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Mixing With a Newborn

While I was pregnant (The Audio Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy) my plan was to take off a couple of months off after the baby was born then go back to work part-time for a while. My husband, who also works in audio, planned to work from our home studio. We figured between the two of us we wouldn’t need a babysitter or daycare. How hard can it be to mix and watch a baby?

Things didn’t quite go as planned.

Before having a baby, I thought I’d be better prepared for parenthood than some of my non-industry friends because I had survived studio life. I’ve worked the night shift for years, and most of my career has been irregular schedules and over 40 hours a week. What I discovered, though, is in my pre-parenthood days working a double shift meant you deserve a day off and a cocktail. With a newborn, Golden Time (working beyond 16 hours) is just called Monday. And Tuesday. And there’s no weekend or days off. The recovery time you get really depends on how much help you have – and the sleep patterns (or non-sleeping patterns) of your baby.

It’s true you can have time to yourself while an infant sleeps but in actuality that “free time” can quickly get taken up by basic needs like eating, showering, or catching up on sleep. My grandiose plans for bringing Baby J to work at night or updating my plugins while he slept was never even an option (although some parents do manage to do it!)

The first work project I took on didn’t go as planned. It was a Sundance Film when Baby J was two months old. It took me two weeks to do EIGHT HOURS of sound design. I expected it to be difficult but it went so much deeper than just being sleep-deprived! I later learned about factors like mom brain or mom fog (a real condition due to hormone changes during and after pregnancy). It makes it difficult to focus long periods or remember details. Also, women’s brains change attention when a hungry baby cries (which doesn’t happen to men)  The two combined make it incredibly difficult to get into a flow or stay focused on a single task. Like everything else, it gets better over time.

After ten weeks of maternity leave, I went back to work part-time. I could have easily taken off another month, but it was nice to have a few nights a week to talk about compressors and upmix plugins instead of diapers and swaddles. By six months I felt comfortable working from home on occasion. It was only possible with someone else handling child care (husband, babysitter, etc.). Now that Baby J is a year old it’s much more manageable to take on more complicated gigs or even gigs out of town.

I did learn some things that saved me as a working parent:

I used to wonder how I would manage to be a parent and having a career or if it’s even possible. It’s definitely possible – it just takes being flexible, patience, and accepting things won’t always go to plan. There’s also times you’ll have to put your family first or have someone available who can in those moments (like an unexpected doctor visit or illness).

The one thing I didn’t expect about becoming a parent is how rewarding it is. I’m still proud of my career accomplishments, but they don’t carry the same significance as they did before. Watching someone smile the first time or recognize that the sound of an airplane means there’s something in the sky is pretty amazing. It’s a challenge but worth the effort.

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Breaking the Rules that Don’t Exist

Or How to Have Fun at Work

There are so many rules that as adults we must follow. Things we can get in real trouble for if we don’t pay our taxes, but then there are other rules such as eating a salad for lunch. Who came up with that rule anyway? This can be a stigma for women – all we eat are salads all the time. Well good for you if you really do, but it’s ok to eat the burger too.  Now I get where the taxes come in, but who decided salad was the prime meal, a sundae for lunch wouldn’t hurt and it’s a whole lot more fun, too!

Anyway, things around the world are a bit rough right now so I thought I would write about a way to build in some fun. Especially since so many of us work long hours; we need to make sure to balance the seriousness of life and work with some fun. For instance, just the other day I got into work and immediately there was too much to do with not enough time. Story of our lives sometimes, right? Well, when things finally calmed down and I got to start wrapping up the crazy week my coworker, and I were a little burnt out. We decided to add a little fun into the end of our workday.  The best part was there was a third person in the office that had no idea why there were peanut butter cups and paper airplanes flying across the room. (Sorry Ann!) But, it was a blast, and we laughed super hard about it, which made it easier to make it to the end of the day and week. Something so simple made a rough day a little easier to finish.  We decided to break the so-called work rules and had a little fun. Something so simple can make such a difference.

A few years ago, I had a fantastic speaker come through my venue where he shared their philosophy with me. His name is Jason Kotecki, and he is all about breaking the rules of life and bringing some fun back into every day. Jason calls this fighting Adultitis. You can check out his work here http://escapeadulthood.com/blog/ for some inspiration and for further explanation of his idea about breaking the adult rules that don’t matter and bringing some fun back to life and work.

It can be simple things such as paper airplanes to things like trying your hand at stand-up comedy during a soundcheck or at least switching it up.  Next time you are about to say check one, two, change it up, try some of your best movie lines. Or something like wearing a bright color one day instead of black, have breakfast food for dinner, dye your hair purple, and so much more.  I personally like to break the unspoken rule of not having fun at work.

