Continuing from last month’s blog on preparing for your first tour, in this blog I will be talking about how to build a technical spec.
The two most important documents that you will need for a very long time are; a very clear and complete stage plot and input list. The technical spec will most likely not come into play until the band is in a position to start carrying production or at the point where they can negotiate for what they want.
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There is a lot of preparation that goes into a tour. Of course the bigger the tour, the more planning is needed, but even a small club tour needs some forethought. For this blog, I am going to concentrate on a club/theater tour and mostly from the perspective of being hired to mix FOH. (more…)
Amanda Davis is an independent sound engineer based in Atlanta, GA. She graduated from Roosevelt University with a BA in Vocal Performance in 2008. She went on to attend SAE Atlanta, where in 2010 she graduated with an associates degree in Audio Technology. She recently joined the Wondaland team, and is currently the FOH Engineer for Janelle Monae. (more…)
In 1992, I was on tour with Pearl Jam. We had been on tour crisscrossing the U.S. for the past two months. Ten, their debut album was starting to blow up, and by summer you would hear Alive, Even Flow, and Black blasting from car stereos, out open windows, and on every station is seemed up and down the FM dial.
One of our gigs was at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We had an army of college volunteers that were eager to help set up, although one young woman that was assigned to the sound crew stood out. She would turn out to be one of the best local hands we had all tour and a life-long friend. We would also learn later that Kim had never worked a show before.
I remember being at a party the night before. We had on MTV, and they had Pearl Jam on. I remember looking at the TV and saying “ Hey, that’s the band I’m working with tomorrow.” The next day I was assigned to the sound folks. I had no stagehand or sound experience. I wasn’t going to college there; I just wanted to see free concerts, so I signed up to do security. I hated it because they would put you outside or in a hallway, and the patrons didn’t exactly like you because you were security.
I couldn’t believe there was a woman doing monitors. I was super excited, and I had a great time working with them that day and it made me seriously consider going into sound.
Kim would go on to sign up to work with other productions at the university and would begin on a path that would lead to a career in sound. She was working as a stage-hand at the University and as a coffee barista when a friend visiting from Los Angeles suggested she move out to LA, as that was the place to be for working in sound. Kim figured she had nothing to lose and packed up her 68 VW bug and headed to Los Angeles.
Kim made her way to Los Angeles during the winter of 1993 in a VW bug that had no heat. She spent the drive dressed in many layers and wool socks. She would switch back and forth with her feet on the gas pedal and on the floor where the heat of the engine was really hot. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she started to hit up sound companies for an internship.
No Show Sound, later to be known as Industrial Sound gave Kim an internship and she secured another job as a coffee barista. Kim remembers Greg Dean’s sound boot camp. “He would hold up cables and ask what it was, what it did, and where it patched. It turned out to be an xlr cable, and I was so intimidated I didn’t know where it went. I will never forget that moment”.
Ronnie Kimball, currently FOH for Bad Religion would take Kim under his wing, and she would spend most of her time working shows with him. Kim says they worked so many shows, but one of them stands out. It was a Truce Jam in East LA, (in 1992 there was a historic truce between the Crips and the Bloods, it eventually broke down as the City of Los Angeles walked away from their promises to help rebuild South Central after the Rodney King Riots) the concert as its name implied was to celebrate the truce between the gangs.
I was still a little mountain hippie girl and oh so new to the big city. When we arrived for load in the stage wasn’t quite built, so we sat around and waited for a while. It finally gets finished, and we start building the PA, FoH, and monitor world. I notice we are the only white people there, and racial tensions are still high from the recent riots. The event was poorly organized, and security was provided by the Nation of Islam. I had a Leatherman that they took away from me and told me they would give it back to me at the end of the show.
So the concert starts. They had a cleansing ceremony with a Native American blessing with sage. While a band is playing, I look up to see the crowd parting ways and a guy carrying a folding chair chasing after another guy. People ran backstage, everywhere leading to the cancellation of the show. I remember some people saying damn whitey’s ruining the show with the sound. Everyone was saying it was the white guy’s fault and blaming the sound guys. It was some scary stuff.
