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ISSUE 1VOL 1

col lege career industry

A D IALOG ON :

FALL / SPRING2012 / 2013

PRESENTED BY :

The Music Production & Contemporary Writing Division — M c N A L L Y S M I T H C O L L E G E O F M U S I C

RIDING THE AIRWAVES WITH VERONICA RODRIGUEZ

JEFF RONA TALKS MUSIC, TECHNOLOGY

& CAREER ADVICE

ANDY THOMPSON HIS APPROACH

TO HIT SONGWRITING

! FROM STUDIOS TO STADIUMS

! HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER/COMPOSER

! FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

2 3WWW.McNALLYSMITH.EDU / CROSSTALK ISSUE 1 / VOL. I

[email protected]

John Krogh Editor-in-Chief Chair, Music Production and Contemporary Writing Division

Christopher Blood Contributing Editor Department Head, Music Production

Sean McMahon Contributing Editor Department Head, Composition and Songwriting

Toki Wright Contributing Editor Department Head, Hip-Hop Studies

David Lewis Contributor Career Services

Dan Daley Guest Contributor Sound On Sound magazine

DESIGN

Matt Lunneborg Creative Director

Brian Burton Designer and Photographer

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Crosstalk.

As I write this, the Fall semester has just

started and we’re facing the promise of a new

year. As for me, I have a routine for the first day

of class: I ask my students to share what it is

they hope to do when they graduate. For many

the path isn’t clear, and for others it’s absolute

(at least until next semester…). I tell them that

whether you have a plan or not, it’s okay. Part

of the experience at McNally Smith is being

exposed to new ideas, opportunities and career

avenues that you’re not aware of or maybe

thought were even impossible.

This is certainly the case with the two alumni

profiles in this issue. Dan Comerchero (pg. 25)

graduated from the Music Production program,

but initially came to McNally Smith with definite

plans of becoming a professional drummer.

Through a combination of discovering Logic Pro

recording software and his experiences in the

classroom, he went on to develop his own music software with a Minneapolis tech firm.

Similarly, Veronica Rodriguez (pg. 20) thought she was destined to spend her career

in control rooms recording bands. She never thought she’d land in radio — and that it

would be completely fulfilling.

I know with my own career I never would have predicted I would be where I am, and it’s

through reflecting back on the twists and turns my own path has taken that I’m able to

help mentor these young creative professionals who are often eager and very anxious

to know what their lives might look like after graduation. Mentorship is a big piece to

the McNally Smith experience, and I’m honored to be part of such a diverse group of

talented educators and professionals who guide, encourage and inspire students to

succeed. We teachers know the challenges of working in the entertainment industry,

and I’ve personally seen how sharing our seasoned perspective can renew a student’s

confidence and commitment.

In the spirit of celebrating student and faculty success, and in recognition that coll-

ege is just one step on the path toward making a life in music, it is our hope that

Crosstalk will be part of the ongoing dialog among the community of music

makers from McNally Smith.

EDITOR’S LETTERJ0HN KROGH — EDITOR IN CHIEF

HAPPENINGS News, events and industry trends.

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: ANDY THOMPSON Life on both sides of the glass.

FEATURE:

HOLLYWOOD COMPOSER /PRODUCER JEFF RONA Talks music, technology and career advice.

ALUMNI PROFILES:

VERONICA RODRIGUEZ Finding success over the airwaves.

ALUMNI PROFILES:

DAN COMERCHERO Blazing trails in music technology.

GUEST COLUMNIST: DAN DALEY Statistics about the music industry rarely give you the whole picture, but they can tell you a lot if you know where to look...

ISSUE 1 VOL. 1fall / spring 2012 / 2013

PG. 08PG. 04

A DIALOG ON:

college / career / industry

PG. 20

PG. 25 PG. 30

” Don’t come into production thinking you can just make beats and sell them and that it’s going to be your living. It could happen, but you don’t know.”

” Looking for scarcity might be a rewarding employ-ment strategy: An audio professional working in Richmond, VA earns about the same annually as one in the LA area — both pull in over...”

The ‘studio magic’ that Thompson adds is critical to getting songs placed with established artists.

”If you’re a young composer or filmmaker you need to show what you’re capable of as a musician, meaning that you need...”

” I thought drumming was what I was going to do, but, it led to so many other things, and if I had never started with doing something that I was passionate about, I wouldn’t have ended up here.”

” Every young creative professional needs a portfolio that showcases depth and variety – this is a chance for students to strengthen their demo reels.”

04

08

12

20

25

30

/ CONTENTS

PG. 12


Mixing Audio, Music and Media with MCAD

Beginning in the Fall McNally Smith College of Music is part-nering with Minneapolis College of Art and Design to present audio+music+media (AM2) — a creative collaboration that gives students from both institutions professional networking and portfo-lio development opportunities through a series of events hosted at both campuses. For MSCM students AM2 is a chance to build a com-pelling body of audio-for-media work by providing field recording, post-production, and original music composition services to MCAD film and animation students. ”It’s a great opportunity for students to work together in the way producers, directors, composers and audio professionals do in the entertainment industry at large. It’s a model of the bigger ecosystem we all work in,” says John Krogh, Chair of MSCM’s Music Production and Contemporary Writing Division. ”Every young creative professional needs a portfolio that showcases depth and variety,” he adds, ”so this is a chance for our students to strengthen their demo reels while they’re still in school.”

The first session will be held at McNally Smith on Saturday, Septem-ber 22nd from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. and is open to all MSCM students.

The session will include an ”audio in media” workshop featuring Tom Lindquist, one of the Twin Cities top audio post mixers and sound designers. Open Mic Returns

for Another Year

In October 2011 the hip-hop student group H20 and the Hip-Hop Studies program partnered to throw McNally Smith’s first-ever Open Mic event. Co-hosted by acclaimed poet Mooks and rising hip-hop star Mike Dreams, the show was a great success with over 25 acts and 90 attendees. The event was lead by Percussion and Hip-Hop Studies faculty member Kevin Washington, who has been the co-host and musical director of the Poet’s Groove, an ongoing open mic event that has been running at the Blue Nile in Minneapolis for over 10 years. The event proved to be a meaningful and valuable live performance opportunity for all involved, which led to an ongoing series of open mic sessions headed up by H20.

Building on the success from the 2011/12 year, H20 is again plan-ning a series of open mic events to be held every third Wednesday of each month starting in September 2012. ”The open mic sessions are a great place for students and faculty to do what they do best, and absorb the energy we are all trying to create in one room,” says Hip-Hop diploma student Matt Jarvi, frequent participant and occasional host of last year’s sessions.

For more information about H20 and the Open Mics events contact Sean McPherson at [email protected] or join H20’s Facebook group at http://bit.ly/McNallyH2O.

