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How to Make a Stage Plot That Will Save You Time and Misunderstanding

By Nathan Lively

beth featured

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In this episode of Sound Design Live, I am joined by long-term festival patch monkey Beth O’Leary. We discuss audio riders and what separates the successful ones from those destined to create chaos at changeover.

I ask:

  • Advancing the Plot
    • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to creating stage plots?
    • If you could wave a magic wand, what would the ideal stage plot look like?
  • Tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
  • From Lou Kohley: What software is standard for stage plots?
  • What’s in your work bag?
beth

I don’t care what brand of bass amp you have. I don’t care who’s a vegan. Put channel numbers on the riser.

Beth O’Leary

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Alejandro Magaña Martinez.
  2. Workbag: DBbox2, Rat Sniffer, Sennheiser e 604, RF Explorer
  3. Books: The Ultimate Live Sound Operators Handbook
  4. Podcasts: Freakonomics, The Biscuit Sessions, SoundGirls Podcast
  5. April Tucker: How to get started in dialog editing
  6. Stage Plot Pro
  7. Quotes
    1. Most companies here don’t have an HR department. No one else is looking after your career progression so you really have to work on it yourself.
    2. I am the idiot test. If there’s anything that can be misunderstood about your stage plot, I’ll misunderstand it.
    3. The best thing you can do is put the channel numbers on the riser. I don’t care what brand of bass amp you have. You can’t presume that it’s obvious. Just put the numbers on the stage plot.
    4. If you have a clipboard to go with the paper you look a lot more official.
    5. It’s obvious to us that we’re working on the problem, but it’s not obvious to the client. Just taking a couple of minutes to make that clear makes all the difference.
    6. You need to have something that’s completely unrelated to shore you up.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

I’m Nathan Lively and today I’m joined by long term festival patch monkey from Village Fete to the main stage at Redding Festival, Beth has read and interpreted countless audio writers and knows what separates the successful ones from those destined to create chaos that change over. Beth O’Leary, welcome to Sound Design Live.

Thanks for having me.

OK, so you just explained this to me. But but let’s just get it on the recording again. For Americans, what is a fate?

Yeah, so a fete is like a local kind of affair, basically. So if you do a village fete, then it’s like it’s really small time, teeny tiny stages.

So, Beth, I definitely want to talk to you about, you know, some of the great stage plot mishaps that you’ve run across. But before I do that, after you get, you know, a sound system set up or if you’re working on the stage, maybe you’re sitting at the monitor system was maybe one of the first pieces of music that you’re going to play to get familiar with it.

Yeah, well, I don’t find myself in front of the system very often, but if I do, I usually quite like listening to stuff that has a lot going on in it. So maybe to step by Dave Matthews Band. Or tightrope by Janelle Monae. Some people talk about it like they know all about you when you get down about you feel you develop the things that they can diplomacy to, about, about or if it’s a it depends on the gig, I guess maybe some Rage Against the Machine Ghost of Tom Joad.

Something nice and big and heavy.

Yes. All right, so how do you get your first job in audio, like what was your first paying gig? Now, this is a bit confusing, so I got into audio. This is going to be this British translation again. So in the UK, universities have like students unions, which is kind of like a hub where everyone goes and there’s like restaurants and venues and stuff like that. So I started working there. They had a student committee that you could join in and they teach you everything you needed to know.

But you also work for free, like we worked for CD vouchers. That’s how old I am for any of the younger listeners. But if that was money, it would have been like fifty an hour. It was not really a paying job. But during that we had like an intense training week and the head of audio from a local company came in and was teaching us desks. And I kind of said, you know, I’m really interested in doing more of this.

And he he asked if I wanted to come and help on this festival that was on a boating lake. So front of house and the audience were on the the mainland. And then the stage was a pagoda in the middle of a boating lake.

And all that was your first gig. Awesome.

And all the gear and all the bands were transported back and forth by motorized swan. Sure.

I believe all of this, by the way, how would I make that up? So that was that was the start, I guess.

Wow. And so so just remind me again, how did you get that gig? Someone was training, doing some training, and you were there and he just said you. Yeah. OK, so I’d love to zoom in on another point in your career. I’m always kind of curious, like what was like the very starting point. And like, if you could pick out another point in your career where you made maybe a hard left turn or you just felt like I’m going to do something completely different or I’m going to stop doing this thing and only do this thing now.

So the question is, looking back on your career so far, what’s one of the best decisions you made to get more of the work that you really love?

I’m trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying this. What do you mean by diplomatic but talk? So I think a big thing for me was really stepping up, expanding my client base, because I think I’ve seen it with other people as well, where you get in with a company or a couple of companies and you kind of go, OK, I’m starting at the bottom, but if I work hard.

Well, yeah, but you’re comfortable. You know, the people there. But you’re like, if I just you know, I’m getting the lower roles at the moment.

But if I just keep going and going, I’ll progress.

And then for me, I was doing that with a couple of companies, and especially where I live in Sheffield, in England, it’s it’s really central. But there’s not a huge audio presence here in a way. So you kind of have to push in like talk to people, like talk to companies from other cities. And I kind of found myself a little bit in a rut. And, you know, the companies, you know, when when people kind of treat you like you’re still the same person as they first met you.

And I was just kind of not really going anywhere. So pushing to get in with other companies to make new connections really helped open that up. And kind of a bit of a fresh start and a bit of a change of pace.

OK, and how did you know to do that? Did did someone else suggest that to you or you were just feeling like, OK, I’m feeling stuck, I need to branch out a bit of both.

I mean, it kind of got to the point where I was kind of like, oh, some some new people were kind of skipping me in the ranks kind of thing. And, you know, some people some people are new and they’re super talented and that’s fine. But it kind of got to the point where I was like, wait a minute, that guy is no better than me. Something’s going on here. So I was just kind of like, yeah, no, it’s not it’s not that there’s bad blood between me and those people or anything like that.

It’s just kind of got a bit stale, needed a bit of a change. And I still work for those companies as well. But now that it’s kind of a bit more spread out, I think that’s a bit better for all of us, really.

Would you agree that it’s it’s sort of difficult to to know what the path is or the things in in pro audio? It’s sort of difficult to know what you need to do to progress. Or do you feel like that’s pretty clear to you now, looking back?

I think it can be tough because we know we don’t have a very regimented industry at all. Like, you don’t have to have qualifications. You don’t have to have gone to a certain university. And most of us are freelancers. So you can’t kind of go, oh, well, I’m the assistant manager now. I want to be the manager. You’re kind of like, well, this week I’m doing this job and then next week I’m going to be doing that job.

So you don’t really know. It’s hard without hindsight to know exactly how your career is progressing. And I think as well, some people some people, you know, get going really quickly and that’s great. But some people it does take a bit longer and it’s hard to tell whether you should just keep at it or whether. You should try a different tack. I’m not sure if that actually answered the question. No, that’s really helpful. I mean, instead of generalizing you just like you have to keep trying things until you find the things that work for you that help you stand out.

Have you whatever it is that’s going to help you move forward? Probably no one is going to be able to tell you exactly what it is, especially for you and your conditions and your location and like all those things that add up to, you know, having a growing career and providing them.

And it’s hard as well, because, like most companies don’t have an H.R. department or anything like that, because I know on a few forums, especially forums with a lot of American women on it, maybe people who work in theaters or something about that, where it’s a bit more structured. If there’s a problem, people are like, oh, we’ll just talk to H.R. It’s like there is no H.R. in any in any companies I work for. So, you know, no one else is looking after your career progression.

You really have to work on it yourself because, you know, you’re not an employee. So they’re not really that bothered.

Yeah, good point. Yes. Well, let’s dove into talking about stage blood. So at the most recent Lifeson summit, you did this great presentation all about stage blood. It’s called advancing the plot. If people want to see it, it’s a live Sound Design Live 20 20 Sound Design Live Dotcom. But it was great. You showed us like a lot of things that you’ve seen people do wrong. People do right what you prefer to see. And you are in the best position to talk about this because you are the one that has to interpret these on a regular basis.

And I don’t know if I’m going to get it right. But one of my favorite quotes from your presentation is you saying I am the idiot test. If there’s anything that can be misunderstood about your stage, but I will misunderstand it. Is that right?

Yeah. Like how that’s what you took away, was it?

And now not that you’re an idiot, but that, you know, in the rush of like doing the job and doing things quickly, like I felt like what you were really highlighting is how important the clarity of these documents is, and that if you have anything on there that could be misunderstood, like something in the wrong place or spelled wrong or just the wrong, you know, you know, then it has to be all super clear, I guess.

Yeah, I think I think something I didn’t really make clear in the presentation was, you know, especially for festivals, you might be like, oh, well, it’s only one small difference, you know, or that’s pretty clear. But but you don’t know who else have been interacting with on that day. And some people, their stuff is just an absolute mess. And, you know, they might be nice people, but they take up all my energy and all my mental ability to work with them.

And they’re, you know, people who bring half their own line system and then want to integrate it with yours. And it’s just like, oh, my God.

So so if you’re someone who’s seeing me eight hours into that shift, things might be misinterpreted unless you’re crystal clear. And I know and not to sound bigheaded, but I am one of the more experienced people doing this. If I misinterpret it, then if you’re going to a smaller festival or, you know, working with a newer person, they don’t stand a chance of understanding what you’re doing. So you know anything, it only takes a few seconds to clear it up.

But those are seconds that you could be spending, getting your sound right instead of messing about with this stuff. Totally.

So let’s talk about some of those things that you have misunderstood and that you’ve seen other people misunderstand. You know, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are creating their own stage plots?

I think just the main thing that audio people do, because I know when musicians make their own stage plots, it’s a whole different level of vagueness, which is not helpful.

But for audio people, it’s mainly people go crazy with, like getting the perfect to the MM.

Actual diagram of their exact set up, like, you know, painting different man’s actual face onto the you know, you’re absolutely perfect, but then absolutely crammed full of stuff and very little of it is actually the information that I need is like I don’t care what brand of amp you have, I don’t care whether you’re a bassist is a vegetarian, like the amount of stuff that people put on there. There is nothing to do with what I need.

But then they won’t have like the best thing you can do is put the channel numbers on each riser or like area of equipment.

So I know exactly where everything is. And so many people have these full on diagrams, but they don’t have any numbers on them. And it’s like, OK, your guitar is probably where that guitar channel is going to go. I get that. But like things like playback, a lot of the time it’s on the drum riser.

Not necessarily could be a monitor world. It could be anywhere or sounds are a big thing because obviously they’re usually in the pedal board, usually in a bass paddleboard, but not always. Sometimes they’re a. On the AMP, and it’s like you can’t just presume that it’s obvious and it’s not that this stage person is a dumb ass for not knowing, it’s because they’ve seen lots of different set ups and there’s not one way to do it. So just put the numbers on the on the picture.

We’ve ever seen anyone successfully include humor in their stage plot? Yeah, yeah, it was an example.

I’ve always wanted to do that. And then I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. It’ll be misunderstood. And then they’ll create confusion. So. So tell me something funny you’ve seen on a stage, but.

Well, I’ve seen a few where instead of people in the band, they have like little pictures of kittens and bunnies, which is. Which is nice. Yeah.

Um, or just big smiley faces like, you know, like emoji almost drawn on, you know, it’s humor more works for kind of supporting notes rather than the essential information. Like if you’re going to be like, oh, our front man is a is a lunatic. He, you know, runs through the crowd, he does X, Y, Z, and you can like you can be funny with it while getting the point across it. You know, you need to tape the hell out of the vocal mike or something like that.

But yeah, kind of joking around with who I want to be to fifty two of my overheads.

And it’s just like I can tell you’re joking, someone might not like OK, so we’ve talked about some things that can be misinterpreted and things that need to be clear. Is there a standard template like if you could wave a magic wand, is there an ideal stage plot?

It depends on your setup. So I really like those ones. That is just one page with the stage plot. And then you’ve got the channel list on the same page that you’re not flicking back and forth trying to go like, oh, channels eight to ten. What actually are they? It always helps to have a second page with more detail of like what mix you need, what stands and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, that’s they’re really nice.

There’s a software called Stage Plot Pro that does really nice, clear diagrams for you, which does all that one page stuff. But it really, you know, it really depends on your band. Like if you’ve got 100 channels and stuff going all over the place, don’t try to cram it all in onto one page. That’s fine. I think it’s a is much about white space as about getting the information across, I think because if there’s just too much stuff shoved in with, like, tiny, tiny writing, it’s like it’s not going to help anything at this point.

Are you do you have like a binder full of the stuff or are you just opening this up on your phone or an iPad?

I, I like to have the paper. I know some people like to have iPads or tablets, but I am very clumsy and forgetful. So I like to have paper and at least one spare copy because the amount of times I have left my paperwork on a different browser when it’s gone on stage, including including shows that are televised. So yeah.

So hopefully they never noticed that. But yeah, I always end up losing, at least for at least part of the day. So on paper I can roll up. I usually have like cargo shorts armed with big pockets, so I just roll up the paper, shove it in my pocket. So I’ve always got it with me because I’m looking at it constantly. I’ve done some gigs where I haven’t been able to print stuff off. And, you know, I’ve been looking at stuff on my phone, but it’s a lot of the time, unfortunately, it tends to be corporate events that do that.

And then the client is watching me and they think I’m just like on my phone the whole time.

Oh, man, I’ve run into that problem, too. I won’t tell the whole story. But yes, this has happened to me and exactly on a corporate event where we were using our phones for communication.

And so I had the two looking at his phone often to get information from me and ended up being a huge problem later down the line. The client never said anything to us in the moment, but later on they’re like, hey, the audio guy was on his phone the whole time. And yeah, so that’s the end of my short story. But, you know, I learned my lesson, like, you have to make that stuff really clear and I don’t know how you would handle that otherwise except to say to the client, hey, we’re going to be using our phones for communication.

So if it ever looks like we’re ignoring you or if we’re playing games.

Yeah. So I’m not sure the best way to handle that. But is that similar to what happened to you?

Uh, yeah. I mean, hopefully they didn’t make an official complaint about it, but I think you can see their faces sometimes that they’re kind of like, why did you keep checking your phone? It’s like because I’m looking at your Facebook. And again, you know, if you need to make any changes or anything, it’s so much easier on paper to try. And if you’ve got a PDF on your phone that you’re trying to look at and then you’re like, oh, but that’s not actually that anymore.

And it’s just like I find it much easier. Just use paper and. Yeah, go old school.

You know, I want to say one more thing about this, because I was just remembering that also at Lifeson summit, Drew Bresler made a presentation and one tiny thing he mentioned that stuck with me was that he doesn’t use his phone. He uses pen and paper when he’s taking notes with people and then later puts it into his phone just because he’s found. That people have a different reaction with them when he’s using his phone, and I wonder if that’ll change in 10 years and everyone will, you know, it won’t be a confusion anymore.

But I’m just remembering he also talked about how people sort of misunderstand that.

So, yeah, I think it’s still especially if you’ve got a clipboard to go with the paper.

I think people think you’re a lot more organized and an official than if you’re just like tapping things into a notes up in your phone, which is just as effective. But yeah, it’s the appearance of it that’s unfortunately still a little bit of a problem.

Wow. I think you just saw this. All I need is a clipboard. I put my phone on that and then it looks official. Yeah. All right. We solved it. Thanks, Beth. Well, see you later. OK, bye. All right, Beth, I feel like you have a lot of good stories, so I’d like to hear another story.

And I’d like to hear about a time that you feel like you screwed up and maybe it was big, maybe it was painful and sort of what happened afterwards. Just one story.

Yeah. The one time you made a big mistake that one time, remember? Uh, no, I don’t think I did. Um, again, I guess talking about talking about I saw someone else made a big mistake.

Yes. My friend. My friend had a terrible gig. No, I mean, I’ve made loads of mistakes over the years and it’s hard not to dwell on them and to kind of beat yourself up about it. But you’ve just got to kind of accept that these things happen and move on and try and do better next time. But I think probably if we’re talking about client communication, one of my worst gigs, annoyingly, was the first gig I did for a company and was my last year.

So I was doing front of for a corporate gig.

So a whole bunch of love mikes in a really, really difficult room could not stop them ringing. It was awful. We had a rehearsal day and then we had the show day and I stayed late and I came in early and I talked to other engineers about what I could do to fix it because, you know, EKU was just not doing anything annoyingly. Looking back on it, I think because I had an in-house take with me and I kind of followed his lead a bit too much because I was like, well, he works in this room all the time.

He knows when actually he wasn’t an amazing tech, unfortunately, but so I worked really hard to try and fix it. But I never took that time to stop and say to the client, hey, I know this is a problem. I am working on it. I just presumed it was obvious that I was working on it. And I have a little bit of resting bitch face, especially when I’m focusing on now.

So this, you know, the client, all she saw was me just like looking angry. And I guess because I wasn’t running around and like, I was at the desk the whole time, which is, you know, how you fix it. But if you’re not technical, you don’t know that. And so I didn’t communicate properly. So she didn’t say anything at the time. It wasn’t as bad for the actual show, but they were still ringing.

There were still problems. And then all smiles and said thanks and said bye and then sent an email to the office complaining not just about my competence, but my attitude. And yeah.

So that was the last show I ever did for them, which I was like, yeah, I was devastated because it’s like, OK, I don’t know everything in the world. I’m not perfect. But like I like to think that I have the right attitude and I would never be rude to someone or anything like that. But, you know, with hindsight, I could see that I should have been clearer about what I was doing, because it’s not it’s obvious to us that we’re working on the problem, but it’s not obvious to the client.

So just taking a couple of minutes to make that clear is it makes all the difference, I think.

Wow, what a tough lesson to learn. Yeah, it’s funny. It’s this weird combination of often working alone, right.

Where you’re sort of like in charge of managing various people and their expectations and communications and you’re trying to do this technical job and it’s maybe in a place you’ve never been to before and maybe there’s some gear thrown into the mix. And ultimately, I think this is what makes the job continually sort of interesting for us. Right. We’re not going to the same office every day. We’re not always using the same tools every day. And so variety is important.

But then, you know, I don’t know I don’t know how to wrap this up except to say that it’s it’s challenging. And even sometimes when we feel like we’re doing our best to handle it, that’s not what’s visible. Mhm. Right. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I don’t know what there’s nothing else that you could have done differently except as you mentioned, tried to communicate to them, hey, here’s what’s going on.

So I just don’t think that, you know, I’m angry, but I think, you know, it’s a shame that I lost that client. But it was a good lesson to learn. Of like and it was quite a long time ago now, so it was a good lesson to learn early on that just just a couple of sentences. You don’t need to go into the technical details of what’s going on. But just a couple of sentences to to let them know, you know, there’s a problem.

You’re working on it. You are you know, they are your priority and then they don’t need to worry about it. Is it makes all the difference, I think.

OK, so luckly similar question to ask you is that what software is the standard for use? Now you mentioned stage Platero, but do you consider that the standard or is there something that is the standard?

I think that’s the standard. That’s the the the style the template I see most coming through. I mean, it’s you don’t have to have it at all. Like it’s a paid for thing. You can get a free trial. So if you’re confident that your band’s not going to change anything, you can you can do it in the free trial and counsel. But it’s totally not necessarily like you don’t need like I would much rather have a handwritten as long as your handwriting is clear, a handwritten plot with the information I need in it, then all bells and whistles, fancy slick looking picture, a picture of a gig with nothing on it, which I’ve seen quite a few times.

