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Intern with Sennheiser at AES NY 2019

Sennheiser & Neumann is seeking one member of SoundGirls to intern with the company during the 2019 AES NY show. Interns will need to be available from Oct. 15 – 18, 2019

Dates and Times

Responsibilities

AES NY takes place at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center

Payment will be a pair of Sennheiser headphones and microphone: HD280 Pro and e835. You will also receive a letter of recommendation upon successful close of the show. Travel expenses are not included.

You’re also welcome to join Sennheiser for dinner each evening.

Please send a cover letter of why you would like to intern and a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org

 

Intern with Sennheiser at NAMM 2019

Sennheiser & Neumann are seeking one member of SoundGirls to intern with the company during the 2019 NAMM show. Interns will need to be available from January 23 – January 27, 2019.

Dates and Times

Responsibilities

Anaheim Convention Center North

Payment will be a pair of Sennheiser headphones and microphone HD280Pro and e835. You will also receive a letter of recommendation upon successful close of the show.

You’re also welcome to join Sennheiser for dinner each evening and attend The She Rocks Awards on January 25th.

Please send a cover letter of why you would like to intern and a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org

 

Intern with Sennheiser at AES NY 2018

Sennheiser & Neumann are seeking two members of SoundGirls to intern with the company during the 2018 AES NY show. Interns will need to be available from Oct. 16 – 19, 2018

Dates and Times

Responsibilities

AES NY takes place at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center

Payment will be a pair of Sennheiser headphones and microphone:HD280Pro and e835. You will also receive a letter of recommendation upon successful close of the show.

You’re also welcome to join Sennheiser for dinner each evening.

Please send a cover letter of why you would like to intern and a resume to soundgirls@soundgirls.org

 

Keeping It Real

Using psychoacoustics in IEM mixing and the technology that takes it to the next level

SECTION 1

All monitor engineers know that there are many soft skills required in our job – building a trusting relationship with bands and artists is vital for them to feel supported so they can forget about monitoring and concentrate on their job of giving a great performance. But what do you know about how the brain and ears work together to create the auditory response, and how can you make use of it in your mixes?

Hearing is not simply a mechanical phenomenon of sound waves travelling into the ear canal and being converted into electrical impulses by the nerve cells of the inner ear; it’s also a perceptual experience. The ears and brain join forces to translate pressure waves into an informative event that tells us where a sound is coming from, how close it is, whether it’s stationary or moving, how much attention to give to it and whether to be alarmed or relaxed in response. Whilst additional elements of cognitive psychology are also at play – an individual’s personal expectations, prejudices and predispositions, which we cannot compensate for – monitor engineers can certainly make use of psychoacoustics to enhance our mixing chops. Over the space of my next three posts, we’ll look at the different phenomena which are relevant to what we do, and how to make use of them for better monitor mixes.

What A Feeling

Music is unusual in that it activates all areas of the brain. Our motor responses are stimulated when we hear a compelling rhythm and we feel the urge to tap our feet or dance; the emotional reactions of the limbic system are triggered by a melody and we feel our mood shift to one of joy or melancholy; and we’re instantly transported back in time upon hearing the opening bars of a familiar song as the memory centres are activated. Studies have shown that memories can be unlocked in severely brain-damaged people and dementia patients by playing them music they have loved throughout their lives.

The auditory cortex of the brain releases the reward chemical dopamine in response to music – the same potentially addictive chemical which is also released in response to sex, Facebook ‘likes’, chocolate and even cocaine…. making music one of the healthier ways of getting your high. DJs and producers use this release to great effect when creating a build-up to a chorus or the drop in a dance track; in a phenomenon called the anticipatory listening phase, our brains actually get hyped up waiting for that dopamine release when the music ‘resolves’, and it’s manipulating this pattern of tension and release which creates that Friday night feeling in your head.

