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These Women Are Fixing The Gender Problem in Music Tech

Making up just 5 percent of the music tech industry, women are vastly underrepresented. There is a long way to go to achieve gender parity across the board. However, as Chandler Shortlidge discovers, welcome and overdue change is in the air. 

Great strides have been made across the electronic music industry in recent years to bring more visibility and opportunity to women and non-binary artists on stage. Major drink brands have launched entire campaigns around the issue, helping to highlight the work done by groups like female:pressure, Keychange and Discwoman to make lineups gender equal. And while there’s still much work to be done, few would argue that the efforts have been in vain. But beyond the stage, and into major audio production and engineering studios, women are still greatly underrepresented, currently making up just 5 percent of the music tech industry.

The question of why this imbalance exists has been well covered and is seen by some in the industry as counterproductive. Focusing on the disparity itself only “reinforces the message that women and non-binary people working in sound are an anomaly,” says Kirsty Gillmore of SoundGirls, a non profit organisation founded in 2013 with the mission of inspiring and empowering the next generation of women in audio. Instead, women like Gillmore think the message now needs to be focused on solutions.

Kirsty Gillmore

Kirsty Gillmore, photo by Issac Peral

Gillmore has worked professionally in the sound industry for 17 years. She graduated in New Zealand in 2001, and says she was one of only two women in her class studying sound engineering. “Sound design wasn’t really a known thing in New Zealand,” she says. So she moved to the UK, earning a job at the BBC, where she worked for eight years in a variety of sound-related roles. Now she does sound design for theatre and opera, where she’s responsible for everything you hear. “So that’s everything from the speaker selection to microphone selection to the soundscapes and sound effects,” she says. She also creates soundscapes for audio drama, where she shapes and selects sounds before mixing it all together. As for SoundGirls, Gillmore works on a volunteer basis as the European co-director and UK chapter head.

With over 6,000 members and chapters worldwide, SoundGirls first launched a directory for women in audio two years ago. It was a place where anyone looking to find a woman for their engineering or production needs could find one. But early this year, Spotify reached out to SoundGirls about updating the directory in the hopes of giving it more visibility. “Spotify has made an ongoing commitment to making strides towards equity in the industry,” Gillmore says. Together, they launched The EQL Directory, a revamped version of the original database that’s more dynamic and user-friendly.

You can’t keep saying that there’s no female producers because you just don’t know them. We know them, and we gather them here.

“A lot of what was heard in the industry was, ‘oh, we really wanted to hire a woman engineer but we didn’t know where to find one,’” Gillmore says. But by creating a focal point to easily find female and gender non-conforming sound engineers, designers, producers, mixers and editors, Gillmore hopes the days of claiming ignorance will soon be over. “This is a way of saying, actually, there are a lot of women working in the industry, and now we’ve made it easier for you to find them, so you don’t have that excuse anymore.”

This ethos is echoed closely by Anna Ingler, who helped establish the Upfront Producers Network. Like its name implies, the Stockholm-born network is producer orientated and helps connect and highlight non-male artists in pop, electronic music, and occasionally hip-hop. Artists come mainly from Stockholm, but also Berlin, London, Finland and Denmark.

Anna Ingler

Anna Ingler

“It’s a way to tell the industry, look, there’s a lot of producers here,” Ingler says. “You can’t keep saying that there’s no female producers because you just don’t know them. We know them, and we gather them here.”

Anyone wanting to join the network must apply. Ingler says this is for quality control, so anyone looking to hire a producer through the network already knows the artists have been professionally vetted. The network also serves as a way to connect non-male artists who have shared backgrounds. “They have experiences with sexism, or just people not believing in them or being degrading in some way,” Ingler says.

This isn’t universally true, of course. But male-dominated production and party crews are already a backbone of the electronic music industry, in part because men already gather in their own spaces. However, analogous female and non-binary crews are still rather rare. By meeting other like-minded producers, they can develop their own creative spaces where they feel safe, learn from one another, have fun and grow as professionals. “To get jobs or to become a professional producer, you need that kind of time to develop and refine your skills,” Ingler says. “I think it’s important to do that in a safe space.”

SoundGirls members are already audio professionals, but many women listed in its original directory obtained further work because of it. And with EQL, Gillmore expects that only to improve. Now she says the focus should be on increasing the visibility of women and non-binary professionals across the entire audio industry so that women and girls who are less experienced have someone they can look up to. “I know when I was starting out in sound, there very few female role models,” Gillmore says. “They were out there, they just weren’t visually represented.” Famous female engineers are still rarely used as spokespeople for audio equipment advertisements, or listed amongst many manufacturers’ famous clients when touting the quality of their brands. “I would like to see those manufacturers pledge to have gender equity on their websites,” Gillmore says. Women and non-binary people should be given equal representation in interviews with audio publications too, so future generations can clearly see someone like them they can aspire to.

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” Gillmore says. “We obviously want younger women and girls to come into the industry, and if they look at these publications and manufacturers and all they see are men, then it’s difficult to then go, well, there’s a path for you there.”