Sure. So, yeah, I know everyone loves to have the software and sometimes it can be, you know, if you’re doing a whole bunch of plots for a whole bunch of different people, that it really speeds up the process. But, you know, MAPP paint and an Excel spreadsheet is just fine.

You know, Beth, what’s in your work bag like?

Are there a couple of interesting or unique items that you think you could share with us?

I would say the most useful thing I own is a dB box, too, which is like it’s a signal generator and headphone amp in one. So and it’s got a little speaker on it. So basically any line system issues, you can chase it and it does analog, a midi, whole bunch of stuff and it’s all just one box. So it’s really useful is really got me out of a hole quite a few times. Apart from that, what do I have.

I’ve got when I’m doing patch stuff. I’ve got a little easier so far with the clip broken off. I didn’t break it off. It was broken. That’s why I’m using it with Jack to Axler on a carabiner. So I have it on my belt all the time. And that’s for line checking. You know, if something’s wrong, if something’s wrong with a channel, the first thing you should do is just put a mike on the line and check that the line is clean.

And, you know, so you can say to the back line text that this is your problem and then Jack Weeks so you can get it into a dB so that, again, that’s super useful. Use it a lot. What else do I have? I got given a Rutzen it for the last two hours zone. That was nice. Thanks Buzz.

And for people who don’t know rats never is. Yeah, explain that. It’s a little bit like a phantom power checker.

It’s, it’s a little tube, an extra tube that comes apart into pieces and it’s got little LEDs on it. And so when you plug one end in to one end of your signal chain and the other end into the other, you can see whether you’re actually forming a signal chain. And if a leg is down or the phantom power is not coming through, the different patterns on the LED will tell you what the problem is as super useful. And what I’ve got, I’ve got no RF Explorer, which again is hand-held portable RF scanner I’ve got.

I actually plug that into a little omni antenna rather than using the antenna that comes with it. Just because an RFQ I know said that is really helps with its efficacy. So that’s again quite handy to try and because you can walk around with it, you know, it’s great to do a scan with a unit, but if you’ve got issues, if you’ve got interference, you can walk around with the RF scanner and then find what it is that’s doing it.

Sure.

Have you have you found anything like someone that’s broadcasting that’s not supposed to be or something that’s on that’s not supposed to be?

Yeah. There’s been a couple of times where it turns out we were quite near like a small local TV station in the middle of London. Like where does this come from?

Or usually it’s cheap video. Well, that’s causing horrible, horrible issues.

But what about books? What’s one book that you feel like has been really helpful to you? I’m going to say let’s go and look at my bookshelf to find you’re not going to see it with my good. OK, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s the ultimate Lives and Operators handbook, but oh, Bill Gibson call. Which is cool. It’s nice. It’s a you know, it’s all kind of it was aimed at it’s a big textbook but it’s aimed at beginners and it’s, you know, clear language and an accompanying DVD that got scratched up within about two days of owning it.

But, you know, it’s a nice idea to be able to actually hear what those. Talking about but I’m actually quite bad, like I don’t read many audiobooks is not the right word because no one reads audiobooks books about audio. Sure. You know, I’m all for book learning. I love reading books. But there’s just something about a lot of audio books that is just sucks the joy out of everything. I just don’t I just can’t stick with it.

So, I mean, I really I watch webinars. I did courses. So I even read manuals. I’ve read entire desk manuals. Yeah, but but books about audio. I don’t have that many.

I feel like there’s a difference in the urgency of the information. You know, like if there’s a desk that you’re going to use tomorrow and you’re reading the manual for it, like it all feels super important and interesting. You know, if it’s something that’s like just in case you might need some day sometime, like, it’s hard to get excited about that.

Yeah. It’s also kind of like especially if you’re reading about mixing, it’s quite difficult for me to retain that information or to to understand exactly what they mean without having a desk in front of me. And usually if I have a desk in front of me, I’m working in a busy so I don’t have time for reading books. It’s a bit of a catch 22.

Beth, tell me about your experience during quarantine. Are you sort of like stuck at home or are you doing education or are you, like, getting a few gigs? What what’s the what’s it been like for you?

I, um, at home I am mainly learning to code because I think it’s interesting and I’ve got some projects. Well, I mean, I’m just kind of chugging along with it. Learned a bit of python, little bit of see I’ve got some projects that I would like to be able to do in the long term. So I’m kind of just working towards that.

Can you tell us, are these secret, secret, secret.

But once you start thinking about it like us and I was kind of thinking maybe in my downtime, even like a couple of years ago before all this happened, I was like, oh, be cool to be able to, like, be a freelance programmer and fill in the gaps, which I’ve now found doesn’t really work in the programing world. It’s not really like us. But anyway. But you need to have your portfolio is like a GitHub page where you you host programs that any potential employer can like, play around with and look at your code and all that kind of stuff.

So I was I was like, oh God, I’ve got to think of like projects to make. I can’t think of anything. But once you start learning and once you start thinking, like so many times now I’ve been like, oh, I’d really like to be able to do that. Oh, maybe I can program it. So I’ve got and I think there are so many things to do with audio that could benefit from programing. And I know I’m not the only person learning to program, but there are a lot of people are getting on it.

So hopefully, after all, this is over. Silver lining is there’s going to be a million and one apps and ways to make our lives better.

So, yeah, fingers crossed. Yeah.

Well, keep us updated. I’d love to see what you’re working on eventually. Yeah. No secrets. It’s OK. Do you listen to any podcasts. Yeah. No audio.

No, that’s good. I just want to know like what are the one or two that you have to listen to every time they come out.

I love Freakonomics. I think that’s it’s really well put together and it’s super interesting. No matter what they’re talking about, they’ve, they make it really clear and fun. But also, like you do learn a lot about economics, which is not something I thought would be that important or interesting. But once you get into it, it’s it’s not just about economics. It’s about kind of how people think and behave and how a lot of the time it’s actually not intuitive and the results can surprise you.

So that’s quite cool.

Now’s a perfect time to start it. Just comment on that. That was a perfect time to be diving into that. Right, because we are stuck in this world where it feels like if the economy is in recession and people don’t behave in a certain way, like, for example, going to shows, then we don’t work anymore. And so I’ve been trying to wrap my head around that a little bit as well. Like, is there a way for us to sound engineers to diversify so that we can, like, balance out a little bit so that when the economy does this, we can do this other thing and when people aren’t going to shows and we have the next quarantine pandemic, then we can do this other thing like it is.

Have you been thinking about that a little bit? Is that kind of where your interest in like, let me learn some python came from? Yeah. So I mean, I’ve been thinking about this for years, partly because I was lucky enough to be on well, a couple of times over the last few years. So interesting. Not yeah. Not enough to actually fully stop me from working, but I had to work a lot less. And, you know, basically both times I couldn’t lift anything.

So there were lots of gigs I had to say no to. So that kind of it made me realize that, you know, work is not always going to keep coming and you’ve got to have a backup plan and preferably a backup plan that you can do that’s not physical and is in location independent would be perfect. So I think programing is one of those things. And yeah, I think I’ve been saying for a long time, you should have a backup plan, but not actually working on my own.

Sure.

I’ve been meaning to do this, but I know a lot of people’s backup plans would be like, oh, well, you know, I tore rock and roll. If that dries up, I’ll go and do corporate work or I’ll go and do theater or I am in theater and I’m going to do in-house stuff. And it’s like it was all kind of just different parts of audio, which unfortunately the whole thing went away in one go.

And it’s really kind of driven home for me. I think that you need to have something that’s completely unrelated to shore you up and preferably, as I say, location independent. So for me, I’m not great with the winters, which is I know sounds really stupid, but like is that because winters are hard in Sheffield?

I mean, you’re in Minneapolis, so I’m not going to say this until the winter, is there? No, they’re like pretty mild, but it’s there’s just something about like not having enough hours of daylight makes me almost hibernate. So you’d like to go to the Southern Hemisphere.

Yeah. Or, you know, so in January I went to the Canaries for a couple of weeks, which is like as far South as Africa belongs to Spain, but it’s off the coast of Africa. And that made a big difference. You know, just I was happier. I was more active. I was more productive.

So it’s not authorized. Magali, isn’t that where he is? No, I don’t know.

OK, he’s the started void acoustics. Oh, right. OK, cool. Well, I’m probably going to go back if we can travel. I’m going to go back this winter so I’ll look it up. But yeah. So it’s not, it’s not the end of the world if I have to stay here for winter. But it’s kind of, you know, I’m not as productive and it’s just a bit meh. So if I can I was thinking, you know, if I love traveling as well.

So it’s like if I can travel and work at the same time, that’s fantastic. And programing is the way to go for something like that. But there’s a lot of audio stuff you can do as well. Like, I don’t know if you know April Tucker, she’s really active in sound girls. She does a lot of film and studio work. And so she put together like a little free course on how to get started in dialog editing, which is actually really interesting.

I watched it and read it and it was and she was like, well, that’s one of the kind of entry level jobs for the film side of things. And it can be done remotely. Is is almost always done remotely. Really. So that’s another avenue that I was looking at which be cool.

OK, so I interrupted you use, uh, Freakonomics and then you were going to say another one.

Yeah, I’ve started listening to the biscuit sessions from Anku Live, which is so the live is a couple of guys from the industry over here have put together a radio station that’s kind of, you know, music and chat, but it’s also talking about mental health in the industry.

And so the biscuit sessions is just two of those guys chatting and they have me on last week as well. So I kind of listened up. And it’s quite interesting. There’s not so many of them out yet, but it’s kind of it’s it’s like being back in the bus and just hearing other people chat about the industry and talking shop all day.

Cool. Oh, and the Sound Girls podcast have a bit of a plug for that back that’s got all kinds of people on it and talking about audio and and lots of other stuff. And it’s it’s a fun one. All right, Beth.

Well, where is the best place for people to follow your work sound girls?

I guess I blog for some girls. Not really about my work, just about general principles of audio and life. I don’t really have much else of an online presence. I mean, I’m on LinkedIn, but no, that’s great.

We’ll link to your your author or your contributor page on SoundGirls. Well, Beth, thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live.

Best sound absorbing material: Rockwool, Audimute, or Furniture?

By Nathan Lively

rockwoo-audimute

My wife and I recently bought a house (well, she bought a house and she’s letting me rent a room) and for the first time in my life I have the opportunity to do whatever I want with my office. I installed a few different sound absorbers, taking measurements along the way, and here are my results.

The Room

The first time I walked in I knew it would need some help. When I clapped my hands I heard something ringing and it was more difficult than it should have been to understand someone talking a few feet away.

fresh paint

Let’s estimate where the room starts to transition from modal behavior to diffusion by dividing the three times the speed of sound by the room’s smallest dimension (3c/RSD).

3390 / 9.02 = 376Hz

Let’s look at the Room Simulation in REW.

REW

Since the length and width are almost the same we can see two axial modes lining up nicely around 50, 100, and 150Hz. I hope some absorption will help with that.

I took four sets of measurements:

  1. Empty
  2. With ceiling mounted absorption panels
  3. With wall mounted Audimute sheets (and the ceiling panels)
  4. With furniture (and ceiling panels and Audimute)

Let’s get a global view of the overall changes with a spectrogram.

spectrogram all

And now the RT60 over 1/3 octave frequency bands.

RT60 all

I’m looking at the value in REW called Topt RT60 because:

The start point for the classical T20 and T30 measures of RT60 is where the Schroeder curve has dropped 5 dB below its peak. That works well in the large spaces for which RT60 is most applicable, particularly if the source used for the measurement is omnidirectional. In domestically sized rooms using normal, directional loudspeakers as sources the initial drop of the Schroeder curve is quite sharp (the Early Decay Time is quite short) meaning the -5 dB point lies within the early decay region rather than the diffuse field region. That in turn means the T20 and T30 figures underestimate the RT60 time. Where the EDT is much shorter than the T30 RT60 figure REW’s Topt RT60 calculation uses a start point based on the intersection of the EDT and T30 regression lines, to determine a point that lies within the diffuse field region. It then tests each possible end point in 1 dB steps and picks the one that gives a regression line with the best linear fit. That produces a more reliable RT60 figure.

REW user manual

I think it’s pretty clear that the biggest improvement here is around 400Hz. There’s a bunch of energy in the midrange that just made it nasty to try to have a conversation in here. And it’s no surprise that the ceiling absorbers made the biggest difference. They were also the biggest pain to install, but totally worth it. Thanks to Matt Bombich here in Minneapolis for those.

Also keep in mind that the measurements are not made with each material installed independently. I didn’t take down the Rockwool ceiling panels so I could measure the Audimute sheets by themselves. The Audimute measurement shows the improvement on top of the ceiling panels and then the furniture on top of all of that.

Those axial modes I hoped to tackle did not see such a significant improvement. I’m not an expert on absorbers, but I assume I would need some kind of low-frequency monsters.

Did you notice the 60Hz hum in every measurement except for the final one? I’m not sure what finally killed it.

Empty

You can see the room modes predicted around 50, 100, and 150Hz.

With 3 Ceiling Absorbers

With 2 Audimute Panels

The Audimute panels gave a nice improvement to the low-mids.

After I purchased them I discovered that they are also available in green. Instead of painting the wall I could have simply hung green panels and covered them up with the black curtain when they weren’t being used. 🤷🏻

With All Furniture

The only thing you can’t see in this photo is a twin mattress I put on top of that book shelf for even more absorption.

Overall, I’m really happy with the way the office sounds. The lighting is a problem, but I can figure out a better layout later.

Here’s a link to all of the impulse responses I recorded. Maybe you can do your own analysis and find some things I missed.

The Difficult Balance of Hustle and Self-care for Live Event Technicians

By Nathan Lively

danielle-bowker-featured

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play or Stitcher.

Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of Sound Design Live, I talk with licensed professional counselor Danielle Bowker from dB Counseling. We talk about why she decided to specialize in working with live event technicians, how to find a therapist, and finding balance between road and home.

I ask:

  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to the unbalancing effects of working in live event production?
  • Finding Balance Between Home & Road
    • Why do I need balance? How do I know that I don’t have balance?
    • I’ve seen a lot of my friends and family benefit from working with a therapist regularly and I’ve considered it for myself, but I’m worried about the cost, the benefit, and how to find someone that could really help me. How do I if it will work for me and how can I get started?
    • I recently found out that depression runs in my family. Why symptoms should I be on the lookout for in myself?

Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.

Danielle Bowker quoting Dolly Parton

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Noah Feldman.
  2. Music Cares non-profit
  3. EMDR: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is a form of psychotherapy.
  4. Book: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
  5. Podcast: Criminal, Story Core
  6. Quotes
    1. Many people in the industry tend to struggle with alcohol and drug use…trying to deal with lack of sleep and hustle.
    2. Balance: Filling your day with community. Doing things that take care of yourself (meditation, reading, exercise, etc.). Productivity, a lot of people overdo this part.
    3. Right now is a really tough time to be home.
    4. It means a lot more when you are able to come to a determination on your own from working on your own thoughts and feelings.
    5. There are big T traumas and little t traumas and everyone has experience a little t trauma.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

I’m Nathan Lively, and today I’m joined by a licensed professional counselor, Danielle Bouker from dB Counseling. Danielle, welcome to Sound Design Live. Thank you for having me.

Right, Daniel. So I definitely want to talk to you about finding balance mental health issues that we’re struggling with today, especially in these strange, strange, weird times. But before I do that, what is your favorite song to start a road trip?

That is a tough question, I think. Yeah, I have two two little ones, a six year old and an eight year old. So right now we are obsessing over the Hamilton soundtrack and everybody in the entire family knows it. So if we were to go on a road trip today, that is absolutely what would get us through.

Wait, are those kids safe lyrics?

I feel like not really challenging subjects, and they they fill in what they think they’re saying, but I have to tell you, luckily they can’t go to school right now and repeat that stuff and get you in trouble.

We are in the midst of some home schooling right now. And my my third grader is learning about ancient Greece. And so I was reading him some stories about Hercules and his response was Hercules Mulligan.

So I think I think he might be a little bit confused, but we’ll figure that out.

Well, he’s getting an excellent musical education. So, Daniel, how did you get your first job in counseling? Like, what is the I don’t know anything about the career path of a therapist, even though I have several friends who are who are counselors and therapists. Do you have to go to school for a long time and then do you immediately get a job?

How’s that work? Yeah, well, I was lucky enough that straight out of my bachelor’s degree program, I got my bachelor’s in psychology and straight out of that program, I was able to work for an organization where I was doing some counseling and independent living skills with kids who were aging out of custody of the state. So kids who had lived in group homes or foster care, who were turning 18 and when they turn 18, all of a sudden they need to be on their own.

And so we worked a lot on life skills, learning how to get a job, how to go about getting an apartment, paying bills, things like that. And so I was lucky to to get a lot of practice right away. And while I was doing that work, I started on my master’s program. So in order to to be a licensed professional counselor and to work completely on your own in private practice, you have to go through a master’s degree or a PhD and then get that licensure.

So I’ve been I’ve been blessed to have a lot of different experiences.

Well, that’s great. OK, so that was how you got your first job and now you have your own practice called dB counseling, right? Yes. And just so we’re clear, that is decibel counseling. Oh, yes, absolutely.

It’s my initials. It is my initials. But I didn’t even notice that.

But I also love to put it in as a lowercase D and a capital. OK, just a little wink wink for anybody who gets it. So I’d love to zoom in on a moment in your career when when something changed for you, I find that a lot of people that I talk to take a hard turn somewhere or just make a decision that they’re going to choose themselves or choose something different.

So looking back on your career so far, what is one of the best decisions you’ve made to get more of the work that you really love?

Wow, definitely starting my private practice. And right now, my private practice is a part time thing for me. I also work full time for a nonprofit organization that helps the music industry, and I’ve done that for 13 years. And so when I started my private practice almost two years ago, I it was because I was speaking at an event for live sound engineers, actually, and audio crew. And we were talking about mental health. And I found that the questions were really directed toward me.

And some of what I know from my background, being somebody who grew up in the music industry with my dad owning a live audio company, my husband is a weekend warrior. He travels and does video content. And so there were a lot of questions that were being directed at me that kind of came from that side of things.

And I thought, wow, I have this knowledge from my background and my study as a counselor that I can really hone in on this particular group. And these are my people. So ever since I started doing that, I just I absolutely love it. I love that I get what the situations are that people come to me with. And a lot of times people are coming to me with balance is really the biggest thing, work life balance and then a lot of anxiety and depression as well.

Those are kind of the top three things that I work on with my clients.

I think it’s such an interesting field and there’s so much to say about it. But the first thing that comes to mind, actually, let me get this question. All the what is the nonprofit Music Cares?

It’s the nonprofit arm of the recording academy and provides emergency financial assistance for people in the music industry all across the country.

Oh, cool. OK, so I find working and probably to be really interesting. And one of the reasons is that everyone who gets into it has kind of had to figure it out for themselves, you know, and I think most people get into it because they don’t want a regular job. I don’t know if that’s a fair generalization. You know, if you’re listening right now and you’re like, that’s not at all it, you know, let me know.