A while back my crew adopted a cartoon movie figurine. We named it Rex and decided to hide it within our staff-only areas for our co-workers to find. People got a kick out of looking for Rex and hiding it again. People would see it on top of work lights or buried under cables, and it always brought a smile to their face, and they would quickly hide it again. It was something so simple that the entire team had fun.  What have you done to break the adult rules? How do you have fun or be silly once in a while?

On Jason’s website, he has a saying –  “Don’t settle for the life you’ve been told to live. Create the one you were made for.” I feel this is a true motto that many SoundGirls can relate to; I know I do as I have worked hard to get where I am today.  Women are told every day what they should be or how they should act, but as SoundGirls we are following our passions and creating the lives we want to live.

 

A Good Attitude Will Keep You Going

And Zero Tolerance for Sexual Harassment

I recently embarked on my first tour ever. Yes, I’m 27, and yes I’ve been playing in bands and making my music for over a decade. I’ve done long drives and weekend “mini-tours,” but I have never been on a real tour. And then this September, it happened!

Before I left, I was feeling grateful that I was going to go on tour this year and not last year, or the year before, or the year before. I had finally reached a point where I stopped caring about what other people thought of me. My anxiety about making an ass of myself in the years between absolute-and-total-beginner and goddess-of-pop-and-production-and-also-successful-film-composer—aka my ultimate dream—had pretty much diminished once I turned 27. I knew that this was going to be a very valuable asset on my first tour because my band was the opener for two other well-known bands, our budget was next to nothing, and at the end of the day, it was entirely possible that the headliners’ fans wouldn’t like us. The thick skin was a welcome change. My newfound penchant for not giving a shit, paired with years of work that had led to this moment was, without a doubt, feeling pretty good right about then.

Another reason I was glad to be touring later rather than sooner: I had worked in restaurants a lot, and my restaurant “skills” that I had previously seen as invaluable were suddenly feeling extremely valuable:

But one of the things I had not foreseen was how much my live set design* affected the entire flow of my band’s setup, our soundcheck, our show, and any challenges that came up along the way. My live setup was lightweight, looked good, and got the job done. At the onset of my first-ever national tour, my live set consisted of:

Drum World:

Bass World:

My World:

The music we were performing contained synth riffs and all sorts of expressive percussion sounds, as well as swells and other emotive drops that were integral to the songs. After tweaking frequencies and decibel levels according to the feedback of a number of trusted sources, I was proud of what I was going to be working with on stage every night, and I was excited about the live musicians I’d chosen to play with me.

However, midway through our tour, I had to fire one of the musicians I’d been so excited about. The reason? Sexual harassment of underage fans.***

That this happened mere weeks before the Harvey Weinstein stor(ies) broke and dominated our news feeds. Of course this person tried to defend himself with comments about how “no physical harm was done” and how “the Internet isn’t really real.” (Yes, these are real quotes from a real adult who was a working professional. And no, they had no bearing on my decision to promptly remove this person from my tour.) By the time he got home, our entire nation was fuming over sexual harassment scandals. Perhaps it’s silly of me to think that he learned his lesson by reading the news? I’m still hopeful.

Anyway. My remaining bandmate and I were five shows deep into a ten-show tour, and were suddenly faced with a huge task: play a set of (relatively complex) pop music for an audience of about 1,000 people in an expressive and engaging fashion, all while being short one musician.

So how did My World and Bass World pull it off?

First of all, I was lucky. The Ableton project folder I had saved to my brand new, purchased-on-credit solid-state laptop**** happened to include the Ableton session I had used months before for a couple of impromptu two-person shows. The day after we fired our rogue drummer, I fired up said session in the minivan and promptly began adding any bells and whistles I believed we were missing in his absence. This consisted mostly of drums tracks and one-hits that I had to mildly adjust: some pocket issues here, some EQ issues there. I made a decision to add a bitcrusher effect to any drum tracks that felt too “acoustic” to play on the house speakers. For those who don’t already know, a bitcrusher is a rudimentary distortion that digitally alters resolution. It adds a bit of a prickly sound to sounds that don’t have much prickle. Too much bitcrusher and things can easily get chaotic, but the right amount and things sound more interesting. Put another way: drum tracks that sounded too angelic were transformed into a sample that sounds something like the lo-fi quality of Sleigh Bells or Crystal Castles. (Side note: I still haven’t decided if I am still a Crystal Castles fan after member Alice Glass’ public statement about her prior bandmate’s extremely abusive behavior toward her. Considering Crystal Castles is the work of both of them, is it more supportive to engage with her work, or to denounce his?)

After this brief editing, my bass player/backing vocalist (who herself is a talented producer and songwriter) and I rehearsed in our minivan while our photographer/tour manager drove us to our next show. Our rehearsal was my laptop, my Push, and us singing and playing air guitar and bass.

Our first show without a drummer I told the audience to “take care of each other.” Our second one I told the audience “we used to have a drummer but they had to be sent home.”