Missing Fundamentals

Our brains are good at anticipating what’s coming next and filling in the gaps, and a phenomenon known as ‘missing fundamentals’ demonstrates a trick which our brains play on our audio perception. Sounds that are not a pure tone (ie a single frequency sine wave) have harmonics. These harmonics are linear in nature: that is, a sound with a root note of 100 Hz will have harmonics at 200, 300, 400, 500 Hz and so on. However, our ears don’t actually need to receive all of these frequencies in order to correctly perceive the chord structure. If you play those harmonic frequencies, and then remove the root frequency (in this case 100Hz), your brain will fill in the gaps and you’ll still perceive the chord in its entirety – you’ll still hear 100Hz even though it’s no longer there. You experience this every time you speak on the phone with a man – the root note of the average male voice is 150Hz, but most phones cannot reproduce below 300Hz. No matter – your brain fills in the gaps and tells you that you’re hearing exactly what you’d expect to hear. So whilst the tiny drivers of an in-ear mould may not physically be able to reproduce the very low fundamental notes of some bass guitars or kick drums, you’ll still hear them as long as the harmonics are in place.

A biased system

Human hearing is not linear – our ear canals and brains have evolved to give greater bias to the frequencies where speech intelligibility occurs. This is represented in the famous Fletcher-Munson equal-loudness curves, and it’s where the concept of A-weighting for measuring noise levels originated. As you can see from the diagram below, we perceive a 62.5 Hz tone to be equal in loudness to a 1 kHz tone, when the 1k tone is actually 30dB SPL quieter.

Similarly, the volume threshold at which we first perceive a sound varies according to frequency. The area of the lowest absolute threshold of hearing is between 1 and 5 kHz; that is, we can detect a whisper of human speech at far lower levels than we detect a frequency outside that window. However, if another sound of a similar frequency is also audible at the same time, we may experience the phenomenon known as auditory masking.

This can be illustrated by the experience of talking with a friend on a train station platform, and then having a train speed by. Because the noise of the train encompasses the same frequencies occupied by speech, suddenly we can no longer clearly hear what our friend is saying, and they have to either shout to be heard or wait for the train to pass: the train noise is masking the signal of the speech. The degree to which the masking effect is experienced is dependent on the individual – some people would still be able to make out what their friend was saying if they only slightly raised their voice, whilst others would need them to shout loudly in order to carry on the conversation.

Masking also occurs in a subtler way. When two sounds of different frequencies are played at the same time, as long as they are sufficiently far apart in frequency two separate sounds can be heard. However, if the two sounds are close in frequency they are said to occupy the same critical bandwidth, and the louder of the two sounds will render the quieter one inaudible. For example, if we were to play a 1kHz tone so that we could easily hear it, and then add a second tone of 1.1kHz at a few dB louder, the 1k tone would seem to disappear. When we mute the second tone, we confirm that the original tone is still there and was there all along; it was simply masked. If we then re-add the 1.1k tone so the original tone vanishes again, and slowly sweep the 1.1k tone up the frequency spectrum, we will hear the 1k tone gradually ‘re-appear’: the further away the second tone gets from the original one, the better we will hear them as distinct sounds.

This ability to hear frequencies distinctly is known as frequency resolution, which is a type of filtering that takes place in the basilar membrane of the cochlea. When two sounds are very close in frequency, we cannot distinguish between them and they are heard as a single signal. Someone with hearing loss due to cochlea damage will typically struggle to differentiate between consonants in speech.

This is an important phenomenon to be aware of when mixing. The frequency range to which our hearing is most attuned, 500Hz – 5k, is where many of our musical inputs such as guitars, keyboards, strings, brass and vocals reside; and when we over-populate this prime audio real estate, things can start to get messy. This is where judicious EQ’ing becomes very useful in cleaning up a mix – for example, although a kick drum mic will pick up frequencies in that mid-range region, that’s not where the information for that instrument is. The ‘boom’ and ‘thwack’ which characterise a good kick sound are lower and higher than that envelope, so by creating a deep EQ scoop in that mid-region, we can clear out some much-needed real estate and un-muddy the mix. Incidentally, because of the non-linear frequency response of our hearing, this also tricks the brain into thinking the sound is louder and more powerful than it is. The reverse is also true; rolling off the highs and lows of a signal creates a sense of front-to-back depth and distance.

It’s also worth considering whether all external track inputs are necessary for a monitor mix – frequently pads and effects occupy this territory, and whilst they may add to the overall picture on a large PA, are they helping or hindering when it comes to creating a musical yet informative IEM mix?

Next time: In the second part of this psychoacoustics series we’ll examine the Acoustic Reflex Threshold, the Haas effect, and how our brains and ears work together to determine where a sound is coming from; and we’ll explore what it all means for IEM mixes.

