Ken Blair is a sound recordist and recording engineer who runs BMP sound recording. His company deals with recording classical, jazz and acoustic music.
His background is in the relatively controlled environment of recording studios and began for him 25 years ago – He compared the technicalities of the studio with the much more precise sessions in the world of classical recordings, with these recordings tending to be of multiple instruments recording straight to stereo. This requires what might be considered a distinctly old school approach of achieving a good balance of sound at source and live mixing on the way into the recorder which leaves very little room for error on the part of the musicians or the engineer. He also explained that recording portably in venues suitable for classical ensembles often requires unconventional problem solving in constructing a suitable workspace and cable runs.
Ken discussed how important musical academia and the ‘grades’ system is to his business model, as the alterations to the system each year offer the opportunity for regular, repeatable business. He also focussed some of his talk on the more mundane day to day work for his business, and moved on to dispense some advice about presenting yourself to potential employers and clients. He made the point that CV’s are often overly work-based and that it’s worth adding a little character to the front page rather than overloading it on skills and experience, which was particularly useful to me as I was in the process of updating my own at the time and recognized that tendency in my own.
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