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SOUNDGIRLS.ORG IN LOCKDOWN Monitor Engineers, Karrie Keyes and Becky Pell discuss women in the industry, their preferred console setups and share their secrets to success.
Although they have never met in person, Karrie Keyes, Pearl Jam’s Monitor Engineer, and Becky Pell, Monitor Engineer for Westlife have developed a strong bond, thanks in large part to SoundGirls.org. Co-founded by Keyes and fellow Audio Engineer, Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato around seven years ago, the online platform supports women working in professional audio and music production by highlighting their success and providing a place for them to connect, network, and share advice and experiences. “Our goal was mainly to find other women in audio. We had been working in audio for 20-plus years and we were tired of people saying, ‘I’ve never seen another woman do this’,” commented Keyes. “So, we built a website and found other women, because we knew they existed! We offer support and guidance for people starting out and have amazing women blogging for us. We do workshops and meetups and it just keeps growing. Now we’re trying to figure out what we can do for our community in this time of need.” Keyes and Pell met online when Pell started blogging for the website and, while they haven’t been able to arrange an in-person meet-up yet thanks to their usually hectic touring schedules, the pair are united by their desire to promote women in the industry. “I didn’t realise there were many other women doing this,” Pell commented. “It’s fantastic to have this place where we can come together and support each other. It was hugely inspiring to me, and a bit of a fangirl moment,” she said of meeting Keyes. “Pearl Jam is one of my favourite bands, so to discover that the Monitor Engineer was a woman was really exciting!” A 30-year veteran of the Pearl Jam touring crew, Keyes’ biggest tip to any engineer is to be nice to your support bands. “Pearl Jam was my support band when I was out on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” she
recalled. “I was asked if I would mix Pearl Jam for a 30-minute slot by the road manager. I said yes and we’ve been together since then. You never know what’s going to happen.” Pell added that the job of a Monitor Engineer is 50% technology and 50% psychology. When she started working with Westlife, technology was starting to come into its own, but was not as refined as it is today. “In their earlier days, the screaming level coming out from the audience was just nuts, like any boy band – very young girls with high-pitched voices,” she described. “Technology has improved and progressed since then, and the band have honed their craft. I can make them much more comfortable on stage now; they can hear themselves and actually enjoy the performance thanks to the improvements in technology.” However, just as important as the technology is trust. “It’s everything,” Pell added. “The band needs to feel heard. They need to feel that you’ve got their back because they’re totally reliant on you. We all have different ways of doing things and different modes of mixing. With Westlife, the guys just liked the sounds that I made, and we seem to click. So much of it is down to relationships and not assuming that you know what they want. It takes time to build that kind of relationship.” Both Pearl Jam and Westlife use a mixture of wedges on stage and in-ear monitoring, which makes for a more complicated setup. Both use DiGiCo consoles, with Keye using an SD5 and Pell an SD10, SD5 or SD7, depending on availability in different territories. “The SD5 has been amazing,” said Keyes. “I love the sound and the power it has, and I can set it up however I need it to be. I’ve set mine up pretty much to run as an analogue console. My main job is to pay attention to the band, so I pretty much have everything I need on the surface.” Pell added: “I like to keep things fairly simple, so I only use additional 22
