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Sonic Memories

At Boom Box Post, we try to take the time to meet with nearly everyone who asks: be it for an interview or a to give career advice to a young editor.  Among the most inspiring parts of interacting with those who are new to the profession are the questions they pose that cause us to look again at our job with fresh eyes (and ears!).  One of these questions which was posed to me by a recent audio school graduate was, “What should I do to prepare myself to be an editor?”

My answer is, “Start listening.”

Unlike visuals of which we take constant notice, sound is often an unnoticed undercurrent in our lives. Ask yourself: when you tell a story to a friend, do you describe what you saw or what you heard?  Most likely, you focus on the visuals.  Now think about how hearing a sound from your childhood can suddenly thrust you back to the emotions from that time in your life.   Sound can be an incredibly powerful storytelling device.  Think about what emotional state the story asks of the viewer. It is our job to connect our personal sonic memories to those emotions.

To give you an example, I’d like to share one of my favorite memories from childhood: going camping on an isolated lake in northern Wisconsin with my family. I’d like to tell the first part with visual descriptions and the second with sonic descriptions.  Think about which one you find yourself connecting to more.

THE VISUAL TAKE

When I was young, we often went camping at a lake in northern Wisconsin.  My father always said, “It’s not a vacation if I see anyone else.”  So we drove for hours to part of the north woods, parked in a remote lot, and then carried our gear and canoe along a path to a little piece of beach no wider than a child’s arm span and launched out into the lake.  From there, we paddled to our campsite which was accessible only by water.

Once we had settled in, we spent most of the days by ourselves.  My father wandered off amongst the trees to take photos of butterflies, mallards, or sometimes us.  My mother took care of the camp, cooking the meals and washing dishes, and my brother and I played in the forest.  Each evening, we shared a special moment together: a canoe ride at sunset.

THE SONIC TAKE

As the sun dipped lower in the sky and began to cast a shadow over the lake, the sound of the forest suddenly turned.  The lively birds and cicadas of the day ceased and a period of pure silence washed over us.  Our canoe scraped against the grit of the shore as we pushed it into the water, then only the sound of the tip of the bow cutting the water could be heard.  We paddled into the center of the lake to the steady beat of oars splashing into calm water, and then stopped and just sat, letting the silence envelope us.  After a while, we heard what we were waiting for:  a loon.  It skimmed across the water, letting loose its lonely cry, and we heard this solemn sound echoing off the banks and folding back on us like an origami bird.

SPINNING STORIES FROM SONIC MEMORIES

When sound enters the equation, don’t you feel not only a better understanding of the events of the story but also an emotional connection to it?  This is what I attempt to achieve in each project.  As sound editors, it is not just our job to look at the screen, and place the sound for the action we see (door open, door close, car ignition on, gear shift), but also to think about what emotional state the story asks of the viewer.  It is our job to connect our personal sonic memories to those emotions and use them to trigger the right feeling for the audience.  For example, whenever I’m faced with a scene that asks the audience to appreciate a lonely expanse of wilderness, I add in a loon.

THE LISTENING PROJECT

Now that you understand the importance of sound in storytelling and how to use it to make emotional connections for the viewer, there’s only one thing left:  start listening.  As you go about your daily life, start taking note of what you hear.  This will help you in your ability to draw on these sounds as you edit.  Think about this the next time you go for a hike, enjoy dinner downtown, attend a party with friends.

QUESTION: WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SONIC MEMORIES FROM CHILDHOOD?  

Mine are: the loon from my story, the sound of a foghorn coming through my window on a hot summer night, and the perfect hollow pop that a tennis ball makes as it hits a racquet. 

Top 10 Tips to Improve Your Mixes

Make sure your mixing environment has some proper acoustic treatment

Every room has its sound. Your speaker monitors should be placed at the center of the room, right next to a wall, with a small distance from it. The positions of the speakers and your ears should be at an equal distance and form a perfect triangle. The next thing you should do is adding some acoustic treatment to the room. There are plenty of ways to do that. Check online for more detailed acoustic treatment solutions.

Have a reference track you know pretty well

You should have several different songs that you have listened to on pretty much every playback device, and you know how it sounds in every type of environment. This will help you understand how the room that you work in sounds and should put you on the right track toward your desired mix.

Mix at low volumes

I know that you want to hear that beefy low end and sizzling highs. And that’s fine I do too. There is time for that. But in order to make quick progress, first in order is to put the right sounds at the right spots. Mixing at SPL around 79dB to 82db is more than enough. After 8 hours spent on mixing at around 82dB to 85dB our ears became useless and with every increment by 3dB, you shorten your ears’ work hours by double.

Take frequent breaks. Try not to mix for longer than 1 hour without taking a break.

Mixing is a time-consuming job. We often spend time listening to the same 3-4 minutes for hours. And guess what happens… Our ears adapt to the sounds we tend to make better. We are getting unable to hear the things we wanted to fix or change back when we started. I cannot stress enough how important is to take frequent breaks. Trust me on this; you don’t want to start all over again the next day.

Master your stock plug-ins before you invest in other brands’ software.

