A Lesson About Fun & Failure

When you are working hard towards your goals, it is easy to forget to take time off and have some fun. In all honesty, I take myself way too seriously all the time. I need to remind myself to have some fun, sometimes.

When you have a goal that you are working towards, booking new and challenging projects, chasing deadlines, client meetings, pushing yourself to get a little bit closer to your goal, your dream. And somewhere on the way, I guess you just forget to have fun.

I had a rehearsal the other day, two hours of going through a DJ set. After two hours of playing my favourite music, what could go wrong? Well, I will tell you this, EVERYTHING went wrong. It was hilariously bad. I was laughing and crying because I couldn’t believe it went so poorly. I messed up everything! But I had so much fun and instead of beating myself up about it I just thought “Hey, it is better that this happens in practice and not on a gig.”

A younger me would not have cried with a such a bad rehearsal. I believed the world would end because I messed up, feeling I would never improve, never be good enough. A younger me would never have thought that I one day would become a Production Manager. The feeling that everything you do has to be perfect and systematic was always on my mind. The fear of failure! And when you fear failure you stop having fun.

Luckily I never listen to myself, how wise or unwise I may be. However, I did luckily listen to the people who encouraged me.

But in all seriousness, from a young age, women are taught not to explore and have fun, they are not allowed to make mistakes. There is this excellent book by Professor Lucy Green called Music, Gender, Education. It is worth the read and as a woman, it explained a lot that I had never thought about and why I was feeling the way I did as a young woman.

How we are educated from a young age is perhaps why we have a more systematic and serious way of being sometimes.

So let us make music because it is fun, not because we have to. Let us rehearse and mess up. Let us have bad days and know it is not the end of the world. Let us have some fun on the way to reaching our goals and let us pick each other up when we feel down.

Let us fail but not feel like failures.

Festival Guide part 2: In-house Tech/Engineer

Much like in part one of my festival guide, the key to working in-house at a festival is to be prepared. Pack warm, waterproof clothes, way more socks than you think you’ll need, sanitiser, etc. If you have any special dietary requirements make sure they know as soon as possible, and bring extra non-perishable food in case the message doesn’t get passed on. The days are long and busy; you may not get a chance to sit down to eat your meals, let alone leave the stage to get them. Someone else might pick your food up for you, and they might not understand what Coeliac is, for example, so have a backup ready.

When prepping the gear, read all the specs you’ve been sent carefully (e.g., a Shure Beta 98amp, 98AD/C and 98H/C may all have the same capsule, but they are not interchangeable) and allow for several bands to be mic’ed up at the same time if you have rolling risers. Pack extra mics (I’d recommend mainly Shure SM57s. We joke about it, but they really will work on almost any instrument) and adapters so you’ll be ready when someone inevitably brings more than what was on their spec. In fact, take the specs as a guide rather than gospel and plan to be flexible. If you are operating a desk, try to find out whether the bands have their own engineers, and whether they have a show file. If not, along with your generic starting file you can start building ones for them to save time on the day (but expect there to be changes!).

If you’re in charge of patching, discuss with the rest of your department whether you’ll work “1 to 1” (everyone gets plugged in as per their channel list) or if you’ll have a festival patch (all bands use the same channels, with similar instruments grouped together. e.g., inside kick drum is 1, guitars all go in 13-16, brass in 24-30, etc.). Festival patch can be a lot quicker if you’re using analogue desks, sharing backline and mics throughout the day, or if you’ll be mixing most of the bands yourself. It helps the in-house monitor engineer in particular because they can leave rough mixes up and just tweak them band to band instead of starting fresh every changeover, which can be very time-consuming. 1 to 1 is obviously a lot easier for guests, though, especially if they have programmed a lot of scenes for their set in their file which could take too long to adjust after a soft patch.

Festivals can be intense, with very short changeovers, so staying organised is paramount. Label absolutely everything. Imagine you were to suddenly get ill and have to leave. Would a colleague be able to step in and know where and what everything is? If not, label it up until there’s no way anyone could get confused. If the worst happens and you do have to go, someone will be able to pick up where you left off. More importantly, when you’ve been working flat out for 14 hours and your brain goes blank right at the critical moment when you’re fault finding, you’ll be able to rely on the labels to get you through. If coloured tape everywhere doesn’t suit the look of the show (for example if it’s being broadcast), silver marker pen on black tape is a lot more subtle. Keep your paperwork and a pencil with you, so you can note down any changes as you go along. Don’t forget to update anyone else who needs to know, e.g., other stage crew, engineers or the broadcast truck. Carry a phantom power checker, and a small mic with a patch lead and an XLR to jack for DIs so you can test any lines that go bad straight away (after making sure that channel is muted!).