 

Systematic Inequality, Part 2: Culture, Culture, Culture

In my last blog post, I discussed the ways in which culture influences the media that we create, consume, and how we interpret it. Expanding upon that this month, I will explore how culture affects every aspect of our lives. Every single thing that humans do is cultural. We are a product of the culture that we are raised in – but that’s not to discount the existence of free will. This means that everything that we do, from what that we eat, to the way we eat is all culturally defined. And there is more variation than you might initially think. The first time I experienced any amount of “culture shock” was a couple of hours after I landed in Romania. Thinking my Romanian upbringing would have prepared me for anything, I was utterly taken aback when my well-meaning family members ordered Pizza for my sister and I. The pizza had a whole fish on it, and everyone ate the pizza with a fork and knife. After spending over ten hours on a plane, and adding the jet lag, I was actually shocked by this (literally) fishy pizza. My family found my shock amusing. To them, fish pizza is normal; and eating pizza with your hands, well that’s borderline barbaric.

Culture is what tells us what “normal” is. The process of learning this “normal”  is called socialization; which describes a variety of processes that can range from overt to so subtle you probably didn’t even notice it. An overt process would be something like a company handbook with a list of values and typically a page that you sign agreeing to act accordingly while on the clock. More subtle socialization could be in the form of negative repercussions and/or positive reinforcement. For example, I have developed the mouth of a sailor. As a complete coincidence (it wasn’t a coincidence), my cursing increased drastically when I started working as a stagehand. My cursing was positively received and therefore reinforced, while the use of what I like to call “SAT vocab words” was met with mostly confusion and a dash of resentment for being pretentious. That’s how I learned what sort of vernacular (that would be an example of a pretentious “SAT Vocab Word”) was “normal” for stagehands. It happened pretty quickly, and I didn’t really notice until my cursing started to bleed into my personal life.

 

One of the “normal”s of the live event industry is the predominantly male workforce. When I show up on the show site and am the only woman, that is normal for me and everyone in the room. In a different cultural context, this lack of a female presence would be very noticeable. However, we in the industry have been socialized into this normalcy. Male is the default and female being different, creates a situation in which I arrive on show site and I am the other. I feel this on the daily from comments about “you’re a young and competent tech, and a woman!”  to dress codes and apparel not taking the possibility of women into account.

The inherent masculinity of the industry is yet another roadblock that women face. Recognizing these cultural norms, and then challenging them is an essential step in achieving a more equal workspace. We need to actively socialize current and incoming industry members in a manner that includes more than just white men. Changing the whole culture of an industry will be a long and arduous process, but it will be well worth it. Studies have shown again and again that more diverse and inclusive workplaces are more productive. So if the ethical standpoint that women are human beings that deserve to be treated equally isn’t enough of an argument for you – there is an economic incentive as well.

As always, work hard, do your best, and make yourself proud.

Tia Azimioara interest in live sound engineering began while studying the clarinet at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where she took a class on music technology. She would go on to double major in Anthropology and Classics at Lawrence University while working as a sound tech. She googled and youtubed her way through shows and concerts. She fell in love with the fast-paced, trial by fire world of live production. After graduating she began working any live events that she could. After two years she has completely fallen in love with her varied and fast-paced life; today you can find her doing anything from slinging deck at a concert venue in Doc Martens, to working as in IT specialist for a corporate event in a suit. She is not sure what the future holds, but would like to use her training in anthropology to help make the industry more inclusive for everyone. 

 

 

What’s Your Plan B?

So you’ve wanted to be a sound engineer since you were a little kid. You studied hard in school, slaved away as an enthusiastic, overworked and underpaid intern, and no matter what the setbacks, you remained determined to succeed. In such a competitive industry, you’d think you’d need to be focused on nothing but sound, but what happens when your dream gets derailed? It’s easy to believe that pure grit is enough to get to the top and stay there, but there are so many factors that can throw your best-laid plans out the window. The earlier you put contingencies in place, the softer the blow will be if something does go wrong. Believe me; I’ve been there.