Every Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) platform has built-in plug-ins. Most often they are not the best but will help you understand how compression, EQ, reverb, limiter and other components (depending on the DAW) are working. Spend some time working and understand what they do and how they do it before investing in some expensive 3rd party plug-ins.

Try not to overuse EQ. Don’t go drastic if not needed

Those are the mistakes every beginner does.  Often I hear tracks with ear-piercing highs and with squashed dynamics at the most complex parts of the songs. So my first advice is to find what stops the high frequencies from standing out in the mix. Most often you will find that the problem is in the low end. Maybe you should first try to decrease the low end, and if that doesn’t do the trick, then you should try to increase the top end.

Be gentle with compression

My second piece of advice is when you want to add compression to your music, always start from the loudest part of the track. Select it and play it on repeat. Start adding compression depending on the volume, speed, and complexity of that part. And once again be gentle. For the quiet parts, automatization could work just fine.

Reference mixes on multiple speaker systems as possible

You should listen to your mixes thru various playback devices. Of course, the first thing that you are going to listen thru your mixes are your monitor speakers or headphones. My advice at the beginning is to go switch frequently between them. Because those are the referent devices with the flattest frequency response and are build to pinpoint every unwanted sound. Then you should move to the consumer playback devices such as laptops, phones, earbuds, cars, etc.

If what you hear satisfies your expectations then you can try to enjoy your work on some audiophile equipment. I prefer valve amplified speakers or a good pair of planar magnetic headphones.

Take a 24-hour break then re-listen to the final mix before sending it to client

Now you are finished with your mix. You are happy how it sounds. You have listened to the same track for more than a hundred times. All you have to do now is to depart from it for 24 hours. Give your brain a chance to forget what exactly happening in the track. After 24 hours come back at it. It’s very much possible that you will need to make some final adjustments. Now you are done. Play it to everyone.

It’s not the tools that matter, it’s the engineer.

Back in the day when mixing first came up, it was referred to “balancing.” In my opinion, that is a much more appropriate term to describe our job as mixing engineers. Our job is a form of art, and our obligation is to put every sound right where it belongs.

Guest author: Paul Schoff from SoundMaximum. An audiophile from Detroit.

Cuyahoga Community College Recording Arts and Technology

Cuyahoga Community College based in Cleveland, Ohio offers a Recording Arts and Technology program. Students that complete the five-semester program receive an Associate Degree in Applied Science. The program prepares students for a diverse array of entry-level jobs in the audio industry. The program covers studio and on-location recording, live sound, music business, and audio electronics. Students are exposed to a broad range of music production and audio engineering techniques, skills, and styles through theory, practice, and hands-on/real-world training. (more…)

High Tech Gypsy – Amy Powelson

Amy goes where the work is and where the wind blows having worked in professional audio for over 20 years. Amy most commonly works as a FOH engineer for corporate and broadcast events and as a monitor engineer on festivals. Amy has always had a love of music and electronics and has found that a career in professional audio was a perfect match. Working freelance complements her gypsy lifestyle, although, given the right circumstances, she would love to find a steady home.

Amy’s grandfather was a professional jazz musician, and growing up Amy remembers watching her grandfather practice in his basement. He played the Clarinet, Alto Sax, and Tenor Sax and would inspire Amy to take up the trumpet while in Jr. High School. She would later get to play a bit with him and she still has all of his horns. He was one of the greatest influences in Amy’s life. Amy remembers, “during birthdays, holidays and other special occasions, he would always place a mono cassette recorder on the dinner table or in the middle of the room. I still have several ancient cassettes of these occasions. So, from the time I was a very small child, I was always surrounded by music and audio equipment”

Along with a love of music, Amy had a curiosity to figure out how things worked. Her mother would always pick up old stereo equipment and other odds and ends at garage sales. A lot of the equipment did not work, which saved Amy from ever being electrocuted, but she did manage to start a few fires.

Amy's First PA

Amy’s First PA

After high school, Amy attended Kent State University for a semester, as a Pre-Journalism/ Mass Communications major with a minor in Radio/Television Production. This allowed Amy to discover a desire to work behind the scenes in a technical position. However, she found their equipment was so antiquated, and it did not allow involvement until junior or senior year, so she decided to fast-track it and enrolled in The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Amy enrolled in the Music/Video/Business program and found that The Art Institute opened many doors for her.

 

The first door that was opened to her was an internship at the Graffiti Showcase Cafe, working with the FOH Engineer. The Graffiti Showcase Cafe operated for 17 years and was one of the premier music venues in the country, it closed in 2000.  The Graffiti Showcase Cafe hosted over 1500 acts from Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers to Bonnie Raitt and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Amy says she “fell in love with live sound from the first moment I plugged an xlr cable into a stage box”. The internship at Graffiti Showcase Cafe gave Amy practical work experience and she says she learned much more than her formal schooling would have ever taught her.

When her internship ended, Amy headed to Florida and attended Full Sail, graduating with a Associate Degree in Recording Arts. At the time, Full Sail only offered two-degree programs: Audio Recording or Video/Film. Amy says “the studio maintenance course with Hunter Menning was the most valuable in terms of knowing how the gear worked from the inside out.  All of the courses taught me something, but that one stands out. She found that Full Sail gave her credibility and opened up even more doors for her.