Kim would eventually make her way to San Francisco where she knocked on the doors to the Warfield. There she met the late Paul Majesky, the production manager for the theater and presented her case as to why he should hire her. Kim still had a limited resume and lacked experience, but Paul took a chance on her. Kim would spend several years working at the Warfield and occasionally still works there. She would also start working at other Bay area venues such as the Shoreline Amphitheater, Slims, and The Fillmore.
In 1998, Kim was hired by Grant Lee Buffalo as a monitor engineer and drum tech for a short tour of Australia. Kim did not have experience as a monitor engineer or drum tech. She had no clue how to do monitors or even how to tour. She convinced the sound guys for Big Day Out to mix monitors for the band, and somehow faked setting up the drums. Kim says it became evident that she had no idea what she was doing and needless to say did not become friends with the drummer. Miraculously, she survived the tour and became friends with Grant Lee Phillips.
Grant would go on to recommend her for a sound gig at Cafe du Nord. The “Monday Night Hoot” series at Cafe du Nord is named for the hootenanny movement of the ’60s. Kim would learn to mix during this Monday night folk series on a small Allen Heath board set up on the side of the stage. She would work at Cafe du Nord until 2007 and become known as Audio Elf and Tough Love Griess.
During this period, Kim also fell into a lot of TM/FOH work. She toured with several bands ranging from Arab Strap to The Cramps and Nada Surf to Chapterhouse. Kim says, “all of the bands sounded so different, and I loved mixing every single one of them. When you’re on tour, you get those songs in your head. You wake up with them and fall asleep with them. I love that I got to mix every night. It’s great to be able to add the effects where they were meant to be, bring up the solos and really be able to mix something. You get to feel like you’re part of the band.
As much as Kim loved being able to do FOH, she disliked the tour managing aspect of the job. Kim explains “I never wanted to be a TM. It was just a means to get to do sound. I am still willing to do some very small tours as TM/FOH, but I won’t go out and do any long and grueling tours like that anymore. I really didn’t enjoy TM ing as you are never off and it is one of the hardest and thankless jobs out there but I did the best I could. Kim would continue to tour as a TM/FOH until 2010 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Fighting Breast Cancer
In 2010 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This put a little damper on the work thing. I was offered a tour with Chapterhouse a band from the UK. I wanted to work the tour since it was going to be my last for a long time. I was the TM/FOH, and I had a blast. I was also asked to do one more four-day gig, in Hawaii with Dengue Fever. There was no way in hell I was gonna miss going to Hawaii. It was a beautiful visit with two shows and some fabulous free time spent sitting on a gorgeous beach. It was a wonderful way to come home and start four months of chemo, surgery, and six weeks and five days a week of radiation. I have been cancer-free for ten years.
I didn’t work for over a year taking care of myself. I slowly started working at clubs again and have recently just done my first tour as FOH for John Doe.
It was a pretty amazing realization I was doing sound for John Doe, that sexy bass player from X. You bet your sweet bibby I was gonna go out there. Getting a call from John was so surreal. I was honored to be asked to mix his sound.
We had gigs in many different types of clubs. Venues ranged from 300 to 500 seaters. I had to do monitors and FoH from FoH on every show we did. I didn’t mind so much. In some venues, it’s better that I do monitors as some of the guys out there don’t care as much about the show.
The band and crew traveled in a van, and we all shared hotel rooms. So you have to be willing to spend every day together, you are thrown into a 24/7 situation with people. It isn’t easy, but it is part of the job. Sometimes to just get some free time to myself, I would take myself out to a nice Italian dinner and just sit back and relax. It’s good to make sure you give yourself some me-time on tour. It’ll keep you sane.