Saffron Laura Lewis-Paul also wants to give women a path. Though initially, her background wasn’t in music or technology, she’s long been interested in making creative spaces more diverse. But while working for Creative Youth Network, a youth creativity outreach program, she set up a “very small” label, and soon noticed the music industry’s lack of diversity. “[It’s] not a very diverse industry at all,” she says. And music technology even less so.

So in 2015 she launched Saffron, a music label and artist development program with six to eight week courses in DJing, Ableton Live, Logic and sound engineering, aimed at teaching women the skills necessary to empower them in traditionally male spaces, like music studios. “It’s a difficult place to hold yourself, to navigate a career,” Lewis-Paul says. “By giving women those skills, they can reclaim creative control over their work, and know exactly what needs to be done to make their careers the best they can be.”

Saffron Laura Lewis-Paul

Saffron Laura Lewis-Paul

Heavyweight studio veterans like Katia Isakoff agree. “Walking into a professional recording studio armed with session files and the necessary skills and confidence to communicate one’s technical and creative ideas can be very empowering and liberating,” she says. A veteran composer and producer, Isakoff owned a commercial studio in West London for 12 years, composed and produced for Mute Records in 2002. She also co-owned a commercial studio which she co-designed and built, and her lengthy resume is dotted with a host of other equally impressive achievements.

You can’t be what you can’t see.

Today, she works in experimental avant garde electronic music using hardware synthesisers, voice, DAWs, Theremin and other hardware and software. She knows better than most, how powerful professional knowledge can be when working with a recording or mix engineer. “Especially for a self-producing artist—it can indeed help reclaim or maintain creative control over their work and career,” she says.

Katia Isakoff

Katia Isakoff

Last year, Lewis-Paul says roughly 15 percent of Saffron graduates went on to study higher education in audio at dBs Music—a production, sound engineering and electronic music performance school with campuses in Berlin, London and Bristol. It’s a Saffron partner, and where Lewis-Paul’s students learn the tools of the trade. Lewis-Paul is hoping she’ll soon be able to further track how many of her students then go on to work professionally in the music industry, but that’s still a work in progress.

Right now, her focus is on encouraging new students into the program, and organically developing the Saffron artists who are starting to show potential. “It’s a slow process, and I think I’m okay with that,” she says. One graduate of Saffron’s DJ program is now playing on Worldwide FM. And while it might be easy to try and quickly push her up through the ranks, Lewis-Paul says it’s “really important not to skip over some of those processes in the journey.”

When it comes to encouraging women into Saffron’s classrooms, Lewis-Paul says DJ classes fill up almost instantly. She thinks this is due to the high visibility of women on international and local DJ circuits. “In terms of what we’ve created in Bristol, there are women on nearly every lineup,” she says. But studio work is done behind the scenes, so “you can’t see them being celebrated,” she says. Which is why she thinks EQL is so important, closely echoing Gillmore’s “you can’t be what you can’t see” mantra.

“You can’t see there are other people like you going into these engineering positions,” Lewis-Paul says. “And there’s a fear with that where you might think, ‘well that’s going to be intimidating. It’s going to be men. If I’m going to have to spend more than a day in that environment, I’m going to feel vulnerable.’” But with the EQL database, women can see that there are people like them in those behind-the-scenes roles who they can connect with. “It’s about having a community and feeling supported in what you’re doing and what you want to go into so that you’re not the only one,” she says.

Saffron Masterclass

Saffron’s Masterclass. Photo by Rianna Tamara

As for the future of women in audio, Gillmore says she’s optimistic. “Well I have to be, really,” she half-jokes. In terms of actual numbers of women working in audio, “there’s a long, long way to go.” But there is more awareness, she says, and a willingness to do something about the gender imbalance. That includes initiatives like the EQL Directory, Girls Make Beats—an American school similar to Saffron—and Red Bull’s Normal Not Novel campaign, a monthly series of workshops for women led by

female electronic producers, engineers, and DJs. And although she’s heard the gender imbalance hasn’t greatly improved in her New Zeland class since 2001, she’s also heard about post-production studios in Australia that are half women. Things are improving with manufacturers and the media too. “ProSound News Europe does a regular podcast about women in sound, and they’re very good at featuring equal numbers of sound engineers, designers and producers,” she says.

As for Lewis-Paul, she thinks change needs to start even earlier, by erasing antiquated gender stereotypes as young as possible. “Around 13 to 15 years old, a lot of girls can start to lose their confidence and not want to go into some of those tech subjects,” she says. “So it’s about education starting from a young age, and continuing that so that there isn’t a drop off [in interest].”

With more focus on early education, an emphasis on highlighting female and non-binary role models, and the continued success of empowering networks and education programs, a large and lasting gender shift in the audio industry does look set to happen. Which Upfront’s Anna Ingler says is something we should all be excited for. “I see equality more like a resource than a problem that we have to fix,” Ingler says. “I mean in a company, if you have a diverse staff, you’re going to have different perspectives of a problem and you’re going to solve that problem better. It’s the same thing with creating music. If you have a more diverse, creative team, you’re going to come up with a more creative product.”

