"Breaking the Sound Barrier"
Electronic Musician -- By Carolyn Keating
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Women who have a passion for audio-living on a steady diet
of gear magazines and talking technology all day-might
seem like a rarity in this industry. In fact, I often
wonder where all the other women audio professionals are
when I read music technology magazines, flipping through
articles about male producers and engineers, opposite
ads only rarely showing a woman who looks like she is
actually using the gear instead of lying on it in a state
of undress. But appearances can be deceiving. Women are
out there mixing sound, composing music, and playing around
with gear, too-and in ever-increasing numbers.
Following are profiles of four successful women in the
music industry: Lora Hirschberg, a mixer at Skywalker
Sound; Rachel Portman, an Academy Award-winning feature
film composer; K.K. Proffitt, co-owner and chief engineer
of JamSync, a 5.1 surround facility; and DJ Rap, a DJ,
songwriter, and vocalist. These women were kind enough
to take time from their busy schedules to discuss their
paths to success and share their views on women in the
industry.
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LORA HIRSCHBERG
Lora Hirschberg is a rerecording mixer at Skywalker Sound
(a division of Lucas Digital Ltd.) in Marin County, California,
where she does the final mix for feature films. Her numerous
credits include Titus, Titanic, The Horse Whisperer, and
One Fine Day. She also assisted in the sound design for
Strange Days, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Toys. In 1996 she was
nominated for an Emmy for her work as a rerecording mixer
on HBO's The Celluloid Closet.
Could you explain what your job entails?
I mix a lot of sound effects. The sound-effects editors
will cut all the movie's sound effects, and they'll bring
them to me in certain groupings, like the backgrounds,
or what is sometimes called ambience; the hard effects-like
if there's a fight in the movie, the punches and things
getting knocked over; and the Foley, which is footsteps
or prop movements.
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Lora Hirschberg
Lora and Titanic Crew |
In premixing,
I take those sounds, place them across the different speaker
channels, decide what's going to be left, center, and
right; or if something moves across the screen, I'll pan
it that way. But I also have to plan ahead and organize
these things in case the director says, "That's a great
chin sock, but I don't like the crunch sound there; I
want just the face punch." So part of my job is to know
what things not to marry together and how to plan for
the inevitable throwing away of things, which we often
do.
So I'll premix all the sound effects for a couple of weeks,
and at the same time the dialog person will premix the
dialog. Then in the final mix we bring together all the
premixes and the music, and then it becomes this big battle,
trying to figure out how all that stuff is going to go
together. Our job is to take those elements and balance
them out, decide what works and what doesn't, and combine
them.
How did you become a film mixer?
I went to film school at NYU, and I was also studying
music, so I sort of gravitated toward the audio side of
things. I worked in small video post houses in New York,
and then I moved out here and I got a job in the machine
room-which is basically the back room of a film studio-at
Zoetrope. I just learned about mixing by hanging out and
seeing how things were done. That's kind of the traditional
way people become mixers; they start in the machine rooms.
Are there more women in your field now as opposed
to five years ago?
I don't think it's changed that much. There are a lot
of women sound editors and a lot of women in editorial
and sound design. In the nontechnical jobs, like producing,
it's maybe 50/50 men and women, and as you go into the
technical jobs, it's like 5 percent women and 95 percent
men. I think there are a variety of reasons for that.
There are probably a lot more production jobs than there
are technical jobs. In this country, there are only about
200 people who do my job on the feature film level, so
it's still a small percentage that are women. I think
a lot more women are coming out of recording schools,
but many of them go into music. I think many people don't
know that you can work in the film industry and have a
good audio career.
Have you had the chance to mentor anyone?
I wish I could do more of that. A couple of years ago
Leslie Jones [scoring mixer at Skywalker] and I had a
seminar where we got a bunch of applications from women
in recording schools and film schools, and set up a two-week
program where they just sort of shadowed people at Skywalker.
I wanted [them]to know that they could come here and apply
for a job, because I think a lot of people just don't
see it as a possibility-or they don't even know that those
jobs exist. They don't know that you can be a maintenance
engineer on a film stage or a transfer operator or a machine
room operator. These are all really good, high-paying,
interesting jobs. You get to play with a lot of gear and
work on good projects. So we had a group of about ten
women, and it was a success. I think we hired one of the
women-she was a USC grad-and another one applied to ILM
[Industrial Light and Magic] and got hired. So those kinds
of programs work, but we just haven't had the time to
keep it up, and I'm really hoping we can do it again next
year.
Have you encountered any sexism in your job?
No. It's not worthwhile to think about gender roles in
our generation the same way [older people did]. I'd say
that regarding the glass ceiling and people giving you
attitude and all that stuff, you get that from people
a little older than you. You don't get it from your peers.
