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Giving Up Wasn’t a Choice – Freelancing in Bollywood

 

I come from a family of bankers, doctors, and engineers & therefore have always considered myself to be the black sheep of the family as I’m more inclined towards Art, People & Culture. When I was seven years old, it was my father who discovered that I had a fascination for sound and musical instruments and had me join piano lessons and thus I started training in Hindustani Classical Music.  As a kid, I was an average student when it came to academics, had no extraordinary talents or goals. But I religiously stuck to music. It was my only solace, and I practiced and yearned to learn more every single day.

Towards the end of high school though, my parents were worried about the fact that I wasn’t doing well in my studies and hence decided to talk me out of pursuing music in the long term. They talked about the reality of this competitive field and that how hard it would be to succeed, especially for someone who personally knew no one belonging to her area of interest to mentor her. I abruptly quit studying music. All those years, I blamed my parents for talking me out of doing something I loved. I also hated Myself for accepting that maybe, I really wasn’t good enough.

After finishing junior college, the idea was to get into any STEM field, but I knew that I’d drop out midway because I had no passion for those subjects. Neither wanting to waste my time nor my parents’ money, I started researching about music schools in India, came across a private institute that provided a bachelor’s degree in Mass Media with specialization in Sound Engineering and decided to opt for it. All my three years as an undergraduate in sound school, I was the only girl in an entire batch of around 70 students. I knew right from the beginning that if there weren’t any girls to even study this subject, I wouldn’t find many when I actually start working in the profession, either. That didn’t dim my love for Sound, though. It was uncharted yet engrossing territory for me. I was learning something entirely new, the technical aspects of sound and music; as to what goes on behind-the-stage – beyond all the glamour – in this artistic field; what it takes to brilliantly record a song track for millions to listen to, later on; and how sound adds to the visuals and brings an entire film to life! I mastered my digital software (DAW)/outboard gear skills and also began composing and producing music of my own. I did a number of internships alongside my course, including one in my college itself. I did have a few clashes with my male batch mates, but I was fortunate enough to have to best faculties to guide and support me.

After course completion, I returned to Bombay  – the Hub of the Indian Mainstream Media, Music and Film Industry. My parents asked me to look for a stable 9 to 5 regular day job. It was quite a task for me to explain to them that odd long working hours and erratic schedules are a part of this Field. I had the skills and the talent, but I lacked contacts and networks. My first job, which was at a popular TV Channel, lasted for not more than three months. The head of the sound department told me that he thought I was in this field just for Hobby and that I “should get into other mass media field such as Print like most women until I got married and then I wouldn’t have to work further.” Also, working night shifts was risky, and hence I was, in a way, a liability. I decided to quit.

Why should I let anyone else dictate my future goals? I joined another studio, again for a very short period, as the owner didn’t believe that I’d succeed as an audio engineer and wanted me to work full-time but unpaid, under the name of exposure and experience. If I did get a good opportunity because of my skills, guys would claim that it was because “I was a woman” or that competition was less. What they didn’t gather was that as a female, I had a whole bunch of other challenges and issues to tackle, that they did not. Neither did I experience any sort of compensation or leniency because of my gender, nor was I expecting any. Another studio told me that I was aggressive, manly, and less feminine; a brash talker who lacked female creative input. How does one co-relate Creativity and gender roles, I wonder!

The idea of working for someone else was something that I completely started to abhor and also be scared of. I started questioning myself and having second thoughts that maybe I should go look for a less male-dominated field where I didn’t have to face such constant misogyny and be surrounded by the clichéd stereotypes and hackneyed ideas. My relatives and other acquaintances who knew nothing about my field also suggested the same.

But what if I experienced similar scenarios everywhere?

I was so done with the system and the field that I was jobless for months. I even sold off my piano and guitar – my only prized possessions – out of frustration, because they were a constant reminder of something I could achieve but chose not to, anymore – Creating Music.

One day, I got a call from an acquaintance who wanted to know about my field for their daughter. I was flabbergasted. Was I to say that this field wasn’t for women even if they had the passion for it? Wouldn’t that make me an accomplice in patriarchy?

Or that I was a failure? This made me question further –

What message or example does this lay for the women of the younger generation who decide to get into this field and find themselves in the same predicament? They’d have no one to look up to or guide them. They too would feel similarly lost and decide to quit. And the gender ratio in our field would, yet again, remain uneven.

Hence giving up wasn’t a choice. I refused to start believing what everyone else had to say about me, just yet. I decided to get back into the field as a freelancer and started working on small-scale projects on Sound Design, Dubbing, Sync-Sound and also began conducting guest lectures & fun workshops on music programming, theory, arranging and production. For someone who had just started out on their own again, after a long hiatus due to personal setbacks, Struggle, competition, unstable money, and lack of projects was truly a messy phase. But with more and more work projects and practical experience, recognition came my way.