Chandler Shortlidge is a dance music journalist based in Berlin. Follow him on Twitter

Seven Ways To Make the Most of the Quiet Season

Last year I put together a list of activities to make the most of the end-of-year quiet season. Ten Ways to Make the Most of the Quiet Season

With another one fast approaching, here are a few more suggestions.

Make time for family and friends

Touring schedules and unsociable working hours means that many of us let family commitments and get-togethers with friends slide a bit during the year. Quiet seasons are a great time to reconnect with your nearest and dearest. If it’s cold in your part of the world, wrap up warm and grab an appropriate hot beverage. If it’s warm, enjoy a natter over a few cold ones in the sunshine.

Get healthy Part 1 – revamp your diet

If you’re coming off the back of a hectic year, chances are you’ll be run-down and more susceptible to viruses. Being ill over the holiday season is no fun, so ward off the bugs by increasing your intake of fresh fruit and vegetables and staying hydrated.

Get healthy Part 2 – personal system overhaul

Make time to do a full checkup of the kit you carry to every job: your body. You only get one, so it’s worth putting in the time and effort for regular maintenance. Book in with your GP, dentist, optometrist, audiologist, whoever you need to get your system back up and running.

Financial spring-clean

Boring but necessary! Get your accounts in order and your tax return ready. If numbers aren’t your thing, it’s also a great time to look for an accountant.

Get certified

If you’re anything like me, you have a list of new tools that you keep meaning to learn and certifications that you know you need to look into. With so much training and certification programmes available online, as long as you have a decent internet connection, there’s really no excuse not to get stuck in over a quiet period.

Get some rest

Your body needs it! Sleep, switch off, and rejuvenate.

This will be my last blog for Soundgirls for the foreseeable future. Thanks for reading, and I wish you a relaxing holiday break, wherever you are in the world.

SoundGirls note – We will miss Kirsty writing for us and we appreciate all the years and dedication she has dedicated to writing her blog.

A Year of Saying No

At the end of 2017, I made a career decision: I no longer wanted to do theatre sound design jobs that were creatively unfulfilling.

For years I’ve been working theatre and opera sound design jobs around other sound work because the work that came my way was often last-minute and frequently not well-paid. I regularly felt worn out from over-working. I had also noticed that by filling up my schedule, to feel like I was still part of the industry, I was limiting my opportunities to apply for better-paid, more creative jobs. I wanted to move up the career ladder. To do this, I needed to make a change.

So I made a list of what I wanted from a theatre or opera sound design job and set this as my criteria for accepting an offer. It was a pretty straight-forward list: decent fee, exciting script/concept, opportunities for creative sound design and not just a “dog bark, doorbell” show, within timescales that fit with my schedule and ideally something that would mean a step up (not across or down) the career ladder.

I knew this would cut out a lot of the smaller-scale work that came my way, particularly with regards to the fee, but as I had other means of generating income, I knew this wouldn’t be too difficult. The challenge would be fighting against the urge to take creatively unfulfilling jobs that wouldn’t add anything to my CV so I could still “feel” like a theatre sound designer. But I’d made my list, and I believed that creating space in my schedule would open me up to the kind of opportunities I wanted.

The result? I haven’t had a theatre or opera sound design job this year so far.

At the start of this year, I felt pretty confident with my choice. A couple of sound design opportunities came along that I wasn’t able to do because of scheduling conflicts, but neither of them provided much creative stimulus, and I didn’t feel conflicted about turning them down. Then along came a job I really wanted to do, with a great script and intriguing concept. The interview went well – but they needed more availability than they had initially indicated, and I didn’t get it.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this set a precedent for the rest of the year. Every so often an opportunity came up that excited me, the interview with the director would go well, and ultimately I wouldn’t get it because of a specific requirement. One director eventually decided that they wanted someone who could compose and arrange as well as sound design, which counted me out. Another revealed in the interview that they wanted the sound designer to be present during all rehearsals, which were outside of London, but didn’t have any budget to get me there. In between, there were jobs that I turned down because they didn’t meet my criteria.

So what have I learned? Despite what motivational memes might lead us to believe, sometimes taking a leap of faith doesn’t have the hoped-for result. At least, not in the short term. Having a solid backup plan is also a good idea. If I hadn’t had other workstreams that I could rely on for income, I wouldn’t have been able to say no to many of these opportunities.

And while I say I didn’t get quite the result I wanted, I have got a different result. Not having theatre sound work freed me up to work on audio drama and audiobook sound design, and building a portfolio in this area has led to unexpected opportunities. I am currently designing and mixing three audio dramas and a series of audiobooks for well-known production companies, and it’s an area of sound design work that I very much enjoy.

I’m passionate about theatre sound design, and it’s been demoralising not to be able to get the work I think I should be getting after I’ve made room for those opportunities. It’s made me seriously doubt my skills and ability. Despite this, I am going to continue with saying no to work that doesn’t fulfill my criteria. Because as much as I’ve hated not doing sound design for theatre, I hated being ground down by unfulfilling, low-paid sound design jobs even more.

The Sound of Steampunk

Creating a Flying Machine for an Audio Drama

One of the things which I love most about sound design for audio drama is the opportunity it can bring to create entirely new, fantastic sounds. Sounds for creations or beings that don’t exist in our world.