I used to work at Shoreline Amphitheater, Slims, Great American Music Hall and sometimes at Bottom of the Hill. The thing is I’m not getting any younger, and I had to start thinking about what to do for the future. I have benefits and make a living wage working with the union. I do miss working at all those nightclubs, hearing all the new bands and just how much fun it is, but you don’t really make that much, and there are no insurance benefits. So I sadly gave up most of the rock and roll lifestyle but not all of it. Good lord, I couldn’t give it up all the way. I think I’d lose my mind if I did. That’s what I grew up doing. I was 18 when I started in the “biz.”
Kim’s favorite gig The Stern Grove Festival has just ended for the season. The Stern Grove Festival is a ten-week series Kim mixes monitors for. The festival keeps her busy through the summer; typically prepping the gear at Delicate on Thursday and Friday, loading in and setting up on Saturday and doing the show on Sunday. This year the festival opened its season with Smokey Robinson and closed with The Zombies.
So see, I still get to do some rock. I’m just doing a bit more corporate shows to keep food in my belly and keeping a roof over my dog Ollie’s and my heads.
Stern Grove
Roadies are typically seasonal workers, our most active season for work is usually during the spring and summer, with the year winding down during the fall. As the holiday season approaches, our gigs for the year are close to wrapping up. It is an excellent time to return home for some downtime. The holidays are usually low key and allow us to catch up with friends and family. Some of us will find ourselves busy on New Year’s Eve. The fortunate will be touring Australia or South America during January and February. For most of us though, we will have sporadic work through the winter months as we wait for tours and festival season to start around March. (more…)
At the young age of sixteen, Magali Couturier happened upon a man setting up for a very small concert in a park. As she watched him set up a couple of tiny speakers, microphones, and equipment, she questioned him. After he finished explaining to her what he was doing, she asked him if that was a real job? When he replied yes she thought to herself that it sounded much more interesting than all of the jobs she had heard about before, and since she always had a love for music it might be worth pursuing.
Magali enrolled in a two-year technical school in France where she earned a degree specializing in sound for Television/Cinema, which she found to be rather useless. She moved to the UK at age 19 where Mags met a small UK audio company and got her start in the business. Some of the lessons she learned working for that company were; “(among how to make a proper cup of English tea!), perseverance, confidence, flexibility, multi-tasking, never to think you know it all, mix with your ears rather than your brain, how to load a truck, and how to lift things a lot heavier than my own weight.” She also picked up skills in accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll, dealing with clients, and all sorts of management skills.
It paid off, and Mags has been working as an independent Monitor Engineer for 19 years. She’s toured with The Dandy Warhols, Rufus Wainwright, My Bloody Valentine, Gary Numan, Duffy, Nick Lowe, Natasha Beddingfield, Lila Downs, Mathew Herbert, and Camille and is soon starting with Marianne Faithfull. Mags occasionally does Production Management as well. Her first tour was with Nils Lofgren. Thrown in at the deep end, she ended up mixing monitors for her company. Mags also spent eleven months managing a US band but recalls that she would never want to do that again.
Mags has had some obstacles to overcome in her early days at the sound company- being foreign (French and working in the UK) young, and female. “There was this one guy who spent every gig we worked together re-doing what I was doing.” She dealt with it by being stubborn, persevering, and having faith in herself. “However the boss of the company believed in me, and he didn’t treat me any different. Actually, he was a very hard boss/teacher, but he pushed me more than I would probably have been able to push myself.” Mags ended up working alongside her boss in running the company for years.
She started working for the Dandy Warhols in 1998 and would still return to the company to work in between tours. Mags did this until 2004 when she became strictly a touring engineer. She now spends her downtime between tours working on her home, an ‘old ruin’ she bought nearly ten years ago in the French countryside. Mags still tries to work at least once a year with the old company, “not mixing but just loading trucks and moving gear around, to keep sane and grounded in this industry.”
Mags loves the constant travel with touring, losing track of time and what day it is, as well as the diversity of the people, places, and culture she sees while on the road and enjoys ‘being a little part of bringing joy and entertainment to the world through music.”
The downside of being independent, however, is that “you never know when the next job is going to come.” The other difficult bits about touring for Mags are “saying goodbye to your touring pals when a tour is over, bad catering, and the lack of a proper croissant and hot chocolate.”