Sent me an email. But so many people that I’ve talked to are just like me. And they’re growing up and they’re thinking, hey, I just want to be a rock and roll star forever, you know, or I don’t want to have a nine to five job where I go into an office. And so that must be an interesting place to meet people who have got in for this particular reason, which is kind of like to have fun, get dopamine off of this work, and then discovering that there are all of these challenging situations that that make it just like a real job or whatever the stressors are that people didn’t get into it for.

So I feel like I’m just imagining a lot of your conversations go like this. Hey, this is not what I signed up for. And you’re like, is that how it is?

I feel like the most. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I think there’s a lot of stress. There’s a lot of conversations around transitions. OK, you know, maybe I want to consider transitioning, starting a family, coming off the road a little bit more. How do I do that? All my experience has been on the road. It’s all I’ve ever known. Yeah. Just a lot of different conversations around things like that. And it’s interesting you said that the nine to five, my husband told me before we got married, I am never going to work a nine to five office job.

Just I just need you to know that. So I was very, very aware from early on that that was not going to be the way that that we did things.

So you’re like, cool? Well, if we have kids, they’ll be raised by someone else.

Will you make a ton of money? We’ll be fine. OK, so and tell me a little bit about starting your own practice. So you had this moment.

You’re like, oh, I have a nesh. And then. And then what? Do you just put up a sign? What does it mean to to start your own practice as a counselor? Wow.

Well, a lot of it was networking was really networking and networking a lot with people who I was already connected with. I realized, oh, wow, I’ve got these different connections of people who are good friends of mine, who work in the industry, my family, people who I’ve known through my non-profit work. And so it really was just a lot of kind of hanging out with those. People that I love anyway and getting to talk to them about, hey, I’ve got this idea, what do you think?

And the amount of support that I got from other counselors, from people in the industry was just amazing. And it’s really helped my practice to grow so quickly. And it’s been really awesome being able to have such a specific niche and still fill a practice with that. So that was a little scary, like, OK, are there going to be enough people who I can fill but in Middle Tennessee? Yes. Yes, there are.

OK, and what is the difference between I keep like just going back and forth between counselor and therapist. So counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, what are those? OK, so counselor therapists are basically the same. So a counselor and therapist can be used synonymously.

A psychologist would have a degree specifically in psychology and usually a psychologist. I mean, sometimes they are going to be seeing clients in a practice like a counselor or a therapist would. But usually they’re going to be a little bit more based on clinical research, things like that. A psychiatrist is an M.D. So what they’re looking at is prescribing medication and that medical side of things. So a lot of times individuals will work with both a psychologist, counselor, therapist and a psychiatrist.

So one in that one, that first group. And then to work on kind of the behavioral side of things and then the psychiatrist will work on the medical side.

Daniel, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to kind of the unbalancing effects of working in live in production? And when I’m thinking of mistakes, I’m kind of thinking as you’re starting out and you’re like, oh, man, I feel on balance because I’m working on a lot of hours or doing a lot of travel or I’m not seeing my family, my friends. There’s often an attempt to self medicate or fix DIY that on your own.

And I’m sure people come to you and they say, hey, I’ve tried this, this and this and it’s not working. So I’m curious, what are some of those things that you’ve seen people try and the mistakes I’ve made? Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I think one of the easiest mistakes to make in this industry because so many are trying to you’re selling your own craft, you’re selling yourself, and there are so many contractors and what you guys do that you’re just go, go, go saying yes to everything because you don’t want to say no.

You want to make a name for yourself. You want to show that, you know, you can do it. And so I think there’s a lot of overworking and not having those boundaries, not finding that balance. And when that comes, it’s usually coming because of the crash and burn. It’s usually coming because stress has really built in or depression, anxiety, however that comes out of you or substance abuse, that people are using these different mechanisms to kind of get through to get through on that little amount of sleep, to get through and constantly work, work, work.

Go, go, go. That hussle we talk a lot about the hustle in my counseling office. The hustle is real and I think that there are some pieces of it that are necessary. But you also have to take care of yourself, because if you keep pouring out into all of that work and all of that hustle and there’s no pouring into yourself, you’re going to eventually just burn out from that.

So I guess what I’m wondering before we talk about some ways that we can improve the balance is some ways that people are doing it wrong. So how have you seen people sort of like attempting to fix this on their own and making it worse before they get better, I guess? I think substances are definitely something that we see says. Like what?

Yes, substances like alcohol, like alcohol and drugs, using drugs to kind of get through.

And that’s I mean, that’s a part of the industry. That’s a part of it. It’s it’s really hard to get away from. That tends to be, you know, you work long hours and you’re in a city that you don’t know, let’s go have a drink. So I think a lot of people tend to go toward that. And I don’t have the research right in front of me. But I want to say it was over 70 percent of people in the music industry tend to struggle with alcohol and drug use.

And it is just trying to deal with that, that lack of sleep, that hustle that they’re going through. So I think that that is absolutely probably number one mistake that people are making.

There’s this this energy fluctuation that that is really exciting but can be difficult to deal with. And one of the most exciting things and stressful things about working on live, even production, is there’s this urgency, right. Like we’ve got to get this thing done and we have this deadline and that. Actually feels really good because it feels like the work is really important and I’m really important in these things, that we’re doing a really special because there’s this urgency.

And so I can definitely see that in my own patterns of this day of like, go, go, go. And like now how do you like how do you switch gears? And that’s where a lot of the substances come into that. That’s just where they come into the picture. Mm hmm. Absolutely.

So no question, they’re just I’m just agreeing with you.

OK, so let’s let’s talk about some some some of the things from your talk, at least on some of this year, which if people want to hear, they can go to live on some twenty. Twenty does Sound Design Live Dotcom, you had a presentation called Finding Balance between Home and Road. And I know this is going to feel a little bit out of place right now while we are all in quarantine talking about the road. But that’s why I’ve been sort of referring to it as a live event production and not necessarily touring right now because people are still working, doing broadcast, doing live streaming events.

And we will go back to work and people will be listening to this years into the future.

So I think it’s fair to talk about the stresses of working on any event production, even though we will be referring to home in the road, I guess. Right.

OK, so I want to dive into this a little bit because you shared with people some ways that you’ve identified unbalance and how you can start looking at restoring balance. So first of all, why do I need balance? How do I know that I don’t have balance? Like, what are some indicators that this thing is happening? Right.

So I think when you look at balance, you need to look at it as this filling your day with one is community. So having your community, whether that is like a work community or your home life, whatever, but having people that you are in community with, that’s a piece of balance. I think another piece is doing things that take care of yourself. So whether that’s, you know, meditation, reading a good book, exercise, whatever, it is, something that is really taking care of you, it could be a hobby.

And then I think the last piece of balance is that productivity and where we get stuck is a lot of people overdo the productivity and forget about the hobbies and the self care things and the slow down and that community around them, especially when you’re constantly changing what you’re doing. Or maybe your community is hard to connect with. When you’re in the middle of an event, you’re working 15 hours. How do you connect with those people that that help you that care for you?

So I think just kind of trying to find that balance, that middle ground in all three of those. That’s when you know that you know you’re good. That gives you kind of that ability, that stability to move forward. But I see a lot like I love that you said, you know, just kind of that creative mind. And, you know, so many people that I work with have that really creative mind and they really love the go, go, go.

They love the endorphins. That’s why they got in the industry. That’s why it works for them. And so right now is a really, really tough time for people being at home. Because you don’t really have that as much as some are able to really think out of the box and start doing some other things, but not everybody, not everybody has the ability to do that right now. And so not only are we out of that go, go, go a little bit with being at home, but now you’re in a completely different environment, maybe around people that you’re not normally around as much where you get a little bit more independence and you don’t have that right now.

So just some things I know I went off on a tangent, but just some things to think about in this current day, in this current season that we’re in.

No, I want to go with you on this tangent for just a second. I don’t think we need to to really spend a lot of time on it. But I do see this. I kind of thought we were all on the same page that like, hey, this is going to go on a little bit longer than we thought. And so if we’re going to survive, like we need to look at diversifying our business, the ways that we can be making money, staying busy projects, family, like there’s it’s it’s not the new normal, as you mentioned in your talk, but it is a sustained change for a while and potentially an opportunity to look at our businesses and our personal lives in a different way.

And the only reason why I want to say that is because I posted something about this on Facebook about a week ago and, you know, talking about like, hey, here’s how we can start looking at working on streaming services, because there are a lot of people doing online meetings now. And someone commented and said, hey, don’t worry about this, just relax and we’ll be back working on shows soon. And I was like I kind of felt like that four months ago, but not anymore.

That seems like a really short sighted way of looking at our businesses because something like this is going to happen again. It won’t be exactly the same. But, you know, this isn’t the first time we’ve had an economic depression or economic downturn that has made people spend less money on live events. And haunting is definitely a new thing. But something could happen to the economy that that would affect our business again. And so.

Yes, I’m sure with to bring it back around to you in your practice, I I’m just thinking that this must be a topic of conversation in your sessions and kind of stress people are experiencing right now. So it’s not home and it’s not balance between home and the road now. It’s a balance between home and home and what we do. So I don’t know.

Do you do you have anything else to say about that? We can we can sort of we can move on from this. But if you have anything else to say are interesting sort of revelations you’ve had from conversations with your clients, I’d be curious to know.

Yeah, I think that I’ve had some really great experience with some of my clients in this, that they’ve taken the opportunity to work on the hobbies or things that they really enjoy outside of this work. I have a client who just got licensed as a realtor and is doing that on the side. And that’s something he’s always kind of wanted to do as just a fun thing and something that could bring in a bit more income. And he’s doing that right now as he’s furloughed.

So he expects to go back into the music industry. But this is something great that he could even do when he’s back to that full time work. You could do this on the weekends and still have this enjoyment with it. So it’s just it’s been interesting kind of seeing what people are doing with this. Some individuals you going into breaking out of the box and doing more webinar based things to be able to still kind of show, you know, show their skill and do something within the industry, but in a safe way.

So it’s just it’s been really neat to see, like, the creative side, because creativity is all is all in this industry. I mean, it’s and it’s so cool to be able to work with creatives who can think outside of the box. So I’ve I’ve been really lucky to have a lot of clients who really see the silver lining in this and have been able to work with that really well and kind of have that grateful mindset to be able to move forward in this.

OK, yeah.

So I guess what I’m taking from what you’re saying is, is less about looking at what I’m missing out on right now and more at what the possibility is right now. Yeah, absolutely.

So, Danielle, I’ve seen a lot of my friends and family benefit from working with a therapist regularly. I never have, at least regularly. I’ve seen people like off and on through the years, a few sessions here, a few sessions there that I really enjoy, different life coaches, different teachers that have come into my life at times that have been really helpful. And so I can’t really speak to it for myself. And I just thought maybe for other people who are in my position, you’ve always sort of wondered, like, what’s it like to work with a therapist?

And the questions that have always stopped me from getting started are what’s the cost like? Am I going to be able to afford this? And what’s the benefit like? How long will it take me to see a result? And what is the result? Do do I feel better? Am I happier what I get out of it? And then how do I find someone to help me get started? So I was wondering if you could talk us through some of those questions.

You don’t have to have a specific answer on these. But like, I think these are going to be the same questions that some people have listening. So, yeah, let’s talk about getting started. Absolutely. So, you know, I think just one of the things thinking about what are you going to get out of therapy that is all up to you as an individual. So the first time you meet with a therapist, they’re going to ask you about what your particular goals are for therapy.

That doesn’t mean that you’re coming in with this horrible situation that’s going on right now and you’re needing that to be fixed. But being able to have somebody to talk to about some different things that are going on, a therapist isn’t going to give you advice. They’re not going to tell you what to do. There’s someone who is there to kind of walk alongside you as you’re going through some things and maybe help kind of direct a little bit. So I’m never going to tell a client this is absolutely what you need to do to change your life.

It’s a lot better to walk beside them and watch them come to that as we work together. It means a lot more when you’re able to come to a determination on your own from kind of working through your thoughts and your feelings around something, then if somebody were to tell you, you know what you need to do, you need to do that.

You ever had somebody. Yeah. Have you ever had somebody tell you what you need to do? You’re usually not going to listen to that. It’s OK.

I mean, specifically for that thing, like tell me how to fix this house or fix this car or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Normally unsolicited advice. No one wants that. Right.

So a big piece of it is just, you know, figuring out what what you would want to get out of therapy. And from that, determining it would be a good fit for you. And one therapist who might be a really great fit for somebody, might not be a great fit for another person. It’s about personalities. It’s about. Value, it’s about modalities, there are so many different modalities that therapists use. So some come from a cognitive behavioral space, some come from like me.

I do some MDR work with trauma. Some people are really into that, some people not.

So MDR is something that you can use for trauma. That is a therapy that utilizes eye movements or kind of a back and forth from the left hemisphere of your brain to the right hemisphere. So it can be with eye movements, it can be with tapping, with sounds, but basically getting at information processing to go through in your brain. And if you’ve been in a trauma, you’ve had something stuck. It didn’t process correctly. So you kind of start to live life looking through this lens of that trauma, even if you don’t realize that that’s what it is.

There’s kind of that that background. And so with MDR, we help to work through that trauma and get you into information processing in your brain to kind of file that away. And it doesn’t completely take away the fact that a trauma happens, but it lessens the sharpness of it. It makes it not something that’s always right in the front of your mind. Not something that you live through every day, and when you say trauma, I think a lot of us think car accident, war.

But I was surprised to learn that that almost everyone has experienced some kind of trauma. And for everyone, that’s everyone has kind of like a different story and a different perception and a different experience of that. And so I just wanted to kind of point that out to people who are listening. So would you agree that, like, is it fair to say it’s kind of a big catchall for, I don’t know, an experience of pain in the past?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we call those.

So what you named like car accidents or things like that? Those are big traumas. Those are what we usually think of when we say trauma, but they’re also little traumas and everybody has experienced a little trauma. There are things that happened to me in sixth grade that for whatever reason are so vivid. And I might think like, oh, that’s not a big deal. That kid was just mean to me on the playground, but it’s kind of taught me something about my life.

And there’s a reason why it’s still vivid. So it’s kind of taught me some maladaptive beliefs that I need to work through.

Interesting. That’s what triggers shame. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah.

And going back to your original questions, so I think it’s really important to try to find a therapist who matches well with you. And one way to do that, I always encourage people reach out to them ahead of time and ask them for a brief consultation over the phone. You can figure out in a couple of minutes of talking to somebody if they seem like a good fit for you. And most therapists are going to do that for you. They’re going to be able to give you that time so that you can determine if they’re a good fit.

And then that’s where you can get all your questions answered about money, fit time, stuff like that.

Yes, yes. And then there are programs for financials. There are some different programs that exist like music carries that can help to provide a short term grant to help pay for the cost of therapy if you can afford it. If you have insurance, there are definitely therapists who accept insurance. Most therapists have a sliding scale if they don’t accept insurance, where they are open to taking you at a lesser rate. So there are all different, all different types of ways to go about that if you’re needing some help to actually financially be able to cover the cost of therapy.

OK, and if you send me links to those things, I’ll include them in the show notes to help people find those if they want. Perfect. OK, so I recently found out that depression runs in my family. It seems like both sides. My father was recently diagnosed, for example, and is starting some treatment for some various things. So should I be on the lookout for that? What symptoms should I be on the lookout in myself, or should I just start treatment immediately knowing that it runs in my family?

Well, I don’t I don’t think you need to I don’t think you need to get super anxious about it, you know, but knowing that that is something that runs in your family and again, just having an awareness of it. What is that? What does that look like? It doesn’t necessarily mean that when you have a case of the Mondays that you’re depressed, that you’re clinically depressed. But just noticing, are there times in your life when you find yourself withdrawing and even those people who are kind of your core community, you’re pulling away from them.

If you kind of can’t get out of a rut for a while? What what kinds of things can you do to try to help yourself to to find that balance, to kind of come back out of that? So I think just having an awareness of what that looks like and what are your what are your kind of tender spots? What are the things that you do? Do you tend to just kind of ghost on everybody for a little while? Is that something that is good for you or is that something that’s bad for you?

Does it affect your everyday living? Does it affect your work? Does it affect your relationships? If there’s a big effect there, then you probably should look into some other things. OK, cool.

I’m sure there’s a lot of things we didn’t get into on the subject. So there is Daniele’s lies on some talk and then we’ll talk about the best place to contact. Turn on include that in the show notes for this for the show as well.

So Danielle, seems like things have gone great for you, but I’m sure they don’t always go great for you. So tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake that you’ve made on the job and what happened after that?

Oh, can I claim like Pippa and just there’s nothing I can tell you.

I tell the story and I’ll make a long beep over the Internet.

And I think I think probably the biggest mistake. Is working too hard as a therapist, working too hard to try to get my clients to work harder.

I think what does that look like to them and like pushing them or what?

I think it’s my own anxiety and feeling like, oh man, I should have done that in the session or I should have I should have done this or I shouldn’t have done this. And realizing that it’s not really my journey, it’s theirs. And so kind of going back to that, I’m there to walk with them through it and not to fix them. And if they’re going a certain way, that maybe isn’t something that that I agree with or that I would encourage that it’s OK for me to just to be with them and that and help them come to that realization on their own.

I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to try to fix. Daniel, what is a book that has been immensely helpful to you? I love Lori Gottlieb. She’s a therapist, of course, who wrote a book called I think it’s called You Should Talk to Someone.

You should really talk to someone. But it’s that’s really great. It’s it’s written really well.

And it’s from her as a therapist. There are kind of scenes of her working as a therapist, working with clients, working with one difficult client in particular that she talks about, and then with her becoming a client because she’s going through a really tough time in her life. So it kind of shows you from both sides. And it’s really interesting. She’s really raw and vulnerable. And it’s it’s a great read. It’s a really it’s a sweet story, and it’s interesting to be able to see both sides of the coin and then you’ll do listen to any podcasts.

I do listen to podcasts.

So I want to know, like the one or two that you have to listen to every time they come out. Oh, I love criminal.

That’s one of my favorite podcasts. It’s terminaling. So it’s really interesting how they talk about things that are our criminal. So they go into different stories about crimes that occurred where, you know, maybe whatever happened is something that wouldn’t be seen as criminal now. So it’s just it’s really interesting. I can’t remember who does it. But then another one that I love, that’s just kind of a short little like bleep if you’re just in the car for a little while is StoryCorps.

Oh, sure. Yeah. So that’s great. That’s so sweet. It has been around for a while. So there’s there’s a lot if you haven’t listened to it, there’s a lot to catch up on.

Daniel, where is the best place for people to follow your work.

So my website w w w dB counseling dot com. I have also recently bit the bullet and decided to get on social media on Instagram at Danielle Bouker LPC.

Well, Daniel Bouker, thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live. Thank you, Nathan. I appreciate it. Sound Design Live.

This episode was edited by Noah Feldman, features music by me, Noah Feldman, you can find more at SoundCloud dotcom slash Fantasia 2.0. I have two new workshops coming up that you might want to know about. They’re both about phase. The first one is called intro to the phase graph. And the second one is a follow up to that called Phase Alignment Science Academy Interface Grathwohl. Answer these questions. What are the optimal settings for the phase graph? How do I practice when I don’t have a PEO and how do I convert phase to time in time to phase?

And the phase alignment Science Academy Workshop will answer these questions. Where do I put the measurement microphone? How do I use crossover filters and how do I use all pass filters?

So the first one introduces graph is next month in March and then the second workshop will be in April. Each of them had three dates to pick from. I try to make it really easy to work with your schedule.