Don’t wait for bands or engineers to come to you, go and find them as soon as they get to the stage. Check for any changes to their spec, ask them how they like their mixes if you’re doing monitors for them, and so on. Musicians can be very laid back, so you need to be friendly but firm to keep them on schedule. At the changeover, make sure they set up as quickly as possible. Take the lead for line check if you’re mixing. Ask for the instruments you want to hear, and politely tell them to stop playing the ones you don’t. For monitors, the quickest way to get usable mixes is to ask everyone to put their hand up when they want the instrument that is being checked in their mix, and not to put them down until it’s loud enough for them. Don’t get flustered trying to give everyone what they want at the same time, just calmly work from one side of the stage to the other and let impatient people know you’ve seen them and you’ll get to them. If the engineer on the other end of the multicore is moving too fast for you, ask them to slow down. You both need to hear everything, so they should be happy to oblige.

Festivals can be manic, challenging, wet and cold, but it’ll be over before you know it, and that huge sense of achievement you feel at the end might even be enough to persuade you into another field the next week. You’re going to need more socks.

Other articles on Festivals with useful information

Festival Guide Part One

Working Coachella and Surviving Festival Season: How Two Monitor Engineers Approach Festival Season

Coachella Music and Arts Festival: Two Companies that Did!

Rat Sound Answers Your Questions about Coachella

Music and Life-Long Friends

When I was a kid, I used to sing in the tubes on the playground with my friend Melly. We liked the way the plastic tunnel helped us hear our own voices. We’d lay head to head and play with our voices, intervals, vowels, lyrics, improvising harmonies for what seemed like hours.

We both played the guitar, our little 11-year-old hands barely reaching both E strings for our first position G chords. We wrote songs together in Melly’s bedroom, which she shared with her little sister and was covered in Spice Girls stickers. Her dad was a musician, a drummer and songwriter, and we sometimes listened to his recordings for inspiration. Melly had music in her blood.

We stood next to each other in the school choir. We were both in the alto section, but Melly’s range extended well into soprano. Together we learned Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” and Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Edelweiss”. After school, we’d take turns guessing the soprano part, so we could sing together in harmony.

In middle school, we started a band with three of our other friends called Magenta. We were essentially trying to be the new Spice Girls. Our “thing” was that we all wore magenta lipstick (even though none of us had ever actually worn makeup yet). Melly wrote a song for us called “The Stars Are White” which we rehearsed a few times before our schedules conflicted too much for us to keep going…I still sing “The Stars Are White” to myself sometimes.

: 2004 – Melly and me, age 14 and 13

: 2004 Open Mic – playing our songs at an open mic in Nashville, age 13 and 14

In college, we took Electronic Music Production together and learned MIDI and audio signal flow. We learned C Sounds and how to create sounds using computer programming language. We learned Melodyne and the power of auto-tuning software. We learned how amazing it was to have a studio software at our fingertips—we could harmonize with our own voices now, and there was no limit to how many we could have at once! We could make beats with our mouths and a microphone. We could play any sound we wanted on a MIDI keyboard. Melly always created with a sense of ease and excitement that was electric to be around.

2006 – Melly playing with a capo

Melly transferred schools for the last two years of undergrad. The year we graduated, she got a job in Massachusetts and I found one in New York City. I played gigs on the side and took more music production classes. She got her master’s degree in social work. I moved to Los Angeles. She got engaged. The power went out in a thunderstorm at her August wedding and I sang her (and her whole wedding party) songs by candlelight underneath the gazebo.

She adopted a baby boy and for his first birthday, she and her family came to visit me in Los Angeles.

I picked them up from the airport and sang to the baby in the car. We arrived at my house after trekking through LA traffic, and it was time for his nap. We put his travel crib in my bedroom and closed the blinds. Everyone besides Melly and I was asleep, exhausted from a day of traveling. We crept upstairs to my home studio. “Show me what you’re working on!!” she said. I opened Ableton Live, which Melly had not used before. I explained the basic design of the software to her and we started a beat. Five minutes later she was recording vocals and harmony parts and we were discussing lyrics. Her teenage sister Lillian woke up from her nap and joined us in the studio to watch. She had never seen Melly The Musician before—she knew her as a sister, as a bride, as a mom. “This is incredible,” she said. “I didn’t know you could do this!”