/ HAPPENINGS/ HAPPENINGS

WHAT: AM2 — audio+music+media collaboration between MCAD and MSCM

WHY: To build student portfolios with real work and network with other creative pros

WHEN & WHERE:

SESSION 1 September 22, 2:00 – 3:30pm @ McNally Smith campus

SESSION 2 October 27, 2:00 – 3:30pm @ MCAD campus

WHO: Co-hosted with MCAD; all McNally Smith students welcome

WHAT: Open Mic featuring hip-hop student group H20

WHY: Sharpen live performance skills and get helpful feedback from peers and community

WHEN: Third Wednesday of every month from 6:30 – 9:00pm, starting September 2012

September 19, October 17, November 14, December 12

WHERE: Soundbyte café on campus at McNally Smith

WHO: Co-hosted with MCAD; all McNally Smith students welcome

Students from MSCM’s Sound Design for Post Production class [REC 249] put the finishing touches on the final audio mix for a digital animation.

Students practice their live performance skills during an Open Mic events presented by the Hip-Hop Studies department and student organization H20.


/ HAPPENINGS/ HAPPENINGS

INTERN REWIND: Brandon Buttner

Internships are a critical component to preparing students for success in the industry, and often it’s not learning new skills or techniques that students find most valuable, but the insights they gain from working shoulder to shoulder with more experienced engineers, producers and composers. This past Spring/Summer over 40 students participated in internship programs, including Brandon Buttner (B.S. Music Production) who was placed with Dark Horse Recording Studios, a Nashville hotspot that has been host to artists such as The Fray, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Taylor Swift.

”The most important thing I learned from my internship is that who you are as a person affects your success more than your knowledge of engineering,” says Brandon. ”This is an extremely competitive industry and there are a ton of great, young engineers out there looking for their shot. The way you stand out is by being respectful, being punctual, having drive, and wanting more than everyone else.

”I also didn’t realize how fast paced real sessions are, how many people are actually involved in the process when you get into the real world, just how many people are trying to make it in this industry right now,” he adds, ”and how business-minded you really have to be.”

To learn more about internship opportunities visit Career Services or email [email protected].

BY THE NUMBERS

Popular audio/music sharing site SoundCloud was started by Eric Wahlforss (left) and Alex Ljung (right) who met at college in the U.K. SoundCloud has become the Flickr-equivalent for musicians and audio creators around the world.

Worldwide music industry total revenue for 2011

Estimated royalties streaming service Spotify expects to pay musicians in 2012

67 .6 B I LL ION

360 M ILL ION

Number of registered users of audio/music sharing site SoundCloud 10 M ILL ION

LET US KNOW !Attention faculty, students and alumni! Have a cool gig or project that you’re proud of? Let us know.

If you or someone you know from our McNally Smith community would like to be profiled in Crosstalk, please send a note to [email protected].

$360,000,000

10,000,000

$67,600,000,000


FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

ANDY THOMPSON

omposition and Songwriting faculty member Andy Thompson has carved a unique role for himself in the industry as an in-demand ”demo doctor,” a job that combines equal parts studio

musician, technician and tastemaker. Working with established songwriter and former Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson, Thompson takes basic vocal-plus-accompa-niment song sketches provided by Wilson and turns them into fully produced mixes, often recording, programming and mixing everything himself. These showcase-ready recordings are then shopped to major-label artists for future album projects. To date, Thompson has helped develop demos for a number of Wilson’s co-writers, including Rachael Yamagata, Gabe Dixon, Natalie Imbruglia and David Cook. Recently this has led to instrumental session work on forthcoming album tracks for two current Wilson collaborators, Pink and Taylor Swift.

Thompson’s work with Wilson is indicative of the current industry realities: Decision makers in the music business expect to hear highly polished and produced demos. Gone are the days of songs being pitched as bare-bones recordings consisting of little more than a vocal with accompaniment. In fact, these days it’s increasingly diffi-cult to distinguish between the quality of the songwriting and a song’s production quality, which is why the ”studio magic” that Thompson adds is critical to getting songs placed with established artists. We sat down with Thomp-son to discuss his active career and get the inside story on his life on both sides of the glass.

C

ANDY THOMPSON / LIFE ON BOTH SIDES OF THE GLASS

LIFE ONBOTH SIDESOF THE GLASSB Y S E A N M c M A H O N

1 0 1 1WWW.McNALLYSMITH.EDU / CROSSTALK ISSUE 1 / VOL. I


SPOTLIGHT

INTERVIEW

Sean McMahon How long have you been working with Dan Wilson and what’s all involved?

Andy Thompson Dan’s trajectory as a songwriter really started to take off in the last seven or eight years, which is when I started working with him. Even back then the stuff he was writing needed demos to give to the various managers and reps for different artists. Dan didn’t have the time to be producing all these demos, which increasingly needed to sound professionally recorded and produced, as opposed to just a simple demo. It started with him sending me guitar and vocal or piano and vocal tracks, and he just said, ”Make it sound like a song. Listen to these other artists for an idea of what we’re going for.” He’d give me specific style and artistic direction, and my job was to flesh out the sketch with an arrangement and turn that into something that sounded like a ”real record.”

It’s exciting work because you have to work very fast. I usually only have a day or two to turn these around, and there’s a lot of variety with the styles. He works with a lot of different artists so I’m able to put on different hats, musically speaking, and play this or that part to make it sound current and authentic to whatever style he’s going for.

Working on the demos has also been really good training for writing music for advertis-ing, which I do a fair amount of. Ad music usually has compressed timelines as well. It’s all about being able to work quickly.

SELF-PRODUCED

Thompson frequently plays many of the instruments on his demo productions as well as functioning as the recording and mix engineer.


SM You’re a multi-instrumentalist, an expe-rienced engineer and a classically trained composer. It sounds like the studio work you do really requires a broad and diverse skillset. Did you start on the music side or engineering side?

AT I’ve always seen myself as a jack-of-all-trades. I grew up playing a lot of different instruments and got interested in song-writing and composition pretty early, so I started in music, definitely. These days I do a lot of record production, not only the more conceptual production, but a lot of the technical aspects, too. I end up doing a lot of engineering and mixing as well, and I find mixing to be a really good outlet for my musical background, whether it’s arranging or orchestration. And through the projects I produce I end up doing a fair amount of co-writing with other artists that I’m working with, whether its coming up with brand new songs or just helping them take their songs to the next level.

As far as composing, I don’t put that many notes on paper anymore, although I did just do a choral commission. Every once in a while I do have a chance to flex those

muscles, but a lot of the composing I do is more composing for clients, whether it’s TV commercials or documentary films. I do that under the name ”Scribble Sound.”

SM What is your studio set up like — is it more of a writing room or for tracking bands or what?

AT It’s more of a writing room, but I can do overdubs at my place, and I go to other studios for larger recording projects. I some-times use the studios at McNally Smith, and I’ll get students to help me engineer. It depends on what the project needs. It’s rare that I would set up my drum kit and mic it at my place. That can end up taking the better part of a day, so I use a fair amount of MIDI for a lot of what I do demo-wise. For drum programming I use Addictive Drums [by XLM Audio], which has some really usable sampled acoustic kits. As a drummer I’m pretty comfortable sitting at a MIDI keyboard and recording drum parts as if I were sitting at a kit.

I also use [Native Instruments] Guitar Rig a lot. Again, speed is important for the kind of writing and production work I do. When

you’re turning around demos very quickly it’s not practical and doesn’t make sense to mic up a bunch of amps, so I use Guitar Rig for many of my guitar tones. [ Fig. A ]

SM What other projects are you working on beyond producing demos?

