Meeting Topic: Trina Shoemaker Mixing Event
Speaker Name: Trina Shoemaker - Independent Recording and Mixing Engineer
Meeting Location: Murfreesboro TN
In continuation of its series of events featuring prominent mixing engineers and producers, the MTSU AES section hosted Trina Shoemaker. The all-day event began with a discussion of how she came to be an engineer and how she managed to stay in the business through her many years of working as an assistant engineer. Her advice on this was to find a source of income outside of studio work that does not leave you unavailable for sessions. Her choice was real estate. She played a few tracks from her recent and older works to illustrate points, including a track from an album that was cut in a basement with a U47 into a Mackie mixer.
Then, the event turned to mixing. Trina went through every step that she would in a normal day of mixing from color coding tracks, to getting sounds, to applying effects and final polishing. Each step was explained in detail and the members were free to ask questions throughout the process. She even went into fine detail of her preferred approach to sample replacing drum sounds. After lunch, a new song was started. This time the song was more laid-back, allowing for discussion of different approaches and techniques.
Throughout the event Trina took time to discuss issues close to her heart, including the flooding of her home in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, succeeding as a woman in the recording industry and balancing work with family. Her main message was that being a woman in the recording industry is not a problem if one does not make it a problem. She discussed how her decision to quit recording and producing years ago led her, in very short time, to her husband, a child, and right back to making music. The MTSU AES can not say enough good things about Trina, and we look forward to hosting her again in the future.