Mags enjoys her alone time on days off, along with running, going to a museum or movie, and “eating gorgeous food.” Her long-term goals include doing what she loves and loving what she does, and right now she wouldn’t change her job for anything in the world.
Advice to anyone wanting to enter the field of live sound reinforcement– “make sure you know the meaning of perseverance.’ Be flexible, open-minded, and have a good work ethic.”
Recently, I was on a crew of three working a small event at a community college. As the audio engineer on the call, one of my tasks was to set up a small lobby PA before the event and take it down once the theatre portion was underway (the first half an hour or so was one person talking into a wireless mic, so I had ample time to go out and retrieve the PA). The rig consisted of one rolling rack of gear and a large Mackie-powered speaker on a stand. Cake, right? (more…)
Woodstock is the iconic music festival that continues to influence the music industry today. Woodstock brought over 350,000 rock n roll fans to a six-acre farm in Bethel, New York to celebrate three days of peace and music. Woodstock inspired countless attendees to pursue careers in the music industry, one of them was a young woman by the name of Karen Kane. Woodstock would inspire and put her on a journey that would start by learning to play music and wind up forty years later as a well-respected audio engineer with countless awards to her name, owning a professional studio, and teaching the next generation of audio engineers.
One of Karen’s earliest jobs was managing 6 West Recording, a New York jingle house. Even though she was working in a studio, Karen says she still did not think about a career as an engineer. Karen explains “When I worked at 6 West Recording, there was an unspoken rule that women did not touch the equipment”. Thankfully, there were a few engineers that took Karen under their wings and trained her, and most importantly taught her that she could be a recording engineer regardless of her gender.
Karen would move to Boston and enroll in Berklee College of Music, where she studied guitar and bass performance. She then landed a job at Intermedia Sound in Boston, starting as an assistant studio manager but soon after starting work there; she received two diplomas from the Recording Institute of America. (The first audio classes in the U.S. were held at Intermedia). She learned the basics of audio, as it applied to analog recording in a studio environment While there, Karen would pull all-nighters with one of the engineers, learning everything she could, including how to ride a motorcycle. Eventually, Karen would become one of the studio’s engineers.
Once in a blue moon is a woman does work in our favor, although I admit very rarely. For Karen it was beneficial as she explains “I hooked up with a community of musicians who were “folky/leftists” and when they wanted to record their songs, they wanted to use a woman because it was a male-dominated occupation and they wanted to make a statement by using a woman engineer. So even though I was a beginner and not very good yet, I got the job because I WAS a woman. I ended up making albums with them for the next 12 years and got better and better”. Karen learned everything hands-on, after graduating from RIA. Karen credits Barry Ober, R. Berred Ouellette, and Bob Stoughton as being her early mentors at Intermedia.
Intermedia 1977
Through the years Karen spent in Boston she continued to work as an independent recording engineer, music producer, and live sound engineer. You can check out all her recording and live sound credits on her website mixmama.com.
One of Karen’s favorite live gigs was the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, where she was the live sound engineer for the acoustic stage for 19 years (she retired in 2010). The Michigan Womyn’s Festival often called the Womyn’s Woodstock was an international feminist music festival. It started in 1976 and was put on every year (until 2015) in August with attendance ranging from 3,000 to 10,000.
The event is unique in that women built all of the stages, ran the lighting and sound systems, provided electricians, security, and medical services. They facilitated workshops covering various topics of interest to the attendees. Hundreds of women spent upwards of a month out on the land building the festival from the ground up because every year the festival was torn down, leaving the land as close to how it was found as possible. You can read more about this unique festival here Michigan Womyn’s Festival
Love brought Karen to Toronto where she continued to work as an independent engineer/ producer. During her time in Toronto, she developed courses in Audio Engineering for the Learning Annex and Centennial College. She also was hired to teach at Toronto’s Harris Institute for the Arts which Karen says “was a big highlight in my life, getting to teach at such a great school.” “I learned how to be a teacher at Harris. I realized I was good at it and the students really liked me. I spent four years teaching there”.