Musically, my time is split between studio work and playing live. I sometimes play drums with Dan for his shows. We’ve played South by Southwest and the Sundance Film Festival. I’ve also been working with [acclaimed singer-songwriter and fellow MSCM faculty member] Jeremy Messersmith on a new record right now and we’ve been in the studio. I’m working with a couple other artists, too, and those projects should come out sometime this next year. I also started a blog — theDIYRecordist.com — where I write about audio and music production. It’s a very recent development, but there have already been some insightful discussions and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback.

When Thompson isn’t in the studio or on stage, you can find him teaching MUS381 Songwriting III and REC150 Sound Capture and Production at McNally Smith. To learn more about Thompson’s songwrit-ing and production work visit www.andywho.com.

FAVORITES

Here’s a screenshot from one of Thompson’s demo sessions. Note the use of Guitar Rig, a go-to tone cabinet that Thompson turns to when working under tight deadlines. Also in view is XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums, a software drum module that features heavily in his writing.

FIG. A


HOLLYWOOD COMPOSER / PRODUCER JEFF RONA TALKS

MUSIC, TECHNOLOGY & CAREER ADVICEB Y J O H N K R O G H

ccomplished composer, programmer/sound designer and music producer Jeff Rona has enjoyed a career in music that started over 20 years ago when he began making his way up the ranks as

an in-demand programmer and session player. Today Rona composes and produces music for film, television, video games and other media formats from his studio in Santa Monica, CA. He’s also a noted author and speaker on the subject of scoring music for media.

Always one to ride the bleeding edge of technology, Rona has played a hand in shaping the tools and technologies that modern musicians rely on today to create and produce music. Among the many highlights of his career, he has composed music for Black Hawk Down, Mission Impossible 2, Gladiator and Traffic, to name just a few of the feature films he’s worked on.

We interviewed Rona shortly after he had just finished the score to Phantom, a thriller about a Russian submarine written and directed by Todd Robinson and starring Ed Harris, David Duchovny and William Fichtner. In our conversation Rona provided an in-depth account of the approach he used to create the score for Phantom and shared with us his expert advice on building and sustaining a career as a composer of music for media.

JEFF RONA / HOLLYWOOD COMPOSER & PRODUCER

FEATURE

JEFF RONA

A



FEATURE

Scoring Phantom

John Krogh Tell us how you approached composing the music for Phantom.

Jeff Rona As with most projects, I wanted to have a unique sound palette that included custom samples, so after I met with the director and we discussed the nature of the film and the role music would play, I decided to write some sketches purely based on our conversations. Initially I didn’t have picture to write to. Once they started shooting I expressed an interest in creating a palette of sounds made from the submarine that they used for shooting. They were filming

on board a Russian submarine anchored in San Diego, CA. I was invited down to record some samples and I was given about an hour over a lunch break. We went into this amazing old submarine filled with metal knobs, valves, tubes and hydraulics with several drum sticks and other percussion mallets, including a big rubber hammer. I spent about 40 minutes tapping and bang-ing on everything in there with the different mallets, going from soft to loud so I could make velocity-switched kits. With some of the bigger, more resonant pieces of metal I would do some rhythmic performances and loops of four to eight bars. All of this was recorded onto a Zoom portable field recorder. We took all of this raw audio

material back to my studio and started cleaning, editing and processing the record-ings in [BIAS] Peak and using some of the Redmatica sample editing tools [both since discontinued, Ed.].

We time-corrected my performances in Ableton Live, sliced them in ReCycle to cre-ate Rex files, and then imported them into Spectrasonics Stylus RMX. Other kits went into Native Instruments Kontakt. With everything cleaned up, I went into Logic to begin building a template of my sounds track by track. As I went further I found I could turn some of the percussion instruments from the submarine into pads and melodic instruments by using granular delays and different radical reverbs. I ended up with kits, loops and some pad/harmonic material. I went on to organize a number of newly created synth sounds, percussion and some sampled strings to be replaced by live players later. This all became the groundwork for the more serious passes of sketches.

That was at the end of January [2012]. Then in March they started sending over scenes from the movie for me to start scor-ing. I took some of my sketches and tried applying them to specific scenes, starting with one sketch that I thought could work well as a main title. As it went on, I started to fill in what themes would work for certain situations. For example, certain ideas went with certain characters and there were reoc-curring ideas in the movie, so I created sonic and melodic motifs based on this.

Since this was a fairly low-budget film, I didn’t have the budget for a full orchestra but I had enough for a string quartet, so I ended up using the Calder Quartet, a fantas-tic ensemble out of Los Angeles. In addition to the live strings I bought an antique instrument called a Marxophone, which resembles an autoharp but it has these


weighted strings and you sort of play it like a keyboard. Even though it’s an American instrument I thought it had an interesting sound quality that sounded vaguely Rus-sian or Eastern European. It’s a little like a hammered dulcimer or balalaika. I ended up writing a motif with that instrument.

I also did some sound design in [Spectrason-ics] Omnisphere and [Native Instruments] Absynth. Other acoustic instruments included flute, which I played, and I added a trumpet player. This all became the sonic palette for the score.

JK It sounds like your compositional process was influenced considerably by sound design.

JR It’s important to remember that in con-temporary scoring you can’t think of sounds in a generic way. Very often when I create a unique or evocative sound, that sound is only evocative if it’s played in a very specific way, just like with acoustic instruments. You can’t write the same thing for a string section as you’d write for a trombone section, for example. Every sound you create electroni-cally will ”ask” you to compose certain kinds of ideas for it. In the case of Phantom, and many projects I’ve done before, sound design doesn’t take the place of composition, but it needs to come before the composing pro-cess. After pulling together sounds that I feel belong in the film, I’ll improvise extensively to get to know them and what they offer musically. By approaching writing this way, the sounds I create or choose become an organic aspect of writing because they’re being treated as their own instruments in the same way I might write for more conventional acoustic instruments.

JK Is that typical of your compositional process, where you’ll work to create a set of unique sounds and then apply more con-ventional compositional concepts to these electronic instruments or textures?

JR For a score with a fair amount of pro-gramming and sound design, yes, although the sound design continues to evolve throughout the whole process of scoring. However, I do change my focus at some point early on. I like to feel that I am, to some degree, finished with the sound design phase, so I can set my brain completely to focusing on the actual writing of music.

JK That raises the question of how you maintain consistency from one cue or session to the next. I tend to mix through

one or two plug-ins inserted on my sub-groups for strings, percussion and other instrument families, and this can make it tricky to keep sounds consistent if I have slightly different subgroup settings for each cue. Do you use any processing on your subgroups, and how do you maintain a con-sistent sound from session to session?

JR Good question. After I’ve finished pro-gramming a broad range of sounds I build a master sequencer template in which I have every sound I might ever use in any cue, and then I stick to that template for every cue of the film, even if I only use a small handful of sounds for a particular piece. If I find myself modifying a sound along the way and I like

it better, I use the Channel Strip preset function in Logic to save variations on particular sounds that I can then import into other cues.