People are still surprised to see a woman working behind the Console. Some artists seem to be more comfortable with it. Especially female musicians or actors, who claim that they can be themselves and not at all feel intimidated as they do around male engineers. Now that’s a compliment! Work done with ease and devoid of any sort of limitations brings out the best results. I believe in promoting diversity, inclusion, gender equality, and defying all kinds of stereotypes that surround men and women, both. It’s high time we move past conservative gender roles. Women are much more than shopping and accessories.

Women can be nerds; women can be gadget freaks & women can be Audio Geeks too!

No one should judge a person/an employee by the way they talk or walk or by what gender, race, or class they belong to, but only by their skills. “Am I getting the job done and am I getting it done Right? Am I bringing quality output to the table?” is all that should matter. The most significant work ethic that everyone should adopt, no matter what field they belong to, is that there has to be boundaries between one’s personal & professional life and everyone should try and respect them. I’m so, so grateful to the few good men who have been a consistent support and have helped me with their tremendous insights and knowledge with regards to not just the field but the business and politics behind it. No gender is superior or inferior. We shouldn’t tear each other down and instead be open to work as a collective, share ideas, create, innovate & inspire. And thus, I encourage and hope that more and more women opt for unconventional career paths, have an undeterred approach towards their goals, and also help their fellow female co-workers along the way.

As for me, my journey has just started, and I still have a long way to go and a great deal to learn.

Priyanka SE, Bombay IN: Based in Bombay, India, Priyanka SE is an audio engineer and music producer who’s been working as a freelancer in the Bollywood Industry on versatile mainstream and indie media, audio and music projects for the past five years. She has a distinct taste in music, irrespective of the genre and language, especially Blues, Jazz, Sufi, Indie, Folk Fusion, and Film Scores. Apart from that, she’s also an avid reader, an amateur writer, and Equal Gender Rights activist.

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/priyanka.se/

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/priyanka-se
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/priyankactk651

The Importance of Reference Tracks

While mixing and how to use them.

One of the first things I do when I schedule a time to record a band is asking them what albums, and songs they like the sound quality. I ask so I get a good idea of what they might be *subconsciously* looking for in a mix or master. Then I will ask, “What would you like your reference track for the mixing process to be?” I ask these in two separate questions because what you like and what’s right for a mix of a particular song can be two different things. I want to have options, so when I go to pick a reference track- I am picking one that’s right for the song, and that the band will like too.

Reference tracks are essential because often while mixing, your ears can lose perspective. A reference track is helpful to have this happens; you can play the track and compare it to where your mix. Once you’ve done that you can hone in on anything that isn’t where it needs to be in your mix- and with a specific goal in mind you can get it where it needs to be because of the reference track.

Now, to utilize this correctly, you have to do it right. You don’t want to just download your reference track from Youtube and upload that wav file into Pro-Tools. You also don’t want to use an MP3. When using a reference track, you want to get the rawest and uncompressed version of the track you can find (WAV file). Another thing, you need to know how your reference track translates onto different sound systems. Listen to the track in your car, at your house, on your laptop, on your headphones, in your parents’ car…you get the point. Then do the same for YOUR mix. Listen to it everywhere you can, so you know exactly what to fix when you sit back down at your computer to do revisions.

You can use plug-ins to help you compare the track to your mix. Magic AB is my favorite. It’s straightforward to use. You upload both tracks, one is A, and one is B. Then you level the two songs out, so your ears aren’t being tricked because one mix is louder than the other (Hello, Fletcher Munson), and then you just click between A and B to compare your reference track to your mix! Easy as that!

I hope this helps your mixes grow as it helped mine when I discovered how to use reference tracks! As always, you can send me examples of your mixes, or even email me just to chat about how you noticed a difference in the process after you started using reference tracks at virginia@backbeat365.com.

 

One Is Not Enough: Understanding Bias in the Audio Community

The studio owner skimmed my resume and nodded several times. He glanced up at me, back down at the resume, and then carefully set it back on his desk.

“Your credentials are great. The chair of the Sound Recording Department recommended you very highly, and we have a close relationship with him. So, we will hire you… We will hire you, but you won’t last. We will make sure of that.”

He paused, and I waited for an explanation.

“We don’t hire women. Studio policy,” he stated matter-of-factly.

Unfortunately, he was right: I didn’t last. I worked as hard I could imagine meticulously recording patch bay settings and outboard gear levels, setting up drum kits, moving gobos that were many times my weight, and carefully calculating my mic placements. I silently fought my way to being one of the studio’s best assistant engineers. All the while, my shifts were cut, I was offered up as entertainment to the clients and was goaded with sexual comments and sometimes worse.

After a long year of staying simply to prove the owner wrong, I quit. I had realized that by remaining there, I was succeeding only in making myself miserable.

That was my first experience in the industry.

Luckily, that kind of overt discrimination is rare even in an industry that is so male-dominated. For the most part, over the course of my ten-year-plus career, my co-workers have been my biggest supporters and have often become close friends.