Traditionally, the perception of mixers has been that
you want some powerful, authority-type person to be doing
the job, and then when people see some little woman, sometimes
that kind of shatters the myth, and I think that's fine.
Maybe some of the older guys don't like that, because
that's part of their image-"Well, only people like me
can do this"-but it's not true.
Do you have any advice for women who want to follow
in your footsteps?
I would say that probably the best advice is, just don't
give up. If that's the job you want, you should just go
ahead and get that job. Don't give up. When I started
out, people said, "You really don't want to do this, because
you're not going to get to, and why don't you do that
. . . there are a lot more jobs in that field. . . ."
You don't need to listen to that. If it's the thing you
want to do, you'll be good at it. And I think it's important
to know what it is you want to do. Look around and [find
out] what jobs there are. Try and make personal connections
with people. The odds are, if you like movie sound, you
should contact people who do movie sound and say, "I like
this job. Is there anything you can do to give me some
advice as to where I should start?" And probably ten of
them will say no, and one of them will say, "Yeah, why
don't you call that guy, or why don't you do that or think
about this," or that kind of thing. And just keep after
it. I don't think people brush people off because they're
rude; I think that they're all just very busy. But if
you ask an intelligent question, you'll get a useful answer.
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RACHEL PORTMAN
Born in England and educated in classical music at Oxford,
composer Rachel Portman was the first woman to win an
Academy Award for Best Original Score (Emma, 1996). Her
other credits include The Legend of Bagger Vance, The
Cider House Rules (for which she was an Academy Award
nominee), Beloved, Marvin's Room, and The Joy Luck Club.
How did you get your start scoring films?
In America I think there's more of a "composer's industry"
that women need to break into, whereas I never studied
film composition; I just sort of wormed my way into it
with a lot of luck, a lot of persistence, and an incredible
amount of ambition. I remember when I very first started
working as a television composer in England doing films
for the BBC and thinking, "Oh, when I go to do an interview,
they probably won't treat me as seriously as they would
a man, so I'm going to just make sure they know that I'm
really competent and that I'm really efficient." But apart
from that, I've never really paid any attention to the
fact that I'm a woman, and I think it's probably been
quite a good thing, because I want people to think of
me as a composer, not as a female composer.
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Rachel Portman
Legend of Bagger Vance |
What is
your scoring process? I understand you hardly ever use
synthesizers or electronic instruments.
I write in a big studio room, but it doesn't contain any
machinery except for a DAT recorder, a microphone, a TV,
something for me to watch the film on, and a great big
grand piano. That's it. I don't work on a computer of
any sort. I'm not at all against using electronic instruments
for sounds, I just am naturally more curious about acoustic
instruments and oddball combinations.
When I'm scoring, I tend to go through a film and watch
it many, many times. And then I just make myself start
writing music for it. By that time, I know where I think
music should be, and I sort of pinpoint the different
scenes. Then I go through the film from beginning to end,
trying to do a first draft of the whole score. And then
I might hit on a theme that I know I can make work, that
feels right for the film. I begin to work quite quickly
once I have a theme-I might need four themes or something,
you never know; on a big film like Bagger Vance, I had
about five different melodies in there, some of which
were related to each other. When I have enough material,
I play it for the director-all prerecorded, lined up to
the film, but on piano-and I tell [the director] exactly
the instrumentation. And with [the director's] comments
in mind I carry on, so I tend to be continually adjusting
the whole score until the end, as opposed to starting
at cue 1 and 1 and writing the main title and going through
like that. But it's very, very simple the way I work.
Also, when I'm scoring-when we're actually on the scoring
stage-95 percent of the time I don't use click tracks,
so the players aren't wearing [headphones]. I find that
that makes it much more musical, because the players aren't
playing to a beat and they can completely hear the instrument
that they're playing, and it gives the performance a real
fluidity.
How do you overcome creative challenges?
I just try and-this is something that you get from experience-really
focus when I am working, not to just sort of wait for
inspiration and think, "Oh, you know, I'm going to have
to go out for a walk," but to stay there all day. And
just keep trying from different edges, from different
angles. Because eventually you're going to crack it quicker
that way. So just put the hours in. It's always hard at
the beginning-there are all sorts of games that your mind
plays on everything, on every single job that you do.
You have negativity creeping in, and you're thinking,
"Oh no, I can't do it," and stuff like that. I'm always
frightened of not coming up with a theme. And eventually
I just have to trust that I will, and I always have so
far.
Do you have any advice for other women who want
to become composers?
Don't ever give up if it feels right that you're doing
it. I've had many, many lean years with nothing, when
I'd just have 18 months and one tiny, tiny job and then
nothing for another 18 months. And if you know in your
bones that this is what you need to do, just hang in there
because it will come. Just keep trying different doors.