But I do sometimes use busses for generic reverbs and delays and possibly distortion effects. That works really well for me. I’m able to move from cue to cue pretty quickly, and everything that was in other cues is there in my new session, either because I saved a session using Save As or because I use the channel strip presets and I’m able to

bring in a particular sound just as it was in another cue. Also, if there’s a cue that’s go-ing to be a variation of another cue I’ll start with that piece, save it as another session and from there I change the key or tempo or some other musical elements.

JK So you just hold yourself to that template without changing EQ and other effects?

JR Oh, no. Sound design is an integral part of contemporary composition, and that’s also true for mixing. The balance between background and foreground, rhythm and ambience, chords and melodies — these are all sensitive and critical issues. Even if I do things electronically that will be replaced by

Composers are hired for a multiplicity of reasons, musical abilities being only one of them, but far from being all of it.



FEATURE

a live player or orchestra, I’m always work-ing on the mix. First of all, I need to get the music approved by the producers and direc-tor, and they need to hear it exactly the way I hear it. So I absolutely use very meticulous mixing as part of the composing process. You can’t have one without the other.

Composing for Media: Career Realities

JK What role does technology and one’s fluency with it play in the life of a modern composer for media?

JR That’s such a great question. If you’ve ever heard a bad violin player, you realize that somebody who doesn’t have technical capacity can’t express themselves musically very well. There are exceptions. You could say there are famous rock musicians who only know three chords and never took a lesson. But that’s a different thing than composing scores for media. Anybody who is able to express themselves successfully in music has some form of technical ability and know how.

In composing music for film or TV or any medium, if you’re not good with the technol-ogy at hand you’ll be just like somebody who’s been handed a violin but doesn’t know how to play, and asked to make an audience cry. Well, they might cry, but for the wrong reasons (laughs)! First of all, you can’t push yourself as far as you want creatively as a composer if you don’t know your tools, and secondly it’s going to slow you down immensely. With that in mind, I think of my studio as a whole — my sequencer, every plug-in I use, every type of software I use, my interfaces, keyboard controller — as the instrument I play. Just like a violin virtuoso studies, practices and learns their instrument, my studio is my

instrument. When I sit down to write, I’ve learned my studio well enough that I’m not thinking about it. I’m not thinking, ”What’s the keyboard short cut for quantizing eighth notes or how do I layer and combine these two parts, or whatever.” It’s all under my fingers. You hear some musicians talk about how they no longer think when they play, they’ve already mastered their instru-ments to a level that they don’t have to think — they’re able to just play and express themselves. It’s nearly impossible to think and do at the same time. It’s the same with the studio technology. If you are confused or unsure of the technology, then you’re not in the creative place inside of you where music comes from, which can be a very quiet place — you’re going to miss it.

JK You’ve worked in episodic TV, feature film and more recently video games. What chal-lenges do you constantly face?

JR Composers are constantly challenged with very strict schedules and budgets. And yet my goal as an artist is to never lose touch with what’s important, which is writ-ing and producing good music regardless of limits. The challenge of having to make compromises with time and budget always keeps me on my toes. So working with live players, working with an orchestrator, working with an engineer, how we pass files around, how we record orchestras in other countries, making sure that the final product sounds every bit as good as everY other film score ever made or better — these are the challenges. As our tools improve — better plug-ins and systems for working with audio — I have to think about the final result all the time. It’s important to remem-ber that it’s a multi-stage process. My role is a ”hyphenate.” Every composer’s role is kind of a multitasking hyphenate. We are music producers. And what is the role of every music producer? To maintain

the highest quality possible within the given budget and time constraints.

We may have to know what the best reverb is for a piano sample or the best way to integrate a tool such as Ableton Live into an action scene or how to get a particular drum sound to be aggressive or mysterious. We’re called on to know who the interesting musicians are to collaborate with and the best ways to do that where I can maintain a great deal of control over the final product, especially if things have to change after the recording session with the players. Am I using Melodyne or Autotune? Am I going to bring in an engineer before the final mix? Like every other working composer, I have to be conscientious about the quality of the music creatively, conceptually, emotionally and technically.

JK You used the term ”final product.” The awareness that you are creating a product is often foreign to young composers who are not used to looking at their musical compositions as products that go through tremendous scrutiny by producers, directors and creatives. Do you find yourself emotion-ally divorcing yourself from a piece of music when it comes time to present it to a client?

JR The number one thing to remember is that film composers are storytellers and collaborators, and as such our musical visions have to take a back seat to the project and to what is trying to be achieved emotionally as a whole. To that end, when I write something, I’m fully present and com-mitted to what I’m trying to do emotionally. I go in thinking I know what the director intended and what I think the director feels would be able to express that intent musically. In a good situation I’ll get that right more than I get it wrong. But invariably something will come up or a director will say, ”That’s not what I had in mind,” or ”The


music is getting too busy too fast,” or ”That doesn’t sustain the energy long enough,” or ”The music needs to stay low-key until a later scene and then let loose.”

In those situations my first musical instinct needs to be discarded and I must do some-thing different. That’s the nature of this work. I have the option of tossing out what I did and starting over or I could substantially alter a piece of music to more closely fit what the director wants. In the end, all that

matters is that my director eventually says, ”Okay, you got me and you understand the story.” That’s my goal.

Nobody makes a movie all by themselves, it’s a collaborative art form. What we as composers do is one piece of a shared vision. You can’t take criticism or notes on the music personally. For example, if a director says something like, ”This doesn’t feel scary enough,” you just have to say to yourself, ”Okay, it scared the shit out of me, but the director’s not scared, so how do we do that?” It’s sometimes a matter of semantics. I have to figure out what ”scary” is to him. We can use words like sad, joyful, frightening or dramatic. But what those words mean to me might be different for

the director and different for the producer. You have to be willing to let go of your own musical preconcep-tions in order to fulfill the vision of the final product.

JK There’s always some degree of transla-tion between what the client is asking for and what that means musically.

JR Absolutely. And you should never feel that you are a lesser artist for not getting everything right the first time.

JK Describe the competitive nature of com-posing music for film or TV.

JR It’s not only a very, very competitive field, it’s also always changing. What filmmakers are looking for musically changes. It’s important to stay relevant, which is not always easy. Composers are hired for a mul-tiplicity of reasons, musical abilities being only one of them, but far from being all of it.

The one thing a composer offers a filmmaker, which is perhaps more important than anything, is trustworthiness. A film may cost millions of dollars and take years to get off the ground. So the filmmak-ers have to feel completely confident that they’ve chosen well and that their composer will deliver music that enhances the film, is technically excellent, is delivered on time and on budget, and that the process of getting to the end — the give and take — is one that they will enjoy. There is a deep sense of intimacy in this relationship. Confidence in a composer is critically important. And one of the first things that will give filmmakers confidence in their choice of composer is an interesting resumé. If they see a composer has worked on other successful projects, they not only think, ”Oh, I liked that type of music or that was a good movie,” but they also think, ”Here’s a composer who finished that score on time and on budget.” It’s a very basic thing. Look, do you want to be a

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Rona employs a host of hardware and software to compose music for film and media. One of his cues can be seen in Sibelius notation software (background, onscreen).



FEATURE

surgeon’s very first operation? Probably not. It’s the same thing with choosing a film composer.