Having worked in sound design and mixing both for short films and voice-based productions, I’ve always thought that creating the sound of imaginary beings or machines for audio drama is both more freeing and more challenging than for visual media. You’re not tied to a physical representation and the obligation to be able to hear everything you see, but you only have audio to “sell” the creation to the listener. Using a processed version of a crocodile combined with your pitch-shifted voice might work brilliantly as the roar massive bear creature in a game, but in an audio drama, the listener may find it hard to believe that sound came from a bear.

I’ve just finished sound designing and mixing the second season of a steampunk audio drama. The writer/director had included several imaginary beings, creatures, and machines in the script, so from the get-go, I knew I would need to dedicate some time to breathing aural life into these creations.

One of these, and probably my favourite to work on, was the fixed-wing flivver. The writer described it like this:

“The flivver is a homage to an early fictional airplane, from H.G. Wells’ ‘The War in the Air.’ It’s more or less like a biplane but powered by different technology – in this case, probably including an aetheric battery – so its turbine whine would sound different. It might also be in some ways less and in other ways more advanced in terms of the aeronauticals.”

This description gave me a starting point for research and sourcing of raw material. I’d be looking at early 20th century biplanes and whatever an aetheric battery was – more on that in a minute.

I also knew that I’d have to consider how the flivver sounded from different perspectives. Reviewing the scripts, I noted that I needed six different variations:

– distant perspective, external (heard in the distance from a rooftop)

– close perspective, flying flat, internal (seated in the aircraft)

– close perspective, steep climb, internal (seated in the aircraft)

– close perspective, circling, internal (seated in the aircraft)

– close perspective, leveling out, internal (seated in the aircraft)

– medium perspective, departing, external (heard from the perspective of outside the aircraft as it departs)

My first piece of research was the sound of early 20th century biplanes. The purchase of high-quality sound library recordings was beyond the budget of the production, so I turned to YouTube as the most likely place to find any recordings of this kind of aircraft. As you’d expect, most videos were from airshows, which meant additional wind noise, crowd walla and applause and occasional commentary.

The amount of noise present in the videos wasn’t too much of an issue. I didn’t want a modern(-ish) biplane sound to be too present in the final sound as the technology didn’t match the steampunk aesthetic. But, I did need enough of it so that the flivver was easily aurally identifiable as a flying machine. It took a combination of finding enough of the right sound, and some careful editing and noise reduction.

After a lot of listening, decided that the sound of the Bleriot XI was the best fit for the base layer of the flivver sound:

 

 

Next, I needed to add a core engine sound – an engine powered by an aetheric battery, no less. Aetheric energy, as I discovered, is based on a theory developed in the late 1800s by Nikola Tesla, which proposed that the human race could harness the power of the ether (a space-filling medium present all around us) as a source of energy. Ether theories lost popularity as modern physics advanced, so the sound of an aetheric battery is now as speculative as the original theory.

However, there is an invention of Tesla’s that’s still used today to demonstrate principles of electricity and whenever you want to do impressive high voltage displays: the Tesla coil. In the absence of any concrete idea of what aetheric energy might sound like, this seemed a reasonable, and suitably steampunk, alternative. I ended up using a pitched sound of a medium-sized Tesla coil, with an ascending version for when the flivver is climbing. To suggest the kind of mechanics that we associate with steampunk technology, I finally added the sound of a vintage sewing machine.

When I sent the first draft of the flivver to the writer, he felt something was missing – “a sort of insect-like aspect described by Wells, where he talks about the craft’s resemblance to a dragonfly:

“Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings.”

I tried various insect whines and flutters and eventually settled on adding the sound of dragonfly wings.

Here’s the finished sound

And in the context of the drama

My next audio drama design and mixing project take me to medieval Europe, which is quite a change of pace! But I hope I’ll be revisiting the world of steampunk audio drama, and its fascinating design opportunities, again soon.

How to Write About Women in Sound

PSN Europe recently interviewed me about my work as a sound designer. Aside from the fact that it’s an articulate, interesting article – thanks to the writer, Tara Lepore – there is one key thing that makes it stand out for me. Although I had the opportunity to mention my work with SoundGirls, and how we work to support women working in sound, at no point does the article define me as a “woman working in sound.”

In my seventeen years working in the industry, I believe this was the first time I haven’t had to answer a single question about why there aren’t more women working in sound/music, or on a similar gender imbalance-based theme. It was both a relief and hugely refreshing.

Interviews like this are necessary.  To the writers and journalists: female sound engineers, producers and designers have answered enough questions about why or how or what’s it like to be a woman working in sound and music. Talking about why women make up only 5% of the industry only serves to reinforce the message that women are an anomaly. The way you encourage more women into audio is to show women, particularly WOC, succeeding in various areas of music and sound. Make it clear to the female sound experts of the future that there are paths open to them. Put the focus on our careers, not our gender.

Instead of asking women what we can do about the industry’s gender imbalance, ask the people and organisations who influence the industry what they plan to do about it. The answers to those “women in the sound/music industry” questions are well documented – we, the women, have been talking about it for years. Take those and investigate the causes, put out a call to action, challenge those in a position of power who can instigate change.