Firstly, I can’t stress enough how important insurance is. It seems so expensive when you’re starting out, and you’re barely earning enough to pay the bills, but do not treat it as optional. The world of live sound is a high-pressure, fast-paced, physical environment and accidents happen. Your number one priority should be public liability insurance. This won’t keep you out of jail if you are criminally negligent, but it helps if you get sued. Even if you didn’t do anything wrong, could you afford to prove it in court? Plus, any company worth its salt won’t hire a freelancer without it. Most unions and professional bodies can offer PLI for their members at a discounted rate, just make sure whatever policy you get covers you for all eventualities. If you are employed, check that your boss has you covered, don’t just presume.

Next is injury and illness insurance. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to carry on working if you aren’t in full health. Even if you live in a country with good social security, there can be a long, frustrating application process that can leave you without any income for months, especially if you’re a freelancer. It can also be tough to show that you are unwell enough to qualify. For example, if you break your leg, you can’t load in gear or tip a desk, but as long as your hearing is intact, the person in the social security office may not see why you can’t work. Get a good injury and illness insurance policy from a provider that understands the nature of your job. It’s tempting to skip the illness part when you’re young, thinking it’s so unlikely to affect you, but you should seriously consider it.

I was 28 when I got ill. I went from being absolutely fine to having to leave work halfway through a load-in within a week. It turned out that I had gastroesophageal reflux disease, which is the term for severe, chronic heartburn. It doesn’t sound serious, but I got unbearable stabbing pains in my stomach any time I tried to lift anything. If left untreated it can lead to oesophageal cancer. It took 18 months to get the message through to my doctor that taking an antacid here and there and avoiding lifting wasn’t an option for me, get referred to a specialist, get officially diagnosed, have surgery and recover. If I had known that it would take so long, I would have taken a break from sound and done something else, but it felt like everything might get fixed at the next appointment. Of course, I didn’t have illness cover. I was 28! I stubbornly kept working as much as I could, but every gig hurt, and it made my condition worse. It also meant I wouldn’t have qualified for unemployment benefits if I had applied.

You can do everything in your power to pursue your goals, and you can treat your body as a temple, but there are some things you can’t predict or control. Even if you’re lucky enough to stay healthy, you might have to take time out to look after a loved one. You might need to move somewhere with fewer jobs available, or the work might simply dry up. Our industry is frustratingly fickle, and I’ve seen talented, hardworking engineers lose long-term clients just because their new management wants to use their own team, or someone offers their services cheaper. It’s a smart move to make as many friends as possible and have a diverse client base, so you aren’t relying on one band or company too heavily, and you have an excellent network to call on when times are hard. Still, there will almost definitely be a point when you’ll need to make a living doing something else, even if it is temporary. Live sound, especially touring, is unlike any other job and can leave you institutionalised and stuck. What transferable skills do you have? What else are you passionate about? You need to sit down and seriously assess how you could make a living outside of sound. That Etsy shop you’ve meant to open to sell nose warmers for elephants isn’t going to cut it.

I know I’ve been pretty pessimistic here, but there are ways to stave off disaster if the unthinkable does happen. If you realise your skills are lacking, start working on them now. We’re lucky enough to live in a time where we can study online from anywhere in the world, whenever it suits us. Learn a language, learn how to code, figure out how those social media celebrities make a living. Find something you enjoy, treat it as a hobby, and if the worst happens, you know you have something to fall back on. It could even earn you some good money on the side in the meantime, and you can feel smug in the knowledge you’ll continue to do great things, no matter what life throws at you.

 

Daniela Seggewiss – Time Flies When You Are Doing What You Love

Daniela Seggewiss can’t believe that she has been working in Live Sound for ten years, because time flies when you are doing what you love. She initially caught the live sound bug when she was 13 and attended her first concert.

Daniela grew up surrounded by music, with music always being played around her house and she learned to play piano and drums, but she never could put her finger on what fascinated her about music. Until “I visited my first concert (One-Day 70ies Rock Festival – Sweet, Slade, Suzi Q, Hollies). Seeing that technical side of live music was the missing piece of the puzzle. I remember the one moment I realised I wanted to work in audio. I was standing next to monitor world watching crew, band and audience interacting with each other, that magic moment when music connects people and lets them forget their troubles. I knew there and then, age 13, that that’s what I want to be when I grow up, I wanted to be part of creating that magic. Following that fateful moment, I spent my time figuring out what career options there are in audio and how to make it happen for me.”