The desire for a warmer climate would bring Karen to Wilmington, North Carolina, where she is now based. In Wilmington, she owns her own professional home recording/mixing studio. She also runs her own audio courses, which take place in the Fall, Winter, and Spring. There are five courses offered, including, Intro to Audio Engineering, Learning Pro Tools, and the “hands-on” only Advanced Course. You can check out her courses here mixmama.com.
In addition to her independent recording work and audio courses, she joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington as the instructor for the Recording Technology program there. Karen says the University job is “one of the best things to EVER happen to me.”) Getting to teach Audio Engineering and Pro Tools in a University setting is my dream part-time job! I plan on it being my retirement job!” The 2nd “best” thing to ever happen to her is WINNING the “Producer of the Year 2013” Award last summer at the Carolina Music Awards in Raleigh, NC. AND, she just found out that she is nominated again for Producer of the Year at the Carolina Music Awards for 2014.
I never had any trouble with how I was perceived as a woman in a live sound position. I THINK mostly because I was not doing big shows with mainstream artists. At the time in Boston, there were not a lot of engineers studio, or live. Because of that, I was able to hook up with a few rock bands and started doing local/regional gigs with them. Later, I went on several U.S. tours (on a converted school bus) with a political folk band named Bright Morning Star. That started in 1980, and I did gigs with them for several years. I also did a lot of local acoustic shows with other singer/songwriters.
The studio gear today blows my mind compared to the studio gear in the ’70s and ’80s. There are things I can do today that I NEVER DREAMED possible. I do miss, some things about analog recording (especially the smell of 2″ tape) and the simplicity of it all compared with today’s gear. I cannot speak to live sound, but I can say that as I am learning how to use live digital boards, I love some of the features like calling up monitor mixes and FOH mixes (as many times I do both).
Learn to play a musical instrument…for fun or seriously. It helps with audio engineering in many ways.
Go to a good audio school. Research them and find out all you can about the teachers! That is what makes an audio school GREAT, the teachers! The best audio schools have teachers that are ACTIVE professionals in the music industry.
If you are interested in studio work, TRY to get an internship at a local studio.
If you are interested in live sound, go to as many live shows as you can…stand by the soundboard and watch and listen to what the engineer is doing. This will start to train your ears. And by the way; ANYONE can learn to use equipment, what separates the good from the great are your EARS!
You can also begin training your ears by analyzing recordings…. on a good pair of speakers, describe the tone of each instrument, describe what you hear more in the left speaker or in the right speaker, describe the overall balance of the instruments, and then the instruments with the vocals. It’s a good way to get you to listen more intensely.
Melissa Britton started in live sound 20 years ago mixing in a classic rock biker bar. “My friend Casey knew I was interested in learning how to do sound. He was mixing at a club and told me I could come in on Sunday and mix the “Ladies Afternoon Stripper Party” Which was great! I rolled some cd cues and watched hot guys strip. I started working on the weekends mixing local bands. Eventually, Casey left to go work at the sister club, and I was hired on full time.”
While mixing five nights a week, Melissa was also going to school and working a regular job. She moved on from the club to work for Dowlen Sound in Denver, CO, where she worked festivals, graduations, corporate gigs, plays, comedy, and a large variety of music. “I worked really hard. I was determined to succeed. I would run circles around the guys. Bret Dowlen taught me a lot. He built his whole sound company from scratch, and even though I came into it 10 or so years after he’d started, I learned a lot from him. Watching him take apart consoles and fix them (analog consoles), watching him build crossover’s, wedges, Subs, and PA stacks and then take it all out and put it all up and analyze it, figure out how it could be better, throw farther, etc.… I learned priceless info from being around all that. “
Melissa with Bret Dowlen
Melissa mixed in every club she could get a gig in doing Monitors or FOH. “I worked every day, seven days a week. I learned by watching others and implementing their style, their technique, their flavor, into my own style, when it was my turn to mix.” “I learned to work with older analog consoles. Gamble EX56, ATI Paragon, Soundcraft Series 4, 800B, 800, Midas H3000, XL4, Bret even had a couple of Harrison’s.”