Don’t force women interviewees to act as a spokesperson for all “women in sound.” If gender expression is a crucial part of an interviewees’ work, then it should be included – in a way that works for them. Let them bring it up. If they don’t, then it’s probably not something they feel is relevant to their career.

Highlighting sexism and sexual assault in the industry is important and relevant in the current climate, but it shouldn’t be the whole conversation. Nor should anyone expect women to share their experiences. It can be challenging enough to fight everyday sexism without having to relive the trauma for an interview unexpectedly. If it’s an article about sexism, then that should be made clear upfront so the interviewee can decline if they wish. Otherwise, ask whether it’s relevant for the article.

If you’re interviewing a woman sound professional about her work, it comes down to this: would you ask a male audio expert a question with the same angle? If not, then it’s probably unnecessary.

I welcome any writer who wants to support women and girls in the sound and music industries. The best way to do this is to let us talk about what we love: sound and music. Ask us about what we’ve created, what inspires us, what artists we love and the gear we like to use. Take the opportunity to promote the hundreds of amazing women sound engineers, producers, and designers and the work we do. Not the lack of us.

Resources for a more inclusive industry

 

It’s Time to Stop Just Talking About It

In January 2017, I asked the readers of this blog how they were going to take action to support women in sound – what were they going to stand up for that year? I am more than a little ashamed to say that it’s taken me over a year to decide to take an active stand myself. But now that I have, I don’t plan to stop.

I am tired of talking about being a woman in sound. Please understand me: I am not tired of talking about my career in sound (far from it), and I am not tired of talking about other women in sound. I am irritated by only being asked to answer questions about how difficult it is to be a woman in the sound and music industries. I am frustrated by requests for a definitive answer on why there aren’t more women working in pro audio.

I am exhausted by the questions put to me by professional panels, organisations, and publications which are more interested in talking about the issue of the lack of women in sound, than taking action to do anything about it. I am tired of talking about the problem when I could be boosting the profile of women in the industry by talking about my career in sound.

It is no longer enough to acknowledge there is an issue. If I want change if we all want change – we have to take action and encourage the leaders in our industry to do the same.

A few days before International Women’s Day, I saw an opportunity to call out one of the major audio industry publications on the representation of women in their magazine.

Below is a transcript of the full Instagram conversation. The original can be found here

@soundswilde

Happy International Women’s Day, Sound on Sound. Let’s have a chat.

I was given a copy of the December 2017 issue of Sound on Sound at a conference last week and I was drawn to this statement in the Inside Track article about Kesha Lee “This is the 132nd article in Sound on Sound’s Inside Track series, and it’s a sad reflection of the state of the music business that only three female engineers have featured in the first 131”

You’re absolutely right; it is a sad reflection – not just on the state of the music business, but also on the organisations and publications that perpetuate gender imbalance and inequality in the music and audio industries. Which, by your own admission, includes Sound on Sound. You’re part of the problem.

The fact that fewer than 3% of the engineers featured in the Inside Track series have been female is pretty shocking in itself. On top of this is the reinforcement of the message that in order to work in the audio industry, you need to be male. Let’s take the December issue as an example.

There are no female writers credited that I could see. Of the 18 ads which include pictures of people, only 1 has a woman at a mixing desk – and she’s a student with a male tutor. Of the 11 ads which include quotes, none of the quotes are attributed to a woman. Special shout out to Radial Engineering who included 8 pictures of 8 male engineers with a quote from each of them in their ad, and to Warm Audio for their tagline “like father, like son”. Way to be inclusive, fellas.

As a woman working in pro audio, I am often asked why gender imbalance persists in the audio industry. The short answer is that there is still a cultural and sociological bias that women don’t belong in technology. This manifests in the kind of non-inclusive imagery and marketing that you can see in the December 2017 issue of Sound on Sound. Put simply: you can’t be what you can’t see.

I’ve been training and working in pro audio for 18 years. There have been a lot of positive changes in the audio industry, for which I am grateful. We still have a long way to go if we want the 5% (the current representation of women in audio) to change to 50%. I want to work in a diverse, equal industry. I hope you do too. If you consider Sound on Sound to be an ally of women in the audio industry, then we need you to step up and do better. You’re in a position of power and privilege. You can use it to challenge bias among your advertisers, subscribers, and contributors and pro-actively support a more gender-equal industry. I hope you will.

Kirsty Gillmore – sound designer, sound engineer, European Co-Director of Soundgirls.org.

@soundonsoundmag:

Hi Kirsty, thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking points you make.

As regards advertising, SOS is only allowed to reject submitted advertisements for very specific reasons. Unfortunately, these reasons don’t include perpetuating gender imbalances within the industry. This isn’t a question of editorial policy but a matter of law, and one on which we have taken legal advice in the past. It is counterintuitive but is also, sadly, the current situation.

Regarding the authors who write for SOS, we are aware that bylines are overwhelmingly male, and we would really like for this to become less so. This is a reflection of the pitches we receive rather than any bias within the office. If you’d like to help us change this, then we’d love to hear from you or any female engineers interested in writing for us.