So there are two dates on a Sunday and then one on a Monday and same thing for the one in April. So if you want to find out about those, go to Sound Design Live dot com and click on training or look in the show notes for this podcast.

The 5%: Women in Pro Audio

By Nathan Lively

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play or Stitcher.

Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of Sound Design Live, I talk with writer and podcaster for SoundGirls and Associate Course Director at Full Sail University, Susan Williams. We discuss sexism in pro audio, remote learning, and constructive criticism.

I ask:

  • The 5%: Steps you can take to balance the audio industry
    • What is the 5%?
    • What’s one step I can take to help?
  • Tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
susan williams

I don’t think you can try too hard anymore. I think we have to do the harder thing.

Susan Williams

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Shane Ivers.
  2. Susan’s blog and podcast.
  3. What can I do? Hire women.
  4. Books: Video Production 12th Edition
  5. Podcast: Samantha Potter Church Sound podcast, Roadie Free Radio, Signal to Noise podcast.
  6. Quotes
    1. The main things I see consistently students do [wrong] is to completely ignore the basics. If you can’t record 1 channel properly then you can’t record 50 channels properly.
    2. Just be humble and ask questions.
    3. 5% is lower than female truck drivers or construction workers.
    4. I don’t think you can try too hard anymore. I think we have to do the harder thing.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

Welcome to Sound Design Live, the home of the world’s best online training ing sound system, tuning that you can do at your own pace from anywhere in the world. I’m Nathan Lively, and today I’m joined by writer and podcaster for Sound Girls and Associate Course Director at Full Sail University, Susan Williams. Susan, welcome to Sound Design Live.

Thank you, Nathan. I’m so excited to be here again. Woop woop. I definitely want to talk to you about your career and we’ll get into some topics related to gender sexism and stuff and pro audio. But before I do that, after you get a sound system set up or I don’t know if you’re setting up a lot of sound systems these days, but when you did what is one of the favorite pieces of music you would want to play to kind of get familiar with it?

Uh, I don’t do it so often anymore. But when I used to, I would play something that was going to be similar to what I was going to be mixing. So when I would do like theater, I would go honestly with stuff like music. And I’m not even that huge of a music fan, but they have such this huge presence that I would love playing some of their stuff because it just had a big dynamic range. And it just sounded really dramatic and so I could really like listen to it and then other times I would go with something really delicate just to, like, simple, like not overly produced.

So I had some of these, like Irish folk, like acoustic Irish Philbin’s stuff that I would play that was just really like soft and gentle so I could hear both sides of it, but.

So, Susan, how do you get your first job in audio, like what was your first paying gig?

My first paying gig was actually in high school. I worked at the high school theater. We actually had a legit theater for my high school. It had, well, a full sound system. It had lighting. It even had a two storey rail system for the, you know, to get the scenery and stuff to fly in and out. So it had like a full Idjit theater.

It was actually the only one in our town that I lived in. So we had other aside from the high school theater stuff, we had other people come in and rent out the the auditorium. And so I would work those events. I will tell you that I was mildly scarred by one of the first paying ones that I did. And it was this weird old old person like talent show.

And this was decades ago. But I very, very strongly remember this like very old man doing this like baby sketch. And he was in like a giant like diaper.

Yeah. So weird. So weird. And then you’re like, oh, God, this is the kind of thing I’m going to have to do from now on in. Like, that wasn’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever worked with, but it was the first weird thing.

Wow. Yeah, that’s awesome. But doing all that got me scholarships and stuff for college so it was cool.

Oh yeah. OK, so you were able to say like, hey, I’ve done all I’ve done all this work. Yeah.

I got some scholarships from a theater. It wasn’t in our town but it was nearby. So I got a scholarship for theater for that and then went to college for tech theater and got more scholarships. I was a nerd in high school, so that worked out nice scholarships for nerds, theater nerds.

That’s special. So, Susan, I know a lot of stuff has happened in your career and I don’t want to go through everything, although that would be fun. It would take a long time. Yeah. I was wondering if we could zoom in on one moment that maybe connects your first job in high school with this job you have now, full sale university. It’s you know, your career has taken all these twists and turns. But take us to a moment when you made a big decision and a decision that really affected your course.

And maybe looking back now, you realize it really helped you get more of the work that you really love.

So something that I very distinctly remember that changed my course in a couple of different ways. But I went to in college, we had to have an internship. It was part of our degree requirements in order to graduate. So I got a summer internship because Summer Stock Theater was a huge thing, not so much now for obvious reasons with the state of the world. But I so I moved to California and I did this internship where in California it was in Lake Tahoe.

It was for. Oh, cool. It was really fun, man.

It was beautiful and it was fancy and we were so poor. So it was a paid internship, but it paid like this stipend, which is fine because you were probably the only poor people there.

The only poor people for sure.

Yeah. OK, we we can talk about this more later too. But it was actually really interesting being there because I’m from Florida and I’m from central Florida. So we have a pretty diverse population here. And when I moved to California in that specific area, there were no people of color at all except for some of our cast members. And so that was kind of alarming. I’d never been in a place that was just white people before.

So, yeah, it’s surprising to arrive in some of those places, especially in famous cities that you didn’t know about. And like the Northwest. Yeah. Where you get there and you’re like, oh, well, there’s no black people in Portland, like, what’s the deal now?

Just always in that part of California. OK, yeah. So that was a surprise. What else is a surprise I have that I would love it. And I was I was so excited to do summer stock and be, you know, an audio intern and all of the stuff. But I hated it. I hated all of it. I hated living in an apartment with seven other people. I hated not having my own car. I hated the job in general.

I hated getting yelled at for missing a cue because literally a mouse was living in the rack behind the console and then climbed onto the console mid show. And I just had never had to handle that before. And so, you know, that’s why you take your chips to panic and learn from the thing.

So, like, all kinds of awful things happen. We had bears come out. We had to cancel a show because there was literally a bear in the area. Like I did learn a lot, but I hated it. And so sure for that internship, I was like, all right, well, I’m not doing this anymore, but I still have one semester left. So I. To finish and graduate and I’d been booked on a show, on a musical.

So, like, I was like after this, I’m done because I’m like, well, great. I just wasted four years of my life getting this degree and I hate every second of it. So I did my last show in college, graduated and then took a shitty job at a theme park because it’s Florida. So I took a job as a photographer at a theme park, which is a terrible job. Oh, really? Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

It’s a bad job. Don’t do that. But OK.

But it was not in that field and I was like, OK, we’re done. And then like three months went by of me doing that job that kind of sucked and thinking like, oh great. I’ve completely changed the course of my career. Like what am I going to do now? I literally have a degree in theater and no way to use it or anything. And a couple of months into the New Year, because I graduated in December, so a few months into the New Year, one of my friends is like, hey, I’ve been interning at this local theater in Orlando and they really need someone for sound.

And we went to college together.

And I know you did sound and I was like, oh, OK, OK, I really need a job.

That’s not this. I really need to refocus and, you know, do something. And I missed it. I missed working, but I just hated what I was doing so much before. So I’m like, OK, I’ll meet with the same person there. And then I sent a message to my friend and I’m like, hey, if this works out, like, you know, I’ll make your pie, you know something, because I baking has always been my, like, not depression remedy, but when things are going really poorly, like I’ll bake a lot.

Sure. Self care totally. And then I give them away because you can’t eat all of them. All of them. So she she freaking forwarded that email with my response to the the sound person at the theater and he’s like, well hell, if you’re making pies I’ll hire you. And I was like, oh God, oh no. That’s how you get the job. That’s good.

So I, I accepted and I was his audio tech for as long as he worked at the theater. And then I took over for a little bit after him and then I got back into it and he was so different as a mentor than the other person that I had from my internship that it was so needed. He was he was so gentle. He was really smart. He’s worked at a lot of pretty cool theaters in in the country since then.

And it was just what I needed. I needed that mentor to actually just be nurturing because, you know, if you if you’re not perfect starting out and who is, you know, having someone who’s mean and like telling you how much you suck isn’t going to be helpful for some people. Like, maybe that motivates other people. But it didn’t motivate me. I was just like, well, it I’m done with this whole career because of how awful this is.

And I couldn’t take that, like, rudeness. So my you know, this was my third mentor in my career at this point. And he was at the theater and he was so great. And it kind of revived my interest and my belief in myself that I could do it. That’s such a cool story.

And one of the things that I’m taking away from it is that it’s really hard to separate the conditions that a job is in. And like the people, the relationships with the job itself, especially when you’ve never done it before. And so it totally makes sense that you get thrown into a situation where, like maybe one relationship is bad or all of the relationships are bad and you’re like, oh, the job is terrible.

Yeah. And then it took it took a contrary contrasting situation for you to be like, oh, wait, actually I am good at this and maybe I could like this. And and I think we’ve all had similar situations.

Yeah. I’m really thankful I’ll give him a shout out. I don’t know if he listens to any of this stuff, but it was his name is Marshall Simmons and he was the audio tech at the Orlando Repertory Theater. And he was awesome. He was cool. Thank you, Marshall.

All right. So, Susan, I know you work at Fulfill Your Course Director. You work a lot of students. You see them going through, you know, a lot of the same mistakes that you did and bumping into things and making a mess. So I’m kind of curious if you could pick out maybe one or two trends that you see. What are some of the biggest and most common mistakes you see students making who are new to the world of pro audio?

We get a lot of students like there’s thirty students in my class this month. And so every month we get like, you know, between 20 to 50 students. And it’s been kind of tough seeing what they’re doing now. Like what they’re doing now online is completely different from the mistakes that they were making on campus. So I’m going to focus on campus and hands on mistakes because those are so different. The main things that I see very consistent. Students of all different backgrounds and hopes and dreams of what they want to do is that they completely ignore the basics and they go forward and just want to learn the really cool stuff.

So they’re jumping ahead. And I know it’s it’s really tempting to do that because we have so much amazing and cool technology at our hands. But if you literally can’t record one channel properly, then you can’t record 50 channels properly. Right. You can’t mix more than one channel properly. So that is the biggest thing that I see time and time again of them getting kind of overwhelmed or looking too far into the cool stuff and not getting the basics signal flow, just literally signal flow and then signal to noise ratio and that’s it.

And so if they can’t capture those two things, then they’re not going to do OK at the rest of it. You know what I mean? And then the other huge thing that I see very often, which was the opposite of my problem when I was a student, is arrogance. They they can’t record one channel properly in general. And then they have this huge arrogance about them, like, oh, I’m I’m an artist and I’m I’m a recording engineer.

And I’m like, you just learned how to touch a console today. I showed you this for the first time. You can say that you’re that, but that doesn’t make it true. So there’s this arrogance that is insane. And I had the opposite problem. I had no confidence for, like, the longest time. So, yeah, just be humble and learn the basics.

Yeah, but I’m just thinking, as you’re saying, that is that is that partly because the industry is generally unregulated. And so since we can’t have a piece of paper that says I’m a doctor, then we feel like our license is our confidence. And so we just try to like, pretend. And I put on this face of expert, since there’s no way of proving that I’m an expert.

Yeah, I guess that that would yeah. I wonder if that’s how most people understand it or subconsciously students are like, well no, I guess I got to say it’s me and this is how I do it. Like, I don’t know. That seems like maybe part of the problem.

I think there’s a lot of like fake it till you make it. And I don’t I don’t think that’s always a bad thing because how do you know when you’ve, like, made it? That’s a different metric for every single person. But I think that’s doing themselves a disservice. And those who hire them, because if I expect that you can do something, I say, go, go patch the console. Here’s a paper. Here’s my here’s my iPad sheet.

And they can’t do that. OK, we got to tell me, though, because now you’re wasting both our times because I leave you alone for an hour to do that and now you haven’t done it. And now I come back and I’m like, bro, you just wasted an hour of our time when you could have just said, can you help me with this? And I would have taken the ten minutes to help you. Right. So that level of confidence or just being afraid to admit that they aren’t sure of themselves, you know, those are things like just being humble in general and asking questions.

I don’t know that anyone’s ever been pissed off at you asking a question, being genuine about it. Now, if you ask every five seconds and you question, maybe you weren’t ready for this, but I can also if I know that’s what’s up, then I can adapt and help, you know what I mean? And as an educator, that’s literally my job.

So you have to be real with me, because if you lie, then I’m like, OK, all you can do this and I’m wondering about knowing the basics is there’s some sort of a metric for that, because sometimes I think I know the basics. And then like I just interviewed Jason Romney for the podcast a couple weeks ago and I looked on his YouTube channel and he has a three hour, three part series about the decibel.

And I was like three hours or things, about the dozen or so. So when when do you know do you guys have some sort of handbook that’s like, here’s the basics, here are the things you need to know how to do and here’s how to do it properly.

I guess we do, because every class has its like core learning principles, you know what I mean? Like objectives, core learning objectives. That’s our our jargon for that. So if you meet those metrics, then in theory you have absorbed that information. So if you can do these things for each class. So yeah. I mean, can you can you properly record one channel is your signal to noise ratio OK?

Are there issues? Is it quite enough. Did you do this thing properly. Cool. You can do that thing. Can you design a system, you know, for whatever size venue. Can you do that. And it works. Cool, you can do that, but it’s going to be so different for every individual person because the systems that I designed for a theater are a bit jillion times different than what my colleagues did for. Concerts and bands and live sound, and that’s completely different than broadcast audio and what some of my other friends did for sports, you know what I mean?

So those metrics, there’s no generic one that fits to tell you, you know what the hell you’re doing it there.

It isn’t. And I don’t think any of us are going to know what the hell we’re doing with every single thing, because it’s impossible. It’s so it’s so vastly different for each industry and each thing that you’re doing.

The audio is very specialized for, you know, down to the company that you work with, but also, like, I don’t know, the city that you’re in and the industry that you’re in. And, you know, the words change specifically how things are done gets changed. But but I appreciate what you’re saying. And I feel like I could get a lot out of going to full sale if I do these two things of, you know, focusing on the core objectives and asking for help.

Seriously, like we are underutilized and especially now, like I have every instructor that was on campus now, including our lab specialist. I’ll have open office hours. We have we’re doing workshops on campus now because we can’t have classes on campus and one or two students, if any, are showing up to them. And I get that, you know, there’s safety issues or maybe they’re not in town anymore, but they’re not taking our students in general are not taking advantage of what we’re trying to give them.

We are so accessible more than we ever were because, like, I don’t have to go on campus and maintain my equipment. I don’t have to go on campus and, like, reset lab spaces because we haven’t used them in months, you know what I mean? So, like, I’m sitting here, you can literally call or email me at any time and I’m going to be able to respond, you know, so I. I think that they’re missing a lot of opportunities with having such accessibility to their teachers right now.

Yeah, well, sort of wondering if we were going to get into this. But I’m curious, like from a for profit Institute of Education, I’m wondering what you guys are telling people. Are you telling people or what is the conversation around whether or not it’s a good idea to invest your time and money in an audio career? And the idea that I’m thinking of is that when we first got into this back in, what was it, May or March?

It was March when we closed, uh, camp. OK, so back when we got into this in March, there was a big energy, I thought, from a lot of people, like, cool, I’m going to use this time for self-improvement. And there are a lot of people like, cool, I’m going to do all the webinars. Yep. And I remember several of students in my community were like they were like listing their daily process of all the learning they were doing.

Like on Mondays I do system optimization study and on Tuesdays I practice mixing and all this stuff. And now we’re, you know, five or six months into it.

Where are we that far? I’m losing track of time. It’s been deeper into it and I’ve OK now we’re deeper into it. And I feel like people are losing their steam. There’s more people that I’m talking to now who are like don’t even want to talk about it. They’re like, oh, no, I’m not working, so I can’t help you. And I’m like, well, you could be practicing, but nobody wants to do that. And and so I wonder if you’re seeing that kind of energy and like what what is the conversation right now among your colleagues on this topic of, you know what I guess what the future holds?

Should we should we be optimistic? Should we be like powering through with self improvement in education to be ready for the shows that could pop up tomorrow? I oh, so it’s tricky because I can’t speak for the entire I can’t speak for the entire school because there is a lot of other programs and stuff that they have, like they have cloud networking and they have animation and all this other stuff. So for our department at least, I have felt a little justified in pushing video production to our students because I started to feel like a fraud a little bit like, yeah, live sound.

I spent my career doing that and like films, sound and stuff like that. Now that that industry is temporarily dead, which sucks because I miss going to the movies. I don’t know about you, but oh my God, I missed so many of those things. So I felt like a fraud because, you know, the stuff that I’m teaching and I really care about is temporarily gone. I don’t think it’s forever gone, but I have felt a little bit more justified on the other side where I, you know, teaching video production and how important that has become because we have all all of a sudden, you know, everybody.

So not just teachers, but the church that I work for and sports and I don’t know every company ever is suddenly having to do all of this stuff remotely and video production as individuals. So now you don’t have the camera guy and the audio recordist and these people in your house to get good stuff for you. You figure it out on your own. And so some like live TV shows like, you know, Saturday Night Live is kind of hit or miss for me, and I think it is for everybody.

But they started doing their SNL at home where they sent them like maybe microphones and cameras and stuff, but they were producing their own content literally in their apartments. And I thought that was pretty cool because now these people who are literally just actors are figuring it out. And so I think maybe learning if you’re sick of learning or you’re just done with all of the stuff that you’ve been doing, like system tuning, there is only so much that I can stomach to sit and pay attention to all of these, like really technical things.

So maybe instead of doing that, think about what the future is going to be and what new standards we need to make, because it’s not going to be the same for a while. Have you seen any of the pictures of the concerts? They’re doing the European concerts. And I remember I think it was Germany where they have like the little like six inch or six foot like squares. Yes.

I saw one on Facebook this morning. Yeah, Omar posted that right.

Yeah. So, I mean, is that what things are going to be like? I don’t I don’t think so. They having a lot of Drive-In concerts and stuff like that, I don’t know.

But I think the question you’re posing is really important.

Like what are ways that I could potentially diversify like you video gross. But yeah, that’s where some work is now, you know, with all with all of these online meetings and stuff. Yeah. I would say focus on that’s a really good point.

What you think it could be or figure out, I think brainstorm what you can do differently, because we’re all sick of being at home and we’re all sick of, you know, looking at the same kind of content. Like right now we’re talking of resume, which I use every single day. And I don’t know about you, but this interface is getting really old and it kind of got really fast, you know. So what else can we do?

What other things can we develop that is better than what we’ve been having for the past several months? And I think that energy is better spent, especially if you’ve already gone through all of the educational stuff that you can handle for right now innervate. Yeah, because I’m not smart enough to build apps and software and I have no idea how any of that stuff works. But if you’re one of those people, like freaking innovate, make something cooler for us so that we can use that instead.

So, Susan, at this year’s Lifeson summit, your presentation was called the five percent steps you can take to balance the auto industry. We’ve talked about this in the past, but I want to cover again for for people who haven’t heard it before. And it just feels like an important topic that will continue to be important for the rest of our lives. So just to get into it and kind of remind people, what is the five percent?

The five percent is a percentage that a couple of different organizations, specifically A-S and some girls have decided is kind of the number of how many women are working in the audio industry. So it’s kind of a loose number. It could be as much as like seven or 10 percent. But this is pretty much out of, you know, surveys and stuff. What they figure it out. So that number is disproportionately low, obviously, compared to the number of guys working in the industry.