2017 – us together last year

“She’s a beast,” I said.

Melly was totally comfortable using Ableton. She played a bass part on my Push controller and quantized it. “This is SO much better than Digital Performer…” she said, referring to our pseudo-antiquated Electronic Production class in college. “Wow. I love making music.”

We kept playing for what seemed like hours like we had always done. Except this time we were in my studio, and her sister was watching us, and her baby was asleep in the next room. And yet it was just as it had always been. We were on the playground again, in the tube again, head to head, listening to our voices and making music together.

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

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.

: Samantha Potter

: Fela Davis

: Carolina Anton

: Becky Pell

Managing your Work Load

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with how many things you need to do and there is just not enough hours in a day? Looking at next week hoping it will be an eight-day week rather than seven? Hands up, I am one of these people!

Learning how to say no to things have been a bloody hard journey for me. I think learning how to say no and prioritise yourself is something that applies to both full-timers and freelancers.

Personally, I love doing different things. Djing, producing music, scoring for short films, etc. It is incredibly hard for me to manage all the things I want to do at the same time as I am working full time. Do not get me wrong, I love my job, and I would not have anything different (Except for maybe an eight-day in the week), but sometimes I just do not have the time for it all!

Not only do I want to do these other music-related things, but I also want to see friends, have fun, and exercise as well! Being able to cook food at home, have a day off, and just do absolutely nothing. The list goes on.

The truth is, all of these things will not happen. At least not at once. And we need to learn to accept this. I have accepted that there are different things at different times and stages of life! Some weeks I will have time to exercise and time to cook proper food that will nourish me. Other weeks I will eat fast food for a week, and the thought of exercising is just not happening. And that is OK!

The only way to manage workload is to try and plan ahead. Try and stay on top of things, prioritise what is important, what can wait, and so on. At university, I was taught the traffic light model. Some of you might be familiar with it, some of you might not be.

With the traffic light model, you put things into categories:

Red is off track and urgent.

Yellow is not incredibly urgent and is relatively on track.

Green is on track and projects can wait.

When I was taught this in university, everything felt urgent & off track in my life.

I just could not let go of the idea that I needed to do everything and everything at once. But now a couple of years later I truly understand the importance of this and the importance of saying no or “this can wait” to not burn myself out.

There are things in life we need to deal with urgently, whether it is your personal life or work-related. And we should deal with these things immediately! We might have gotten sidetracked, found the task boring or it just felt stressful to deal with it. But the longer we wait, the harder and more stressful it will be to deal with it. Ask for help if you need to.

I would say, look at your life as a DJ mixer. Just try to avoid going into the reds. There is nothing good happening there. Try and stay in the greens & yellows. Evaluate your life, where are you right now? Incorporate an admin hour or two in your day/week, so you can properly sit down and have a look at where things are at. When you take control of things in your life, you are less likely to feel overwhelmed, and you will make time for the essential things in your life. And the most important thing in your life should always be yourself and your well-being.

Powering Through

For my March blog post, I’m going to answer two questions I was recently asked.

How do you manage performance while stressed/upset? Like today I played a show and I was really stressed all day, and I could really feel it when I was on stage. I was really still and didn’t move a lot and, I could feel it in my voice too. What do you do to kind of control that?

I’m really close with my parents but they’re a little bit unsupportive of my choice to go for music. My mom more than dad. So far I’ve gotten into all the colleges I applied for, and I also might be able to get a full ride to another school that used to be my top until I realized I didn’t like the programs there. My backup is either graphic design or entertainment management, both of which are at the college I want to go to. If I go to the school I want to go to, my friend and I are gonna get an apartment together and really work hard on building our band and putting ourselves out there.

I know at the end of the day it’s my decision but it’s difficult to discuss this with my family. All in all, I guess I know they just care and want the best for me and are coming from a good place. But it’s so difficult to face that, and it affects me a lot (especially performing). Did you have to deal with something like this?

I’m going to answer these questions together, as they are both about maintaining composure and performing well even under stress and sadness.

Yes. The late teens and early twenties are inherently chaotic times for most of us. The arts are scary to a lot of people for a lot of reasons, including issues of self-love, capitalism, and creative blockage. Often it seems easier for children of musicians to find their way into music, and I speculate as to whether this is a result of fewer barriers such as these.