Her family was not quite sure how to deal with Daniela’s choice for a career, mainly as they had no idea what it meant to be a sound engineer and could only imagine the world as one of Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll. They did their best to support Daniella, while her teachers and career advisors in high school tried to stir her into more conservative alternatives.

After finishing her A-Levels (high school), Daniela would apprentice as an event technician at a German national broadcasting station, learning about sound, lights, and rigging. This provided her a solid foundation in audio knowledge and stagecraft. She would eventually start out in audio taking care of the live sound for WDR’s (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) events in Cologne, Germany.

“Our team of three handled live audio and projection for every in-house event from planning to overseeing or operating the event itself. The events ranged from conferences to literature readings, and award shows to orchestra and big band performances and the occasional jazz or rock show.”

She would spend her summers working in Ireland for a festival, as an audio engineer on the second stage and the main stage audio tech. “My day started midday with the 2nd stage soundcheck followed by the gig and me running to the main stage to make the load in for the evening gig.”

Daniela would eventually leave Germany, to study and work in Leeds. She is a registered freelance sound engineer and was able to work in venues throughout Leeds. Rotating between four venues, with different size rooms from 100 -500 capacity. More often than not, she was the only tech working the gig, doing monitors from FOH and assisting the bands with the backline.

“The venue I spent most my time was the Cockpit in Leeds, which had three rooms in three arches under a railway bridge with aluminum stuck to the arched ceiling, literally a gig in a tin can. A shift in there would involve several power cuts, water dripping off the ceiling and stage invasions by the whole audience. After surviving that nothing a gig throws at me nowadays takes me by surprise.

The Cockpit main room had a monitor desk, and most engineers did not like mixing monitors there, so I got that shift regularly and figured out quickly that I prefer that side of the multicore.”

Working at those venues, led to working with a local music festival, Bingley Music Live. It is a three-day, 15,000 capacity festival. She started as 2nd stage audio tech and worked her way up to main stage monitor engineer.

She currently works mainly as a freelance monitor engineer for the bands The Sweet and Opeth. Her year fills ups quickly between the two groups. She fills in the gaps with festivals and local gigs in Leeds.

In 2017, she finished her BSc from Leeds Beckett University (Hons) in Music Technology, which has increased her knowledge of recording. She continues to learn by taking part in manufacturer training, d&b, Shure, Midas, etc. to make sure she stays up to date with the newest technology.

Her long-term goals are to start working with sound companies, so she can work her way up to working on larger-size tours. Although she does enjoy the medium size productions, being part of a small team that is family. And for now, feels that she could Mix Bands and See the World forever.

What do you like best about your job?

It’s two things for me.

The touring family & seeing the world! The friends I’ve made on the road from as early as that first concert are family to me! The part I like best about these deep friendships is that it does not matter how often we see each other, whenever we do, we can pick up right where we left off, and it feels like we haven’t been apart at all! I have “family” all over the world now, which is very handy considering I love to travel, too.

My family always traveled a lot. We own a campervan and would just go to the coast for a weekend. I always loved going on trips, exploring new places, meeting new people. Now I get paid to do that.

What do you like least?

It is the travel pace that I like least. I don’t even mind long flights too much, yet anyway. Give me another ten years, and I’ll probably hate them, too. But for now, it’s not having enough time to explore a gorgeous part of the world due to the brief time we spend in one place. I can tell you my bucket list of travel destinations is becoming longer and longer instead of getting checked off.

What if any obstacles or barriers have you faced?

The most significant obstacle for me was to find the way into the industry, especially into the rock’n’roll side of things, as there was no clear career path that I could follow and come out as a sound engineer.

I was very lucky to make connections early on with a network ever-expanding. However, even with some contacts, I felt like I did not have many options after finishing school as there are no sound companies in or near my hometown.

However, working through these obstacles confirmed that I was really passionate about becoming a sound engineer. And my way through the industry starting in broadcasting, followed by tiny clubs to medium venues and finally festivals and touring is exactly the “education” every sound engineer should experience. You have to grow in the industry! It is a hands-on job that has to be learned through hands-on experience.

I know there is still a lot of discrimination happening in this male-dominated industry. Either it never really happened to me, or I just didn’t care.

The local crew that thinks I must be the merch girl, just makes me chuckle nowadays. However, I have encountered local engineers, who thought I didn’t know what I was doing. In most of those situations, my touring crew family was more upset by the situation than me. It was only encouragement for me to show these guys that I know exactly what I was doing. And the band gave me the thumbs up at the end of the show was the best thing to shut these people up.