But there’s also usually a desire to have the next cool thing. So filmmakers go back and forth between wanting to take a chance on somebody who was maybe successful as a rock musician or electronic musician. For example, Justin Timberlake is about to do a film score. Trent Reznor [NIN frontman] became a sought after film composer, along with Atticus Ross. The rock world is often tapped for film music.

But yes, it’s an intensely competitive profession. The good thing is that there are more films, TV shows and web series being made now than ever before, so the demand for people to write and produce music for media continues to grow.

Advice for Young Composers

JK What do young composers need to have in order to get scoring opportunities?

JR As I mentioned earlier, a composer needs to know how to instill confidence in a filmmaker, and just about the only way to do that is with a resumé. If you’re a young composer or filmmaker who doesn’t have much of a resumé, then you need to show what you’re capable of as a musician, meaning that you need to have finished demo tracks that sound like contemporary film music. Often there are young compos-ers who may have demos that may be well written and well produced, but don’t reflect the kind of aesthetic and appeal that filmmakers are typically looking for. Film music is not a genre, but there are certain elements that make certain kinds of music

work better in film and TV. When you listen to the vast majority of film music you tend to hear a simplicity and an emotional directness that you don’t necessarily hear in other forms of music. You don’t hear a lot of complex chamber music in the mainstream of film scores, and there’s a reason for that.

So composers need to show what they’re capable of, which means showing a range of musical styles, showing a good attitude about music, showing that they understand what makes music work emotionally in a film, and that they know how to be good producers. It obviously helps if you’ve put out albums and have had experience in some other area of the music industry. But at the end of the day, you need to prove that you can be trusted with a multi-million dollar project or a project of ten thousand dollars, whatever it is. You need to show that the risk of hiring you as a composer is incredibly low. And of course, you get better

TIME & TEMPO

Here’s the Arrange page for one of Phantom’s cues – note how Rona adjusts the time signatures and tempi throughout to hit the onscreen action.


with each project. You’re always learning and hopefully, if you’re a good artist, you’re trying to grow.

JK How important is it to find mentors for young composers who are just starting their careers?

JR I think it’s extremely important. I know very few composers who didn’t get their start by working with another composer, or at the very least being exposed to other composers and gaining knowledge from more experienced composers. Even when Trent Reznor started doing films he approached more established composers and asked for help and advice.

Nobody should be expected to be able to do it without any mentorship. Even if you study formally and you’re coming out of an academic environment like your program, it’s such a huge help to gain some intermediary experience. I’ll use the surgery metaphor again. Before a surgeon gets to do a liver transplant, they assist a more experienced surgeon hundreds of times, each time tak-ing a more active role as they learn. That’s how everybody I know got their start is by working with another more experienced composer to learn the ropes. There’s a lot of logistics to get down, and the politics alone are unexpected and can be make or brake. How one talks to a director or producer, how one deals with unreasonable demands or expectations or setbacks.

The way to learn is to watch someone else go through it with you at their elbow. To be able to write a piece of music to picture and then have a peer listen to it before the direc-tor and tell you what you got right and what you got wrong is invaluable. Most every A-list composer today had somebody show them what to do. Look, John Williams was Bernard Hermann’s piano player.

JK What advice can you give young compos-ers as they’re coming up and trying to build a career?

Even though I love composing, I was very lucky I had a marketable skill before having the opportunity to compose for film and TV. I could design sounds and program synthesizers in ways that were interesting and appealing to working, successful film

composers. So I was a programmer for a few years. My name got passed around. That was ”phase one” of my film music education. In the process I got to watch a lot of films being scored, and that led to opportunities to ghost write. But I had something to trade, I had something I could give a composer.

I think it’s beneficial for anyone who wants to be a composer in film or TV to find an internship or some kind of relationship with a working, successful composer. If I were to break it down, it would be: Step one — get your shit together musically and personally. Be a good composer, have something to say as a musician. Then develop the technical production chops needed to realize your musical ideas in audio. You need to be

able to make good music sound good. As a film composer you’re both a composer and producer. Until you’ve built some experience don’t go out into the world thinking you’re ready. Find opportunities to connect with more experienced composers, musicians, orchestrators, and engineers. Another pos-sible way to go about it is to be successful in some other area of music. If you have a

successful pop or rock career you have a chance to get into scoring for picture, like Trent Reznor, Daft Punk, M83, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Cliff Martinez, Badly Drawn Boy, Stewart Copeland, Trevor Rabin, Karen O, Skrillex, and many others.

JK Any parting thoughts for our McNally Smith composition students?

JR Getting to write music that other people listen to is a privilege. Working with other talented people is a privilege. Never taking anything for granted has been a key to a happier and more enlightened life for me. I think it’s also important

to never assume you are ever a fully realized artist. You should always continue to chal-lenge yourself and grow as an artist and as a human being.

For me, the greatest thrill I get from my work is knowing that what I do allows people to feel something... it elicits emotion. Whether it’s moments of fear, joy or a sense of romance. As human beings we’re emotion junkies, we want to feel emotions. And that’s why we gravitate to music and film. We’re after an experience. So for me to be a part of work that gives people emotional experi-ences is never less than incredibly satisfying as a fellow human and an artist.

For more about Jeff Rona’s career and filmscores visit www.jeffrona.com.

There are more films, TV shows and web series being made now than ever before, so the demand for people to write and produce music for media continues to grow.

ALUMNI PROFILES

VERONICA RODRIGUEZ

BY JOHN KROGH

fter graduating in 2010 with no less than four degrees from McNally Smith College of Music, the last place Veronica Rodriguez expected to land was in the fast-paced, high-tech world of radio broad-

cast. ”Radio wasn’t what I pictured for myself when I left college, but I love it — I’m glad I ended up here,” she admits. Veronica ini-tially enrolled in the Associate Applied Science Production degree program in 2006, but thanks to her strong determination — and a healthy number of general education transfer credits, which she earned at another institution — she was able to complete the A.A.S. Production, A.A.S. Recording, Live Sound Diploma and the Bachelors of Science in Music Production degrees… all within four years.

From Club Gigs to Radio StationsJust after college Veronica was making her way up the ranks of live sound around the Twin Cities when a broadcast engineer job listing caught her eye. She sent her resumé, received a call back, and after several rounds of interviews, she was offered a job with Clear Channel Radio, one of the nation’s largest broad-cast media and advertising vendors, which reaches 237 million listeners monthly. Now working as an assistant engineer, she’s part of a 5-person team that serves all the technical broad-casting needs for eight radio stations owned by Clear Channel. ”I don’t work for just one particular station, like KDWB [pop] or Cities 97 [adult contemporary],” she explains. ”I work for the

A

VIKINGS TRAINING CAMP Rodriguez is responsible for engineering remote broadcasts that take her to many different locations, such as the Vikings training camp shown here.

CITIES 97: OAKE ON THE WATER Here Rodriguez engineers atop lake Waconia during a Cities 97 Oake on the Water session (Summer 2012).

FINDING SUCCESSOVER THE AIRWAVES


VERONICA RODRIGUEZ / FINDING SUCCESS OVER THE AIRWAVES

PROFILE

parent company that owns many of the local stations, including KFAN [sports], KOOL 108 [classic hits], and K102 [country], so there’s a lot of variety with what I do.”