Florida to Los Angeles

After graduating from Full Sail, Amy headed to Los Angeles with a shortlist of names and numbers. One of her first gigs was working staging for Kevin Lyman of Goldenvoice, (who would go on to found The Warped Tour) for a Meat Puppets gig in Long Beach. There she met Dave Rat who would recommend her for a gig at the Anti Club. Industrial Sound would help her out too, and Tom Santee of Auntie M, got her mixing gigs right away. Amy remembers a gig in Monterey Park doing sound for Mariachi bands, which was a first for a girl from Ohio. The Anti Club gig would help her land a gig at the Troubadour, and then the Northridge Quake hit.

Early Days

Early Days

Amy decided that maybe Los Angeles was not for her and being the high-tech gypsy she is, headed to Seattle. She was able to get a gig at Moe’s on Capitol Hill and says it was the best house gig ever. Amy kept that gig as long as she could and watched as the Seattle music scene of the ’90s came to an end.

From Seattle – Amy headed back east to Chicago. She worked at Andy’s Music and Chicago Sound doing all the summer music festivals at Grant Park. As that was winding down, she got a call from The Ringling Bros. Circus about a Monitor Engineer position available on their Blue Unit. Amy toured the U.S. mixing both FOH and Monitors in major arenas with the circus band for the last four months of a two-year tour as a replacement engineer but decided not to sign a two-year contract to tour the next show.

 

Ringling Bros. Circus

Ringling Bros. Circus

She headed back to Los Angeles, where she stumbled upon the existence of highly lucrative corporate gigs. Amy landed a gig as an audio engineer for AVHQ Staging Division in Los Angles. She remained there for over two years until they were absorbed by another production company and started to lay everyone off. Since then Amy has remained a freelance engineer working all over the U.S.

Amy has even dabbled in television work. Working on a reality show called Paradise Hotel in Acapulco, Mexico in 2001 and another one called Next Big Champ around that same time. She also mixed 26 episodes for a series for the Jim Henson Company in 2000. While the pay was fantastic, the gigs were absolutely grueling. Long days hiding in bushes with a 35-pound field mixer and RF receiver packs weighing heavily on your lower back while holding a big boom up for hours at a time. Amy did her best to avoid things like killer bees while picking up the intimate dirt of cast members attempting to secretly plot against the others. Amy says “It felt more like boot camp than a career accomplishment, and it was beating me up pretty bad. It was quite an effort to keep that boom up there when I only stand at 5’4” and they never say “Cut” on a reality shoot”.  The Henson project was a rare non-union opportunity Amy was absolutely proud to be a part of. Unfortunately, the series didn’t get picked up for a second season. Amy would love to get back into television if the opportunity was ever offered.

Jim Henson Project

Jim Henson Project

Being a freelance engineer has allowed her to indulge her inner gypsy, but Amy also feels that she has been forced to move around a lot. “It’s not an easy industry for anyone, but I’ve seen a lot of guys move up while I plateaued. I found that the only way to really increase my knowledge was to move around a lot. It gets frustrating when guys who can lift more weight, get more breaks, and you’re toughing it out and doing your part to the best of your ability”. Amy has stuck it out by networking and looking for work everywhere, settling into corporate work, which tends to be very lucrative and steady. Corporate work also tends to require less physical lifting of gear due to larger crew calls.

Amy reflects on some of the calls she gets for gigs because she is a woman, like the Mary Kay convention. “They actually wanted me to work the show while wearing a dress. You try so hard to blend in, and even something like that which seems like an opportunity is ultimately repressive. I’m more than happy to take a gig where they want me for whatever reason, so long as the company hiring me puts me on other shows as well. Most of the time those “we want a female engineer” shows go bust, and you never hear back about the other shows”.

Amy offers this advice to women wishing to enter the field

If like me, you are stricken with the sickness of an innate love of audio, don’t be discouraged if you get stopped at the front door. There are lots of side doors in and you can make it happen if you want it bad enough. I’m not sure spending a lot of money on education is a good idea in today’s economy. I’d take some electronics classes and volunteer to help small local sound companies in return for training and future employment opportunities.  After that, hit up as many manufacturer trainings as possible. It’s a hard profession to make a living at and retain any resemblance of life, but it’s one of the most exciting careers a person can pursue. I’ve had a lot of highs and lows causing me to have a love/hate relationship with it, but I’m still here.

Must have skills

Mechanical dexterity, keen listening skills, knowledge of a wide range of musical instruments and styles of music, organization skills, electrical and wiring skills. The ability to use hand tools. Most of all, the ability to work under extreme pressure and be solution-driven when it all hits the fan, because at some point it will, and it’s more about your ability to recover from chaos than anything else.

Favorite gear

As a freelance hired gun, I don’t often get the luxury of picking and choosing my own consoles or PA system components, so if I’m going to be completely honest… My favorite gear is gear that has been well maintained and is in good working condition. When I do get to choose, it totally depends on the application.

Willie Nelson - The BackYard Gig

Willie Nelson – The BackYard Gig

 

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