Thus I would like to discuss something much more prevalent and subtle than overt discrimination: bias. By this, I specifically mean the assumptions that we make about any group as a whole based on our own previous interactions with members of that same group.

Fei Xu, a development psychologist who has researched this phenomenon, has reported that this is a natural instinct, even a necessary one. This innate human talent for using our past experiences to make assumptions about new things has helped us throughout our evolutionary existence. We have come to recognize that if a new animal has sharp fangs, it is likely a predator and not a friend. We have come to categorize small, round, red things as berries and have then innately known that they will be sweet and a stupendous source of energy. This ability to categorize based on our past experiences has single-handedly lead to our continued survival on Earth.

Unfortunately, it has also led to bias. Our evolutionary programming tells us to trust our previous experiences and draw natural conclusions based on them. Thus, our experience tells us that on the mix stage, the men are most likely the technical employees and the women the clients. It tells us that at sound industry award shows, the men are the nominees and the women are the wives and girlfriends.

As a supervising sound editor, I was once asked to add a Dolby E-encoded printmaster to my deliverables for a project. I had not encountered this request before, so I read up on the process and then made an appointment with our layback department to discuss it. When I showed up for that meeting and began to ask technical questions, the engineer responded to each one starting with the phrase “Tell your boss that he should…” Clearly, it had not occurred to him that I was the boss.

I did not correct him, and perhaps I should have. As uncomfortable as it made me to have him assume that I was someone’s assistant, I knew that his responses were not ill-intentioned. This was a case of an honest mistake based on actual real-life experiences. Most likely, he had never personally encountered a female supervising sound editor.

Furthermore, women are not immune when it comes to bias. I, too, have found myself wondering who that new producer is only to find out that she is, in fact, a sound editor or mixer. We all live in the world as it is, and our minds create the necessary assumptions to accommodate that world. We are not bad people for this. We are simply people.

As you can imagine, it is difficult to not only exist but thrive, in an environment that finds my pure existence to be a surprise. Add to that the constant visual reminder that no one else looks like me, that I am “other,” and you will understand the force of impact that this has had on my professional life. This impact is purely facilitated by numbers, not the environment. As long as there are so few women in audio positions, this issue of bias will remain.

So what should we, as an industry, do? The answer should be obvious: hire more women. Previously, I had thought that there was a general lack of women in the industry because young women were not pursuing audio engineering in school or as a career. However, since becoming a partner in a post-production sound studio of my own, I have been inundated by resumes, requests for coffee meetings, and emails asking for advice from the exact set of young women which I did not previously think existed. Not only are they there, but they are hungry for careers.

So, my request to you is twofold:

First, I ask that you do something scary. I ask that you create a situation in which you will be “the only one.” Put yourself in a position where you are a willing participant in a situation where everyone else is different than you. Go to a mommy and me yoga class, attend a service at a Sikh temple, drive to East Cesar E Chavez Avenue and spend an afternoon chatting with the shop owners and eating at a restaurant. It is important that you do this alone.

You will most likely feel out of place and isolated as if everyone is looking at you even when they aren’t. Those feelings underline the fact that as welcoming and accepting as any environment is, it is impossible to feel completely at ease when you are “the only one.” I challenge you to understand that one woman in a company or even in a department is not enough to claim diversity or to dispel ideas of gender inequality or workplace discomfort.

That brings me to my second request: I ask that you do your best to help women find a place in the audio community. If you are in a position to do so, interview more women when you have a job opening. Suggest female candidates to your boss. Answer LinkedIn requests. Give career advice. Brush aside the idea that your assistance may be misconstrued as a romantic interest. If there were more women, young female audio engineers would surely contact them to ask for coffee meetings and phone calls (a fact made evident by my now-flooded inbox), but for now, you are their best chance for an inside perspective.

More resources for A More Inclusive Industry

See the original post here.

 

Us VS Them?

 

With all of the forward motion in the entertainment industry over the past few years, I just can’t believe that we still live in a culture of  “Us vs. Them.” I’m talking about actors, musicians, “the talent,” vs. technicians. Even in my list, I’ve used a term I’m used to hearing: The Talent.  Here’s the thing, I am also the talent. The spot ops are also “the talent.” The stage manager is also “the talent.” The deck crew, the A2, the board ops, the wardrobe techs, etc. are all “the talent.”

We’ve stopped thinking about what language that has been used for generations actually means. I cringe every time I hear “actors on a ten” during tech rehearsals. What about technicians and designers?  Should we just power through? Obviously, this announcement actually means that this is the time everyone should take a break, but the language just needs to change. What about the rehearsal report that refers to the actor as “Mr. Smith” but refers to the technician as “the board op?” It only perpetuates an already unspoken and uncomfortable divide between those that work on the stage and those that work just off the stage.