That's what I did. And it does take time. The other thing
is-for people who are really beginning-is to start on
small things. Don't try to go to big things straight away,
because big things are scary. And it's the best way to
grow anyway, to work on smaller projects and then gradually,
as you learn to orchestrate-if you do indeed orchestrate
yourself-go from smaller projects to bigger projects.
K.K. PROFFITT
 
K.K. Proffitt is the chief engineer and co-owner of JamSync,
a 5.1 surround facility in Nashville. Along with mixing,
mastering, music editing, and producing, she also does
beta testing on products for such manufacturers as Digidesign,
Dolby, Drawmer, Kind of Loud Technologies, Lexicon, and
Waves.
Could you explain some of the aspects of your job?
We do a lot of digital encoding-Dolby Digital encoding.
Much of what we do is for corporate clients. We do 5.1
mixes for people who make HDTV equipment; and we did audio
sweetening for Tim McGraw's "Something Like That," which
went number one twice on CMT [Country Music Television].
We're doing 5.1 effects, and we've gotten into trademarking
and intellectual property. We're actively looking to license
certain libraries to upmix and to remix for 5.1, and we're
doing a sound effects library in 5.1.
How did you get your start in audio?
I went to graduate school in experimental psychology,
which is really where I started to learn about audio,
strangely enough. Then, in the early '80s, MIDI was starting,
and I was crazy about it. I had one of the first SBX-80
SMPTE machines from Roland. I started working as a consultant
on these projects where people didn't want to read the
manual. So I would be called in at two in the morning
to help producers plug all the stuff together, or do a
takedown when the drummer couldn't play in time-I'd sync
up the SMPTE and we'd sample the drums. In 1986 I went
to Northeastern and got a degree in software programming.
I bought my first 24-track Otari MTR-90 III in 1991, and
I bought a fairly good board, an Amek TAC Magnum with
36 channels, 72 inputs-which is still around if anyone
wants to buy it-and about that time [Tascam] DA-88s came
out. I dropped all this money for analog, and digital
was starting to happen. Then I met [partner] Joel Silverman,
and we built this studio.
How has it been for you as a woman in your field?
Has it improved in the past five years?
I think it still sucks. When I was younger, I never became
an assistant, because most assistants when I was growing
up were just girlfriends of these guys. I realized pretty
quickly that I was not going to be mentored by anybody.
I also realized pretty quickly that nobody needed me,
and nobody wanted me, if I didn't have any way to make
money for them. That's the name of the game in this business:
If you can bring money into a studio, everybody wants
you. But if you just come in and say, "Oh, I want to be
mentored; I want you to need me, " which is a curious
attitude among a lot of people that I meet these days,
you're bound to fail. People hired me because I had a
skill. It wasn't because I said, "Gee, I just wanna come
and make coffee . . . I'll run your errands and I'll sweep
your floors . . . and maybe I'll get to become a famous
producer some day!" That may be true for men, and maybe
for some women, but from my point of view, that is a fantasy.
It's a cruel fantasy. It gets a lot of free work for people
who are established.
As a beta tester for Drawmer and Kind of Loud Technologies,
do you have any favored plug-ins?
I don't want to put one manufacturer over any others;
they're all useful. The VST stuff is good, the DUY and
Waves plugs are great-they all have their uses. Even plugs
that one might not think are so interesting-some of the
more mundane Digi plugs-still have their uses. I use them
all the time in conjunction with other plugs to change
the sound a bit. There's no one plug-in I reach for. If
I don't like a vocal . . . like I didn't like a vocal
yesterday, and I went through every stinking EQ I have.
I think I wound up just using part of the vocal with part
of the EQ, bussing it out to different strips, having
different parts be in different EQs and stuff. Once you
have as many plugs as I have, you don't care if it's real-world
emulation or not; you really start thinking about, "Well,
for this program material, does this thing work?" I would
like for something to really do a great Pultec like I
used to use way back, 20 years ago-I don't know if Bomb
Factory does Pultecs or not-but I haven't seen the old
Pultec EQP-1A in plug-in emulation yet. There may be one
out there, but I haven't got it yet. That was a cool thing.
What is your favorite aspect of your job?
Making new stuff. Making stuff sound better. I once had
a rap group [in the studio], and I said to them, "Well,
you know, this drum sound, the snare . . . it's obvious
that you were overdriving the input to your board. And
I can help you with that. I can sample . . ." This guy
looked me square in the face and said, "Don't mess with
my stuff. I like just how it sounds. You leave it alone,
put it together, make it sound like it is, but better."
This is the way he liked his sound. Some people like certain
things, and that's the point of what they're doing. It's
like those paintings where they just squirt paint and
step in it; that is the art for them. It's the same thing
with music. You're not a critic if you're an engineer.