How have you dealt with them?

I feel like I just run through any wall. It was in my head that I would be a sound engineer, so any dead-end or obstacle was ran over.

Thinking about it now I realise that there were a lot of “No’s and “You cannot do that” involved, but I was so determined that I just kept going until I found a “Yes.” I came out the other end stronger and even more determined. So my determination and passion for this job help me with all the obstacles.

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

Never give up! Be persistent.

Your best shot is to get to know sound engineers in your area, your local venue. I know this is the cliche answer. Networking! It is still weird for me to know to advertise myself and network to get my name around but that is where jobs come from, at least as a freelancer.

What helps me is to remember that we are all tech geeks and love to talk about it. Also, most engineers, however big their current gig might be, started out exactly where you are right now and provided the timing is right, are happy to give you advice!

As there is no clear, academic career path to become a live sound engineer, persistence, and professionalism, from the beginning is the key, as you never know which one of those 1000 people you talked to about sound might get you your first/next job. It was the monitor engineer I met when I was thirteen that got me my first job in a venue when I moved to the UK, ten years later.

Must have skills?

Such a simple question it seems but oh so complex.

The big picture:

Technical understanding – managing all those buttons

Music – it’s all about the music, you have to have a feel for music to understand the musician’s needs and requests and translate that into technical terms.

People – in my opinion the skill that’s the reason you get/ lose you the job

You’ll spend a lot of time with your band & crew so be easy to be around.

Especially as a monitor engineer you are working with people and need to be able to understand them almost on a psychic level, translate whatever they throw at you, in context of their daily mood, to a sound.

On a more practical level, it has to be Tidiness!!!

A tidy stage doesn’t only look good and professional but also you make your life so much easier for changeovers and fault finding. And this applies to 50 cap bar gigs to arena shows.

What other jobs have you held?

I am proud to say that I have managed to work as a sound engineer all my adult life. I was lucky enough to make some important connections early on and had that little bit of luck to be in the right place at the right time, so whenever one job opportunity ceased another opened up and I grabbed it tight and did not let go.

Do you ever feel pressure to be more technical than your male counterparts?

Not really. I am German and a perfectionist, which makes for a highly efficient combination. I demand a lot from myself. So no male counterpart, may he be oh so ignorant of my skills, has ever topped the expectations I have towards myself.

Is there anything about paying your dues you wish you would have paid more attention to that came back to haunt you later in your career?

On a more general level. Maybe. I wish I would have been more in the moment in the past couple of years. So many great things happened and kinda just flew past, again coming back to this rapid pace of life.  I am proud that I have grabbed every opportunity that presented itself to me if anything it has been my private life that had to pay the dues so far.

I actually regret not continuing to play music regularly … I can still play a bit piano, taught myself some chords on guitar and love playing drums but I wish I would have continued to improve my playing … well, it’s never too late for that I guess.

Favorite equipment

I love DiGiCos. I seem to agree with their workflow.

I tour with a SD9 whenever I get the chance, and since I first used one, it felt like any given function I was looking for was exactly where I thought it would be.

I also always carry my RF Explorer which saved me and my IEM loving artists several times.

Parting Words

Keep calm! It took some club shows with power cuts and over-enthusiastic young bands knocking the PA over to teach me always to keep calm.

I bought my RF Explorer after getting an Arabian prayer through a GTR wireless, luckily only mid soundcheck. I did not want to take that chance ever again though.

Thinking outside the box.

The heaviest thunderstorm I have seen to this day at an outdoor gig in the Czech Republic taught me to think outside the box and just make it work with whatever you have available. That day the whole stage & backstage was flooded. But in good old “the show must go on” fashion we found as many towels as we could in an attempt to dry the stage and played the show with pedalboards on towels. Having learned a lesson, we played a show in Norway right after heavy rain with all pedalboards and wireless in zipper bags.

In the end, it all comes down to the ability to make it happen, which in my opinion is one of the main characteristics of the live sound / live concert industry. There is no second chance. We have the one chance to get it right so if something goes wrong we look around and use whatever we can find around us to make it happen!

Find More Profiles on The Five Percent

Profiles of Women in Audio

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

 

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