This is not a one-way street; the sentiment goes both ways.  We always hear about “actor-proofing” gear for the stage. What does that even mean?  Does an actor suddenly lose all ability to think logically about the thing they are holding, or sitting on, or walking over once they hit the stage?  I mean, we’re not actor-proofing an actor’s day-to-day life, are we? If what we mean is we are going to make sure a cable is run properly and taped down so that it can be crossed over many times without being a trip hazard, we should probably just say that instead.

The theatre conservatory that I taught for the better part of a decade has a policy that all acting students must serve as a technician on at least one show during their training.  I love this policy, and honestly, a few of my best A2s were actors. Why just hear about the other side when you can actually experience it? The benefits are massive. The actor learns a bit about a technical trade, will be able to incorporate that new knowledge into their craft, and hopefully has a newfound respect for the life and work of the technician.

The tech crew also benefits from working with the actor-tech. One of the coolest and most functional homemade mic belts I’ve ever used was made by an actor-tech who used his prior experience of uncomfortable mic placement to develop a beneficial design. Also, an actor’s knack for memorization has come in super handy when I’ve had to rattle off a list of instructions that needed to be performed in a timely fashion.  And let’s face it, actors almost always know every character and every word to every song way earlier in the process than a technician. It is so much easier to be able to say, “Fix that mic on Sibella” without having to add, “She’s the girl that’s always dressed in pink.”

Acting conservatory classes often feature a lot of exercises that include self-reflection, group trust, and team-building.  Over the years, I’ve heard tech students talk about how awesome it was that they didn’t have to take classes like those, and that has always boggled my mind!  Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of free therapy? I know (possibly more than anyone) how uncomfortable and difficult it is to open up about feelings and stuff, but think of the personal growth!  If we were all taking team-building classes together, actors and techs, US and THEM, just think of all of the positivity that would come from it. If nothing else, it would let us get to know one another. Maybe get coffee together, maybe collaborate, maybe learn from each other. My challenge to you all is simple: Cut this phrase in half. There is no Us vs. Them; There is only US. It takes all of us to make a show.

I wanted to say something here about symbiosis, and my first Google search turned up this definition:

“Symbiotic relationships are a special type of interaction between species.  Sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful, these relationships are essential to many organisms and ecosystems, and they provide a balance that can only be achieved by working together.”

I really can’t do better than that.  So just keep reading that definition, and thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

 

Lifting each other up – Interview with Naomi Larsson

 

Sometimes I forget that England is on a tiny island and the six degrees of separation is a common phenomenon in the UK music scene. A few weeks ago I’d had the pleasure of engineering a lovely band for the second time. As we chatted whilst packing down, we discovered that I admire the work of the lap steel guitarist’s girlfriend Naomi Larsson, writer of the recent Guardian article “You lift with your mind, not with your muscles.”

Not only is Naomi an award-winning humanitarian journalist with a hefty back catalogue of empowering and candid pieces on women in music, she’s an active musician and creator of a female-centred collective titled “Sister Rosetta’s.” Boyfriend Joe Harvey-Whyte kindly makes the introductions and the following week Naomi, and I meet for a chat in a relaxed coffee shop, hidden from the backdrop of a busy London afternoon.

The first thing we talk about is the previous Friday night’s gig – Naomi and Joe put on a sell-out show at Wilton’s Music Hall, which is the oldest surviving Grand Music Hall in the world, recently restored keeping the original features, complementing the theme of the night. The show was an ‘Americana’ live homage to the film Heartworn Highways and featured 13 artists including The Magic Numbers, Zak Hobbs (the grandson of Fairport Convention’s Richard Thompson) and Ren Harvieu from Bella Union. The event was co-promoted by Green Note in Camden, with an afterparty held at The Betsey Trotwood, who provided sound for the night. In order to emulate the vibe of late-night jams, the stage was dressed with barroom tables and chairs for the acts, and the technical setup was captured with condenser mics strategically placed on the tables.

Q: Friday’s show was a huge success, and it’s nice to see that 6 of the 13 performers were women. Was this a conscious decision for you and Joe when organising the project?

A: “It was a conscious thing in part to make sure there was a balance, but also they all are just amazing, so it’s not a token thing. The Magic Numbers played a big part in that as they’re 50/50 and then it just worked out quite organically as something that needed to happen. Heartworn Highways is a music documentary from the 1970s about all these outlaw country artists before they became famous, and the representation in that is awful – there’s only one song sung by a woman that’s a bit of a joke in it! It was important for us to show that’s not the case.”

Nothing about the musical contribution from the women involved in the show could be further from a joke, and while the full live recording of the show is under wraps, for now, I am privy to a gorgeous snippet from one of Naomi’s original songs, Where the Love Goes.

Q: How did you get into music and what hooked you?