I was under the impression that something was wrong. But, as it turned out, I was the only person on the tour that had that impression. Myself, along with my team, had communicated with the tour team about what had happened, and we were scooted off with nothing but blessings and anecdotes from similarly sad experiences. For the remainder of our short but sweet tour, new fans poured their hearts out to us, took photos, purchased autographed posters and t-shirts, all without so much as a mention of the absence of a live drummer.

So what was at play when I pressed play each and every remaining night on that tour?

First: and foremost: songwriting. Before this tour I’d spent years working on singing styles, lyrics and character perspective concepts that (finally) seemed relevant and original to a wider audience.

Second: our live setup was simple, but it was also capable and flexible. I’d never anticipated needing to let a core player go in the middle of a tour, but I could when I needed to. My remaining bandmate and I were at a slight advantage because we had played a two-person set before (albeit to a much smaller and drunker audience), Also the fact that we were the first of three acts meant that it was totally okay that our setup was simpler than the other bands’. But, we were also open to the objective criticism of what we would be missing without a live drummer, namely dynamics and the energy of another person on stage with us. So we made up for that with some lightweight native plugins and mad stage presence. We had so much stage all to ourselves now! So we used every square inch of it to keep energy high.

We did not see any decrease in merch sales or new fans. We did not need to field any questions about the absence of a drummer. Anyone who spoke to us about our music was excited and wanted to know when they could come to support us again. Most surprisingly, myself and everyone on my team took it in stride. The weight of sexual harassment among our personnel had been dealt with swiftly and strictly. We had exercised morals we lived by, and now we had shows to play.

So. What’s my point?

Sexual harassment is never tolerated, even when the harasser’s role is theoretically indispensable. Make the most of what you already know. And most importantly, be prepared for anything. A good attitude will keep you going.

*Music Directing is the design of artists’ live setups and is a profession unto itself. I will be sure to devote a whole blog post to this topic soon.

**In the past I have played with having my own vocal rig. At one point I ran my vocals through Ableton Live because I anticipated the possibility of wanting to play with effects and looping in real-time without having to purchase expensive pedals. At another point, I invested in the TC Helicon VoiceLive Touch which afforded me amazing on-stage effects. However its signal flow also provided a great deal of noise and confusion, usually from front-of-house people. Ultimately it didn’t do the job I wanted, so I sold it.

***Again, this story will eventually be a blog post unto itself.

****If you are going to use a computer on stage (especially one that you interact with while you are performing), it needs to be a solid-state drive laptop. Traditional spinning drives can skip when they feel vibrations from drums, stage monitors, your own body accidentally knocking your computer over. And you don’t want that!

Sign SoundGirls Open Letter to the Professional Audio Community & Music to Address Sexual Harassment

Find Information on Sexual Harassment in the Music Industry

10 Ways To Make the Most of the Quiet Season

The end of the year will be here before we know it. December-January is often a bit of a quiet season for the sound industry, so for my last blog for 2017, I’ve put together a list of ten highly recommended activities to make the most of it.

Step away from the faders.

Rest. It’s been a busy year; you need it. Start the next year refreshed, not exhausted.

Get some exercise

…that’s not just running cables. If it’s cold on your side of the planet, wrap up appropriately and remind yourself what weather feels like. If it’s warm, sit in the sun and take the fluorescent edge off your studio tan

Be an audience member

Watch a play, see your favourite band, take in a film without trying to analyse the convolution reverb. Take your sound ears off for a bit and remember what it feels like to just enjoy a great piece of art.

Do a career stocktake

Look back at the work you’ve done this year. Which projects took you closer to your career goals? Which ones took you further away from your goals? Which were a side-step? Use this to figure out what kind of work you want to do more and less. Maybe you’ll find it’s time for a brand new set of goals altogether.

Have a bit of a tidy-up

The quiet season is a perfect time to do the tedious but essential maintenance that you put off when you were busy with tours and projects. Software upgrades, backups and archiving, PAT tests, clean-ups, and clear-outs. Start the new year with something resembling a tidy studio/working space and a clean system.

Get educated

Dust off that online course, podcast series or webinar that you never quite got around to watching. Time spent investing in your skills is never time wasted.

Polish up your portfolio

If it’s been a while since you updated your CV or your showreel isn’t showcasing your very best work, you’ll need a refresh. If you’re planning to target a different area of the industry, or a different country, in the new year, make sure you have a portfolio that’s tailored accordingly. Resources for Resumes and Social Media

Say thank you

If you have a mentor, remarkable colleague or someone who’s given you a great opportunity this year, this is a perfect time to say thank you and tell them how much you value their support. It’s simple, it doesn’t have to cost much (or anything), and it will be appreciated.
Indulge in some celebrations

Reflect on your achievements and take a moment to acknowledge what you’ve learned and created. You’ve done good work, and you deserve to celebrate it. Glass of seasonal refreshment is recommended.