Of the many hats Veronica wears, one of her primary responsibilities is to engineer live remote broadcasts. ”If you hear on the radio that someone is broadcasting from a special location, a bar or a park for example, I’m going to be there. I set up all of the broad-cast equipment and I get the talent on the air,” she says. It’s a job that combines con-ventional audio engineering with informa-tion technology (IT), involving either wireless point-to-point transmitters or some form of hard-wired ethernet connection. ”If we can’t get an ISDN line for multi-channel audio, we have to use whatever internet connec-tion happens to be at the location,” she says. ”More recently we started using ‘mi-fi’ portable internet connections that link our remote location back to the Clear Channel facilities, so I’m able to connect wirelessly, which has been great.”

Besides engineering for special events, Veronica also plays a critical role in KFAN’s Minnesota Vikings NFL radio coverage. The station is contracted to broadcast all of the team’s games, both home and away, which means Veronica is frequently flying around the country to stadiums she’s never been to before, making sure each broadcast goes smoothly without any technical glitches. It’s a demanding gig that she enjoys. ”I have to be prepared for everything, and I don’t know what the stadium might or might not have when I arrive, so I end up taking a lot of equipment. [ Fig. A ] We travel with the team, and we usually get there the day be-fore to set up and line check,” she explains. ”The next day we do pre-game coverage and then the game. As soon as it’s over, we tear down and we’re gone. There’s no waiting around — many times the TSA comes to the stadium to screen us and they get us on a bus that takes us right to our plane.”

Her current work with the Vikings is espe-cially gratifying, and though she’s been with Clear Channel for only a brief while, she’s

already made a big impression with her co-workers. ”We were at an away game in Green Bay, and I remember looking to the right and left, seeing all the press boxes, and all I saw were men,” she recalls. ”I wasn’t surprised, because there aren’t many women in audio. But being an engi-neer for Clear Channel and working in sports on top of it, where there aren’t many women either, I felt really proud of what I’ve been

Vikings on-air announcer Paul Allen chats with Rodriguez en route to a KFAN broadcast.

Setting up for Oake on the Water.


able to do. On our last game of the season,” she continues, ”Vikings radio announcer Paul Allen was thanking everyone over the air, and he thanked me personally, saying that he was very proud that our broadcast team had the only lady and the youngest engineer in the entire league.”

Radio-Ready SoundWhen mixing the NFL games, Veronica works to achieve a certain sound that’s tai-lored for each announcer. ”There’s a typical sound that I’m used to hearing,” she says. ”I’m familiar with our broadcasters’ voices, and what people are used to hearing on the radio, so when it comes to picking my microphones, compression and EQ, I try to dial in the sound that people expect and what I know sounds good. But I’m not just mixing the announcers and getting a good sound for them. I take a small-format analog mixer with me to all the games because I have to be able to mix in the sound of the crowd in the background in order to make

the broadcast more exciting, and the an-nouncers have to be able to hear each other and they have to be able to hear our person on the field who isn’t broadcast over the air, but they help tell our announcer what’s going on. So it’s setting up different mixes for people and for the broadcast. It’s actually very similar to mixing bands live in a club setting, and I think that’s why I caught on so quickly here. You know, if you walk into a typical bar gig you’re going to have to mix front-of-house and the stage monitors, too.”

Though Veronica spends much of her time engineering for non-musical events, she still has plenty of opportunities to mix and record bands, albeit without all the late nights. ”Clear Channel has what we call ‘Studio C’ or ‘The Sky Room.’ Each station calls it something different,” she says, ”but it’s all the same — an on-air performance area with a stage and PA. It’s meant for more intimate-feeling performances. Each station invites listeners to come to the studio and they’ll have bands play an acoustic set when they’re coming through the area on tour.

We get all kinds of artists coming through. For instance, I recently mixed The Wanted, Hot Chelle Rae and Carly Rae Jepsen. When an artist comes into the studio, I’m basically mixing a live show for the studio audience, but I do it from a control room off to the side of the stage. I mix what the audience hears and also what goes out on the air, plus I multitrack record everything into Pro Tools, just in case one of the performances gets selected to be on some sort of compilation.”

Soldering and SocializingWhen asked what she learned at McNally Smith that has been the most helpful in her current work, Veronica is quick to respond. ”What I learned from Peter Greenlund in the Live Sound program has been very helpful. What he taught us was very practical — it may have been from a live sound perspec-tive, but it applies generally to audio, not specifically to live sound. For example, being able to make different types of cables, using

What I learned in the Live Sound program has been helpful…soldering and especially trouble-shooting skills — the ability to trouble-shoot is key in this kind of work.



a universal resistor color-coding scheme, all of that I use. Also, a lot of what Tom Day taught me, like soldering skills and especially trouble-shooting skills. The ability to trouble-shoot is key in this kind of work,” she says. ”When you go into an unfamiliar space and something isn’t working and you have two hours until the broadcast hap-pens, you don’t have a choice — you have to figure it out. If you walk up to something to plug into and it doesn’t fit, you have to build an adapter. Without the knowledge and skills they taught me, I would’ve curled up on the floor crying in some of the situations I’ve been in. But because I learned all of that, it’s given me confidence in my ability to make it happen in any circumstance.”

For current and prospective Production students Veronica offers some advice. ”It’s important to keep an open mind,” she says. ”Don’t come into production thinking you can just make beats and sell them and that it’s going to be your living. It could happen,

but you don’t know. And don’t limit yourself to thinking you’ll only ever work with a certain type of musician or only a certain style of music. I can understand why some people would have that attitude, but if I had thought that way and if I didn’t have an open mind, I never would have applied for this job and I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.

”I also think it’s important to make friends and keep in touch with them after you graduate,” she adds. ”The bonds you make with your peers while you’re in school can help bring you more opportunities after you graduate.”

Reflecting back on her college years and her current career in radio broadcasting, Veronica has no regrets. ”I have the best of both worlds here. I still get to work with bands and I still get to record. But having spent all those years in school and in those

great studios, thinking all I wanted to do was work in a recording studio, and now I’m 1,000% fulfilled with what I’m doing in radio — that’s been the biggest surprise. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing or a group of people I’d rather be working with than the people I work with now.”

FIG. A

FIG. B

A

B

THE RACK

MIKING

Rodriguez’s remote broad-cast equipment rack was recently rebuilt with the help of students in the Live Sound program.

Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier talks ball from a remote broadcast during training camp.

PROFILE

PROFILE

I N M U S I C T E C H N O L O G Y

ecent McNally Smith grad Dan Comerchero (2012) is well on his way in the music industry, though his current path could hardly have been predicted when he first arrived at the

College in 2006 to study drums. Initially enrolled in the A.A.S. in Performance degree program, Comerchero had plans of becoming a professional drummer. ”I had to play music, it was going to be what I was all about

professionally,” he recalls. But after seeing a fellow classmate working in Logic Pro recording software, Comerchero began creating and producing music of his own on his laptop. From that point forward his deter-mination and fascination with music and technology have led him to successes he couldn’t have imagined, due in large part to his time at McNally Smith and his transfer into the B.S. Music Producer degree program.