And so there’s a number of organizations that are researching why and then trying to change that because why? Like, why is it five percent? That’s that’s insane. That’s lower than female truck drivers or like. Women, construction workers, it’s crazy, really. OK, it is, and I have all of the graphs. I did a lot of research on that, like, no way, it’s not lower than that. No, seriously, there are more women truck drivers.

That’s not a traditionally woman career either. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And this is not good for anyone. You know, like I don’t like this being a guy. And, you know, women don’t like this who want to see more women like and, you know, it just I mean, everyone easily, pretty easily agrees that it benefits everyone to have a more diverse, more sort of balanced workplace, you know, where you have a better flow of ideas and just general better community. I don’t know. Do you want.

I feel like I got into a topic that I don’t really know how to talk about that. Well, but I’m just realizing that when I go to work with sometimes when I show up at work or to work on a show and the crew is more diverse in some way, it just feels better, you know.

Yeah. You know, I don’t know. Do you do you know what I mean?

Some people might like working in that kind of echo chamber where they just see a bunch of people who look the same as them and have the same ideas as them. But a lot of us weren’t raised that way. And especially me being from central Florida, like we are more diverse than a lot of people might realize because they only go to the touristy parts like we have a whole like Little Saigon area in downtown Orlando. You can get some really great Vietnamese food, you know, so we have a pretty diverse culture here.

So that’s only beneficial for for the first part of it, culturally, having more than just white men in an area, the food is better, number one. And then I think the standards and the standards for things are better. Like I think that in my experience and in a lot of other women women’s experience that I talk to you guys work harder when there’s a woman there doing a similar job because they almost get this, like, manly urge.

I don’t I don’t know if there’s like a scientific reason, but I feel like I’ve seen it where they get, like, this manly urge, like, oh, if that chick is able to push that console or get that console off the truck by herself, then I would need to show how strong I am. And that’s only good because now you’re working harder because I am working harder. And so that kind of benefits everyone. So it’s almost like using the male ego to for good instead of for just so I enjoy that.

And then it’s also odd if you look at other industries, like how many other industries are there? Just men. It’s not that many. So it’s it’s really weird that this industry specifically is a is a dude fest. I mean, you go to your college and it’s a pretty good mix, right? You even go you go to the library and it’s equal men and women. Right. You go to a store and it’s pretty equal. So it’s really weird for this to be so disproportionately male.

OK, so I’m convinced I want to help. So is there anything that I mean, you talked about entities that are doing research and trying to take action to restore some balance, but is there anything that I can do? Like what’s one step I could take to hiring women?

I mean, going out of your way to find a woman to do a project with you, to hire her, to pay her and to lift her up. Having me on your podcast, having a number of women in the live sound summit, those are all great steps. So you’re already doing those, which is awesome. So from that, like just seeking out women to do jobs that men can do. And so a huge part of this industry is, as in many others, is networking.

Right. So I have gotten most of my jobs, you know, from other people that I knew either recommending me or thinking like, hey, I need this person, let’s call her, or I worked with her before and I know she can do this stuff like that. So we with more exposure and more allies like you and like our friend Omar from AV education. Yeah. Oh my God. From AV educate his own friend. It oh God forgive me.

He works in South Florida and he does a lot of great, really cool video stuff. But by by making those allies, those are what really push us into that network and then we can, as women get more jobs and just be more visible. So that’s that’s it. And just that’s all that you have to do, really. I mean, it’s not like it’s a difficult thing, but the excuse that we hear a lot is that they can’t find women to hire.

And I’m like, bull shit.

OK, well, this is a great Segway into maybe taking a peek behind how lives on some it was produced because the first year it was. All white dudes and several people came to me while it was going on and said, hey, you should try, you know, get some more women and some more diverse people for the next one.

And I was like, sure, sure, sure, I’ll do that. And then the next year, I invited a bunch of women, a bunch like, let’s say six, that I could get referrals for. And none of them can make it, but nobody saw that.

So then the next you guessed all dudes again, no one woman I got daring to come and and then I heard the same thing and I was telling them, well, I invited people, but they weren’t available. And, you know, that’s not what people want to hear. And so the perception is still that there’s no women there. And so then this year, I just had to push a lot harder. And so I think it is more work.

But the big payoff is really just getting new insights and new ideas from people that are outside of your normal networks. And so this year I really pushed and I was like, OK, I’m going to invite I just have to invite a lot more women. And I know 12 doesn’t sound like a lot, but like, you know, I’m sending personal emails to them doing follow ups. Like, a lot of it feels like a lot of work for me to not just reach out to people that I already know.

So and then the funny thing was that then we got into quarantine and then all of a sudden everyone was available. So then I just said yes to everyone and then live Sound Design Live ended up being five days instead of two days.

OK, so that’s sort of behind the scenes. No. One, that it did take more work and pushing outside and like really like following up with people like please, please come, please come to get people that I didn’t just already know.

Yeah. So this year we had three times as many women and I was really happy about that.

Yeah, it takes more work. I’m just doing the default like it’s easy. It’s easy to find a bunch of guys. That’s totally the easy thing. So you put in the effort and it, I think it paid off. I was really excited to see the lineup of women that that you had on there. Good. Yeah. And I heard that from a lot of people. But, you know, the thing always needs to grow. And so the next thing that I thought we might get into is just talking about this really painful incident of one person who was really upset about I don’t know what they’re set up.

I can only tell you what they did. So there was one person who decided to kind of stage a one person war against me and live on summit. And it was really strange for me, just like this, I feel like I’m just kind of a nobody trying to, like, do little interesting audio education things online.

And they were acting like I was this big corporate structure that need to be torn down. So what happened was they emailed me and said you were racist and the event’s racist and you only have white men, which is totally not true.

But I realized that a lot of people on the panel who are not American and not white potentially look white. And so that’s when I started realizing a couple of things. Oh, so then the other important part of the story is that they also emailed everyone else who who was who was a panelist on Lifeson Summit and told them to, you know, abandon the event and that I was a racist and so on. And so I had to then hear from all of the teachers who are teaching.

It lives on summit that they were getting emails from this person and explained to them, you know what, what was my response to that? And so I just wanted to chat with you about this for a few minutes because I felt like if there was anyone that might have something to say about it, it was you and you. You know, we talked about this a little bit before we started recording already. And you immediately pointed out that, you know, yes, we can talk about it, but also recognizing that we’re both too white people talking about this issue.

And so it’s not the same as having even a more diverse group of people to to speak to this issue. But I just wanted to share that, like this thing happened. And this is what’s going on in the world. And too, I think my main two takeaways are, number one, I am really responsible for how the thing is perceived on the outside, as well as what’s going on on the inside. And so I pitched to you this idea that, you know, what, if there were a thousand women or a thousand people of color working behind the scenes, but that’s not what you see on the outside.

And so I sort of need to manage the perception of the thing as well as, you know, pushing again, pushing farther, like, OK, this year I push to get more women. And next year I got a push to get people from other countries more diverse backgrounds and just more diverse panel over it all.

So sorry for the long monologue, but I haven’t really talked about this with anyone except for my wife. So now that I’m done with all of that, I don’t really have a question for you. But. But can you say anything about your experience being a panelist on Lifeson Summit and sort of other events maybe you’ve taken part in and maybe you’ve seen some similar sentiments? Very special that you wanted to talk to me about it. We I didn’t get an email from that person, so I’m really glad because I think I would’ve been pretty pissed off because I saw the effort that you need to diversify.

And there were people from other countries and it wasn’t like just a bunch of white American guys. Not that there’s anything wrong with white American guys. I like white American guys, but I can see how a lot of people, specifically white people, are more hypersensitive about diversity right now because it’s a hot topic right now. And I know that people of color have had this issue their entire life of feeling invisible or left out or whatever. And they’re aware of it, but they’re also sort of used to it, which is awful.

But that’s why right now it’s like a thing. That’s why that person felt the need to, like, reach out and attack you. There’s so many other things that they could have done with their energy, but that’s what they chose to do. Did you know them? I didn’t ask you that before. Did you? Didn’t know this person? No.

I mean, the first thing I did is look up to see if it was a real person because I thought maybe it was just I don’t know, like I think I don’t know what to say, but I get emails every day that are like weird marketing or spam things. So you always got to, like, kind of look out for that. So, yeah, it is a real person. And I just check and I had several back and forth with them because they were obviously really upset and it’s like trying to I was trying to, you know, at the same time be a do good customer service.

Yeah. And like listen and not be too reactive, but then also get some information because I’ve discovered that many times you see the tip of the iceberg from one person and you realize that there’s like loads of other people feeling the same way, but just who aren’t speaking up. And so it’s good to listen to those things come up.

Did you find that with this situation?

So yes. Well, in a way. So let’s see this last year, maybe I got two emails from people saying, hey, you should I would love to see more women. And I and I said, great, thank you. And then this year, I probably got twice as many. So maybe I got four or five emails saying either you should have more women or you should do things differently in some way. And just to make one suggestion to everyone out there, whoever feels the need to reach out to anyone.

And so I’m trying to avoid from making complaints. But this is going to be like my one soapbox moment that I realized as being on the because I complain a lot to other people when I don’t like their product or their event and I’ll let them know. And I realize now being on the receiving end of that, it feels it feels hurtful, but it also doesn’t feel very helpful to have someone just say, you suck in your thing sucks.

Yeah, that’s never a full comment.

And I didn’t realize that until one person emailed me one time and said, I think you should have more. I can’t remember even what it was. I think you should have more women. And here are five women who I think you should interview on the podcast like.

Well, great. What you’re brilliant. Like, yes. Amazing. Like who reaches out and criticizes and then makes a suggestion. So I don’t know why I didn’t realize that that was so different. But that is what when people don’t like something, that’s what they’re doing. So if you really care about something and you’re not just like complaining just to bitch about something and because you’re annoyed, like, you know, make a suggestion that’s so much more helpful.

So that’s what’s going on, right? When you say, yeah, there’s not enough women at your thing and then the people are saying to you, oh, we couldn’t find any like, uh, yeah.

Perfect moment to be like, hey, here are five thousand. Here’s a whole group of sound girls that, you know, sorry. OK, off the soapbox go. No, totally.

Like we all we all love to complain about things when we can’t write. Like it’s my favorite thing to angry tweet at a company because like they didn’t put avocado on my sandwich or whatever.

Sure. Sure.

But in these situations, like you are one person essentially, and you have people that help you, but it’s mostly you who is putting on this huge event. And you have this podcast and it’s just it’s you and you’re doing it because you’re passionate. So to be so harsh and judgmental sucks. And it also tells me that they have never had to. Maybe these people have never had to make something themselves, because then you really start to look inward and you’re like, OK, yes, I do suck.

Great. I you’ve confirmed every fear that I have with my life. But when you actually give that peer feedback of like, OK, this isn’t what I expected from you, I think you can do better. Here are ways that you can do better in the future. That’s a tactic that we use in in our classes on how to give peer feedback. You can either do a happy sandwich. Where you say this is something that’s bothering or you’re really great at this, this is the thing you need to do, but I also think you’re doing this pretty OK, you like those things are so much more effective as because we’re human, you’re human.

You’re not a corporation. You know, just yelling at you isn’t going to be productive because then that’s just hurtful. And I totally feel that we’ve gotten I co-host this and Girls podcast and we’ve gotten emails also of like judging our recordings. And we’ve talked about this before. We we started recording here like I can’t control what other people are doing. I can’t control if someone’s having construction done in their house that day and they didn’t want to reschedule. Like, I can’t really control that.

I can just try to edit that out or not share that podcast. So, I mean, there’s a lot of things that happen behind the scenes that no one sees. So I can tell you what we’ve done with the Sound Girls podcast is made a very conscious effort. So we collectively rewrote the Sandro’s mission statement. We recorded that and have been placing it in the new version into podcasts. We have made a very strong effort to highlight women of color and put those podcasts ahead of other people.

I feel weird about that sometimes because I want I don’t want them to think like we’re doing this just because we feel like we have to. Does that make sense? Um, you know, and just be like, oh, well, they’re trying too hard. I don’t think you can try too hard anymore. I think we have to do the harder thing. I think we have to seek out people of color. And it’s not that hard to find women who do live sound, who are black.

That’s not that hard. It’s maybe hard if you close your eyes and you’re just like, I know like seven guys that do love sound like men, then it’s hard. But if you literally just, like, open your eyes for five seconds, you’re going to see all of these amazing people who are doing such cool things. And they also happen to be black and happen to be women like I mean, there’s there’s so many different people out there.

And so when people are judging you and you look inwardly and you’re like, OK, I can do better, I can because we can all do better, then you just do that. But it’ll never be enough. And we talked about that before. You could have had, like you said, a thousand people of color, of all different genders working behind the scenes and no one would ever know. So you do kind of have to you unfortunately, I guess, advertise it like, no, look where we’re woak over here.

This is really helpful, though. Like, I, I didn’t think about, like, having a mission statement, you know, and like trying to be really public about who you are instead of letting people just make whatever judgments they want to make. And so I’m making the assumption that, hey, I know I’m a good guy. So you must assume that I’m a good guy. Like, don’t want like we don’t have to leave everything up to hoping that people will give us the benefit of the doubt.

You we can try to put our put a sign out or put a put our best foot forward with that. That I think it’s a fact is what’s important to me. It’s expected now. That’s why every website that you go to has a statement about Black Lives Matter or about whatever hot topic is. I’m I’m not saying that Black Lives Matter is only a hot topic because I care a lot about that. I went to the protests here in Orlando and I try really hard to highlight people of color and do what I can because we have this voice like you have a podcast, I co-host a podcast.

We have to use that for highlighting and pushing people forward because they deserve it, you know, because there’s some really cool people and they deserve to be hurt you. But it’s like you can’t assume that people think you’re OK anymore. You can’t you can’t just assume that strangers are even acquaintances are accepting that you’re not a piece of shit.

Awesome. Well, the rest is up.

Susan, I just want to say, like, I, I think people should know the doors are open, you know, like you want to hear feedback from people and I want to hear feedback from people because you and I are both doing things to just try and help people like you’re teaching to try and help students. You’re doing a podcast to try to spread information and push people forward. And I’m doing the same thing. And we’re not just doing that for ourselves.

You know, it’s fun for us to produce. But, you know, we’re doing this to to started Livestrong Summit to see, like, does this help people? And people showed up and they said it helped. So I did it. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m building the thing with you, you know, for making the goddamn effort.

Yeah. So if you want to see a change and you want to see something different, like I’m all for it. And so I think it’s important to say that too, because it’s like people don’t see any. They don’t say anything, they don’t say anything, and then it boils over and they explode and they’re like, I hate you. Susan, what is one book that has been immensely helpful to you?

I have. Oh, man. Hold on. Let me put it up. I have a book that we use in our classes that I love. It is a text book. It is a text book that we found after we wrote the class. And we were like, oh, my God, this is exactly what we just wrote. And it kind of was validating because, you know, then we really go. We do know what we’re talking about in this book kind of confirms it.

OK, so one of my favorite books, and this is a textbook because we talked earlier about me being nerdy. This one is called Video Production Twelfth Edition.

Isn’t that fantastic that I couldn’t remember that production twelfth edition of the topic. OK, super, super difficult, but this one is really, really cool. And we use this for the for one of the classes that I, I helped write. And it goes through disciplines and techniques and this thing goes over cast and crew. What are relationships between the director and a camera operator, whatever the relationships between a floor manager and a producer. And so it goes through all of that.

It goes through scriptwriting, how to do how to make a rundown, how to how to write blocking for cameras. And then it goes into directing video switchers, field audio and lighting and graphics and editing and like. It covers absolutely everything and it covers it in a really cool way that is approachable. It doesn’t read like a really tough textbook and it has a ton of, like, beautiful pictures in it. And the best part is that it’s all in line.

So like, God, when I was in college, you would spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks and now you can get them online for free, which is amazing. But this is my favorite my favorite book, and it’s not written by someone I know. And I know some people that have written some cookbooks, but and I’m not diminishing them. I just have referenced this more than any other book for education purposes in the past three years. Susan, do you listen to a podcast?

I listen to some, but I want to know, like one or two podcasts that you have to listen to every time they come out.

I listen to episodes. I am not like podcast subscriber where I listen to every single one. So I’m kind of bad at that. And to be honest, I listen to a hell of a lot less now that I don’t drive as much so that I’ve gotten out of that routine. Because if I’m not driving, I’m not listening as often. But I have been listening to Samantha Potter’s church sound podcast, that one I’ve been interested in. We interviewed her with some girls, but also working in a church environment, which was super new to me this year.

That helped me because I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with houses of worship. They’re like super weird compared to any other kind of production. But and then the royalty free you. No. Yeah. Roadie for radio and then the Signal-to-noise podcast. So and I don’t listen to every episode of those. I kind of reread them. And then when there’s someone that I know or a topic that grabs me, then I’ll pick that one up. But those are the ones that I, I listen to more than I used to.

OK, Susan, where is the best place for people to follow your work?

I have a blog with sound girls, so you can go to soundgirls.org. And it’s usually they have like a front page scrolling part where they have like the new blogs like posts. And then we also have our podcast, which you can find on literally any of the podcast outlets that you like. You can search for it and we are on all of them.

Awesome. Well, Susan, thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live.

Thank you for having me.

What (wo)men want: How IEM mixes differ by gender

By Nathan Lively

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In this episode of Sound Design Live, I talk with flute tech, sound engineer, and all around badass, Loreen Bohannon. We discuss breaking into pro audio, working with Michael Bolton and Lizzo, and what you should be doing differently in your monitor mixes for men vs women.

I ask:

  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to monitor mixing?
  • Using all of your Tools: The science and application of male/female hearing in IEM
    • What was your biggest surprise in the research?
    • What ah-ha moment was immediately applicable to your work?
  • Scott Vogel What are the key points male mixers should know when mixing for the female ear and vice versa?
  • Elliott Clarke Pavan mentioned a modified wireless mic system that Loreen put together for Lizzo’s Flute, I’d like to know more about that! And any other “artist bespoke” solutions she’s come up with over the years?

You should have an idea of how the other sex hears.