A: “I started learning classical guitar when I was six but I was a way better guitarist when I was little than I am now!  A few years later, when I was a teenager, I played the electric guitar and bass a bit and then started playing chords on acoustic guitar more. When I was at Uni I wrote some songs and played a little bit and probably sang more than played, then in the last few years I’ve been slowly doing it again, and now I write and play way more which is really cool.  My sister is a couple of years older than me, and I was kind of copying her, and we’d write songs together, so she’s probably why I started playing and singing. I also fell in love with Laura Marling, and I guess when she started, she was very much singing and guitar, and it felt like there weren’t that many successful people around my age who were doing it at the time, so she was quite a big inspiration.  Then I gradually got more interested in country music, and now that’s more like what I play of my own stuff.”

Describing her sound as ‘blending new British folk with classic American country from the 50s and 60s’, Naomi plays as a solo singer/songwriter as well as front-woman of the house band at Jambalaya’s Honky Tonk Thursdays, which is one of the regular nights from the event management project she and Joe organise. With a full diary for the foreseeable, Naomi plans to record her solo material next year between all the events that keep her busy which “diversify life” and get her “away from the computer screen.”

Q: As a gigging musician, you decided to set up the female-centred collective “Sister Rosetta’s” which has both an online community and live events, creating a safe space for women to come and perform. What sparked the idea in you, and what is Sister Rosetta’s about?

A: “The more you think about it, the more you realise how embedded it all is, that culture and people just aren’t aware of it, and women too feel like we shouldn’t be in these spaces or we’re not the kind of people who should be playing this instrument. I was thinking about the general imbalance and where it all might stem from, and I guess it just came to me that it was such an everyday thing across all levels and ages. In guitar-based music, 90% of the artists are men, a gig at your local pub when you’re little is more than likely going to be men, so I get that you don’t think that’s going to be an option for you. The reason I started playing guitar was because my dad forced me to – it wasn’t a choice. I think that he had always wanted to play the guitar and then forced it on me and my sister; otherwise, I don’t think either of us would have taken it up because it didn’t seem like something that was for women. It’s the same with the guitar shops when you’re a girl and wanting to buy your first guitar; it’s scary going into a place where it’s mostly blokes there that are gonna patronise you. I had this connection with the Betsey Trotwood venue because that’s where we used to do “The Honky Tonks” (the previously mentioned country music night) and already knew that they were a really friendly pub. I knew I could use that link for something positive because I just got really bored going to nights, especially singer/songwriter nights, and it was just a load of white men who all sounded the same.

I think diversity brings more interest in music, and what you can do on more of an individual or grassroots level is open some spaces to make little changes, so you can make sure you buy music made by women and support them, go and see women playing gigs in your area, or you can put on event in your area if you’re able to that promotes women and gives them these spaces because I think that’s what’s fundamentally lacking on a non-professional or more amateur level getting into it and starting. When you feel like that space isn’t for you, if you make that space, it gives women the confidence and ability to do it in a safe environment which I think is really important.  It’s partly a confidence thing, and it’s also a safety thing in the Sister Rosetta’s stuff and what is so nice about it is that it’s always such a respectful audience – people listened, and they appreciated the music, and there was a special vibe there.” Naomi laughs and clarifies, “People have said that! I’m saying that objectively, there was a nice vibe!

Interestingly, the one time there was an issue was from a guy who works in music, he was there in the audience, very wasted, and he shouted a few times over a young woman who was playing, asking if she was single and was being very drunk and lairy. I said to him that if he was going to behave like that then get out, because that’s not what that is for, and I didn’t want to create an environment where people thought that was an alright thing to do. While he responded and behaved better after that, it made me really upset because you just can’t get away from it at all. On the Sister Rosetta’s team, we always had a female sound engineer, and my friend she designed the poster, it was very much a package of ‘we can do this.’ I also hoped that from doing it, people would get more work and it could be used as a sort of larger thing.”

The Sister Rosetta’s online community and newsletter are open and available while the live events will be starting back again in the new year after a short break.

As well as the active events Naomi runs and performs, she does a lot for the cause of women in her journalism. While there have been recent studies and conversations on the frequent imbalance of superstar festival headliners, Naomi felt strongly about the everyday interactions at smaller venues and so decided to research and write a story for The Guardian whereby she found all of the gig listings for one day across the UK and counted how many men and women performers there were listed: 69% of all acts were made up entirely of men, 9% were female-only, and half of those were solo artists. “I kind of expected it, but it’s still a bit bonkers!  I felt that I wanted to do something about that but in a more tangible way, because I think writing is really important, but it is kind of true that people just read stuff and it might have some traction for a day, but then people move onto the next thing”.

While I tell Naomi that I disagree and feel the power of her writing has the ability to stay with people, I also admire how she was able to channel her feelings into something practical in both her writing and Sister Rosetta’s. We discuss the aim to normalise groups such as these so that it gets to the point where they’re not needed anymore, so that representation and safety is much more accepted in the mainstream at all levels. Naomi tells me that since the article, she’s aware of more pockets of groups in the area with the same ethos springing up all the time: “There’s a really great organisation group called Soul Stripped Sessions, and it’s not exclusively a BAME events collective, but they’re well represented, and that’s really cool, there’s another one called Herd which started a little after I started mine that is really good, so there are little microcosms of people with the same aims trying to do this, which is really positive and nice to see.”