B Y JO H N KRO G H

R

BLAZING TRAILS


DAN COMERCHERO / BLAZING TRAILS

Comerchero’s frequency training program Quiztones is available for Mac OS X, iOS, and Android.

MORE ONLINE Go to www.mcnallysmith.edu/crosstalk to watch Dan walk us through his Quiztone app.

PROFILE


you could use to train yourself at home. I spec’d the cost with the developer and it was reasonable. I originally wanted to release it as an iPhone app, but I was working at Apple at the time and they don’t allow employees to release their own iPhone apps. So rather than wait until I could release it for iPhone, I decided to make it an online tool first.

I built the original online version of Quiztones about two years ago. Six months later I was taking a marketing class at McNally, and we had to get into groups and choose some sort of project to work on together. Most students’ projects were hypothetical products or bands, but one of my classmates suggested that we market

Quiztones. I had left Apple a few months earlier and I was already getting the itch to release Quiztones for iPhone, so we asked our teacher, Charles Gehr, if we could use Quiztones for our project and he was totally cool with it. We developed a complete marketing plan and I started searching for an iOS developer.

JK How did you connect with Audiofile Engineering to develop and distribute Quiztones?

DC I originally started in the A.A.S. Percussion Performance program, which is two years, and when I came to McNally all I wanted to do was play and teach drums professionally. I loved being in the percussion program, but I eventually started getting more into music production and technology, so I switched to an A.A.S. in Music Pro-duction. I eventually transferred to the B.S. Music Producer degree, which has a required internship, and when it came time for me to find one, I was able to connect with Audiofile by working with Sarah Williamson in Career Services. I remember thinking, this could be great — I’m building an iPhone app, they make audio apps, they’re all musicians, this is a perfect fit.

Sarah put me in touch with Matthew Foust, co-founder of Audiofile. We set up an interview, and during the interview I showed him the Quiztones app I was working on. Within a few minutes, he suggested we partner on it and have Audiofile develop and distribute it. When we first started working on it together, they took a look at the code and realized that much of it would likely need to be reworked. I was previously working with that overseas developer and with what I could afford, the code that was being developed wasn’t very solid. So the guys at Audiofile took it, cleaned it up, and that became our version 1.0. Since then, Quiztones has undergone major revisions to become a far better app than I ever could’ve built on my own, with

opportunities to take it in directions I never thought possible, such as quizzes for compres-sion, reverb, and delay.

JK What’s it like working at Audiofile?

DC I feel really grateful to be in a passionate start-up environment with really creative peo-ple. I love coming to work here and be around other creative people. I’ll come down here just to work on anything, just being in the same space with these other creative people is inspir-ing. And when I leave work I’m really happy. I’ve never felt a sense of fulfillment like that.

I was always drawn toward entrepreneurship, even when I was a young kid. In middle school

I used to sell things on eBay for fun. I didn’t make much money, but it wasn’t about that. When I was thirteen, I would trade Apple stock with my dad. I’ve always known that I’d either work for myself or be involved in a smaller organization where everything you do can really impact the future.

JK What are some of the most meaningful experiences you had at McNally Smith?

DC A large part of the experience was simply the people I met and the overall creative environment. I think networking is a big part of making the most of a music school like McNally. All of the friends, teachers, and mentors I met influenced me in different ways. I also think there’s something to be said about the academic approach to learning music recording and production. Just breaking everything down and filling in the technical gaps. Everybody comes into a music school with a certain amount of knowledge gaps, and the structure and way everything was taught gave me a solid foundation, whether it was in my percussion A.A.S. or in music production.

If I could go back and give myself any advice, it would be to not be so worried about knowing exactly what you’re going to do in the future, and just allow yourself to get swept up in what you feel most passionate about at the time.

Today, 24-year-old Comerchero is deeply involved in the development of his Mac and iOS app, Quiztones, now at version 1.1 and 1.7 respectively, and is working on a new printable staff paper app, Staffnotes, in partnership with Minneapolis-based software engineering firm, Audiofile Engi-neering, where Comerchero interned while still in college.

Comerchero also provides freelance market-ing services to Audiofile Engineering in addition to running his own blog, The Pro Audio Files (theproaudiofiles.com), which publishes tips, techniques and

industry-insider interviews written by a team of expert contributors. We sat down with Comerchero to talk career develop-ment, college highlights, and why he hates being called an ”entrepreneur.”

INTERVIEW

John Krogh What is Quiztones and where did the idea came from?

Dan Comerchero Quiztones is a frequency ear training app for Mac iOS [and Android], that helps you learn to identify frequencies. The app boosts or cuts a specific frequency of an audio loop, and you guess the altered frequency. You get four answer choices and you can load your own reference tracks or use the built-in audio loops and test tones. The idea came to me when I was in one of my Mix Lab classes with [McNally Smith Faculty member] Joe Mabbott. He turned the computer screen around and began quizzing us by boosting certain frequencies with an EQ in Pro Tools. At the time I was working on a printable staff paper web-app called Staffnotes using Adobe Flash. I was working with a cheap overseas developer, and I thought it wouldn’t be too compli-cated to create an automated quiz app that



JK Can you give me any examples of how you’ve been able to apply what you learned at McNally Smith to the work you’re doing now?

DC A lot of the foundational skills from my production classes, signal flow especially, have been very helpful for mixing and recording other artists, or even just pro-ducing my own beats. Just having a solid understanding of the basic technical foun-dations of the recording process has been crucial, and also helped me in developing Quiztones.

JK You started as a performance student in percussion. How did you get into music production and music technology?

DC I was playing drums and I saw a friend using Logic, and it reminded me of when I used to mess around with an 8-track when I was a kid. I thought Logic was awesome, so I finally got a Mac and a copy of the software. The first thing I did was program some drums. Because I was already a drummer, I remember thinking, ”Oh, I know what to do to make this feel right, I know how to approach this groove.” I discovered how my musical training instantly trans-ferred to the role of producing music. It all ties together, like knowing what the best sound is, when you’ve captured a good take, editing a performance and knowing how to comp the best take rhythmically and musically.

JK Do you see yourself as a musician, engineer, entrepreneur? How do you describe yourself?

DC I’ve always had an issue describing myself and writing bios because I feel like the word ”entrepreneur” is tossed around very loosely these days. I see these people on Facebook with job titles like ”CEO of Me,” but I always wonder what they’re actually doing. For me, it’s not a title, it’s more about

DEVELOPER

Comerchero works with Minneapolis-based Audiofile Engineering to develop software for musicians and audio engineers. Visit www.audiofile-engineering.com to learn more.

PROFILE

what you actually produce and execute on. That’s what matters to me. I don’t care so much about how I describe myself. I care more about what I put out into the world and the quality of what I produce. I hope that it speaks for itself. I also kind of gave up on writing bios because it’s constantly changing. It bothers me when I see bios where people list 20 different titles like ”CEO, manager, inspirer, recording engineer, producer, multi-instrumentalist,” just listing everything on and on. I whittled my Twitter bio down to Music, Web Sites and Apps. That encompasses what I’m into right now. I’m more interested in having people know what I’ve built, and I hope that the passion and time that I’ve put into what I’ve done will speak for itself.

