My 9 y.o. daughter....

[swingdoc]

OK, so I gotta get this project done tonight. I had just a couple of high school students come by last weekend and did piano, vox, guitar.
6 songs. Female vocalist. Decent, not great talent.

I was feeling pretty crummy about my initial mixes earlier, so went to go back at it this eve. My 9yo daughter asks, "can you play with me?" My gotta get work done reply.."no, not really, i'm busy right now." She says.."can I help?" Im kinda bugged beacuse although she has a great attitude when it comes to helping on stuff, I've never had her help with mixes, and of course its gonna take 5x as long to explain stuff to her, and have her turn all the knobs. But she was so nice about it, ..."alright, lets go do it." "Yeah, " she was gleeful.
We went down to the garage, and I threw up the first tune. Without even asking her a thing, she blurts out...."her voice is too loud, turn it down."
Dang, I didnt even know that she knew that this process of mixing allowed for that capability. "You mean turn down her voice?", "yeah, its too loud."
So now I play stupid for sec. "how do I do that?" She said, "Well dontcha just move these things (points to faders) up or down?" "Yeah, I think you're right."
So I take down the lead vox fader mabye 2db. "A little more." I flick down another 1/2 db. "A liiitttle more, " she says. So I go up 1/2 db. "No dad, I said down a little more".So I go back down that same 1/2 db. OK not it needs to go that liiittle more again. I swear I bumbed it not even a 1/2db. "There".
So now a bit amazed and fully intrigued...
"What do you think of the "echos"? "What are echos?"she asked. "Those are the sounds after the voices that make them sound like shes in a big room. When there is a lot of echo, we call it "wet", when there's no echo, we call it dry"', I explained. I set a mute group on all the aux returns, turned them off. "There thats dry" I said, turned them back on..."Thats wet" she stepped in...."right" hmmmmm a natural.
I tell her first we're going to determine the songs tempo to set the echo delays. I have a metronome and hand it to her. In about 30 sec she had the tempo, "its between 72 and 78." (its one of the cheap dial ones with wide settings)..."OK, whats the tempo?", "how about 76?" she says. good for me.
Now we go to my tempo / delay chart, and I explain a bit about looking up the right delay times. Went to 76, then asked about the different choices. 1/4 note, 1/8th note, dotted 1/4 note etc. I said some basics about straight and swing, OK, she pulls up 1/4 note delay...340ish I think, dials it into the delay.
"Now how much echo do you want to hear on the voice," I ask? " A little more" she says ( I go up 1db on the stereo aux return) "A little more" ( I go down 1db again), "no dad, I said up", so back up to where I was..."OK now a little more.....there...." I'm peeing my pants about now.
We then proceded to do this for the vox plate, and a long reverb I had on the auxes. We determined the tempos, dialed them in, and she set the aux return levels. I swear she was hearing slider movements of 1/2 freakin millimeter. "a little more, a little less, a liiitttle less....there!"
Finally I got to the vox compressor. "what does this do?" hmmmmm, "Well, it kind of controls her volume so that is a bit more even, kinda like moving the slider up and down based on when she gets loud or quiet."
"OK, seems easy enough." So we go through threshold, ratio, attack release and make up gain. I'd explain each knob, and she'd say "up a bit" or "go back", or "I liked that better...there, thats perfect." And I'd be just tweaking release knobs thresholds, just a bit, but if I messed with her, she totally would call me, no, that needS to go up, not down."

So finally, this mix is freakin dialed in and gellin like unbelievable!
And I gotta tell ya, I was a mile away when I had my mix thrown up.
She was so easy to work with, so matter of fact and confident, and totally demonstrated the time honored..."that sounds better" concept.

I got all but one song done tonight, she got tired and had to go to bed.
She totally laid out a 5 part harmony they put to gether laying out their pans, volunes and aux sends. It was freakin tight.

I'm just telling ya this, cuz damn, I'm part impressed at her natural ability. Im part depressed that I just got totally schooled by a 9 yo girl whose never seen this gear in her life. And I'm part excited about having her do all my freaking mixes from now on.
I can see it now...the wife.." Hey Mark...Ellen needs to get up here and get her homework done and get to bed." ...Me..."hold on, we're sooo close, she gotta just get this drum kit dialed in.."

Man this was a pretty fun evening. God bless the kids.

[dokushoka]

That is AWESOME. A few thoughts:

First off, kids are so honest, well, at least for a while. She'll give you an honest opinion of your work, where as, say, a wife can't always be trusted for this

Second, children, and some research indicates girls in particular, can hear into higher frequencies than us old people. Your daughter is probably hearing things that you can't, and that is so cool to think about.

Lastly, I wish my assistant picked up on stuff as quickly as your daughter!

[joelpatterson]

You're a lucky guy.

[OneZero]

Dude that is so cool .
I have a 3 yo daughter, your story made me weep.

[ubertar]

Now you gotta raise her allowance.

[rhythm ranch]

Now you gotta raise her allowance.

Hell, you gotta get her logged in here! It's great that you've been able to find a producer you can work with.

[James Dawson]

You're a lucky guy and obviously a great dad!

I think it comes from a child's ability to see things without all the nonsense and preconceived notions that we all pick up over the years... she didn't read Walter Sear's article which ultimately made us all think we need better, older, other equipment.... She doesn't know about trends in reverbs and how dated "XYZ" effect is considered! she has no fear of failure. No understanding that she can fail!

Its raw talent and a child's perspective!!!

But here's the hard part. How to nurture that talent and not let anything else get in her way!

You must be very proud.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

wow, that story RULES!

watch out though, pretty soon she'll be asking for points...

[justinf]

Right on man. I was just teaching my 6 year old daughter some lyrics to sing a backup part on my new record today. She loves it, and is a total studio pro. . ."a little less piano in the phones please dad" and the like. I wish I had her musical abilities in several ways.

There's no time better spent.

[trianglelines]

Kids don't know how to be guarded. It's super cool you would work with your daughter like that.

My son is a little younger than two years old, he just assumes guitars and recording gear are in everyone's house and was mad when the drum set disappeared one night! Me moves the faders and plays with the patch bays


Your daughter doesn't have to worry about whether or not another engineer is going to comment that the overheads are out of phase. It either sounds cool or it doesn't. Prolly a lesson in there for everyone....

-TimT

[nlmd311]

Second, children, and some research indicates girls in particular, can hear into higher frequencies than us old people. Your daughter is probably hearing things that you can't, and that is so cool to think about.

Exactly! Untainted ears. Children havent yet, and hopefully won't deal with the decibel levels and stress levels (once again, hopefully) that adults have put up with in an average life (not to mention that of a musician, live sound engineer, construction worker...). Not to mention that even if you arent exposed to any of this noise pollution, illness, antibiotic (many antibiotics for the flu and other infections can have severe effects on your hearing)... etc. some of your hearing range, will just kind of gradually get "rolled off".

get her a 1/4" 4 track and 4 channel mixer for christmas/chanukah/kwanzaa/ramadan/festivus/ she'll be the happiest, most bad ass kid in 5th grade!

all the best

-Darrill

[bobbydj]

Good story, that.

[joeysimms]

Good story, that.

Good enough to convince you to procreate??!

[jca83]

makes me want kids. i want a partridge family. or, open a studio run entirely by children...! whoa! crazy.

[Randy]

So Swingdoc,

Does she do freelance? or is she on exclusive retainer with your studio?