Q: The recent Guardian feature you wrote about women sound engineers went down a storm in audio and music circles and the SoundGirls community! So many of your articles that centre around women’s rights and women in music resonate deeply with your readers. What inspires you to write about the topics that you do?

A:  “I’m really glad to hear that it had some traction, that’s really great.  The Women in Engineering article was part of a supplement that they were doing about engineering in general, and so I pitched the idea about sound engineers and then did the case study. I think it’s really wonderful to be in the position to write what you care about and I’m lucky that I can do that.  I think once you have a skill or a craft, it’s really worth it to use that to some kind of benefit and to give a platform to these issues as well. I think there should be more stuff done on not only the face of the music, and would really love to do a podcast in the future. It’s really interesting to write about it, though I wouldn’t call myself a music writer because I’ve never done reviews or anything like that, but these kinds of issues of representation or gender imbalance are the things that I really care about, and I think that by writing about it you can create conversations which is important.”

I argue that Naomi is a music writer and is way too humble on the importance of what she contributes; her Huff Post article on catcalling won an award this year. She counters, “I need to do more. I did say to myself that I was going to do more, but I haven’t.  Also it’s kind of difficult to sell these stories as I’m freelance, so whilst you might want to write about something, you’re pitching to editors who maybe don’t have the space, money or interest to commission pieces like that, so that’s a bit trickier, which I’m sure loads of freelancers have experienced, where you want to write about something. I’m on a bit of a mission to focus on Women in Music, and I guess I did pursue that by doing the Sister Rosetta’s but just didn’t do it in so much of a writing way, because much as I would have liked to have done more articles, I put more energy into doing the gigs, but there’s always time in the future to do more about it. It’s not going away.”

Q: What advice would you give to any young women and girls wanting to do any of the things that you’re doing, whether in the music or writing world?

A: “Find someone that you respect and like their work and get in touch with them and see if they want to go for a coffee or something, cause I think that most people do, most people want to help someone else. That can be really important to get some good advice from them and not feel so alone. In terms of music, just keep at it and find a special place where you can feel safe and confident to do the music that you wanna do. Again, find other women doing the same thing.”

It’s been a real pleasure spending the afternoon sharing stories and hearing all about this fascinating woman’s work. I could happily stay and chat with Naomi for the entire evening, but for now we must part ways and run across town to our respective gigs; Naomi is playing at a craft beer festival, and I’m off to work, curious about where and when the six degrees to women making an impact will strike again.

You can catch Naomi next playing at Green Note on 10th September, tickets at www.greennote.co.uk

 

 

Combatting Nerves

Being nervous happens to us all. Whether we like it or not, nerves are a very common part of life.

If you have a job in music, whether that be as a performer, live sound technician, etc. there can often be a lot of pressure for things to be right and to run smoothly. Therefore, creating a considerable amount of stress to get the job right.

So, as the feeling of being nervous is inevitable, I’ve compiled a few essential tips to help calm those nerves in a time of need.

Breathing

As a performer, it’s common to start second-guessing yourself moments before a gig. For example, I’ve stood many times at the side of the stage asking myself, ‘What on earth are my first few lyrics’!

What helps in these moments of sheer panic is to remember to Breathe.

Focus on taking long breaths in and out.

I watched a clip of Beyoncé warming up before a show where she and the crew all stood in a circle reciting ‘Breathe in positivity, exhale anxieties’ and just repeating it several times. So, if it’s good enough for Beyoncé, it’s good enough for me.

Make Sure you have Spares 

As a performer, producer, or live technician It’s always useful to carry spares of your essential kit.

I’ve worked many jobs where a microphone cable has stopped working, or a performer has forgotten to change the battery in their guitar.

To avoid unnecessary stress, I like to keep spares of almost every essential item I’ll be using on the job. This means extra leads, extra batteries, spare microphones you name it.

This leads me on to my next point…

Be prepared

No matter what your role is on the day. The best thing you can do is be prepared.

Whether that means practicing your set until you know it by heart or preparing all the equipment a few hours before the show and checking if everything is in working order.

This I find really helps with the nerves, as it removes the pressure of the unknown. When you trust your equipment and your preparation, you can trust yourself.

These are just a few tips I find to be very helpful when on different jobs and hopefully can be of some help no matter the job.

 

 

 

 

FOH Lisa Affenzeller – Chasing the Magic

Lisa Affenzeller is an independent FOH Engineer, who works mainly with Heavy Metal bands, such as Butcher Babies, TesseracT, Kobra & the Lotus, Devin Townsend Project, Overkill, Annihilator. She has been working in the industry for over ten years.