Loreen Bohannon

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Alejandro Magaña Martinez.
  2. Loreen on Instagram and TikTok.
  3. Books: The 48 Laws of Power, Sound Reinforcement Handbook, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
  4. Hardware: Sennheiser SK6212, MKE104
  5. Workbag: qBox, multi-meter, Cab Driver, RAT sender sniffer, clear medical tape, tincture of benzoin, skin tack, generic ears (Ear Sonics, Sennheiser 400/500), me
  6. Men
    1. Age 39: men’s hearing really takes a dive above 4k.
    2. Age 70: threshold of hearing higher by 6dB, above 12kHz is toast.
    3. Frequently I need to boost the high-end for men.
    4. Men can take 40% more background noise before they are distracted than women.
    5. Men are better at localization. Panning seems more important to them.
  7. Women
    1. Our threshold of hearing is 6-8dB lower than a man’s.
    2. We don’t perceive 1-2kHz as well as men.
    3. Estrogen is one of the main auditory processor in the body. That’s one of the main reason men and women retain and loose their hearing differently.
    4. Women process audio faster. It gives us more information initially. We also anticipate the arrival of sound faster.
    5. Avoid Ultimate Ears and JH or put a small shelf on the high end. Avoid Shure.
  8. Quotes
    1. I spent a lot of money that I didn’t have flying places that I probably shouldn’t have to get connections in the business.
    2. It has astounded me that we as people who put speakers in people’s ears don’t understand how humans hear.
    3. I’m 7 years into this business and I still haven’t worked with another woman.
    4. Failure is part of success.
    5. I’m an amazing monitor engineer, but if you put me in front of a FOH console, I’m magic.
    6. Michael Bolton has been doing this for twice as long as I’ve been alive.
    7. One of the biggest problems I see with new in-ear engineers is that they think they know what the artist wants to hear.
    8. After the age of 39 men’s hearing really takes a dive above 4k.
    9. You can’t take it personal. I’ve messed up bigger gigs than this.
    10. You should have an idea of how the other sex hears.
    11. If it hurts your ears it’s definitely hurting theirs.
    12. In nature we never encounter sound above 80dB, except for natural disasters.
    13. The research of women’s hearing only 20 years old.
    14. Every microphone on the market is designed for a man’s voice.
    15. Every single person on that stage has messed up worse than you and if they haven’t they’re newbies too.
    16. Everybody just likes to pretend that we are some enfeeble creature that lords over the sound. We try to establish these unreal personas. I want to be real. We all mess up. You take a lesson from it. You don’t take it personally.
    17. I just want men to hold each other accountable.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

I’m Nathan Lively and today I’m joined by the monitor engineer for Lizzo Michael Bolton, among others, as well as front of house and tour manager for The Plain White T’s and FOH for Rusted Root, among others. Loreen Bohannon.

Thanks for having me, Nathan.

So, Loreen, I definitely want to talk to you about all of this cool research you’ve done into how men and women hear differently and the like. But before I do that, I’d love to know a little bit about what music you like. So after you get a sound system set up, what is maybe one of the first tracks, you might like to play through it to just get familiar with it.

Shake Me Like a Monkey from Dave Matthews Band. One of my favorite songs to play through, to start off with, it’s really random, I’m not a Dave Matthews Band fan, but I love that song. I love the horns. I love a mix of that song. It really gives you an entire spectrum of sound like as soon as you put it through the P.A., which I really appreciate, it’s one of my favorite.

I’m a big stereotypical kind of person. So I love Sade Smooth Operators, one of my favorites somewhere.

No need to, he’s a smooth operator. And then also Sting Mercury Falling is my other one of my favorite songs.

It’s actually my favorite song to hear through Mercury. So I rise from my. And then for like base and padding, I like to use Trombone Shorty. Hurricane season.

So those are kind of some of the ones I run through, I have more like I’m a gypsy woman from Jonathan Tyler, there’s a couple that I like to use. I go I go through moods like I have moods of tuning music.

It depends on where I am. Sure. All right, Larry, take us back to the beginning. How did you get your first job in audio?

Like what was your first paying gig paying gig? Well, I was 16, 17, and I had a production company. My the lady who’s my adoptive mom now was my theater teacher in high school. And in my junior year, she brought in a production company. And I saw these guys and I was like, I want to work with y’all.

And they’re like, OK, yeah. They’re like, OK, you can help us. But like, only if you know how to rap a cable, we’re not going to teach you. And I was like, game on. And so, like, I learned how to do it and I had to help them when they come to our high school and they’re like, well, you should call you should call Richie the owner like and see if he’ll put you on some gigs and load out some stuff because Rock Street Music and Pittston, Pennsylvania, is where I kind of like originated.

I spent the first 10 years, my career with these guys.

And so I literally would just call Richie every week in the store and just be like, hey, you got any gigs to be? Like, No, like, OK, I’ll call back again. The next would be like, Hey, you got any gigs? And then I started like going to the store. Like I would go down to the music store and be like, just walk in. And it was like it was like an hour drive, 40 minutes hour depending on traffic.

And I would literally just go down to that store.

And I didn’t I should preface this with I lived by myself. I was on my own at 16. So, like, I kind of could do this. And so I would just sit it is in a store and look at him and talk to him and be like, you’re going to hire me.

And then eventually, like, I called one day and he was like, oh, my God, Jesus, here’s a load out, go.

And it was like of blackmail this person, but it all worked out, but it was like seventy five bucks. My first paid gig. I mean, I’ve done honestly through my career very little unpaid work. Even if it was a small amount, I’m always usually getting paid. And if I was doing free work, it was definitely for an advancement in my career or something like that. So for me it was just perseverance and harassing people until they were like, God.

OK, well, you have told me that you are an introvert and kind of shy and kind of don’t want to have like this online. You don’t love social media. So so you must have been really motivated at that time to, like, pick up the phone, go to talk to people. Well, you didn’t have a choice.

Like, I came up in a different time. Like, I’m feel like I’m the last portion of the millennials that grew up without, like, the Internet as a child. Like, I didn’t have Facebook till I was in college. So I really didn’t have any of the social media as part of my core person growing up. And I am I’m pretty adverse to it. Like, I don’t like, you know, we talked about it. I don’t like having my personal things online.

I don’t like people knowing personal things about me. I’m a very private person. I do like it that way. But definitely at that time you had the network.

Like, there’s no there’s no question like, oh, the the reason I everything I am and everywhere I am is because I went out and networked.

I would go to conferences like I ended up on Warped Tour because I went to a conference in New York that was the live touring summit or something. And it wasn’t touring people at all. It was all management people. But because I was well spoken and things like that, I was introduced and made lifelong friends there. And that’s how I met Kevin Lyman through a friend, because I lost my voice. There was a woman that I met there who is my friend as she was translating for me the whole weekend.

Oh my God. She was personal friends with Kevin Lyman, who was doing the keynote speech there, and she introduced me. And that’s how I got worked hard because she introduced me to Kevin Lyman. And through Kevin Lyman, I was introduced to Rat Sound and he just gave me a chance. And networking has been the most important part of my career. Like hands down. OK, so.

So that was your first gig and a bunch of stuff has happened to you since then. But, you know, I love to kind of ask people about maybe some point in their career where a pivot was made. And I find that with a lot of people, including myself, there was a big point in your life when you decided to make a change, when you said, OK, I’m going to stop doing this thing and do this other thing, even if it’s just like switching from during front of house to monitors or for a lot of people, it’s like I’m going to move cities or I’m going to stop being a landlord and only be a sound engineer.

So the question is, looking back on your career so far, what’s one of the best decisions you made to get more of the work that you really love?

Well, I actually have a really distinct time period in mind, but I guess I’ll preface that with I’ve been doing this forever and I was in the business in twenty eight when the housing market. And so I then was consecutively a part of the next few years when literally our industry died a very slow death and it was just coming back when Korona like coronavirus, it was really just back full swing from that. But I actually had gone from working like four gigs a week or five gigs a week to like maybe one at that point.

So I actually had to get out of doing sound.

I had never really I think at that time you’d sound just like a career option. Like I knew that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, but maybe not in the capacity that I thought that I was going to happen. So I actually stepped away from doing this because I really didn’t have a choice at the time. And I was doing radio and waitressing. I was an on air personality for two years on a radio station called One of five The River in Pennsylvania.

And I’m an introvert. Yeah, right. Because well, that’s well, no one no one can see me. It was it was awful. And then I got to tell you, they just threw me on the radio. The first day in the studio, I thought they found me on the side of a stage mixing monitors for a doo wop gig like I swear to God, that’s how I got introduced to these guys. So I thought that when they were hiring me, they were hiring me as a producer, not an online on air personality.

And I got in the studio the first day and the lady that’s on the air, Jessica, she gets up and leaves. She’s like, oh, hey, here. She did like one stop said. And she gets up it goes. And they’re like, you’re going out on the radio.

And I was like, oh, that’s the most hilarious mix up I’ve ever heard.

I only got the talent. I no know you’re the talent. That’s fine. Now you’re the one. And I was awful like the whole time. You can kind of see it when I speak now where I have arms and things like that. Still, imagine me not speaking in front of people and having stage fright and then being thrown on the radio knowing there’s thousands of people listening to me. Oh, the whole first month. God bless those people that listen to me, because I definitely called the station the wrong numbers a couple of times.

Definitely my stops as well.

Like someone has a recording of it somewhere, too.

And I’m just like, oh, God, can you just get rid of it? But I was doing that.

And the owner of the company is an incredible human events. Benedetta, who just got married this last week. But previously we had met we had been friends the entire time. You know, he owned the radio stations. I was in a remote location and we became friends and we became pretty close. We kind of started dating. And one of the things like he very much was someone who never wanted to cross the lines, which I always appreciate and understood and respected from him.

And the radio isn’t what I wanted to be doing anyway. So he said to me, he goes, This isn’t what you want to be doing. Stop take the time and to really figure out what it is you want to do. And he gave me the space to like I had a really rough life. I’ve had a very bad life. And everywhere I am now is purely on the merit of my own fight. And I have no parents or anything like that.

So he’s the first person who gave me the space and the support to truly take a look at myself and see what my dreams were. And it was this. It was touring. It was traveling the world. And that was the pivot point after I took that year and really focused on what I love doing and really like I started. That’s the year I went to the conference. That’s when I got to Warsaw. That’s when I really like I spent a lot of money that I didn’t have flying places that I probably shouldn’t have to try to get connections in the business.

And he’s the person that truly helped me do that and realize that if I’m not doing the thing that I love, then there’s no real reason to like live life because you spend so much time doing the thing that you love. You spend more time at your job. You spend more time doing your job almost than anything else, you know. And my first tour was with Rusted Root. And unfortunately, you know, our relationship couldn’t last through my transition into my life because I changed so much in the time, you know, from starting touring to like the few years after.

Like, I moved to California three years ago, less than three years ago after I came back from my second Warped Tour. So that’s how fast our relationship changed. And that’s not to say that touring isn’t an amazing space because I love what I do. And like he is the most supportive human in the world. As I said, he just got married like he’s a wonderful human and I owe him pretty much that idea. And that whole turnaround of my life came from him and like allowing me to have the space to, like, understand that I love doing this, that I am good at it, that I have, that it is like career.

There are people out there making six figures doing this. And it’s not just like, oh, a gig like this is a career.

This is a job. You can become established, you can become you know, I’m an engineer like this isn’t woo woo. This is like this is like I’m literally manipulating sound. I can build speakers, I can repair circuit boards. Like this is I’m a real engineer.

And that’s also. Been part of my realization the last few years, and the way that I’m speaking out is I think in this industry and why I started my research in the first place, we’re engineers. It is astounded me that we, as people who put speakers in people’s literal ears, don’t understand how humans hear. So that’s kind of like let me, you know, in full circle in that conversation to my research. So it became a point of passion.

One of the things I remember earliest in my career is, you know, I’m seven years into this business and I still haven’t worked with another woman at all. Not once, haven’t even seen one. Not hide nor hair. I’ve heard of them. Yeah, I know. Right.

And then I do the wolf’s den in Connecticut with Cassandra, who we still keep, you know, every now and then we still keep in touch. She’s actually one of the people who inspired this.

My research, because one of the very first conversations we had was like, hey, have you ever realized that, like, dude mixes are like Celmo boom compared to like what I usually do?

Like, have you ever why do they have all that in there? Like what is that? And I was like, hmm, maybe it’s like a difference or something.

So I can tell that you’re about to start getting into the research and like where it came from. And I don’t want to stop you, but I do just want to say a couple of things about about the story you just told. It’s amazing what happened to you all the all the turns that your life took and that from this little piece that you just told, it sounded like you had a friend hold up a mirror to you and then you just saw it and you’re like, OK, I know what I know what I need to do.

And maybe you didn’t know the exact actions, but you were like, OK, I know I need to make a change.

And then you proceeded to take a bunch of risks and it paid off.

I think that’s the I think that’s a truth. And any career like if you’re not taking a risk, like you’re not going to get the reward. And I think that’s that’s a really big business lesson. And like, there’s failures along the way. Like, that’s not to say that things that I did do didn’t result in, like, bad results. Like I have bad moments in my career and stuff like failure is part of success. So, you know, there’s a lot to be said.

Like, you know, I spent before. I mean, I’ve been touring now that I look back like it seems like it’s a lifetime, but I’ve been touring, like, full time professionally for only five years. So it’s kind of like wild to see what I was able to accomplish in that time, you know, from being living in Pennsylvania five years ago, getting my first real big national touring act, being rusted root. So where I am now, you know, in less than five years and even more so than that, you know, I haven’t even been in California for three years yet.

This fall will be three years that I’ve been here realizing that’s the biggest, scariest risk I ever took was, you know, looking at the man that I have been living with me like I got to go. And him going, I know. And then me literally packing up my car and driving across the country with no plan, no apartment, like two weeks later. And it worked out for me. But it’s terrifying.

It’s just so interesting for me that I hope you don’t mind me saying it this way. But for a person who in a way came from nothing like no connections or resources or whatever, you ended up in a business that requires a lot of that. It’s all based on personal referral. If you have certain resources, you can get in places.

If you had money, you could just start you could just buy a bunch of speakers maybe and start a sound company like and here you are, having gone as far as you did.

So I can tell that you were very motivated. And at the same time, it seems like once you started putting the pieces together that like, oh, to make this work, I need to know this person like you just made it happen. And so I’m sure it was you know, it’s frustrating to discover that pro audio and life is not a meritocracy, but once you get over that, you can start taking action and just sort of like use the tools for your own resources.

You were just thinking you were telling me that what you would really like to do is be getting more of this information, especially into the hands of women and sort of like teaching them like this is how the game is played. And so, yes, it sucks. And like now let’s take over something like that was pretty.

You say that in a better way.

I’m not saying much yet. As women and even some men, like depending on how you’re raised, we don’t learn. And I really feel like I’ve had some conversations with other people, um, and young people. One of the lost our son. Our generation is like negotiation and understanding business and how things function. One of the most important books I read to help me understand the rules of the game was the 48 Laws of Power. You’ve probably heard of that book, but it really helped me understand, like put words to the things that I was witnessing, like the plays and power that I was witnessing that I was always very aware of.

I’m a writer. I’m a reader. I’m a. Voracious studier of history. So, like, you know, one of my favorite time periods is like the Tudor period in England, which is all about court intrigue and things like that, and, you know, layers of stuff.

And that’s very much honestly how business is played. Its kupets, it’s layers of intrigue and knowing how to, like, play the game and slip in the right way and like, ask for things, you know, and I, I want to, like, help women and do that because so many people, transgender people of color, women, look at me and go, how did you make it? And like a lot of people don’t actually know my story, that I actually come from literally nothing like I was.

I had no parents. I was emancipated when I was 16. My mom passed away from cancer. My dad was never in the picture, but he passed away from heroin six years later. Like, I literally come from nothing. So like, I want people to know that they can do it. Like, I didn’t go to college, I didn’t have those things, and I still was able to make a career for myself. So that’s definitely where I’m angling my focus now that I’m becoming more of an online presence and people I’m starting to actually respond to everyone being like, how did you do this?

What are you doing? Because before I I want to talk to anyone.

But now I have to say, OK, well, choice maybe on the Internet.

I feel like it’s an important to take a quick moment here, just to point out that you can hire Lorien as a career coach from her website. And I don’t know how long that’s going to be available. And so I urge people to to go and do that, like she learned all this stuff the hard way. And I don’t want to say what the price is, but I looked at the prices really clear in her website. And I tell you that it is significantly cheaper than, for example, hiring me to consult for an hour.

And very few people do that anyway. But I’m just I just want to point out that, like, the price is really good. Lorien has a lot of experience. And so you could be like doing some shortcuts on your career.

OK, promotional ad over. Thank you.

I just think that’s amazing opportunity. OK, let’s get into talking about some technical stuff.

So we were we sort of started already talking about some of this research you’ve done into hearing before we do that, I would love to just talk maybe some general tips about mixing monitors.

And I know you’ve done a lot of different jobs, but you’ve also done a lot of mixing monitors in your monitors. And so I would love to just know from what you’ve seen out there and the mistakes that you’ve made, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to mixing monitors? And I guess would you say that your specialty is kind of in your monitors if that’s like we can focus on that, if that would make the question easier?

I’m not sure I consider myself a sound engineer. So if it is sound, I can make it produce sound like I, I happen like I’m like I’m feel like I’m going to toot my own horn. I’m an amazing monitor engineer, but if you put me in front of a front of House counsel, I’m magic. So, like, you know, I think that’s what makes me that’s what makes me a great monitor engineer is because like my mixes.

I’m trying to make them sound as good as the record does, like I’m trying to make them sound great or not even that one of the biggest mistakes I feel like a lot of engineers make when they first start mixing monitors is assuming they know what the artist wants to hear. And that is why I am so successful, because I really pay attention to my artists. I really try to understand what they’re hearing, why they want to hear it, what they’re hearing.

Like, one of the first questions I like to ask someone that I’m working with when I’m doing like inners for them is like when you’re listening to music. What what what’s the main thing that you’re listening to? Are you listening to the drums or you’re listening to the guitar? You listen to the vocals, and that’s going to tell me what type of frequencies and what type of things they like to hear in their mics.

You know, if they’re a dancer, a lot of times I get people who dance. I’ll be like, you know, they like to hear more drums and bass. You can’t dance to a guitar and a vocal. You’re dancing to the bass in the drums.

So, like for me, not assuming that I know what my people want to hear has been probably my biggest tool and being really communicative with them in what I’m trying to accomplish. Like with Michael Bolton, that was a very big, big thing. He has been doing this for literally about twice as long as I’ve been.

A lot like they’ve got some stage time. Yeah, he’s he’s been around. And I remember one of the first things he said to me was when I ask for something in my samples, in my tracks, like, I know what I’m asking for and that’s what I would like and I know what I’m saying. And I just looked at him and I was like, I’m sorry. Did somebody tell you that you didn’t know what you were hearing? Because that is not my job.

Like, literally, these have been your tracks for longer than I’ve been alive. You know how they go and that. And I think that established like I respected him as an artist and then he respected me as an engineer in my job because I was able to anticipate his needs. Once he explained to me what he was looking for in each song, like at one point Michael said to me goes, I don’t even know if you’re mixing me during the set, which I constantly was mixing him.

He was a very active mixer. Me like he it was the first time I’ve had to do like a real star mix, like lock eye contact with him, the whole set, like we didn’t have another monitor engineer, but kind of what they told me was the band knows you, don’t you look at Michael only if it’s a crisis do they ask for anything from you during the show.

And I had never dealt with that level of and like focus and intense thing with Michael. So that is why does Michael’s mic sound so bad?

He he’s a 70 year old man. And I don’t want to say it sounds bad because. I know. I know.

I’m just taking a leading question to get you into your research. This is one of my most favorite takeaways from your presentation. A live sound summit using all the tools of science and application of male female hearing.

And AM is as how surprised you were at what Michael Bolton’s mic sounded like, what he liked, and how you could barely stand to listen to it.

So. So, yeah, talk about that. Yeah. It was like I’ll have to someday I’m going to pull up a file I like, put it on my own and show people it is all like his vocal four K up like a six dB shelf like on they’re pegging for K and is mix like. And at the time when I first started with Michael I hadn’t compiled, I had been researching but I hadn’t like put all of my research in one place and I had compiled all of my charts and things like that.

When I did I was like, oh my God, it makes so much sense now because he’s he’s almost 70. He’s been in the music business his whole life.