As you say (and you are completely right), it’s your decision at the end of the day. If you can go to college for free and do not have another opportunity conflicting with college (e.g., an all-expenses-paid impending tour for your band), it is probably a smart choice to go to college. It’s hard to go to college for free in the US, and if you find yourself at a crossroads, you can always switch your area of study or leave altogether. At the end of the day, finding your path takes time and you will make mistakes. Period.

It sounds like the emotions or thoughts of people around you affect you strongly, and I think a lot of creative people have this trait. I definitely struggled (and still do) with navigating the feelings and thoughts of people around me, especially my loved ones. When I was in my preteens and teens, my biggest challenge as a performer was learning to stop worrying about what my audience thought of me and my songs. At this point, my audience was mostly my friends and family. I wrote a lot of songs about my parents, growing up in a small town, moving a lot (divorced family), and that sort of thing. People would cry, and give my parents the stink eye. I would be nervous to sing new songs that talked about this stuff, but I faced the fear and would do it anyway. I’m glad I did it, but it was not glamorous! It was terrifying and embarrassing, but also totally necessary.

Oddly, my parents never really confronted me about anything I said in my songs. In this sense, they were very respectful of my creative inclination. However, they were not able to provide me stability through high school, college, and after college. For me, these years were a hodgepodge of putting pieces together, and aside from my grandparents buying me a microphone for my birthday and my aunt paying for my college textbooks, every dime I spent was my own money. Any bit of space I’d previously been able to occupy in their homes all but dissolved as their own romantic relationships started to dissolve. I was stuck in the middle trying to figure out how to make my life happen. Both my parents felt awful and their home lives were coming apart at the seams. I felt terrible for them and wanted to help them, but also I just wanted someone to help me drive my stuff to my new apartment and walk it up the stairs, and maybe to help me put up curtains. Maybe eat dinner with me in my new apartment. I was barely 20 after all. With no one to do these things with, I did them by myself. It was sad, and exhausting, especially after it went on for years. Other family members would say things like “Well if you’re not feeling great, maybe try something else.” What they didn’t realize is that making music DID feel great; it was one of the ONLY things that felt great! But I was only able to do it after a 40 hour work week, after getting off the phone with a crying parent, after cooking and cleaning and paying all my bills, after dragging a desk up the stairs to my apartment by myself.

Really the thing that felt bad was getting through all of the chaos to put my life together in a way that allowed me to make music more often than not. I had to trust that this much was true.

It actually can get harder as you get a little older. Many, many well-meaning people will see your “musician lifestyle” as a lack of commitment to your own self-worth and life. Many will ask why you would do something that doesn’t pay very well, especially during the beginning years. I have lost count the number of times a well-meaning family member or friend has told me to “be ready to get a real job when the time comes.” The sting never lessens, but you indeed become less and less concerned with getting stung at all. So much of the life of an artist consists of stings. It’s part of the job. A lot of times, the discouraging family member is actually just worried about you. They don’t want you to go through all that pain and sadness.

At first glance, all this chaos may seem like something you should avoid. But, listen to other artists and musicians. Their stories always have chaos! They always have tough decisions. They always have shows where something is affecting their emotional state and they need to power through anyway. Channel all the bad stuff into your performance. Treat every performance as an opportunity to be your best performance ever. It’s a skill you must practice to get better at. Play lots and lots of shows and get feedback and keep challenging yourself. Work.

I have a joke I tell myself which is that “the life of an artist is a life of constant embarrassment.” No matter how successful you become, you will always need to take risks to make meaningful work. Taking a risk means there is a possibility you could fail. Furthermore, there will always be people who find a way to undermine you. There is always failure, there is always rejection, and there are always haters. There is always the fear that you may be misunderstood. Check out this interview with Janelle Monae where she talks about how she is afraid of rejection right now.

Every single person has their own struggle. It may not come early on—it may come later in a career. Regardless of when and what it is, it is meant to provide strength and wisdom.

Colorado SoundGirls – KCSU and Bohemian Foundation Venues

Join our Colorado SoundGirls Chapter for a tour of KCSU radio station at Colorado State University. SoundGirl Hannah Copeland (KCSU General Manager) will give us a tour of their operation there and tell us about station and audio facilities at CSU. Then we’ll pop over to the newly-renovated Washington’s – a 900-capacity venue with a brand new state-of-the-art lighting and sound system – and get a tour from Production Manager, Kevin Gregory.