Your own writing is great, so do feel free to send some of your own article ideas over. We’re always on the lookout for new reviewers or people with interesting techniques to share. If you’re interested, drop an email to Ellen Glasper, our Production Editor (nell.glasper@soundonsound.com), and we can take the conversation from there.

Concerning the representation of female engineers and producers within SOS, this has always been a difficult thing to get right. Recent feedback has triggered a discussion in the office about how we can improve the representation of women in the magazine and in the industry in general, and we are open to suggestions about how best to do this. A lot of female engineers and producers have broken through in the past few years, which is great to see, and we hope to cover them in the near future if they’re willing. — The SOS Editorial Team

  1. Incidentally, we’ve received several article pitches over the years from people wanting to explain why women are so under-represented in the industry and suggesting what can be done about it. They were all written by men, and they all basically amounted to “women just aren’t naturally interested in this tech stuff.” They were awful, and we never printed them.@soundswilde

Thank you for your considered response, @soundonsoundmag. While I understand you have no legal recourse to change the content of advertising, you could issue a statement supporting diversity in sound, and encourage your advertisers to reflect this in their advertising with SOS. I also fail to see how including more women in the magazine is “difficult to get right”. You’re not even reflecting the current percentage of women in audio at the moment (5%) in most (if not all) issues, so (failing blatant sexism) it’s difficult to see how you could get it more wrong. Feature more women engineers. Feature more women producers. Feature more women studio owners. Particularly feature more WOC. It’s great that you’re discussing this, but discussion alone will not change gender inequality in the industry. 5 of the MPG awards this year went to women – there are 5 interviews with top industry achievers waiting right there.

Thank you for the offer to contribute. I am heartened that you welcome applications from female writers. I would be further heartened if you took action to go and find female writers, instead of passively leaving it up to them to find you. Have you approached any female tech writers directly? Have you reached out to the many women and feminist music and sound tech collectives, co-ops, and non-profits worldwide to ask if any of their members might be interested? There’s a comprehensive list of women and feminist sound & music tech collectives, co-ops, and non-profits. Have you actively encouraged women writers to apply with contribution ideas?

Regarding articles written by men claiming women “just don’t like tech,” I’m not that interested in your decision not to run articles that perpetuate gender bias – I would hope that you do this as a matter of course. I’m interested in the actions that you decide to take now and pledge to take in the future that will change gender inequality in our industry. You describe SOS as “the most respected music/audio magazine publishers globally.” Do you respect the female and non-male members of your readership and the global audio/music community enough to actively challenge bias in the industry, rather than simply noting that it exists?

Here’s a couple of suggestions: include the recent AES #HeForShe event in the news section of  SOS, if you haven’t decided to already. I believe you were in attendance. Take notes on what Ableton is doing on their website at the moment to increase the visibility of female artists and producers. (Note from the author: Ableton showcased exclusively female artists on their website for a limited period for IWD 2018)

I think (I hope) we’re in agreement that the gender bias in the audio/music industry needs to change. I repeat: you have a position of power and privilege in our industry.  Please use it to pro-actively support gender equality.

SoundGirls Note – Here is a fantastic ad campaign that DiGiCo ran last year.

Changing the World: Audio Engineering Society UK #HeForShe Event

“I wish I wasn’t here tonight. I wish you weren’t. I wish we could talk about the exciting work we do. But we have a lot of work to do on gender equality”.

So said Dr. Mariana Lopez last Thursday night, in her opening for a panel session on Gender Equality and the Audio Industries – the first #HeForShe event hosted by the Audio Engineering Society UK section.

The #HeForShe gender equality campaign was launched by the United Nations in 2014 by actor Emma Watson. It invites people around the world to recognise that gender equality is not just a human rights issue, not just a women’s issue. It also asks “men and boys to help end the persisting inequalities faced by women and girls globally.”

AES UK formally aligned with #HeForShe in April 2017. In a post on their public Facebook page in August 2017, they say “It is our responsibility to make sure we are building a fair industry for all.” Dr. Lopez, who is the first female chair of AES UK, spoke about how important it was for AES UK to formally align themselves with the campaign while admitting that when she announced the alignment, she hid from her colleagues her fear of the inevitable backlash.

The backlash, when it came, actually proved the point that campaigns like #HeForShe are still necessary. The audio industry has a gender inequality issue. Too many people working in the industry fail to recognise this, unintentionally or otherwise.

The answers to the first question put to the panel addressed this lack of awareness: why is there a gender imbalance in the audio industry? Several panel members spoke about the deeply ingrained sociological and cultural biases that we all have to learn to identify and fight against. Examples included everything from teachers telling pre-schoolers that “girls don’t play drums” to the marketing campaigns of educational institutes placing women in supporting roles in photos –  e.g., a female student holding a clipboard behind a male student operating a console.

Imagery is one area where you need to see diversity to send a message of inclusion. If girls associate audio technology, and technology in general, with men and boys, because of the images they see, it will be much harder for them to avoid internalising the message that the audio industry is not for them. In other words – you can’t be what you can’t see.