JK Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, what advice would you give someone just enter-

ing McNally Smith?

DC Make as many connections as possible. I’ve always been bad as an in-person networker, which is kind of funny because I do freelance social media marketing for Audiofile and other companies (laughs). I’m good at the online social interaction, but I’ve never been a really social person, I’m a classic introvert. So, push your-self to meet as many people as possible, even if you feel uncomfortable about it.

If I could go back and give myself any advice, it would be to not be so worried about knowing exactly what you’re

going to do in the future, and just go with what you feel strongly and passionately about. In my case, I was so into drumming and I thought that’s what I was going to do, but it led to so many other things, and if I

had never started with doing something that I was passionate about, I wouldn’t have ended up here. You never know what is going to lead to what or where.

JK That’s an interesting point, especially considering everything you’re now involved with. Do you have any regret that you’re not a professional drummer and that your path is taking a different direction than you thought it would?

DC No, not at all, but I used to struggle with it. When I was trying to convince my parents to be on board with the idea of me going to music school, they made suggestions like, ”What if music was just a hobby and you went to business school? You could still do music.” But I was so adamant that I had to do music 100%.

Now looking back, I’m okay with the direc-tion I’ve taken and the fact that performance isn’t all I’m about. I haven’t left music. I’m making apps that are for musicians. I have a blog that’s for audio engineers. Everything I’m doing is still tied into music, and I feel like there are so many ways to be in the mu-sic industry beyond what you might think you’ll do when you first start college. And that goes back to what you call yourself. Are you a musician? An engineer? There are so many other angles, and they all benefit one another. Are you into the audio/visual side? I was exposed to a lot at McNally. Like when I took a class with Dr. J. Anthony Allen, he’s big into mixed media, combining music and video, and I thought it was incredible. You really can’t put yourself in a box, there are many paths you can take.


There are so many ways to be in the music industry beyond what

you might think you’ll do when you first start college. And that goes

back to what you call yourself. Are you a musician? An engineer? There are so many other angles.


MUSIC & INDUSTRY NEWS / OFF THE RECORD MUSIC & INDUSTRY NEWS / OFF THE RECORD

t’s not easy putting together a statistical profile of people who spend most of their time in soundproof windowless cham-bers, but the Federal Department

of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has done a pretty decent job of it under the circumstances. They have released some in-teresting data recently that provides us with an economic snapshot, stilted as it may be, of the typical audio engineering worker.

The survey understandably doesn’t have the kind of nuance we’d like. The broad category is ‘Broadcast and sound-engi-neering technicians,’ whose functions the Bureau describes as to “set up, operate, and maintain the electrical equipment for radio and television broadcasts, concerts, sound recordings and movies, and in office

and school buildings,” in environments that include recording studios — typically dry bureaucratese, but close enough. As of 2010, people working in that category were earning a reported average of $38,970 per year, which works out to $19.17 per hour. That increased in 2011 to $26.98 per hour and $56,110 annually.

The 2011 report breaks it down more spe-cifically. Of all the categories, those working in the motion-picture business seem to fare the best, earning over $35 per hour and over $74,000 per year. ‘Sound recording’ came in second, at $26.76 an hour and over $55,000 per year. Broadcast audio engineers pull in $51,550. The category titled ‘Performing arts companies’ presumably includes those working on live sound, who earn just under $44,000 a year.

State of AffairsThere is a geographical breakdown and there were no surprises there, with Cali-fornia and New York the top two states by far for audio professionals of all types, with Florida, Illinois and Texas rounding out the top five. No surprise either is the income disparity between them, with Californian and New York audio workers faring far better than their peers in other states. California residents pull in over $74,000 and New Yorkers earn just under $66,000 a year, while an engineer in number-three-ranked Illinois gets $43,120. By the time you get to Texas you’re at $36,510. The discrepancies are not surprising — California has several media hot-spots, most notably Hollywood,

and New York is the center for much of broadcasting, as well as arguably still being the country’s indie music capital.

City LinkWhen the data becomes more granular, other locations appear. In the list of metro-politan areas with the highest employment levels in the category, after New York (hourly wage $31.91) and Los Angeles ($39.85), San Francisco appears, at $29.66 per hour, higher than Chicago’s ($20.90) and pos-sibly attributable to a Silicon Valley effect. Nashville finally arrives, though at a measly $16.32 an hour — lower than Boston, Miami or even Seattle. On the other hand, the cost of living in Nashville is far less than in any of those other cities, though any boost that gives the numbers is tempered by the fact

that there is so much competition for audio jobs there. One location stands out for the

fact that its hourly wage is lowest of those reported in this section. Orlando, home to massive Disney and Universal theme parks (which use tons of audio), offers audio pros an average hourly wage of just $15.44.

In fact, looking for scarcity might be a rewarding employment strategy: An audio professional working in Richmond, Virginia earns about the same annually as one in the LA area — both pull in over $82,000 a year. The data indicates that there are 0.59 audio engineers for every thousand workers in LA, while that number drops to 0.09 in Richmond, which is perhaps better known as the capital of the Confederacy than for the regional commercial spots that get done there. Dave Matthews and the still somewhat thriving hip-hop scene in nearby Virginia Beach, however, where the Nep-tunes and a few colleagues have recording studios, likely help boost the numbers.

Analyze ThisYou have to do some educated parsing of the Federal data, simply because Bureau of Labour surveys were designed to reflect a much broader and more diverse workplace.

What audio profession-als actually do is itself increasingly difficult to pin down as specifi-cally as the job of, say, a bank examiner or florist. Does a programmer who sync’s backing tracks for a live show qualify for inclusion?

Finally, the surveys provide a huge caveat: “Estimates do not in-clude self-employed workers.” It’s reasonable to postulate that at least

half this industry is self-employed. But con-sidering that getting them (and I consider myself one of that cohort) to fill out a survey is like trying to herd cats, these government statistics are the best economic picture of

the world of audio professionals we can hope for.

Now that we have this snapshot, what are the takeaways? For starters, there are a lot of people making solid, middle-class sala-ries in this business, and that’s important: the middle class of anything — a country, a city or an industry — is what creates stability. The health of music production as a career choice isn’t determined by the relative few who hit the equivalent of a lottery jackpot, but by those who manage to pay the rent, put food on the table, pay their kids’ tuition and get to work on time every day. Secondly, in an era of shaky finance in general, the idea that professional audio can offer a steady paycheck could be a pragmatic if unsexy selling point. Finally, this data gives us the very human pleasure of anonymously seeing how we stack up to our peers. And who doesn’t like comparing themselves to the next guy?

This article originally appeared in the July 2012 issue of Sound On Sound magazine and is reprint-ed with permission. Dan Daley is an experienced journalist and author who has been covering the business and technology of the entertainment industry for over 17 years. You can read more of Dan’s Off the Record columns at www.soundon-sound.com.

OFF THE RECORD

I

MUSIC INDUSTRY & NEWS

BY DAN DALEY

Looking for scarcity might be a rewarding employment

strategy: An audio professional working in Richmond, VA earns

about the same annually as one in the LA area — both pull in

over $82,000 a year.

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