On behalf of the UK SoundGirls Chapter, thanks to all our members for being part of our SoundGirls community this year. Cheers to the year to come!

Recommended Reading

Surviving the Slow Season

Live Fast, Stay Young

 

Live Fast, Stay Young!

A former reprobate’s guide to getting healthier on the road

Being a professional gypsy can be a lot of fun, but let’s face it, it’s not always conducive to optimum health. I lived an unhealthy life when I first started touring – in fact I had every bad habit available – but over the years I’ve figured out ways to love life on the road and look after myself at the same time. Here are the good-living tricks I’ve picked up along the way – I hope they give you some ideas if you’re trying to take better care of yourself!

Drink and drugs

Let’s start with the obvious. A lot of us drink more than is wise – it’s all too easy to get on the bus and have a few beers after a long day, and Roadie Friday can get messy as we all know. But even if you don’t get wasted on a regular basis, it’s a good idea to give your body a rest and have a few alcohol-free-days a week. It’s easier if there’s something healthy on hand that you like to drink instead – coconut water, kombucha, decaf and herbal teas are good, and I’m also a fan of alcohol-free beers. Sometimes you just want that ‘job well done’ feeling of a nice cold one, and there are more and more coming on the market these days.

As for cigarettes and drugs? There’s no middle ground really – you know what to do if you and your body want to stay friends. I found Allen Carr’s ‘Easy Way’ book a massive help in stopping smoking, and his stopping drinking one also altered my habits without me even trying. A great incentive to change bad habits is stashing the money you would have spent and treat yourself to something cool as an end-of-tour present instead!

Food

It’s usually relatively easy to eat well if you have tour catering, but it can be hit and miss if you don’t. Even with catering there are great and less-great options, so just be mindful and make the best choices you can – it’s never going to be perfect, but go for the most nutritious thing on offer. Juicers make frequent appearances in catering these days, so take advantage – use plenty of vegetables and not too much fruit to keep the sugar down. (I like to compete with myself to make the ultimate disgusto-juice – greens, beetroot, ginger, the hardcore stuff – the worse it tastes, the better it must be for you, right?!) If you’re at the mercy of local catering, which can be good and can be awful, then it’s helpful to have an emergency stash of healthy stuff. I keep things like nuts, protein bars, oatcakes, etc. in my tool drawers for bad-catering days – and in my suitcase as well, to stop me from monstering the overpriced hotel Pringles when I check in, and I’m ravenous!

I’m always hungry after load-out, and it can be hard to resist the temptation of stuffing my face with whatever’s going. I learnt a great healthy touring trick on a bus where some people wanted the usual load-out pizzas, and some wanted a change. We had a chat with production, and they agreed that we could halve the amount of pizza, and use the remainder of the budget for different things that we would put on the runner’s list. That worked brilliantly. We had a selection of items like vegetable crudites, hummus, nuts, crispbreads, dips, avocados, dark chocolate, etc.; whatever we fancied within reason and budget, and everyone was happy – it’s much easier to resist the siren call of cheesy carbs when there’s an alternative! If that’s not an option, you could buy your stash of healthier load-out snacks for the bus. Another favourite trick is eating light before the show and boxing up some of my dinner – sure, eating late at night isn’t ideal, but being realistic I know I’ll always want something, and it’s a better option than piling into the junk food at midnight!

Probiotic /vitamins

I take a multivitamin and supplements as an insurance policy, and I’m a big fan of taking a probiotic tablet each day, particularly when you’re traveling in far-flung places – it can help keep your digestion happy.

Exercise

Loading in and out is a workout in itself, and as we’re on our feet all day the general activity levels on the road are pretty high. Maximise the good work by taking advantage of hotel gyms on days off to get the cardio happening, or if that doesn’t appeal there are lots of online fitness classes, you can stream or download to do in your hotel room. Rubber resistance bands make a great portable alternative to weights, and a skipping rope takes up minimal room in your luggage. Alternatively, take yourself out for a brisk walk around the city, or if you’re near countryside you can join forces with a few others, rent a car and get out into nature!

My yoga practice has been a huge blessing – it’s free, I can do it just about anywhere, and all I need is my mat. I like to do an hour before work, or in the pre or post soundcheck pause. A dressing room is an ideal place, but I get creative – there’s almost always somewhere I can find a quiet spot, even if that’s a stairwell or a corner of the loading bay behind some stacked cases! The key is to remember that anything is better than nothing, and you’ll feel so much better afterwards.

Hide!

Part of the fun of touring is going out for dinner with the gang on a day off, but once in a while, it’s a treat to hibernate. Find a supermarket and get yourself a roadie buffet, or have some room service, watch a movie or box-set, chill out and have a luxurious early night!

And relax….