Growing up Lisa had always wanted to work and be a part of live shows “Every show you do has that little magic that lies within that kicks you, and you know that you love what you do.” She had a love for music growing up, although she never had much interest in actually playing an instrument. Lisa would attend SAE in Vienna and graduate with a degree in Music Production and had the full support of her parents. She says, “they love the technical aspect of my job as well as the traveling.”

After graduating she moved between a few cities across Europe before ending in Hamburg, Germany. Lisa would make ends meet with office work, stage managing, soldering, anything to get a chance to mix some smaller shows or opening bands. Allowing her to start working in small and mid-sized clubs all over Repperbahn and give her confidence in mixing live sound. It would also put her in the right place at the right time.

Starting in the clubs taught Lisa the ropes. First, she interned, then assisted, and then got to mix a few bands. From there she would start working at various clubs where she learned system engineering, mixing FOH and Monitors, stage managing, patching. And maybe more importantly how to put in long hours, fix broken equipment, and how to deal with artists and characters from all over the world.

Lisa would find herself in the right place at the right time and was able to start touring on the club level where she would learn how to mix on every possible console and PA, and how to get it set up quickly, and sound good. Although she found it intimidating at first, she now finds it fun.

Some of the challenges Lisa has faced while touring are gear breaking or failing. She says, “it sucks for sure, but it happens to the best of us, and it can happen at any time. It’s just a matter of how you deal with it and how fast you can troubleshoot, and that – again – comes with experience.

She elaborates “One time I had a massive show stopper happen on a big club show in Germany during a tour through Europe. One of the photographers in the pit accidentally broke one of the main Cat5e lines, and I was using the spare CAT5e connection to run my show on 96kHz (which, in hindsight, was super unnecessary). I had no backup and after six songs into the set and the cable broke, more than two-thirds of my input channels were not passing audio anymore — almost a total blackout. After we found out what exactly had happened, the audio team and I rearranged the patch together. We trimmed down the channel count and moved on with the show on a spare CAT5e line that we had with us.
I overcame the situation by staying focused (luckily during that time I had so many shows under my belt already I could remain calm), the team effort within the crew, support from my tour manager and indeed a lot of love and understanding from the fans around me. One of the guys in the audience even thanked me and bought me a drink.”

Lisa also finds festivals bring unique challenges. “Very often you don’t get a soundcheck and sometimes even just a 20-30min changeover time in which you have to set up the stage and line check the show and then go for it and fix a solid mix in the first couple of minutes of the show. It’s stressful for sure and challenging, but it’s possible. The upside to festivals is enjoying the other acts and getting to hang out with roadies and friends from around the world.

What do you like best about touring?

The fans, for sure! And also, the bonding you experience when you work and travel with a terrific group of people is priceless.

What do you like least?

White bread & cheese.

What is your favorite day off activity?

Exploring local bars & restaurants!

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?

I think the biggest obstacle that I have faced in my career was my constant fear of failure and lack of trust in myself.

How have you dealt with them?

I have been fortunate with having had people in my life who believed in me more than I did and gave me chances. There might be a grain of truth in it when they say you have to work twice as hard being a woman, but when you do, and you cut your teeth on it, and you are willing to make some sacrifices, it’s absolutely worth it in the end.

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

You will eventually need to take that leap of faith and leave your safe haven back home to enter the touring world.

It sounds like a platitude, but you have to believe in yourself, it’s really true. You will work with a lot of shitty bands, and you will have a lot of bad shows, but you will also have A LOT of perfect shows, and they will love you for it.

You will make mistakes, and you will learn from them. Your ability to troubleshoot will get better, and so will your confidence. You will hit rock bottom, and you will stand up again. And before you know it, you’ll become a kick-ass sound engineer.

Must have skills?

Apart from the obvious, such as knowing your gear, I’d say being communicative is a big plus. And confidence & thick skin.

Favorite gear?

DiGiCo SD Series
DPA 4099 & 2011
Waves SSL G-Master Bus Compressor
Waves C6 & F6
Waves H-Delay
MANLEY Voxbox
BAE 1073
JH Audio In Ears
And a very special shout out to my Leatherman and my pink Peli

Find More Profiles on The Five Percent

Profiles of Women in Audio

Moving to London to Pursue Media

On the 1st of July, I moved from Newcastle to London to pursue the media dream. I had been applying for multiple different jobs in many locations, including Barcelona, Edinburgh, Bristol, and Brighton. I had no real desire or desperate need to move to London as I had never lived there before. It can often seem at UK universities that the obvious thing to do straight after graduation is to move to London to start a grad job on Sep 1st. I had only ever traveled through busy airports and train stations in London to transfer elsewhere or had been there and back in a day for interviews and assessment centres. I visited London for the first time at age 18, which can be seen to be rare for someone UK based.

It all happened relatively quickly; I’ll give a short break-down of my application process below:

I am working in an exciting industry in a company I have been aware of for around eight years. It is not directly associated with audio, but there will be elements for me to learn more about podcasting and music production hopefully. I am five weeks in, and I love it. I learn something new each day and have a great team around me that have such a vast range of knowledge and skills regarding TV, advertising, social media, film, music, theatre, podcasts, radio, law – and so much more!

