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By India Hooi
Look around the audio industry and you’ll find an abundant number of people who are passionate, motivated, inspired, dedicated, hardworking, and often obsessed with their craft! What are some of the reasons that make working in audio so great, and worth dedicating a career and a substantial amount of your life’s hours to?
Most people love music of some kind, and working in recording or live sound gives you the opportunity to work with it every day. Some sound engineers begin as musicians but don’t want to pursue a performing career, and others find that audio may offer a more stable income working in music than working as a musician – though many people are able to do both. Being paid to listen to music is a dream for many people!
Getting to sculpt sound, making creative decisions on musical arrangements or sound design, deciding where elements should sit in a mix, develop new audio software and hardware – audio engineering can be an endlessly creative field. An advantage for many people is developing the skills to be able to produce their own music or creative content.
Sound is a powerful tool for telling a story or creating a mood or atmosphere – a film without sound wouldn’t have half the emotional impact. There’s a great satisfaction to be felt when a client is thrilled with their finished song and it goes out into the world to be enjoyed by many listeners, or you’ve perfected a live mix and everyone in the audience is jumping euphorically to the beat!
Working in this creative industry, you may get the opportunity to do sound for musicians you greatly admire or work closely with a variety of film industry professionals, or people innovating in the field of audio. You’ll likely often meet a variety of different people on projects or events, and be able to share your knowledge as well as learn from them.
In many roles in the audio industry, no two days are the same: you might be working in different venues or locations, working with a variety of music or film genres, solving diverse problems, or working with varied equipment and people. There are continuous advancements being made in audio technology which will motivate you to keep learning… you’ll probably never be bored!
Audio is a fantastic avenue to explore artistic and creative aspects alongside technological and scientific elements. You can develop a unique skill set that allows you to bridge those two sides, and facilitate communication between people in the artistic and scientific fields.
There are many career paths to explore within audio – recording studios, live sound, film, broadcasting, podcasting, theater, research and development, education… the list is endless. There’s always a possibility to train further, transfer your skills and try working in a different field of audio if you need a change.
The possibility to travel and explore new places is an exciting drawcard for several roles in the audio industry. Whether you’re an audio engineer on a cruise ship, touring with a band or show, or filming on location, you may have the opportunity to see places you wouldn’t have otherwise visited, and get to know a variety of exciting locations and people.
A huge thank you to members of the excellent Soundgirls and Hey Audio Student Facebook groups for sharing what they love about working in audio. I highly recommend joining these groups for terrific audio tips, interesting discussions, and inclusive community support from fellow audio professionals and students.
Benefits of a Full-Time Job in Audio
To Freelance or Not To Freelance
The mission of SoundGirls.org is to inspire and empower the next generation of women in audio. Our mission is to create a supportive community for women in audio and music production, providing the tools, knowledge, and support to further their careers. SoundGirls.Org was formed in 2013 by veteran live sound engineers Karrie Keyes and Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato and operates under the Fiscal Sponsorship of The California Women’s Music Festival, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. In 2012, Karrie and Michelle participated in the “Women of Professional Concert Sound” panel at the AES Conference in San Francisco. The panel was hosted by the Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) and moderated by WAM founder Terri Winston. Terri brought together five women working in live and broadcast audio. The groundbreaking panel (which also included Jeri Palumbo, Claudia Engelhart and Deanne Franklin), provided young women and men a glimpse into life on the road, tips and advice, and a Q & A with the panelists. More importantly though, was how incredibly powerful the experience was for the panelists. We had all been in the business for 20 years or more, yet most of us had never met before that day and within minutes we bonded like long-lost sisters. We were struck by how similar our experiences, work ethics, and passions were and wondered why our paths had never crossed and how our careers would have been different had we been there to support each other through the years. Each of us are strong on our own, but together we were even stronger and a powerful force. We were empowered. Each of us had been asked hundreds of times in our careers: Are there other women doing sound? How did you get into sound? How would a young woman go about getting into sound? Through creating SoundGirls.Org, we hope to establish a place for women working in professional audio to come for support and advice, to share our success and failures, our joys and frustrations, and for empowerment and inspiration.
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