Guided relaxations are a lovely way to help you fall asleep and are a great entry point for meditation with all the associated benefits of stress reduction and improved sleep. You could try one of the many Youtube guided relaxations or podcasts that are available for free or download an app that you can listen to on headphones in your bunk. (This has the bonus of drowning out the collective farting and snoring.)

Overall, be inventive and experiment! Rome wasn’t built in a day, but just making one or two changes can make a big difference to how you feel every day, and help you to live fast and stay young!

When Music and Science Collide – Darcy Proper

 

Darcy Proper became the first woman engineer to win the GRAMMY for the Best Surround Sound Album category in 2008 for Donald Fagen’s “Morph the Cat” album. Darcy not only achieved these despite being a minority in her field, but she also accomplished these while she lived thousands of miles away from the center of the American music scene. Unlike many engineers based in New York or Hollywood, Darcy Proper’s mastering headquarters was located in Belgium and The Netherlands for three of her four Grammy wins. She has just recently returned to the U.S. and is currently based in central New York.

Studies have shown that there are less than 10% of women working in the audio engineering field. With the world of sound encompassing a vastly wide array of disciplines, this could range from working in a commercial studio as a recording engineer, doing post-production for film/TV, to touring with artists as a live sound reinforcement engineer, among others. Not often discussed, however, is this small specialized field called Mastering.

Working within the confines of an acoustically precise studio, fitted with top-of-the-line monitoring speakers ranging from stereo to a 5.1 surround setup (or more), mastering engineers are responsible for the final crucial step in the audio post-production process. Often considered an elusive discipline, mastering is distinctly nuanced in both the technical and creative aspect of sound. With this–coupled with the low women-in-audio statistic–one can say that women in mastering may be deemed as unicorns–a rarity in an already male-dominated career path.

This, however, did not prevent mastering engineer Darcy Proper from winning multiple GRAMMY awards in various engineering categories (3 wins & 9 nominations to be exact). Most notably, Darcy Proper became the first female engineer to win the GRAMMY for the Best Surround Sound Album category in 2008 for Donald Fagen’s “Morph the Cat” album. Darcy not only achieved these despite being a minority in her field, she accomplished these while she lived thousands of miles away from the center of the American music scene. Unlike many engineers who are based in New York or Hollywood, Darcy Proper’s current mastering headquarters is located in the Netherlands at Wisseloord Studios.

One may ask how Darcy Proper ever got into the world of mastering in the first place. Here we take a rare glimpse into the world of mastering engineers as seen through Darcy Proper’s own experiences, from her beginnings to the present day.

When music and science collide

Like many sound engineers, Darcy grew up with a passion for music. Wanting to be surrounded by it as much as she could, Darcy spent her childhood in a small town in upstate New York performing with the church and school choirs in addition to her school’s concert band and jazz ensemble. But unlike many aspiring performers, Darcy didn’t yearn for the spotlight. Instead, she preferred to remain in the background with the ensemble, where her stage fright couldn’t get in the way of her love for performing.

Darcy had the makings of a mastering engineer even in her early childhood years, as she would often go through her parents’ entire record collection just listening to music with her headphones all day. “A quick escape from reality”, Darcy shares.

Furthermore, Darcy has always taken pride in her love for learning. Consistently excelling in academics, she was an avid bookworm with a knack for both math and science. This love for learning and music finally came head-to-head when her school hosted a local fundraising concert featuring student-led rock bands. It was during this fundraising concert at the age of 14 when she encountered her first mixing desk–a 12-channel Soundcraft used to run PA for the show. Darcy found that modest mixing board fascinating and it was the catalyst that prompted her to explore this seemingly uncharted world of “audio engineering”. In short, she was hooked and the rest became history.

The journey begins

Knowing full well that she wanted to pursue audio engineering in college, Darcy narrowed her search down to a choice between two schools: Fredonia State University of New York, or New York University (NYU). Fredonia because it offered one of the oldest Sound Recording Technology programs in the state, and NYU because although it had a younger music technology program compared to Fredonia’s, it was situated right in the heart of Manhattan.

Growing up in a small town outside of New York City, Darcy was attracted to life in the Big Apple, much to the dismay of her parents who forbade her from going there to attend NYU. Though her hometown was only a few hours away, it wasn’t unusual for people living there to have never visited the city. To Darcy’s family, New York City was simply an “other”–a gritty foreign place that’s not suitable for a young college student.

Fortunately for Darcy, she was awarded a generous scholarship to pursue her audio engineering studies at NYU. The scholarship easily outweighed the savings of attending college in Fredonia. Ultimately, this was what allowed her to move to New York City and start studying in NYU’s Music Business & Technology program.

Attending NYU’s Music Technology program

When Darcy began her studies in NYU’s Music Technology program at the age of 17, the program admitted a total of roughly 150 students, with only three of them being women. Despite this large gender gap, Darcy did not feel she was treated any differently.