So there’s also hearing loss there, like after the age of thirty nine men hearing really, really above Fourcade takes a dive. Like once you hit thirty nine, probably some of y’all are probably lucky and get to forty your high end, particularly at four K plus dives like is gone by the time a man is seventy. Like I wish I could like hold up a chart here you can like it’s your threshold of hearing is higher by like six dB you like your high end like basically above twelve K toast probably probably at the age of 70 above eight K like not a whole lot present there.

So all of a sudden it made so much sense when I looked at my research.

Why his and for me it was brutal, it was brutal every night.

And also one of the fun facts a lot of people don’t know is Michael Bolton wears one ear, one stereo in year one.

And I I love you ultimate years, but I hate you for making this product. It is literally a stereo set of drivers in one ear. Why does he do that?

Because he’s. School and I like somebody, one of the engineers told them that this was a good idea, so we got used to having one ear open. Oh, no. Oh, good. It was so it was so rough.

So, like, on top of doing that with one ear, I would have to go out to his wedge. And I did this thing where I would I delayed the wedge like three milliseconds or something, and I would put a tracing of his vocal background, vocal and piano in there because it would pair with his ear up here. So it would almost sound like you had a stereo set of headphones in with one ear because I would have the wedge so it would pair.

He never he never realized I was doing it, but like, it really helped him. Sure. And the guys on stage honestly notice, too. So that was nice. But he didn’t like wedgies on stage, but he just can’t hear the high end, like, you just can’t hear it. And that’s true of most men. Like honestly, most men that I mix for.

I frequently find that as a female it’s fine for me, but I need to boost the high end for them and the volume level female hearing, like our threshold of hearing is six to eight dB lower than a man’s. So what is loud enough for a dude is screaming for me.

And that’s one of the things I want people to consider is that that’s also vice versa. Like, so what is just loud enough for you as a man is going to be screaming for a woman? So I feel like that’s just been some of the most important things I’ve taken away from my research, that especially men mixing women and women mixing men. You should have an idea of how the other sex here is so that you can properly address what they’re hearing.

You know, it’s definitely made me effective. Like I feel like I’m a problem solver, monitor engineer now. Like, you know, I get called for Anita Baker and a lot of difficult acts. And I think it’s just because I know how people hear. And one of the things that I take very personally is like, I want to know how I hear. So like I get hearing tests. I’d like to know where my holes are.

Yeah, but I mean, what’s your hearing tests look like? Well, normal actually for women. We have a whole a natural whole. That’s like a a lower. We don’t perceive one or two as well as men. It’s like the flip in our hearing or something. We have a will naturally have a hole there for me. I also have a little bit of a hole at like five hundred, like a little bit of dip and frequency in five hundred.

But I think that in it’s mostly in my left ear, I think that’s more of hearing damage from something probably warped more than anything.

Yeah.

What’s on your chart. Warped Tour. Warped Tour. Well that’s that’s a whole other story of the for my first year out on Warped Tour, we had a we had a beat up system out there, the kora. Do you remember those? No. Yeah, they were this then they’re about three, four, three inches wide. The largest speaker in the P.A. was eight inches.

I had and I had ninety six, eight inch speakers and a flat on my stage. That thing could breeze past one dB without even like thinking because it was meant to be. It throws just naturally as far as a football field without doing anything. And so that’s what they put on a stage for warper, the screamo stage.

I’m sorry, Nathan.

I had hearing I had earplugs in I had 30 twenty dB filters like thirty to dB of of reduction. And it wasn’t enough because they were, we were, they were trying to blow those things up honestly. I mean even if you have that right. So even if I have that much hearing protection and I’m still being bombarded by one hundred plus dB for eight hours a day in front of me, so like I damaged my hearing on WAAPA, like that first year, warped her like hands down.

Something happened. I didn’t come back from it the same. I came back with some tinnitus. And the next year I totally was the front house engineer. I had my filters and gun muffs, like totally was that person that Kepa was. Great if you’re on a football field, but for a metal stage, not the BYB, and then they were they tried to tell me like it got rained on and then all the combe filtering on the right side went away.

We lost the box. So because it was a ray process, all the filtering went away because we had a box out and they wouldn’t listen to me, they would be like, well, it’s on in the computer. I’d be like, dude, you hear can you hear the space in the P.A.? And then one day I was so pissed that I took the sides of the P.A. and I swapped them. And then every single engineer and every single person because they had gotten so used to it being on the right side, every single person came up with what’s wrong with the P.A., what’s going on?

And I was just like.

So so you coming back and having a hearing, hearing loss from work to really kind of changed how I thought about audio and perceiving sound and how we treat our audiences and things like that. Like if my hearing is damaged and I had thirty six to thirty to dB of reduction, like, what about the people that were standing in our audience being hammered by one hundred and twenty dB like. Sure.

That some sort of like audio production golden rule. I don’t know. Yeah. Like if it hurts your ears it’s definitely hurting theirs. Like back it down bro. Like, like it doesn’t need to be that loud. Does it sound good. Yes. Then you don’t need to have it be a gargantuan movement of air every time someone hits the kick drum like you don’t want to like knock down the field. And I get it, people like that EDM in particular.

But like when you’re dealing with live humans, one of the things I am most passionate about is the fact that we as humans and our natural state, we don’t ever encounter amplified sound except for large earth movements. Thunder or, you know, natural natural disasters are pretty much the only time in a human’s natural span that we hear sounds above 70 or 80 dB. So now we’re in environments where we are perpetually, you know, exposing people to a hundred plus dB is regularly.

What is that doing to our hearing? One human ears are not meant to hear at that level. I think that’s why we have a prevalence of hearing loss. We see it.

Sure, it’s not just us plus whatever consumers are doing with their headphones like. Yeah, exactly. And I like, you know, one of the things products that came out that I wanted to come out that I still haven’t seen was dB check from a sense of phonics, which was in your SBL meter, like you would put the inner ear on it and it would measure and it never came to market. I don’t know what happened to it, but I was really looking forward to that product.

OK, well, if anyone knows since then, we’ll put we’ll add it to the notes to this. But yes, let me ask you a couple more questions. So you started getting interested in this research. You started looking into it. I’m curious. Since then, like, what has been one of your one or two of your biggest surprises?

So you learn this stuff about how hearing is different and how your hearing works. Was there anything that was really, like shock to you?

Yeah, I read a really interesting study someone had compiled hearing research regarding children and learning and. One of the most interesting things that I happen to come across is the fact that, like men and women’s attention like is I don’t want to say attention, volume limit before distraction.

Right. Is much different. So like as it goes with the hearing threshold, but like, men can take 40 percent more background noise before they’re distracted than a woman is interesting.

OK, so like, you know, and that also really goes for inners as well in a way. But in real life, what that means is like classrooms today. It’s one of the things I’m also interested in. Classrooms today are very much suited for female learning, quiet, concise, straightforward in front of you back in the day when classrooms are a little more boisterous, a little more noisy and kids can move around, that was more of a male oriented learning.

That was more like men. Boys thrive in those types of classrooms where women and females do not they cannot actually function in a because the background noise is so much for them that they’re distracted. Like for me, I always like it to compare it. Like if you have a girlfriend or whatever and she can be there and you’d be like, what was that sound? And you’ll be like, well, that sound is because she’s like, she can hear you just hear those frequencies more like there’s we’re more sensitive to sound in a way.

So it was really that was kind of shocking for me to understand that how much background noise makes a difference in in retention. And also through my research, I started in the last four years, I think like twenty sixteen. They published the study formally, but they published a study on estrogen and its effect on hearing. And it turns out that estrogen is one of the main auditory processors in the body, really.

And that is one of the main reasons why women retain and lose their hearing much differently than men. That was also a wild discovery and then wandering down that deep scientific path of like how it actually affects our auditory processing, like it actually helps us to initiate the short term memory making process estrogen that’s connected with sound. So that’s also intensely interesting. And that’s still a very new area of study. Like, you know, that, as I said, that journal was only published in twenty sixteen and it hasn’t really caught on yet as popular research.

Like there’s still limited research on it.

There’s so and there’s so many other forms of research that are still lacking. One of the most amazing and shocking things that I found out through my research is that the actual research of female hearing is maybe like 20 years old, like men’s research and hearing goes back 60 plus years. But they really only started researching and understanding that we had different hearing less than 20 years ago, which is why I think I am so passionate about my my research now, because I think that, like every microphone that’s on the market, especially the older ones, are designed for a man’s voice, like the fifty eight.

That’s dude’s voice. Like, I would never use that on a lady I love. Sure. And I could get whatever I wanted out of it. But the right out of the box, the frequency curve on some fifty eight is just not what a female voice needs. And also like opposite of what our ear hears.

Right. So I was thinking, yeah, it’s what, what the voice needs and what a man wants to hear then on the other end. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of our products are made that way based on a man’s hearing or without taking into consideration how women here as well. And I believe if there is an equilibrium between the two, that we a lot of people would be much more happy with the sounds of things.

You know, if we understood more how we each year like what if you can go into iTunes and, like, turn on a filter, that’s like I’m a lady, I’m a dude. And then it, like curves into what your natural genetic hearing hearing curve is, you know, like that kind of stuff interests me. Like, I think that it would change music for a lot of people and make it more comfortable.

Yeah, just did an interview with the co-founder of Sonar Works Reference for and you might want to talk to them because they’re looking at improving their products. And, you know, it totally makes sense in this conversation that you might have male and female target that you would reference to. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. I’m not an expert on their product, but it just reminded me of that.

Yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of things I’m sorry. The other part of research that people don’t have a lot of study on hearing is transgendered hearing. One of the places I’m really interested in is understanding how our hearing changes. When you transition, when you start taking hormones, does a male get better hearing as he transitions to becoming a woman? You know, what are the implications then by hormone treatment? You know what I mean? In hearing and estrogen, there’s estrogen and B, how does estrogen A, estrogen is the one you need for hearing estrogen.

B is the one that can make you lose your hearing. Like, how do we you know, how do we deal with all that stuff? How can we improve our lives? Understanding hormone treatment can help hearing loss, you know.

Sure. And going back to the background noise, I remember one of the applications you mentioned is that the way you create a mix for someone might be affected by this knowledge. So you you might need more isolation between instruments that people want in a mix if they’re man versus woman. Can you can you comment on that and some of the mixes you’ve done for different people? Yeah, big one.

A big comparison that I can do is Michael Bolton and Lizzo. Michael Bolton. Love to hear all the background tracks. Like I like to have all the tracks in there. He like to hear the piano the most, but he like to hear all the tracks. And some of the tracks just sounded like noise, like they weren’t specific. That’s just kind of how they were mixed. There was a lot of parts. And you just liked a lot of like.

Volume of sound behind his voice, but Lizzo, now I will say that Lizzo is a classically trained musician like that is not a lie. Like y’all just get to see her tooting around on the flute on stage. But if you catch her backstage, she does some like arias and stuff and you’re like. Yo, like, I didn’t I didn’t know Lizzo, so we were cool through through the first couple of months of touring, but then when we got to the fall tour and they started adding production tracks to the the show, she started to get very upset.

And she did not like the new tracks. She would be like, I only want the album tracks, period. And my ears. I cannot I can’t concentrate with the other tracks in there. And she would literally like if if I were like Ghostman because I felt like something needed to be filled, she’d be like, take him out. She would get distracted by like she would literally like if they came in she would see her on stage be like, yeah.

And she’s still she was still very new of course to this world as well. Like I want, I want people to understand that like the lisel you saw at the end of the year, like where we were.

And this time last year, like I had an SD eleven, I was running front house of monitors from this eleven by myself, like doing all the wireless coordination by myself. I was her first professional sound higher ever. Like she didn’t know how to talk on a talkback mic like that came back came that was months of work with her for me to get her comfortable to like even just turning around to the deejay and telling her so that she could relay the information or something like that took us a long time.

Or when she’s having a problem on stage, she would talk, she would say it right in the mic and we had to have conversations.

And she finally, you know, a moment of victory for me was when she walked off stage, when her pack was having problems, like, thank you. But she, like, she couldn’t take any distraction in there. And she would hear it like if there was a buzz somewhere that happened to start up on the playback to actually be like, I hear something weird. And that was wild and true to his defense.

Like Michael Bolton was also very specific and what he wanted and he could hear and process all of that information. So it’s just a matter of like processing. Women also process audio much faster, like our actual AV are autosomal brain response time is significantly quicker than a man’s. So we actually process audio a little bit faster.

So it gives us more information initially than a man. So we don’t need as much information. So that’s also something that I have also considered as well as men.

Females perceive sound hitting our ear faster than a man does, like the actual arrival of sight. Sound is the same, but because of an evolutionary feature, women were more predated. We actually anticipate the arrival of sound a little bit faster than a man to give us time to decide, fight or flight if we were going to leave or not.

Interesting. OK, yeah. Faster response. Yes, and sound localization. Men are much better that sound localization. So like the actual placement of sounds on a horizontal or vertical plane. So Michael’s the big difference for him was panting like if I pand everything he was cool.

Lizzo she never even noticed if I pand anything like I’m sure she, I’m sure she did, but she never said anything to me and it wasn’t wasn’t important to her. Yeah. Right. And as a female like because she’s a woman I kind of I kind of have more of a closer idea of what she was hearing. So I was able to more curtail her mix to be a cleaner, like a cleaner present vocal, very, very present, but also not overwhelming because she’s very dynamic.

Michael wanted his vocal to be like piercing like. So those are some of the big differences. But also, like, again, he is a 70 year old man and Liz’s, you know, a thirty year old woman. So there are huge differences. Great test case. Yeah.

Well, you’ve mentioned so many things already, so, so many helpful facts, but I want to jump down to this question from Scott, and I don’t know if you’ll have anything new for him or if you just want to summarize a couple of things you said already. But he says, what are the key points male mixer’s should know when mixing for female year and vice versa?

Well, for a male mixing a female ear, I would say understand that her threshold of hearing is six dB lower than yours. So what is an OK level for you will probably be too loud for her. So consider that when setting up your packs and your gain structure. Also understand that background noise is highly distracting for a female. So if you do have a buzz, if you do have a hum or something on stage, she is probably going to perceive it a lot sooner than a male and be distracted by it and that will affect their singing.

Also, be aware that we do not need as much high end. Like if it sounds bright to you, it is definitely way too bright for the female.

And also one of the things I would like people to consider is that in areas that you are using and in ears that you are putting in people’s ears for me, one of and everybody loves them.

But one of my least favorite sounding ears, our ultimate ears and JH, because they have such an abrasive boost in the high end and that that’s for men.

OK, yeah. His interview in ears. Yeah.

If you have a woman who is carrying JH or Ultimate Years, I would say put a small shelf on the high end above five k maybe start with like two dB and I guarantee you she will have a much better time. I mean with most of my artists that have those ears, I literally do a full on like low pass and back it down. So I’m sure they will appreciate if you would shave off some of the high end off the ears before you start sending things.

And actually doing that will probably make your own makes a lot easier in their ears just with basically what you’re doing without having to do make any special changes for them.

Also on the flip side, for like women mixing dudes understand that they need more volume than you.

Yeah, everything’s the same, but in reverse. Yeah. Like you need like if it’s if it’s loud for you, it’s probably like just right for them. If it’s high end for you, good.

That means it’s probably right for them. If it’s a little noisy to you and it’s driving you nuts. But they’re not saying anything, leave it alone. They’re fine with it and they can handle that, that information in the background. And in fact they might need it to properly process what’s going on in their mix.

Cool. Thank you, Scott, for that question. So we can come back to that if there’s anything else that you that you want to share on that research. But I would love to move on and ask you about I ask you to share with us one of the biggest mistakes that you’ve made on the job. Now, we’ve already talked a lot about sort of all these trials that you’ve gone through in your life. And there’s this trauma and we all have these things we’ve gone through in our life.

But I wondered if you would share with us maybe something that happened to you on stage or at work that was especially painful and then maybe how you recovered?

I have to I think I have two stories that stick out in my head. OK, the first one is a major failure on my part. That isn’t necessarily and I think people have heard me talk about the story before, but I guess I’ll go a little more detail here. I was monitor checking back in Pennsylvania for the Montage Pavilion. I think it’s like the Ford Pavilion or something in Scranton now. And our company was doing the PR and the production for a big festival.

It was coming as a huge stage, like it’s a it’s a shed.

And I was the monitor tech and I was doing great, having a great day.

Everything’s going well. And then Andrew McMahon in the wilderness came. And these people I’ve met people from the crew, I love them. But at this time they were not carrying a monitor engineer. They were carrying everybody else, friend, a house, guitar tech. They literally had a chick who stapled glass to the top of the piano for five hours, but they didn’t have a monitor engineer. And they handed me a stick and they said, this is our file.

And I was like, figure that out.

And I was like, and they had like a twenty minute change over on stage maybe. And I mean one, I think the act before them was like a huge act. They were like seventy plus inputs on stage. And so we’re trying to change these guys over and we’re having massive connection and snake issues with their stuff. We don’t I don’t even get like a game check on any of the channels.

They just start the set and I’m in a I’m in a file that I’ve never even seen before. And I what console was it on? It wasn’t a profile. It might have been a disco. I think it was a digital back then. And one of the older. Maybe a seven or something, and I was way less familiar back then anyway. Oh, no, no, it wasn’t. It was a it was a M7. OK, yeah, it was an M seven, I remember.

And he rolls in and Nathan, it was it was just a nightmare. It was the worst. The worst. I mean, my Coachella’s that with Lizzo was terrifying, but it wasn’t because of me. This was the worst that ever because of technically because of me, but because the band’s unpreparedness and not having a monitor engineer for the entire file, like then it’s it is my fault. Like, it does come down on me to the point where, like, it was so bad the guitar tech came over and pushed me out of the way and thought that he can makes it better.

But there was nothing you could do, like there was no time for gain structuring or anything. I’d be like, bro, if you think it’s if you think you’re going to make them more calm just by being there, then go go on with your bad self.

And I kind of like going to the back of the stage and kind of started to cry a little bit, I’m sure. But my boss came up to me, Billy, there’s Richie and Billy Kozu through the owners. And Richie is more of like the club side. Billy does all the large production and Billy has always been very paternal with me, like they’re very much still my family. He came up to me and goes learing like you can’t take it personal.

Like we all have days where we destroy. We’ve all messed up. Like I’ve messed up bigger gigs than this, you know? And he’s the one that taught me that phrase. I’ve messed up bigger gigs than this one because you can’t take it personally. Like, you can’t let this moment derail you for the rest of your career because these people are going to move on and they’re all they’re going to remember is, hey, remember that shitty sound tech in Pennsylvania?

They’re not going to remember. They’re not going to remember specifics. Maybe they’ll remember you, but like, they’re going to move on that cruise, not even going to be the same, like next year. Like, don’t take it personally. And the honest truth is that they’ve all messed up just as badly as you have. They’re just acting like they haven’t like and I was still pretty young then. And that was a really important piece of information.

The other pretty big messed up I made is when I started touring with Rusted Root was my first time on the road. And I feel like a lot of people there. First time when they get on the road, they want to like hang out with the artist and be like the artist and stuff like that. And I definitely not that I was guilty of that, but we were all on the same bus and there was only like two production people and the rest was the band.

