo mixer, you get to wear a lot of hats. You might be recording voice-over, editing dialog, sound design, recording Foley or walla (background voices), and music editing. Generally, you don’t get to wear so many hats working on movies or tv shows and definitely not on the same day.
There’s a nuance to promo mixing because there’s a lot of things happening at once that are all competing for your attention. Your job is to point the listener to what’s most important. There can be a lot of mood changes in a short period of time and a good promo mix can navigate these without calling attention to volume rides or overlapping audio. When an explosion happens in a promo you’re usually onto the next idea when the audio is barely starting to decay.
Promo mixing can be a great gig if you’re trying to pursue another interest, too. Mixers are usually booked by the day and there are opportunities to mix from home. It’s not as hard to break into as film mixing, for example. However, it’s not the type of gig you necessarily want to learn on the job because deadlines can be tight. Often a mix is booked the same day a spot needs to air so there’s not a lot of room for error. If you are good with details, organization, are a fast editor and mixer, enjoy wearing a lot of hats, and not looking for your name in the credits, promo mixing might be a good fit for you!
Failing Smart
Recently, I have been super excited to see many women sharing their stories and joining us as part of SoundGirls. Many of the recent posts on our Facebook page have been new members of our organization in school, about to graduate, or just starting their first position in this amazing field. It reminds me of conversations about what’s next as student staff members and student event organizers around me begin their last steps toward graduation and their next steps toward their desired careers.
Working within an educational system, we frequently discuss with graduating students what they have learned if they feel prepared, and how to find support once out in their field. Outside of the educational system, I hope everyone can learn something through all of their life experiences. I would like to share some things that I have learned over time through failure in hopes you can learn from them.
How to Fail Smart
There are many things outside of our control that can lead to failure. Those we are rarely able to change, but there are things as an individual we can do to prevent our failures. The first being, always blaming others. It’s a fact, mistakes will be made, things will go wrong, and sometimes it is our fault. Something was missed, forgotten about, or we just simply misunderstood something. When this happens, and you know that you could have prevented it or you messed it up – take ownership of it. Own the mistake, apologize for it, and work toward fixing it. It can be as simple as, “I’m sorry, I messed up on this – I am going to fix it by…..”
I had a situation just like this happen the other day. I was making a room reservation for a client when I was pulled away for something else, and by the time I got back to my desk, I completely forgot about it. Then the next day I was reminded that I needed to finish the reservation. When I did so, I found that the hotel was sold out. I had messed up for not completing the reservation when I should have – but I owned it. I went to my team, let them know what had happened, and asked for help. I asked if there was any way we could fix the problem. We worked together, and we were able to solve the issue quickly.
A second way to avoid failure is to not complain about everything all the time. Yes, there can be negative times, but if all that comes from you as an employee, team member, and leader is negative, you have failed. To get out of this rut, look at what went well and what didn’t and fix it. Take steps to turn the negative into positive outcomes. I grew up with an ideology of – if you don’t like it, then you fix it. Now that can sound a bit intense, but when you break it down this way take ownership, change what you don’t like, and if you can’t change it make decisions to make it better. As individuals within the sound world we will end up working with negative people, and if we continuously act the same as those negative people as well we will all live miserable lives – so let’s not do that, because life is too short to be negative all the time.
Finally, it will always be important, no matter if you are a rookie or a veteran to learn from your mistakes. As I mentioned above, we have all made mistakes. Taking ownership of those mistakes is important; learning from them is even more important. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The same goes for mistakes. If you are making the same mistakes over and over again, you are failing. Learn from those mistakes, and adjust your game plan from show to show. In the long run, this will make you a productive and valuable employee and leader, plus you may not have to spend so much time troubleshooting.
At the end of the day, no one is perfect when it comes to failing, but owning and learning from mistakes will help you succeed in your career path and remaining active will help you move through failure one step at a time by failing smart.
Dedication and Perseverance – Meegan Holmes
Meegan Holmes has worked in live sound for over 25 years doing everything from system teching to mixing monitors and FOH. She is now in Global Sales for one of the largest sound system providers in the world, 8th Day Sound – Los Angeles. At 8th Day Sound Meegan can utilize her years of experience in sales and account/project management, as she held a similar position at Delicate Productions for over 18 years.
With a mother who is an artist and a father who is a musician, chances were high that Meegan would end up working in the arts. Meegan says her parents “were always supportive of whatever I wanted to do and they never discouraged me from pursuing my goals. In many ways, it made me both fearless and a bit stubborn.” At age 13, Meegan was exposed to live sound and event production when she volunteered at a summer stock theater. She would spend many evenings through several summers, painting sets, hanging lights and speakers. It was there Meegan learned all about theatrical mic technique and live mixing from the FOH engineer. From there Meegan would go on to attend California Institute of The Arts, where she studied Sound Design and Music Composition.
After about 18 months at CalArts, Meegan realized that she was not going to make it as a musician and started to think about how she could still be involved in music and not have to perform. It was evident to her that bands would always need crew and if she chose a path on the tech side, she would always have a job. ”I loved the experience that I had with the technical aspect of live production when I was younger, so it was an easy transition for me to make and one that I do not regret.” During her junior year, she started working as a stagehand with LA Stagecall. While working for Stagecall, she would make friends with the guys at Delicate Productions, which eventually led to Delicate hiring her as a stage tech for a tour.