This is a free event – but please register here

Sunday, March 25th
2pm at KCSU, 4pm at Washington’s
KCSU: Room 118, Lory Student Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523
Washington’s: 132 Laporte Ave, Fort Collins, CO 80524

Fort Collins is about an hour north on I-25 from Denver. We’re hoping to get a crew to carpool from the Denver-Boulder area. Contact Anna Frick if you are interested in carpooling anna@airshowmastering.com

Review of Daphne Oram’s An Individual Note

I discovered this book on a trip to Moog in Asheville, NC. After the incredible tour, I was drooling in their gift shop with a small wallet. It was this beautifully packaged book with a soft matte white hardcover that caught my attention. Vaguely waveform-like shapes and a subtitle that paired music with electronics led me to skim the summary. From there it checked the final box: a book written by an audio pioneer who just happened to be female.

Daphne Oram was an electronic musician and sound designer when these terms were in their infancy. She co-founded and was the first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, famous for the ethereal sounds of the television show Dr. Who and the radio drama Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Through Oram’s vision, BBC Radiophonic Workshop was an incubator for musique concrete, experimental compositions that focus on sound manipulation. Oram herself left BBC Radiophonic Workshop soon after its creation and pursued electronic sound synthesis in her facility and on her own terms.

There is a story behind the edition I acquired, and one can feel the love in its creation. This publication was commissioned by the Daphne Oram Trust and funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The manuscript was re-typed, the diagrams were digitally redrawn, and new photographs were added in addition to the originals. The new outside cover is unique unfinished paper with abstract designs, and while reminiscent of a textbook it is smaller and gives a soothing feeling. Inside the endpapers are dark green rastered photos. Daphne Oram’s portrait graces the front, and her studio is featured in the back. Each page is a thin cardstock that gives weight to the words printed. Topic guidelines are added to each chapter heading and reflect the style of writing within. A preface has been added that offers a fitting tribute to Daphne Oram, as well as preparing the reader for the mind from which the main text was created.

An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics is written as a guide to understanding the philosophy of sound and its creation. Starting from the definition of sound, Oram leads the reader through the path of that note as an individual to overtones, chords, and various ways of creation. The final result is her Oramics Machine, a synthesizer that uses pictorial waveforms as the control interface. And like her device, An Individual Note combines different academic disciplines to reach the sonic goal.

Admittedly when I picked up this text, I had thought it would be filled with formulas and circuit diagrams. And while there is mention of Fourier and the basics of an oscillator, this is book favors humanities and art. Even Oram’s writing style is almost more poetry than prose with her use of alliteration, repetition, and metaphors. Nearly every single chapter had a reference to her coined term “cele” as a counterpoint to “elec” (electricity). These flourishes are interspersed in a stream of consciousness that does not reveal its goal until the last few chapters. Complex formulas and jargon are set aside in favor of the nuances of emotion and thought experiments. And some of those thoughts stretch too far in the realm of speculative fiction. In comparing resonance to consciousness and manipulation of it as a form of signal processing drugs become white noise. “You will be using white noise to overwhelm yourself…” Up until the end, I was impatiently waiting for the secrets to proficient analog sound synthesis and methods for tape manipulation. Instead, I found a succession of somewhat restrained nonsequiturs leading towards a creative thought process.

One cannot build the illustrious Oramics Machine from this book unless one has a background in Electrical Engineering, but An Individual Note can serve as a preface to experimentation with pre-made synthesizers. Often she refers to Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, a text which feels anachronistic. “Wee also have diverse Strange and Artificial Eccho’s…” And Oram is not afraid to look into the past to find inspiration for the future. Nothing is off limits to influence the creation of sound. Daphne Oram does not write a how-to book, but a why-to. This is a text to inspire curiosity and to provoke new perspectives, as Daphne Oram did. And I guess I should co-opt a term from Oram herself and say that this book is a muse.

Festival Guide Part 1: Guest Engineer

I have spent over seven years working in-house at nearly every major festival in the UK, and plenty of the smaller ones. Festivals can be some of the most rewarding shows to do, but they come with their own set of challenges. I hope this guide helps you to have a good show.