The physical move down to London, however, was quite stressful. I thought finding somewhere to live for my year abroad in Bordeaux, France was difficult, but this may have been worse, or more disheartening at least. I used SpareRoom.co.uk to start looking for properties a few weeks before I was planning to move down. I was met with many responses stating that I was too early to be getting in touch. I contacted 64 people on the website, got around 30 replies, and visited 20 properties. The way I did it was staying in an Airbnb for four days in London to find a place. I went to seven viewings on my first day and was at the point of moving back home at the end of the day. I had never experienced so many out of date or misleading advertisements. I realised how lucky I was to have had a relatively easy university experience in terms of first-year halls and second and fourth year housing. This was next level.

I spent every evening contacting different people, scouring search results for something in my budget, with as short a commute to work as possible. I also wanted to live with other people and preferably those that spoke French and/or Spanish to keep up my language skills (I’m aware I was probably asking for too much!). I then resorted to Facebook pages to enquire about renting rooms. I kept notes about every property in my red notebook so that I could analyse and make decisions at the end of the day. I rated each place out of 10.

 

 

In the end, I got lucky. I found a nice big room in a 3-floor house with two other really nice girls. We have a garden and I have a direct tube route to work. It’s all going so well so far! I would recommend anyone moving to London, or any other city that is known for it’s “housing crisis” to not take the first thing you see. I know I had the privilege of being able to stay in an Airbnb for a few days, but I can’t imagine if I had felt pressured to take the first property I saw. I understand now why there is such an issue in large urban cities with landlords that take advantage of tenants and tenants feeling unable to do anything about it.

I am settled into my new house and job now, enjoying London life each day and trying not to get too busy or become too overwhelmed by it all. It feels like such a great time for me to have moved to London. I could never have done it when I was 18, or even last year straight out of uni.

 

 

I wish everyone else that is making big moves the best of luck!

Impulse Response Testing and Field Recording 

The Mine 

One of the things that piqued my interest with sound design was all of the magical tools and abilities sound designers have at their disposal. As a young sound designer, I am still surprised and excited by all of this.

I go to school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, at Michigan Technological University. The area is called the Keweenaw Peninsula and is at the very top of the Upper Peninsula. The northern woods and waterfalls are both beautiful and great for field recording, but one part of the Keweenaw that goes relatively unexplored by sound enthusiasts, are the mines. Mining was a large part of the economy during the 19th and early 20th century and was still at large into the 1970s and ’80s. Abandoned mines dot the Keweenaw peninsula, but one mine, in particular, has been reopened and repurposed.

The Adventure Mining Company of Greenland Michigan seemed to appreciate my enthusiasm for their mine. Through a connection formed by one of my professors, and the owner of the mine, I was able to go and see the mine for myself. Early last fall, I drove down to take a small tour of the mine and to see what sights, and more importantly, sounds could be found within. It was a fun-filled day, but I was eager to come back with recording equipment.

Before coming back, I established some goals for this recording session. The most important goal was to record impulse responses of the many different chambers of the mine. I knew this would take the majority of my time, but I also wanted to do some field recording inside and outside of the mine.

My second trip to The Adventure Mine was a bit wetter. Fortunately, I had been careful to not bring moisture-sensitive equipment as working in these kinds of environments can be both damp and rough. The company was also kind enough to lend me an old metal wagon that I stored most of my recording equipment into pull around the many chambers. The gear that I brought with me was a laptop running Logic, an RME Babyface Pro interface, and an Earthworks condenser microphone. I also included a Zoom H5 with a mid-side capsule for any ambient recording that I might have time for. To generate the impulses, I used balloons and a pin to pop them. I decided upon this method because the mine was so far from any power source, which meant I could not generate a sine sweep from a speaker for my impulses. I used the entire pack of 25 balloons, and the whole recording process took nearly five hours, but it was well worth the physical and mental exhaustion.

Processing the impulses was relatively simple in the end as I simply trimmed the tracks to the balloon pin strike and uploaded the files into Logic’s Space Designer reverb plugin. There are many helpful articles and videos for this process online. Audio Ease’s Altiverb is also capable of processing custom IR samples, and they have some useful information on their website as well.

Since this project, I have been intrigued by acoustics and the unique sound of spaces and rooms.  I live in a fairly isolated part of the world with many unusual spots, some that you can easily access. Some may ask, why bother? Not only is the experience of trekking into a dark mine for your job exciting and unique, but in many ways, that hard work translates into the work you do as a designer. I now have many impressive, and unique reverbs that I can use in my designs.

Safety for yourself and your equipment is imperative though, so keep that in mind. I would also like to share the fruits of my labor and invite all to my website, where you will be able to download two of my impulse responses from this project for free. It has been such a fantastic experience, and I hope to inspire other sound designers and recordists with my work.

 

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