“It didn’t cross my mind [that I was different]. This was something I wanted to do, it was possible to do it, and so I did it…I had more of an issue with my parents not wanting me to go to NYU just because of where it was located. For me, then, that was a bigger hurdle to overcome.”

Starting out with a blank slate going into the Music Technology program, Darcy absorbed all the information she could get her hands on. At this point, Darcy wasn’t aware of all the possible career paths in sound. Being most familiar with live sound reinforcement, she took on a part-time job as an assistant to a live sound engineer. She would assist in shows held in NYU and around various venues in the New York/New Jersey area. Darcy thought then that live sound would be the career path for her. But it didn’t take long for her to discover other career possibilities in sound that seemed to suit her better.

Entering the real world

Upon leaving the academe, Darcy landed her first job as an Assistant Studio Maintenance Technician for Sound Works on West 54th Street. At this point in her career, it finally dawned on her how there truly were not very many women in the audio engineering workforce. But despite the low numbers, the few women Darcy did meet all seemed to do very well in their field.

Being one of the few female sound engineers at this time, Darcy was fortunate enough to have not faced discrimination on a daily basis. She attributes this to several factors, including:

“The low point of the totem pole doesn’t discriminate.”

To Darcy, we all have to start at the beginning. And while you’re at the low end of this totem pole, you’re simply so busy trying to figure out what you’re doing, there isn’t a lot of time to dwell on grander issues besides doing the job well. Darcy was too determined to do her best and was so focused on making it through the day without doing anything stupid (not always successfully, she adds), that this helped thwart any concern of hers about people’s criticisms.

“I was lucky enough to end up in places where my colleagues and employers didn’t have an issue with [my gender].  I suppose if they had, they wouldn’t have hired me in the first place.  In any case, when you’re the “newbie,” it’s important to remember that, for the most part, if someone criticizes your work or asks you to fetch coffee, or clean toilets, or whatever, it’s generally because you’re the newbie – you’re young, inexperienced, have a lot to learn about the job.  The fact is, the mundane tasks fall to the low person on the totem pole.  Gender discrimination certainly does exist, but when you’re new, it’s important not to confuse constructive criticism and “paying your dues” with gender bias.  You’ll waste a lot of energy that could have been better spent learning and enjoying the job.”

Darcy is keen to observe how the music industry seems to be a generally more open-minded community when it comes to gender roles in the workforce. And not just with gender. In fact, Darcy feels that there is tolerance in many respects–from religious affiliation to race to sexual orientation. Truly creative people tend to not be close-minded, and it’s this supportive community that gave Darcy the atmosphere necessary to thrive in a male-dominated workplace.

It wasn’t always a walk in the park, however. Although not too serious, Darcy has encountered her share of unpleasant experiences on the job. In one instance during her early live sound days, a band manager refused to acknowledge her as the “sound man” and demanded to work with “a man” on the day of the show. She took control of the situation by gracefully yet matter-of-factly pointing out that if she left, they wouldn’t have a sound system. And with the band on her side, the gig went smoothly afterward.

There were moments when people were surprised that their assistant or sound engineer was a woman, but it was often an honest surprise reaction with no negative intent. However, on the rare occasions when a client would make a pass at her, she was quick to shut down any advances. Particularly for these delicate situations, Darcy believes in the value of a subtle, graceful exit in the interest of keeping the work atmosphere relaxed and professional.

“I found it important in those situations that you give the guy a way to keep his pride (and ego) intact. I generally used the excuse that I would be fired if I got involved romantically with a client and that I was flattered, but really wanted to keep my job. Receiving this sort of unwanted attention is a fact of life which can be intensified by a studio setting. You kinda have to figure it out how you’re going to handle it [along the way].”

Based on her experience, Darcy feels it was easier to take control of these situations in a studio environment as opposed to being on location. Therefore, she has a tremendous amount of respect for women in live sound who may have to cope with these situations more often in a much more stressful environment.  At the end of the day, what’s kept Darcy going is the determination to do a good job every step of the way and to not spend too much time focusing on the difference between herself and her colleagues.

The road to mastering

 

© Katja Rupp

Typical with many mastering engineers in the industry, Darcy didn’t become one overnight. For her, it started with a gradual transition from being a studio maintenance technician in Sound Works to working as a QC (Quality Control) Engineer at Sony Classical in New York. Knowing that Sony Classical was looking for an engineer that could learn Sonic Solutions, she jumped at that opportunity and became adept at operating the DAW. Known mostly for its great crossfading capabilities, Sonic Solutions was the mastering platform of choice for classical music back then.

As part of her QC work in Sony Classical, Darcy relied heavily on her adept listening skills and attention to detail. Her work entailed listening to multiple production copies of a master, many times over, to ensure that no technical errors made it past the final production stage and into the final product.