You're an engineer, and your job is to make the client
happy. And make it sound better-not only the way you think
it sounds better, but the way they think it sounds better.
That's the gig.
Any advice for women who want to become engineers?
Work for a manufacturer who does matching funds and go
get a degree from MIT. Women, if they want to get ahead,
have to take math. Because you're going be a secretary
in the music industry or a promoter unless you know the
math. Everything requires it. Everything. You also have
to know how to read charts. You also have to understand
statistics, physics, and stuff like that. You don't have
to be a genius at it, but you have to be able to look
at a chart in the AES Journal and know what they're talking
about. Audio engineering school is great-it's a trade
school.
But I'll tell you, people who are really successful and
really stick around in the music business and in audio
engineering, they have done more than just learned stuff
from books-they have been in studios and they have also
been innovative in accomplishing something. You have to
start thinking about what you can do that's different,
that makes you a valuable commodity. For me, it was being
able to do takedown. I was known as The Chick Who Can
Put All of the Cheap Japanese Crap Together. That was
my title. [Laughs.] That was my thing. And even today,
that comes in very handy.
DJ RAP
 
DJ Rap (aka Charissa Saverio) is one of the world's leading
female DJs on the hard-core, jungle, and drum 'n' bass
scenes, known for such successful singles as "Ambience-The
Adored," "Bang the Party," and "Spiritual Aura." A songwriter
and vocalist as well as producer and mixer, she was signed
to Higher Ground/Columbia in 1997 and released her debut
major-label album Learning Curve in 1999. Based in England,
she also runs her own label, Proper Talent.
What inspired you to become a DJ?
Pretty much most people start deejaying first and making
tunes afterward, but for me it was the other way around,
so it was always about making music. One night while I
was out raving, I saw these two DJs and it just blew me
away. The thought didn't even occur to me, "I wonder if
there is any other female thing," because I just presumed
there was; I just thought, "Oh, this looks like so much
fun, I want to do it." What inspired me to start deejaying
was I'd made my first record ["Ambience-The Adored"] and
wanted to promote it as best I could. Then when I started
to do it, I realized that there were a couple of female
DJs around, but they were getting a pretty crap deal.
Did you network with them?
Quite a few female DJs were just starting out-I was the
first female DJ to say, "I'm playing with the boys," because
up until that point those girls were always put in the
back room; they always played with girls and got little
to no money. And I come along, and I think, "What the
f*** is this? I'm not having this; I'm good and I can
rock it." My goal was always to be among the top DJs.
I believe strongly if you have a vision of where you think
you should be, you'll get there. Anyone can do anything
they want; it depends on how determined they are and how
brave they are. I made a point of not being paranoid and
jealous about my thing, because I wanted to encourage
any other female who comes along. But women are much more
competitive and much more territorial.
Your song "Bad Girl," off Learning Curve, has the
lyric "That glass ceiling should be radically erased."
Definitely the glass ceiling should be broken. People
like Madonna are breaking it all the time, setting new
boundaries, but she's doing it in a very provocative,
sexual way and that kind of offends me. Let's do it in
a way where our brains speak for us. I am trying to break
real barriers, not by going on about it but by just doing
it.
What are your current goals?
Just to do a great [new] album. I'm taking acting lessons
at the moment, and I am learning to take some time off.
I'm interested in breaking into new territory, I don't
want to carry on doing the same thing. So every time I
work with someone like Brian [Transeau, also known on
the DJ scene as BT] or Liquid Todd, we're not doing what
they normally do, we're not doing what I normally do;
it's more like, "Let's fuse and make something new." That's
what's exciting; no one can stay the same. It would be
boring. You can't just think you can make jungle forever
and that's it. It's not going anywhere. Make some new
forms.
What advice do you have for women who want to follow
in your footsteps?
Do not worry about how good you look-obviously it's a
bonus-but what's more important is that your music comes
from you and it really is you. Be as good as you can on
the decks. Be all about the music, be all about the crowd.
And get all that without being a "ho." You have to maintain
credibility, you have to have respect, you have to be
good, and you have to not play on the fact that you're
female. But use your femininity when you have to.
Any final thoughts?
You don't need all the elaborate equipment I've spent
ten years getting. I have a portable studio, I have a
Mac with a sampler inside it, and I use [Steinberg's]
Cubase and [Emagic's] Logic with it. I have a little keyboard
that I take away with me-really, you can do a hell of
a lot just inside a laptop. I have all the audio plug-ins,
a little microphone, and a Kawai 70, and I can do a tune
on a plane with that. All of the equipment in the world
means nothing if you can't write songs, if you can't make
music.
Carolyn Keating is a composer, songwriter, and engineer
in San Francisco. She is the editor of Home Digital Recording.
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