Even if girls manage to fight against cultural and sociological bias, there are risks to being the only woman, or one of only a few, women in a team, class, or company. As Dr. Liz Dobson said, when there is one person in a space representing a demographic, they feel they cannot make mistakes, for fear this will reflect on the entire demographic.

The panel acknowledged their responsibility as educators to challenge bias, call out bad behaviour and demonstrate your understanding of gender inequality as a teacher. The importance of challenging lexicon, in particular, was raised – for example, questioning gendered terms such as “camera man” and “sound guy.”

One of the most useful aspects of this panel came with the final question: what can we all do? While open, frank discussion of the issues surrounding gender inequality in the audio industry can raise awareness; change cannot happen without action.

So what can you do?

Part of this will be to remove barriers that can prevent women from accepting speaking invitations – for example, having to arrange and fund childcare at short notice. Plan early and provide bursaries or other support to allow women the chance to accept.

Thanks to AES UK, Dr Mariana Lopez and panel members Dr Jude Brereton (Senior Lecturer in Audio and Music Technology, University of York), Kat Young (PhD researcher, University of York), Dr Liz Dobson (Senior Lecturer in Music Technology, University of Huddersfield), Emmanuel Vaas (Senior Lecturer in Professional Studies and Music Business; International Pianist ), Barkley McKay (Touring and Session Musician, Tutor) and all the attendees for an enlightening, thought-provoking, and ultimately, encouraging event.

As #HeForShe says, “no one is whole until we are all wholly equal. Together we’re going to change the world.”

 

Ova Music Studio – Feminism and Female Music Production in 1970s London

One of the most rewarding aspects of being involved with SoundGirls is hearing about (and learning from) the experiences of other members. At the most recent meetup for London and UK members back in January, I met members at all different stages in their careers, working across everything from theatre sound to podcasting. From members who had just graduated and were deciding which career path to follow, to members like Jackie Ord, who has recently started to work as an engineer and producer after decades of working as a musician.

It was through Jackie talking about her experiences as a young woman interested in sound and music in the 70s and 80s that I found out about Ova Music Studio and the fascinating story of the women who wanted to empower other women and girls to create and produce their music.

Rosemary Schonfeld and Jana Rumells established The Ova Music Studio in Highgate, north London in 1984, after had forming the radical feminist band Ova in 1976. As well as providing facilities to record and produce their music, the stud offered workshops for women on sound recording, voice, drumming, and percussion. Ova wanted to control their music production and recording outside of the commercial music industry, and the institutionalized misogyny that surrounded it and help other women to do the same.

Rosemary met and fell in love with, Jana in 1976. Both singer-songwriters started playing and writing music together, living in various squats and playing at lesbian and feminist nights across London. After their romantic relationship ended, they continued to create and perform music together as the Ova, first as a group, then as a duo. They released their first full-length album Ova in 1979 on the label Stroppy Cow, which was set up by fellow feminist group Jam Today.

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive (WLMA) describes the aim of Stroppy Cow as “to encourage women to make their kind of music in their own time and space without the counterproductive pressures of commercialism. The music industry often restricts creativity by pre-determining images and roles that women have to conform to be heard. The policy of Stroppy Cow Records is to encourage women to define their own musical output and to be involved in every stage of production.”

As Rosemary says in this interview with WLMA from 2010, this policy encompassed everything from to women owning the rights to their music to the position of how women’s voices in the mix. As she says “in the commercial music industry women’s voices were often being mixed right back, [it was] male choices for the final sound and production.”

Rosemary and Jana were introduced to recording technology by sound engineer Mike Trim during the recording of their first EP (released on cassette). Their new skills gave them the confidence to be able to hire recording studios and work with, as Rosemary puts it in the WLMA interview, “sympathetic sound engineer[s]…you had to find the ones that were helpful and encouraging…willing to share their knowledge”.

In 1983 they received a grant from the Greater London Council to establish their studio – Ova Music Studio –  as a resource for women to record demos and learn about sound recording. One of the conditions of the grant was that they had to offer workshops, and so they did outreach work, travelling to schools with a 4-track recorder, as well as holding music and sound workshops at the community centre in Highgate, north London, where Ova Music Studio was based. They had a resident female sound engineer, Livvy Elliott, who also toured with Ova and taught the sound recording workshops.

Rosemary eventually left the studio in the late 1980s and moved away from London to study music. Livvy went on to establish Studio 9 in Brixton. Ova Music Studio continued for a while, eventually becoming Overtones Studio. It appears to have closed sometime after 2007.

The full interview with Rosemary is available here and you can read more about Ova and listen to recordings in their Women’s Liberation Music Archive entry here (scroll down to find their listing).

The interview is well worth a listen – it’s a fascinating journey through feminist music-making from the mid-1970s – early 1980s, taking in the London squatting scene, touring, the lesbian and feminist movements in the US, UK and Germany, intersectionality, musical influences and working in music and music production as a woman.

Thirty years ago, these original “SoundGirls” were facing many of the same challenges as women working in sound and music production face today. It’s an interesting and sobering thought to consider SoundGirls as part of the same history – a lineage of (in Rosemary’s words) “agents of social change.”