Step one: Be prepared. You should always have a clear, up-to-date stage plot and channel list (make sure any colour-coding works in black and white. They won’t get printed in colour). Send them, and a show file for the in-house desk if you have one, to the festival in plenty of time. I’m talking weeks, if not months. It’s no good sending your advance in on Friday morning when the gear left the warehouse on Tuesday. Try your best to keep your information accurate for that particular show, too. A lot of festivals will be run on “festival patch”: every band shares channels for similar instruments (e.g., kick drum inside mic is 1, guitars all go in channels 13-16, brass in 25-30, etc.), which means someone will have been tasked with going through everyone’s advances to figure out how to fit everyone in (another reason to send it in early!). If you turn up and tell them you were only touring the 37-piece children’s choir for your headline shows you will have caused a lot of hassle for nothing. It isn’t usually a big problem to add an acoustic guitar, but inviting the mariachi band you made friends at the campsite last night to join you for a few songs might not be possible. Even if the stage is running “1 to 1” (every band is patched according to their channel list), the more accurate your information, the more the stage team will be able to help you in advance.

Step two: Be prepared. Check what the weather is meant to be like, then bring layers and waterproof clothes anyway. Figure out how many socks you’ll need for the duration and pack twice as many. You won’t always have access to running water. A lot of festivals provide alcohol gel instead of taps, and they might not get refilled regularly. Bring your own sanitiser, wet wipes, toilet paper and diarrhea medication. If you have a uterus, bring sanitary products that don’t involve… well, you know. Pack plenty of drinking water and snacks; even though you’re with an artist, you might not be given more than one meal for the time you’re there. If you have any dietary requirements, make that evident as soon as possible and have a contingency plan in case the message doesn’t reach the caterers/runners.

Step three: On the day. Be prepared. Set off as early as possible. Traffic can be absolutely awful getting into a festival. Leave literally hours earlier than you would normally. Make sure you know which gate you need to head to, which may not be signposted. Allow for a long wait to get your passes at the gate. Bands have missed their set because they only got to the site for the time they were meant to be setting up. Being five minutes’ walk away from the stage is by no means the same as being five minutes from the stage!

When you get through security, head straight over and talk to the in-house team. Don’t be surprised if they don’t have your up-to-date spec, even if you sent it ages ago (but thanks for trying)! There are so many different layers of organisation and management involved with a festival; information sometimes falls through the cracks despite people’s best intentions. Keep a few printed copies with you, and have your show file on at least two USB sticks. I guarantee you, you will leave one in a desk somewhere and not notice until the next day, and you might be in a different country by then.

Check with the stage manager whether there’s space to unload and set up your gear. The earlier you get ready, the more time you’ll have to line check and fix any problems. It’s tempting to reward yourself with a few beers in the dressing room after the painful journey onto the site, but that might delay the running of the stage, and you’re risking wasting precious set time fault-finding. Get everything ready and check when your line check slot is (either just before your set or often during the changeover before yours if they’re using a rolling riser and double desk system). If you haven’t used the in-house desk before, you can ask whether there’s any time to play with it before your set. If they’re running two desks at each end, you should have at least the set before yours to get used to the layout. If not, it’s no big deal, because you checked out the offline editor for it beforehand, right? Because you’re so prepared?

Arrive back for your set in plenty of time. If possible, smuggling some cakey treats out from artist catering for the stage crew will win you major brownie points (especially if they are brownies). If you’re still unsure how to use the desk, or anything else, there’s no shame in asking the in-house engineers for help. It’s what they’re there for! No-one’s used every desk out there, no matter how experienced they are. Your host should be more than happy to help, and even show you some of their favourite tips and tricks if there’s time. It’s also very common for engineers to cover for each other over festival season, so it might be your first show with this band, and that’s fine. These experienced engineers can spot a bluffer a mile away, and if you’re too proud to let them help, they’re well within their rights to step back and watch you crash and burn. No-one wants you to have a bad gig though, so make friends with them early (hint: brownies)! If you’re mixing FoH from a tent or tower, walk outside of it at least once. It can sound completely different in the crowd compared to by the desk, even with reference monitors, so don’t just mix for yourself in your little bubble.

Once you’ve finished the show of your life because you were so on it because you were so prepared, all you have to do is grab your USB stick and headphones (don’t forget to bring your headphones by the way. Seriously), pack your gear away and celebrate! Please don’t skip straight to celebrating; there are lots of other bands to get on and off the stage, and there isn’t space to leave your gear set up until you feel like taking it away. So after a grueling 20-minute loadout and thanking the crew, you can kick back and enjoy those well-deserved beers (or soft drinks if you’re the driver) before heading to another field to do it all over again.

More info on working festivals

Festival Guide Part Two