This might sound like an arduous task to the average person, but Darcy enjoyed it. because it meant the opportunity to listen to the works of many engineers and in a wide variety of genres. The discipline she gained from years of critical listening would continue to benefit her for years to come.

It didn’t take long for her to finally take the mastering seat, beginning with album reissues. Working alongside a producer who, while very technically adept, wasn’t interested in making the leap to digital audio workstations.  Darcy stepped in and took on a sort of assistant mastering engineer role. This led to working with other less technical clients on reissues of historic pop standards (Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, to name a few), and several Broadway cast recordings.

Ultimately, Darcy’s engineering credits expanded beyond the classical genre, eventually outgrowing her original mastering toolset that was more equipped for classical music. She decided to make the official jump to joining the ranks of the mastering team at Sony, rather than remaining in the classical department. Darcy continued her ever-growing work on album reissues, while at the same time, learning to expand her workflow to include high resolution surround mastering. Surround sound was slowly becoming part of the music scene. Not minding the extra channels to work with, and loving the surround listening experience, Darcy took on this challenge and mastered it.

In late 2005, Galaxy Studios, a renowned studio in Belgium, was looking for a mastering engineer and was eager to hire Darcy for the coveted position. Being rooted in New York, working anywhere else was something that did not initially occur to Darcy. But due to a personal crisis at the time, the offer to work abroad as a mastering engineer came at an opportune moment. She took the job with the intention of working in Belgium for a few years and then returning back to the US, but so often happens, fate had other plans.  Along the way, she met her eventual future husband, renowned Dutch recording & mixing engineer, Ronald Prent, and her stay in Europe was extended.

After five years at Galaxy Studios, Darcy moved to Holland and together with Ronald, they played a crucial role in the rebuilding of Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. Darcy has continued to achieve success basing her mastering work there and staking her claim as being one of the leading experts in surround sound mastering.

Demystifying mastering

 

Guided tour through the new Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum, Holland, The Netherlands with Joey DeMaio (Manowar) on March 12, 2012
Photographer: Klaus Bergmann | imBlickFeld.de for Magic Circle Music

One of the more common misconceptions about mastering is the focus on gear more than the ears, the art of critical listening and the artist’s intention. A crucial part of mastering is maintaining fidelity in one’s signal chain. The more gear you put in your chain, the more you potentially increase the distance between the artist and the listener. Therefore, it’s important to have a specific reason to add a piece of new gear to the mastering chain. Ultimately, the objective to use as many cool tools as possible. The goal is to deliver the artist’s message across to the listener the best way possible. And for that, less is often more.

“I’m not so much a gearhead. I’m fascinated with gear because it gets you from one place to another. But being a serious gearhead shifts your focus. Musicians don’t sit behind their instruments and think about how they play them. They think about the music they want to create, the note they want to play, and through years of long practice and intuition, it just happens. Of course, you want the right instrument to get the sound that you want and you spend the necessary time to maintain the instrument. In my opinion, this is what gear is for an audio engineer. It’s your instrument. Gear is not the focus, but the means to an end. Using your gear to achieve the sound you are looking for becomes as intuitive as a musician playing the desired/right notes on his/her instrument.”

Darcy continues to innovate in the world of mastering. Many of her most recent projects involved mastering work with height channels in various immersive audio formats. Asking her about recent innovations on cloud-based automated mastering services, Darcy believes that although their existence is logical with the current technology, there are nuances that the human element can provide that can’t be replaced with automated services.  Music is emotion, and it takes a human being to understand and convey that emotion to the listener.

Though mastering remains one of the less common career paths in the audio engineering world, Darcy remains grateful to have been given the opportunity to work and thrive in this field. As an avid listener, she enjoys the variety of music she gets to work with as a mastering engineer. It changes from one day to the next and it forces her to approach each project with fresh ears and a fresh perspective. And with each fresh perspective, the learning never ends.

“At first, I thought it was my ‘job’ to fix things to a certain extent. I thought that was my purpose.  Now, I focus more on what seems unique and special about [the music] and how I can bring it forward. I focus on the positive things and enhancing those naturally minimizes the flaws. This approach allows me to be open and ready for new and unusual kinds of sounds and characters. And when you’re always listening to what’s special about the music you’re working on, that’s a nice place to be.”

More on Darcy

Preparing your music for mastering by Darcy Proper

Darcy Proper on the changing perception of mastering in the industry

First Time Mastering Your Music? 17 Tips from Industry Pros

Find More Profiles on The Five Percent

Profiles of Women in Audio

SoundGirls FOH Workshop – Los Angeles

This  workshop covers various Front of House system design and scenarios. Topics include designing the PA, software prediction, coverage over SPL, time alignment, sub-woofer configurations, and coverage gaps. This is an intermediate course and will help professionals to hone their skills.