Five Ways to Make your Freelance Applications Work for You

Happy 2018 Soundgirls! If you’re self-employed or considering becoming so, then you’re probably preparing for another year of hustling for new work opportunities. As someone who has experienced both sides of the freelance hiring process, I thought it was an appropriate time to offer some words of advice on applying for freelance jobs.

Freelance opportunities aren’t often formally advertised. They’re passed on by word-of-mouth, email, and posted on social media. A casual approach to hiring may seem to encourage a casual response, but don’t be fooled. Even the most laid-back “Hey we’re looking for awesome peeps to join us” company will still be looking for a professional response.

Here are a few tips for increasing your success when responding to opportunities for freelance work:

Read the job description

At the very least a freelance job posting or callout should include something along the lines of “we’re looking for [this kind of] person to join our team to do [this kind of work].” If it’s a useful job advert, it will also include a list of skills and experience required for the position, and any other specific requirements, e.g., location and language. Your very first step should be to thoroughly read the job description and consider if you meet the requirements before applying.

When I’ve posted call-outs for freelancers in the past, it always surprises me how many emails I receive where the applicant either hasn’t thoroughly read the application. Or they’ve forgotten to include any evidence that they have the skills and experience required for the role or they seem to think that working in any area of sound for a few years is enough to be considered for a job that requires specific expertise.

Responding quickly to a job posting may increase your chances of the hirer reading your application, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the content. Similarly, responding to every freelance job advert even if you’re not qualified, in the hope that someone might give you a chance, is not a winning technique. If a company is looking to expand their pool of freelance dialogue editors and your background is solely in music production, they’re probably not going to be interested. Freelance positions fulfill a professional requirement – the hiring company will want whoever they hire to be able to step in and do the job straight away. Avoid wasted effort on both sides, and make sure you understand what the hirer needs before you apply.

Do your research

Of course, not every freelance job advert has an explicit list of the job requirements, or the description might use more generic terms like “we’re looking for sound engineers” without expanding on the work involved. It pays to do a bit of research before applying. If the job posting is on a company’s website or social media account, it only takes a few clicks to get more information on what kind of work they do and for what they may be looking. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for – ask. I’m always happy to answer people’s queries about jobs I’ve posted, providing the answer isn’t already in the job post itself!

Have your portfolio and CV ready to go

If you’re applying to work for a company for which you’ve never worked, you’ll always be asked for your CV (at a minimum) and either a portfolio or details of your experience. Freelance positions often aren’t often advertised for long, and in the current climate, you can expect any job post to attract a lot of applicants, so it pays to be ready to apply as soon as you can.

Your CV should be a professionally formatted PDF – a maximum of two A4 sides, if you can get it nicely formatted on a single A4 sheet, even better. It also needs to be in the language applicable to the company or job for which you’re applying – worth considering if you’re looking to work in a different country. It can be worth having an online version as well, on a personal website, Linked In, or similar. Have your portfolio samples available both as audio/video files and online links – some companies ask for portfolios to be attached to emails or uploaded, others prefer a link to a website or media sharing site like Soundcloud or Vimeo.

Draft an excellent application email: what to include

Your application email (the modern-day cover letter), should be short (250 words maximum), contain the information requested in the job advert (skills and experience), any additional relevant information, and have the appropriate documents and work examples attached or linked, depending on what’s required. Remember: all a hirer wants to know on a first quick pass of your application is: do you have the professional skills and experience needed for this job? If they can’t see evidence that you could do the job, they’re unlikely to follow up.

From my experience as a hirer, I prefer a friendly, professional tone for application emails – not overly formal, also not quirky. I don’t need you to be creative in a cover letter to help you stand out – your portfolio or CV should do this for you. Plus, depending on the job, I might have upwards of fifty emails to go through, and if it takes me more than a couple of minutes to get the information I need, I’ll be inclined to delete and move on.

Regarding including additional relevant information: if you’ve worked with the hirer or hiring company in the past, met them in person, or have been recommended through personal contact, this is always worth mentioning. I am more interested in working with people who I know to be reliable professionals, or who come recommended by someone I trust.

Draft an excellent application email: what to leave out

Unless a job posting asks for it, the following has no place in a freelance application email (all of these come from real application emails that I’ve received)

You don’t have the exact skills and experience, but you still think you’d be great for the job

A freelancer fills a professional need for a company, and they need to trust that you can do the job straight away. Unless expressly stated, you can assume you’ll be expected to do the work as soon as it comes in, with no training. If you can’t provide evidence that you can do the job, then your application is likely to be discarded.

How much you love sound and want to work in the industry

I see this a lot from graduates and people new to the job market. If you’re a working or trained sound professional, I’ll take it as a given that you enjoy working with sound. You don’t need to spell it out in an application email.

How you can only do the job if certain conditions are met, e.g., you can only do certain days per week

Your application letter is not the place to negotiate the day-to-day details of a job (unless specifically requested). If a hiring company decides to take your application to the next stage, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss requirements on both sides. Applications that include a list of unasked-for stipulations can make you seem inflexible, which isn’t a desirable quality in a freelancer.

The best application is always one that’s prepared, relevant, and professionally written. Good luck with all of yours for this coming year.

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