While Meegan does not believe that attending an audio program or obtaining a degree is necessary, it will most likely benefit you. “CalArts gave me a chance to try varying aspects of audio, not just live production. I tried designing and mixing for film, television, and animation. I spent time in the recording studio on campus; I used the first version of Protools. None of that excited me, but a live rock show did. I don’t think a four-year private university is mandatory. Where I grew up in Connecticut, we weren’t given an option to ‘not go to college. I had to apply to at least four and pick one. I chose an art school. Honestly, going to college gave me the hunger to learn, the networking skills to get a job and the discipline to keep it. Keep in mind; there are many successful people in our industry that do not have any continuing education at all. If you already know someone that can help you get involved in the industry, great but if you don’t, attending some education program might be the only way to get some contacts to help launch your career.”
Meegan’s first tour was Lollapalooza 1997, (back when it was still a tour), as the stage/patch tech. “The tour was a lot of hard work; I started my day with flying/ground stacking PA. Once the band risers were up, I would start mic’ing up the seven bands. I’d re-patch between each and only get sporadic breaks to eat lunch and dinner. After the show was over, I took down the PA I had installed in the morning. My trouble-shooting skills improved by 100%. I learned how to be a strong member of a team (not only the audio crew but the other departments as well), we all worked together to execute the show.”
From there she would go on to mix FOH and monitors for various smaller acts, such as Soul Coughing, Tenacious D, The Melvins and God Lives Underwater. The majority of her road experience has been as a monitor or system tech on tours with Natalie Merchant, Natalie Cole, TOOL, Queens Of The Stone Age, Linkin Park, Basia, and Gorillaz. She even had a brief stint working as a production assistant on Limp Bizkit “I just wanted to try something different, I loved working with the PM on that tour, but I missed being on the audio crew.” Her favorite thing about touring was being paid to see the world, but the disconnect from her life at home was taxing.
Touring would no longer become an option prompting Meegan to seek local full-time work with Delicate. Over time she would start to assist in crewing shows, eventually leading to working as an onsite Project Manager for the more complex shows. Meegan says she “developed a knack for dealing with some of their more challenging clients. After learning the onsite leadership skills and all about dealing with personnel, I just had one last piece to learn, the money. I was promoted to account management in 2013 where I learned pricing and client management on an entirely different level. It was not a difficult transition to make. I spent a lot of time on-site with Delicate’s clients, building relationships with them. Also being on-site, I developed stronger relationships with the crew, bands and event producers. Creating these relationships gave me the opportunity to represent the company beyond email and phone calls. I learned a valuable lesson about how relationships drive our industry. Clients liked dealing with me; they did not care where the equipment came from, they wanted the service, attention, and dedication that I had to offer.”
After 18 years, Meegan felt it was time to move on as she says “Account Management showed me a lot. It also showed me the limitations at Delicate as well. I knew I needed to move on to take my career to the next level. I needed something slightly different and challenging. I interviewed with several different companies. Initially, I was interviewing with 8th Day to take on some of the 30+ festivals they do in the U.S. each year. After my interview, the plan changed, and I was asked if I was interested in starting the west coast operation of the company.
So start she did, with a small pile of gear stored in a warehouse owned by one of 8th Day’s clients. Meegan worked alone with the support of the Cleveland office and freelancers that she knew in Los Angeles. “At the time, I did much of everything, sales, crew, trucking, prep, loading and unloading the gear. I don’t think anyone (including myself) knew how quickly we’d grow here. We hired more full-time personnel and moved into our own warehouse last August. I spend most of my days, now that we have more personnel, doing quotes for shows and tours, conference calls and attending site visits and meetings, hiring crew for our shows here in LA and keeping up with the warehouse maintenance and needs. I spend time on show site, I still feel like nurturing personal relationships is a crucial part of my job.”
When hiring crew Meegan says she looks for “someone that is willing to do any aspect of audio, patching the stage, FOH/monitor tech, RF tech, and mixing. This versatility is beneficial if you plan to work for sound companies. If someone specializes in something, we have less work for them of course but sometimes being the best RF technician brings you more work. Keeping a positive attitude, being reliable, honest and having a good sense of humor are all necessary traits. We can teach you the technical side of the things you don’t know, but we cannot teach you to have integrity. Spending time as a stagehand, working in a warehouse or working in a venue learning how everything goes together is beneficial, especially if you are starting out.”
Meegan’s long-term goals are to help build the 8th Day’s business here in Los Angeles and to use her position to help others achieve their goals in the industry.
What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?
I contacted two audio companies when I graduated from college; the first told me “we don’t hire women for touring positions.” The second told me “we don’t hire women because we find we have to pick up their slack.” These were literally the only two tangible barriers I experienced, and both happened in 1993.
How have you dealt with them?
I never stopped wanting to work in the industry and have always worked hard. I never made a big deal out of gender or my education; I let my work speak for itself. Either people wanted to work with me, or they didn’t. I kept a positive attitude and tried to have fun regardless of what I was doing. I never said ‘no’ when I was asked to do something like pull feeder or load or unload a truck.
Advice you have for women who wish to enter the field?
Get ready to work and prove yourself. Nothing comes easily to anyone, and there will always be someone smarter, stronger, and more experienced than you. Stay humble and open to learning from anyone and everyone you are around regardless of age, gender, race, or experience level. This applies to both technical and interpersonal skills.
Must have skills?
Patience. Drive. The willingness to learn. A strong knowledge of signal flow and troubleshooting.
Favorite gear?
Equipment that can handle the wear and tear of road life.
Parting Advice.
Don’t limit yourself! If you tell someone that you only mix FOH, then you’ve just limited yourself, and you’ve made it harder for someone like myself, to hire you or recommend you for a tour. Do not be afraid to fail; it means you tried. If you are not happy with your job, do everything you can to change that. We spend much of our lives working, and if you don’t love your job 90% of the time, it will affect your entire life. Have fun, be safe and do not give up on your goals, sometimes they might take a little longer to achieve than you want but the wait will be worth it.
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