What got Melissa into this business in the first place was a love for music. “I am in love with music. I played music growing up. My dad played music while I was growing up. Actually, he still plays, and we are getting ready to cut an album at the end of this month, his lifelong dream I’m very excited about that. “ “I wanted to be involved in music somehow. I knew I wasn’t interested in performing, but I was passionate about music. Mixing was a way to be involved without having to perform on stage. I just wanted to be a part of it. “
Melissa has been working as an independent engineer for ten years now and specializes in monitors but is starting to do more and more FoH. “Dave Koz picked me up in 2001/2002, and I’ve been touring with him ever since. “ “I’ve done several short tours. The longest being about eight weeks, mixing monitors mostly. I was flying PA and teching and mixing monitors on my first tour, which was great a good way to stay in shape.”
“I love touring. Especially the way I do it. Which normally is four days on three days off. Almost like a regular job. Going out on a bus tour is great too! You get into a groove on the road. You connect with new people and develop great relationships. It becomes a family away from your family. I never dreamed when I started that I’d be out on the road touring. It just happened. “
Touring life and the road does come with its own inconveniences. “I started touring when my daughter was five years old. I missed so much of her life over the past 12 years. You can’t get those years back. They are gone forever. I haven’t been home for the Christmas season in 12 years. You’ve got to make the best of the time you have. Out of all the holidays, birthdays, school events, sports events I’ve missed I make up for the time I have off. Because when I’m off I’m really off and the time is mine to manage. So that’s what I like least. I don’t like missing the things that a 9-5’ver mom gets to experience. But, I LOVE what I do…and she sees that, and now that she’s older she can appreciate that. How many people can say that about their jobs? I love my job. I wouldn’t change anything.”
Melissa’s favorite day off activities includes DJ’ing. “I have a little turntable rig at home, and sometimes I just hang out and spin. I love house, techno, and dubstep. I’m learning how to work with Ableton and Serato and learning how to remix songs. It’s something I’ve always been interested in. “I also like playing basketball. I keep working on my shot and being a better player. There’s incredible satisfaction in making a great shot. “ “And I like hanging out with my kids. They are the super special people in my life. I love them so much. “
Kingston Audio Jazz Fest
“One of the highlights of my career was when I was teching/mixing FOH for Rave on the Rocks in 2000, at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Best show EVER. Paul Oakenfold headlined it was so great. “
Melissa’s long-term goals are to continue learning. “I’m always learning something. If I had to set a goal, it would probably be to take more risks.” “I’d like to tour with some other music genres; pop or rock, but I’m pretty satisfied with where I’m at now…I was just asking myself hmm what’s next
Favorite Gear:
VDOSC and K1 line array systems, Telefunken M80’s, and Shure Microphones.
“A Midas XL4 is probably still my favorite console, but I hardly see them anymore. I like the Pro9. Lexicon Reverbs, (Best thing about the Vi6). Digital is cool. There’s still something to be said for being able to see all your inputs at once. And analog feels good. For me, there are happy memories associated with it. But in the end, I‘ll take what I can get. There’s always something new to learn on whatever piece of gear you have. “
What does Melissa consider to be must-have skills for working in live sound?
“Patience and a good attitude. The days are long and sometimes roll into the next day. 4 am lobby calls for day of show fly dates requires a good attitude patience and a sense of humor.”
“I believe there’s a certain amount of talent a person has to have to make it this business. It’s not just technical. There’s a feel and an intuition. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s more than just faders and knobs. If you don’t touch the gear with respect and love, it’s not going to work for you.”
“The driver I had on the way to the airport this morning told me that it was a gift that I had. His gift was purifying water for the local water company, and mine was mixing and putting up a show. I had never thought about it like that before. But he’s right…. the ones that make it have a gift. “
More on Melissa
Monitor Engineer Britton, Earl Klugh Band Give Thumbs Up to NEXO Wedge
The Making of an Original Streaming Concert Series