Designing  your  PA  

Using  Prediction  Software  accurately  

Coverage  over  SPL  

Time  Alignment  

Subwoofer  configurations  

Filling  the  gaps  of  coverage

About Ivan Ortiz

Ivan Ortiz is a veteran, with over 18 years of experience in professional audio – gaining his education working for a small sound company that specialized in Latin acts while attending Full Sail. After he graduated he headed to the west coast – taking an internship at Rat Sound Systems and his “can do attitude” led to weekend work with several Los Angeles based sound companies. Ivan would go on to tour as a system tech for Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, Pepe Aguilar and toured for several years as a monitor engineer for My Chemical Romance, Gavin DeGraw, and multiple fill in gigs for other bands as FOH or MON Engineer.

Ivan would go on to work for LD Systems in Houston Texas working the Houston Rodeo as Monitors Engineer for the event for five consecutive years. While working for LD Systems Ivan also had the opportunity to work on national televised events as the A1 for NCAA Final Four, NCAA Sweet Sixteen, Houston’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, before returning to Rat as shop manager and all around Tech Master.  Ivan is now the Technical Resources Manager at Rat Sound Systems.

 

“The Sound Guy is a Girl, but She’s Good I Swear!”

On Being a Woman in Audio in the Middle-East

The first time my parents took me to a concert I was about thirteen years old, and I remember looking at the guy with the huge board full of knobs in the middle of the crowd and thinking: “I want to be that ‘guy’ someday”. I started getting more and more interested in sound and acoustics as the years went on, and most importantly I started attending more and more concerts, and that’s where my fascination grew for the field of live entertainment. At the age of 18 I began my undergrad studies in physics, and at the age of 21, I decided to move to France to pursue my master’s degree in sound engineering.

The first day of class in sound school I looked around only to realize I’m the only woman there. And that was the first time, as silly as it may seem, that I realized that this is a man’s field. Before that day it had never occurred to me that this was a man’s, a woman’s, both or either’s field and even after that it seemed pretty insignificant to me. I wanted to be a sound engineer, and that was all that mattered even if I was going to be the only one in the Middle East.

I moved back to Lebanon in 2014 at the age of 23 and started working in one of the largest sound rental companies in the region, Fida Zalloum sarl. I began with basic tasks mainly stage set-ups and assisting other engineers but soon the opportunities unraveled and the first time I handled a mixer on my own was in the summer of 2015 at the Baalbek International Festival, one of the most prestigious festivals in the region, doing monitors for the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, I’ve done monitors for the likes of Tina Arena, Richard Bona, Ibrahim Maalouf, Bob James, Angelique Kidjo, FOH/monitors for Lisa Simone and various visiting foreign and local acts. With stages ranging from small to large scale, bands and orchestras, and attendance ranging from a couple hundred to 20,000 people.

It has not been easy, far from it. Starting out in a country that up until then had not known of female live sound engineers, has forced me to prove myself ten times more than any of the male engineers. People were looking at me curiously; clients were coming up to my boss asking why he hired a female sound engineer and not a “normal” male one. I had countless musicians ask me if I could handle the mixer on my own if no one were helping me. I even had clients refuse to work with me just because I am a woman and supposedly was unable to do what was so far labeled as a man’s job. To this day, I still get weird looks while rolling a cable at the end of a concert, or while lifting a case, or while running a mixer and doing other technical tasks. All of that is in addition to sexist comments I heard in the workplace on a regular basis.

All of these obstacles could have pushed me to give up and accept that it is a male’s field, but I didn’t. Why?  First of all and most importantly this is what I love; this is what “I want to be when I grow up.”  The fact that I’m a woman, or more like: the fact that I am not a man had no part to play in me choosing my career and passion. How I did it? Courage and fierceness. I set objectives and sprint towards them disregarding any disturbance around because I understood that in the big picture, all these small difficulties are obsolete. I love my job; I love everything about it from the long hours to the physical exhaustion to the rush I get when I hear the screams of the crowd as the concert is about to begin. This is my passion, and this motivation is what keeps me going.

And to be fair, being the only woman doing this in my country has given me a great deal of exposure. People were talking about “that girl in live sound” and the fact that I was able to prove I was as capable as any male counterpart has made most clients change their prejudice towards females working in this field. More and more people are not only accepting but support it, and I find this to be quite pleasant and rewarding. If I had to sum up my experience in a sentence, it would be one I so often hear at gigs: “the sound guy is a girl, but she’s good I swear!”

If I can give a piece of advice to any woman interested in sound, starting out in sound or working in sound is to be courageous and fierce. Don’t focus on the obstacles and don’t let your fears take hold of you if you are true to what you want to do and what you love you will make it. I am making it with no signs of stopping any time soon, taking it day by day in one of the most hostile regions for women and their advancement, and all I can say is that it is so darn worth it.

Sana Romanos is a project manager and live sound engineer working in Beirut, Lebanon. Sana will be heading up the Middle-East Chapter of SoundGirls.

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