And so they would like invite me to hang out and they’d be like, oh, hey, you want to smoke weed and the stuff? And I’d be like, OK, sure, but rock and roll lifestyle do it. Yeah. And it was rusted root.

We were touring with the Wailers like it was just an interesting time and so like yeah, I was doing it. But then I had Larry, who is our tour manager, pulled me aside one day and he’s a pretty gruff dude. He was really a teddy bear, but he was like a scary dude. He pulled me aside one day. It was like, dude, you fucking suck. You can’t do that.

Like, yeah, he he’s like, you’re you’re dumb on weed. Like, you’re dumb. You’re slow. I can see it. You’re not the artist. You can’t hang out with them. You are not that person. And like I was mad and upset about it at the time, but he was right. It’s one of the most important moments of my career, like I was messing up. And the reality is, is I’m not the artist.

I’m a professional. I’m a technician that’s hired to go out there to be a professional. And he was 100 percent right. And while his approach was a little gruff for me for my first tour, he was right. And I needed that lesson. And I definitely have. I’ve taken it into my career. But that was a big mess up. Like I really was not myself, like trying to keep up and thinking that that’s how it was out.

There was not not the reality. And I think as I experienced other tours, I really that was the only tour that I was like that on. And I became the consummate professional that you pretty much see now after that tour, because I understood what I definitely didn’t want to be perceived as a man.

Some big lessons. One of the things you gain with years of experience is knowing when expectations are way out of line. Right. And so looking back on that moment in Scranton now, you can you’re probably like, oh, does their expectations are way out of line. There’s no reason for me to feel like I was not competent and not good enough.

But in that moment, you don’t know that. And you’re like, oh, I’m going to make magic happen here. I’m going to make these people happy. And they you this console and then and you know, and it feels terrible and it’s awful.

And you just like especially when you’re new in the business, like you take it really personally. And I just like I keep telling all the women who talk to me and all the people who talk to me don’t take it personally. The honest truth is that every single person on that stage with you has messed up worse than what you just did, trust me. And if they have it, they’re newbies to like, are you kidding me? I’ve had an entire PPO’s go down a middle of festivals console’s.

I’m at Radio City Music Hall with Lizzo this year and my console is just rebooting on the side of the stage for twenty minutes on our thirty minute change over like are you kidding me?

Like I have their moments in my career where I am like I’m an idiot like and there’s everybody else goes through that. They just. Don’t like to talk about it, everybody just likes to pretend like we’re some like ineffable creature who like lords over the sound and like we try to establish these like almost like unreal personas about ourselves. I want to be real. Like we all messed up. Like, dude, my poor feeling guy for Lizzo came out for our front of house dude, and he was out front.

And then all of a sudden in the set, we just start losing all of the pages at random times. And it turns out that there was a hardware issue on the digicam console out there where like the fater banks were like linked together through the layers. And it was like a literal if you would even touch the fader, it would just like it would just go like right down or straight up.

So, like, that’s all going on like this and there’s nothing that person can do. But if you were a new person, you’d be taking that personally, like, you know, and you just can’t like we’re in a technical world, we’re dealing with a bunch of computers all the time. Like stuff is going to happen. You know, you just got to take it with a grain of salt and take a lesson from it and be like the next time.

I’m not going to do that thing or the next time I’m going to institute this step in my set up thing to make sure I’m checking this thing that so that doesn’t happen again. You know, you take a lesson from it. You don’t take it personally. You learn a lesson like the reason I get hired to do what I do is because my check, my systems of checking before shows and my own personal systems of setting up are so effective that that’s what people hire me for.

Yes, my skills. But it’s really consistency is what people are looking for. Yeah, the immediate response oftentimes is to feel like I’m bad, and if you can either get through that or stop doing that and turn it into how to change or how to make an improvement next time or how to react differently next time, then now you’re growing. And now that experience has made you stronger instead of just, you know, a huge bag of emotional baggage that you’re just carrying around with you all the time.

And I kind of you know, and this will be maybe a little controversial to say, but I also kind of take that into my interactions with men on the road. You know, something that a lot of people ask me about is about being a woman in the business. And I’m a lot more vocal about that now. But part of our world is kind of like living with each other and being around each other all the time. And there are interactions that you do with your friends and stuff like that that you start to do with people on the road.

And I just you know, there’s a lot of conversations happening in our business right now. And I don’t want men to feel like ever they’re being attacked, you know, in this whole in this whole conversation. It’s never been in my point. And I hope that people perceive what I say, you know, merely I just want men to hold each other accountable moving forward in our business for the actions that they that they have on tour regarding women and the people around them and even their treatment of each other.

I believe that after we get done with covid, we’re going to have to come together as an industry again and really support each other. And so I’d very much like the conversation to change on the male and female aspect of being in the business. And not that I want to say that women kind of have to let things slide. That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is how men interact with women and how men interact with men is much different scenarios.

And men are Routier and a little bit more noisier and all that things. And while things being said are not appropriate, I don’t want the men’s comfort and culture to go away.

And I wish that people would take things with a little bit of a grain of salt. Like I’m someone who’s able to be on a stage and like a dish and take it like there’s a real big like. There’s a lot of talking shit on stage with people, and as part of the fun, like, I love getting on stage and just like sassing around with everybody on there, you know, it’s one of my favorite parts of the day is totally having those crazy interactions with the dudes on the stage and like, making them kind of be a little shocked every now and then by the things I say.

And I definitely don’t want that culture to go away. So I want us all to be allies and be friends and take things with a grain of salt and not take things so personally sometimes.

Yeah, there’s there’s definitely a spectrum of, you know, experiencing work culture as a garbage fire on one in to, you know, just wearing lab coats and being totally analytical and nerd fun list. I don’t know what a better word is on the other end. Somewhere in the middle is like, yeah, a nice place to work. Yes, exactly. Somewhere in the middle where you can, like, still prank each other, but also have a deep conversation on the tuning of a P.A., you know, are tuning out yesterday in Rotterdam or something like that.

So, yeah.

All right. Let’s see, Elliot, send me a question. He says Pavane mentioned a modified wireless mic system that Lorien put together for Liz’s flute. I’d like to know more about that and any other artist bespoke solutions she’s come up with over the years.

I have a lot I like to McGyver things like I’m I’m a solutions person. Like if you present me with a problem, I’m immediately like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Like, here’s options that you can do to fix it. Or I just look at things from a different perspective.

Often times for Eliseo’s flew, I’m actually a flute player. Like that’s I think also people I’m like I’m a I’m the flute tech as well. So this is like a marriage made in heaven I’ve never met, so. Yeah, well, here’s your first one. She is I didn’t know I didn’t know I was going to end up there either, but someone had to do it because I was not doing it.

I created a system. It was for the BET Awards originally. That’s the first time you’ll see the wireless flute. Brandon Blackwell helped pick out the wireless solution, but me and Steve, the broadcast tie for the better, spent two hours raking it up and trying out different ways to get it all done. We spent, you know, and I perfected it, of course, after the BET awards as we went on. But so we used Sennheiser České sixty to twelve packs, those teeny little wireless packs.

They’re tiny. They’re the only wireless packs that would be able to be on a fluke because of the weight. And then we used an MK one for microphone that I would tape towards the amber. So we’re Lizzo played the flute is called the brochure and I would take the mic and put it on the top side, wrapping around the front of the flute. I would put a little bit of tape. I would put some padding underneath the mic and then angle it.

And then I had a really special way that I would wrap all of the cable and things like that and get it compact onto the flute. So you really couldn’t even see it.

I even had foil tape that I would use to hide the cables. So if I had my work box, I could actually pull it out. But I have like actual like it’s like duct foil tape that I would put over the tape to when we had the TV appearances to hide the. So that’s why people are like, I don’t even see the mic.

I know that was the whole point for all of this with the show notes, because this would be amazing to to see.

Yeah, I think I have a screen capture of the Betti flute on my on my screen here. But yeah. And I actually if I think if we had continued touring this year, I would have worked with Sennheiser to actually make a little proprietary mic. That was the right measurements that I would need for the flute so I wouldn’t have to continue like that. We were having that conversation, but now we’re not doing anything.

So yeah, we really needed it to be safe, like a lot of it.

Brandon really wanted to do. The DBA in it, of course, would have sounded better. But the problem is, is we needed the mike to be mobile, needed the mike to be able to be thrown and tossed and handled and not have something sticking out of it like like a DPA neck. Like we couldn’t have that. So it had to be the Mkhize. So that was that was that was about fifteen minutes to midnight every night. And then I also had to create a proprietary bagging solution for Lizzo because she sweats so much that she would sweat a condom.

Oh wow. Yeah.

I’ve heard about problems like this, mostly with fitness trainers who do like these huge rooms. And for hours at a time they get super, super, super. So. So tell me the solution you came up with.

So of course, you know, Loizos, a big girl, and if you’ve seen her, she’s literally on that stage the entire time. She doesn’t come off, but for like three minutes out of whack maybe. And she is dancing the whole time and in and the pack is in a very tight bodysuit outfit. You know, you all have seen her outfit. So eventually the stylist and I work together and he took measurements of the packs and he sewed pockets on the back for me, which made life better.

But I still needed to protect it.

But originally I would take a condom and then I would have three and a half by five inch Ziploc bags like this that I would drop the pack into and I would cut them and I would cut out a hole for the the antenna and then a hole for the knob. And I would pull it down over it and then tape it on and I would cut out a little bit of it and tape it so that I could get into the pack if I need to.

And then I would literally stab in the headphone jack over like closed closed plastic, like I would stab at it and pulled it out, pull a piece of plastic off the tip and then push back in. So it was completely sealed on the top because it was the top is where all the moisture was getting in. Now, I found out that sure makes proprietary silicone sleeves, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t like fully out or something. I wasn’t aware of them.

I don’t understand why all the shirt people that I encountered and I told them about those weren’t like, oh, hey, we have this proprietary silicone sleeve you can use because I was trying to come up with my own, like solution for that. I still am trying to design my own solution for a more simple because theirs is like it molds to the pack and I want more X, I want more access than that.

So I have a different design in my head, but I’ll eventually work on it. And then for Michael Bolton, the pairing of the wedge with the zipper thing was a proprietary artist’s solution for him, like understanding how the ear works and then understanding that when you have a big gap over here, nothing filling, it’s going to make it harder to hear delaying a wedge and then putting shading in, like if you stood on stage in front of it in the band was going, you wouldn’t even really hear it.

It was just enough that it. Totally paired with his ear and then it sounded like a mix here in the head versus just over here.

So tell me about some things in your work bag. I know you have a lot of things, but are there one or two, maybe unique or interesting items that you could tell us about?

Let’s see things that are always in my work box. I have a lot of things that are always my work box. I’ve spent years putting it together. Absolute necessity is a cue box, like must have a key box. I also have a cable tester. I also have power testers. I’m a huge advocate of like really understanding everything you’re working with all the time. So I test all of my power. I do. You know, I have a multimeter in there.

So this is the whirlwind cue box and you have one of them or two of them one.

And then I have the I don’t know what the big yellow cable tester is. You know, the one I’m talking about, it’s big yellow. It does all the connections on the side. It has like four connections. Yeah, yeah. It’s called the cab taxicab. Something like that. Yeah.

I have one of those. I have the rat center sniffer because that’s super helpful. And festivals to like slam it on a snake when you’re not getting connection and be like well it’s you guys not me.

That’s, that’s my real favorite use for it is you.

Well, the best part about that is when it is when it really is them and you slam it down the thing like they’re usually in their headphones and they’re like they like through the headphones off. And I’ll be like, yeah, that’s what I thought I wanted to you. And then like some random things that I really like, love to have in my work box that people don’t really expect, like I keep medical tape in there, clear medical tape.

So this is this is the thing you only learn if you’ve worked in theater for a while, that medical tape is so good for keeping stuff on skin. Yes.

But even more than that, I also carry around tincture of benzoin which most people haven’t heard of. No, tell us about that.

Tincture benzoin is an all natural compound where I’ve sprayed on the skin. It provides an adhesive that you can’t sweat off. So when you put tape to it, it actually sticks to the tape better. And also you can put tincture of benzoin in water and steam it and it will help prepare vocal cords. Oh, well, that’s an old school theater trick.

They’ve they’ve taken they’ve since taken the adhesion type thing that I talk about and they’ve created skin tech, which is a very similar product. But the original product was tincture benzoin before skin tech. And that’s one of the things I mean, I have a soldering iron, I have boatloads of E tape, I’ve got headphones, I’ve got tons of generics, like I carry around like four to five pairs of generic ears personally most of the time. And you’d be surprised at how often I use them.

Oh well, OK, I will show up who need them but don’t have them or what happens. Yes.

And also I carry around specific generics. I actually carry around generics from a brand called EER Sonic’s. And then I also carry around the Sennheiser, the four hundred series or five hundred series, their new series. Because I find that people that have generic years. I love you. Sure, I hate your ears. A lot of people have those ears and they don’t sound good. And particularly for women, the actual frequencies that are boosted in those ears are not great.

Like they’re like one K to K which are frequencies. We have a hole in their abrasive in the high mids, which we’re sensitive to. I just I always will change our women’s women’s generics with my sures or my or my synthesizers or my ear Sonic’s and ear. Sonic’s is like one of my favorite brands for ears for women. As long as you’re not doing like hard rock and they always have a better day, like sometimes I’ll get when I was with Michael Bolton, when we went to England, we had a crew of background singers that was with us and they all had ears.

And I gave them all my ear, Sonic’s generics. And they were like, oh, my God, I didn’t know. I didn’t know it could sound like this. So they actually all bought your Sonic’s after the tour of Nice. Yeah. I mean, I’m the type of person where I don’t actually get endorsed by any of these brands, but I like like my my presentation of the live sound summit, you know, the science of hearing.

I believe everything is a tool. I believe the ears are a tool like yes, I’m loyal to certain brands and a certain extent, but not really like the guitar player comes up to me and goes, hey, I need ears. I’m probably going to. And it’s a dude. I probably be like, you need to go get some G.H. like, those are perfect for those guys. But if a lady comes up to me and goes, hey, I need to get some ears and she’s a singer, I’m probably not going to offer her the same ears.

But I have listened to all of these brands and all of these different types of ears. And I know how they sound and I know how to utilize them to effect what I need out of a mix for someone. So I think that’s a big tool for people is like just.

Understanding all of that, so I’m a big proponent of trying new things and like introducing people to new things, so I just carry around a lot of just because the has the greatest market share doesn’t mean it’s the best tool, right?

Exactly. And I think we find that I think very much in our business, people get stuck on brand names and like what’s most popular and stuff like that and don’t like to venture in to see the rest of the incredible innovations and tools that have come up, you know, in the 10 years since that single product that they’re still touting has been has come out. There’s been hundreds of advancements in our technology. And, you know, I’m a big proponent of continuing to learn and I like to incorporate that in mixing like or I do a lot of award shows or I do random.

Like I told you, I get called in to like do Anita Baker or one offs or whatever. And people need things. And just having resources and tools is incredible. I guess one of the biggest things in my toolbox is like me, like I can fix anything, I can solder whatever I carry. I can take a circuit board and replace capacitors. I can solder a guitar pedal. I can replace I can record a speaker.

I can, I can. I mean, I was doing that. That’s why I mean, when I was 16, I was working in a warehouse with Rock Street Music. I’ve replaced Pazos, I’ve done diaphragms, I’ve written speakers. I’ve actually cut kown and glued in cone pieces on subs and stuff like that.

Like so I, I believe that’s like my biggest toolbox is like I have this set of skills where I can pretty much fix and do anything. Like I have always been a technician just as much as I’ve been an engineer. And it’s always fascinated me. I believe that the most effective both of us are both. You are just as technical as you are creative.

Lorien, what about books? Is there one book that has been immensely helpful to you mentioned one earlier. Is that the one or was there another? That’s one of them.

There’s a bunch of books. There’s a bunch of other. I read a lot. So The 48 Laws of Power is the book that I was talking about earlier. And for anyone that really wants to understand the rules of the game that is being played with power and things like that, it’s an excellent read. It’s very short. The actual concepts are pretty short. But once you read it, you’re like, Oh, I didn’t know for a sound.

One of the most important books that I ever read was Sound Reinforcement Handbook. I feel like a lot of people say that, but it really started me in understanding the science of sound and like how things work. And, you know, I really was fascinated when I was younger by the science and microphones and how, like microphones and diaphragms, transducers, all that stuff works. So they have a lot of great explanations of the science of sound in there.

And then for like. One of the books that changed my life and how I perceived my career and my success and my skills was a book called Grit The Power of Perseverance by a woman named Angela Duckworth. And that book changed everything. You know, that book talks about how talented people are oftentimes not more successful, oftentimes as people with a little bit less talent that want it more, that are the most successful people. And she also talks about, you know, what we all talk about, like the ten thousand, our role or whatever.

But she goes into a really neat section on flow. When you reach a certain linear time in your career, you no longer consciously think about what you’re doing when you’re doing your job. You’re just doing it. And I very much in about year nine or ten of my career got to that point and didn’t understand, like I would all of a sudden be like mixing and it will have been like ten minutes and I will have gone through and like putting Compressor’s and they’ll be like, I don’t even know what I was doing.

And that’s called the flow state like I am. I’m not learning anymore. I don’t need to second guess what I’m doing. I know what all of the things do. And so now I can flow and my creativity. And that book was really great for those conversations and understanding how we advance in our careers and on our skills and giving ourselves time like ten years. You’re not a master for ten years or ten thousand hours. And it’s very much true.

I feel like it was about year nine where I started to feel like that. So that was a really great book. And I actually, if that book to a lot of people, I send it to him for Christmas, all kinds of stuff. So.

So, Loriene, if people want to listen to all of this research that you talked about a lot, some of that they can do the live sound, some 20, 20 does Sound Design Live dotcom. But if people want to keep up with your work and see what you’re doing now and in the future, where is the best place for people to do that on Instagram?

Probably is my main platform where you can follow me.

I’m a sound lady, 13 on there through 12 already taken, I guess. Yeah, well, I was like 13. It was like I had I had my I had my real name on there for a while and I was like, that’s probably not the best idea. So I changed it to lady. Should I not be using my real name. Right. I just I just didn’t want it to be my username. So I was like, let me take it off of there.

And I was just like, let me just put a placeholder and I just put Sound Lady Thirteen and I just kept it. It might end up changing to my ticktock candle, which is Lady of Sound, but we’ll find out also if you want to follow my little educational things along there on my platforms. But I’m also posted I’m also on Tick Tock at Lady of Sound and I post really fun little short intro to audio. It’s very basic audio knowledge for the average person so it can help them understand what’s going.

And eventually I am going to be doing more talks about my research. So I would say go to my website, learn Bohanon Dotcom and put in your email and then you’ll get notified because I’ll probably be doing events through my website and through my social media sites for it. I would love to do a series on my oh my talks once I’m more formally compile my research because the small part that I had for yours is like like a quarter of all the medical journals that I’ve I have compiled.

So it’s actually more of a project than I anticipated. So that’ll happen there. So I would say you can pretty much I have a unique name. So if you Google Lorien Bohanon on any of the platforms, you’ll find me. There’s not a lot of red headed south ladies, and you can definitely tell on all of my platforms that I’m a sound lady because all of my window, all my pictures of me in front of a console.

So awesome. Well, Loreen Bohannon thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live.

Thanks for having me, Nathan.

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