Beau (3:58)
I'm Beau. I'm a music producer and audio engineer based out of Toronto, Canada. I've been working in music and audio post production for almost 10 years and I make records with people and that's my job. I'm grateful to do what I do. Being an audio engineer is a really varied and technical and also creative profession. It means that I'm recording people. It means that I'm recording everything from. I've done dialogue voiceovers for TV shows, I've done big bands, I've done orchestral and string quartet recording. I've done a lot of rap and singing and I love working as a vocal producer. It's varied in terms of what I do, job to job, and that's part of why I love it. And it keeps you creative. You have to stay up to date on everything technical and it's really focused on telling other people's stories. That's part of what drew me to it and that's a really rewarding thing to get to do. I work with different bands in Toronto. It's one of the things that I really like to do. We actually throw shows in my house. I live in a sort of DIY queer punk house venue in the east end of Toronto called the Arcade. So my roommate, who I live at the Arcade with, is named Tim and Tim's a drummer. Tim has drummed for different bands and formed a band called Crocus with some friends of theirs. And they had talked to me, this was last summer, so just exactly a year ago, Tim had told me that they were looking at wanting to go and record their band's ep. Crocus music is kind of like shoegaze, doom gaze, sort of like a lot of bass and heavy. I'd been to their shows and I really loved their sound. And so when Tim asked me to possibly work with their band on recording their first ep, I got really excited about that right from the get. They had been talking about wanting to go out of town to record. The thing about living in Toronto and southern Ontario is there's a lot of really beautiful places out of the city. Converted barns, converted churches. There's a lot of rural pockets that people move to, places like Prince Edward county and Guelph, that people wind up building or converting beautiful spaces into recording studios or mixing studios. And that's what they were looking at doing. I think for the band. They were all really busy and so being able to set the time aside for the four of them was meaningful for Them. So, yeah, they approached me for that. And there's a lot of, like, planning that you kind of go into a recording session with, especially when you have a fixed amount of time. So part of my role being both the engineer and the producer, co producing the CP with Krokus, meant that we were planning on being there for two days. And we were going to cut four songs. We were only going to be up for Friday and Saturday and then leaving on Sunday. We drove up really early Friday morning, and I drove up with my roommate Tim, the drummer, and Crocus bassist Jess. And then Jordan and Jesse are the guitarist and the vocalist, respectively. So we're going to this barn. Jess had already recorded there before. This barn was on a beautiful plot of land close to, like, within a few hours of the city. And so we arrived sometime around 11 or 12 and started setting up. The barn was really big. I think this barn, they sometimes have little concerts in it. And there's a lot of vintage and I think sort of secondhand antique furniture that they store in it, which was really beautiful. As I walked through the space, I wouldn't say I'm like a super medium or anything like that, but I would say I like. I pick up on vibes a little bit. And there's a couple of little sort of pockets. Specifically when we were setting up drums, there's one of those sliding doors behind the drums that were kind of on this plinth. Kind of felt like there was something behind the door that obviously was just storage. It didn't feel weird or in a distressing way. It just felt like we were guests in this very old space. By the end of that sort of first day, I think we went until at least 10 or 11 at night. We were all pretty tired, and so we crashed in a nearby building. And so by day two, we were up setting up in the morning, we were drinking lots of coffee, had some breakfast, and we started tracking guitars. We set up Jordan's, had these two big amp cabs, and I mic'd them up as Jordan's tracking guitars. This wasn't right when we started, but it was close. It was close to when we started. Jess and I look at each other because Jordan's playing and we're sort of hearing what sounds like somebody talking. But it. It was at a really low level. It was kind of like murmuring. And then it would be sort of like, I hear this. Like, that's the best impression I can give. Like, some things down a hall, like, you know, when you hear a conversation that's happening on a different floor of a house or something, and you can just hear it sort of carrying through the vents, but it's just quiet enough that you can tell that something's saying something, somebody's saying something, but it's out of earshot, so you can't make it out. And that was what was coming up when we were listening on the headphones as Jordan was recording guitars. And that was what was bothering me, is we've got these big amp stacks. Jordan's playing these really loud, you know, stacks of thick, low guitar tone. And then we're hearing this sort of murmur underneath that. If you're an engineer, an audio engineer, I'll. I'll explain that. There's this thing that happens with cell phones and with radio signal called RF or interference, which for in like, layman's terms is basically like microphones or gear or wiring picking up sound or waves from elsewhere. So that could be AM or FM radio signal. That could be stuff that's kind of picking up, causing these, like. Which is what it sounds like through analog gear with phones or laptops or iPads. But this didn't sound like any of that. I've picked up radio noise. And the studio owner also told us that he'd never had issues recording where there was radio interference. So we stopped Jordan as he's tracking, because I have to check. It's part of my job to make sure that the recording is going to be usable. So I play it back, and there's nothing that sounds like what Jess and I were hearing through these headphone boxes. So then I think, well, maybe it's just the headphones. I don't know. I just sort of. At that point, I'm nodding and I'm looking at my talent, which is the guitarist, and I'm thinking, okay, I've got to keep this ball rolling where this isn't actually affecting the quality of the audio. So we can keep rolling. So that's what we do. It's pretty prominent, this sort of murmuring. Jordan's not hearing it, Tim's not hearing it. Only Jess and I are hearing it on our headphones. We swap headphones, doesn't fix it. Swap boxes, doesn't fix it. We're just like, all right, we're just going to keep rolling. So we cut all the guitars, we cut a bunch of really cool layers, some feedback, all this stuff that's really helping the music sound really beefy and good. And I'm stoked because it's really nice to have a bunch of layers for mixing later for something like that. That's part of what makes records sound really full and less like demos. And so then we transition over to starting to cut vocals. And for anybody who's worked with a vocalist, that usually means that you want the vocalist to feel comfortable. We want to minimize like too many cooks in the kitchen. So Tim and Jordan were really sweet and they were like, you know what, Jesse, we'll let you and Jess and Beau kind of have this space. So they drove into town and they were going to get us dinner and stuff. And so we start tracking vocals. This barn is real big and I'm set up with pro tools and the computer and stuff that I'm using in this back corner of this barn. And I'm facing into the barn, I'm facing at the doors. I can see everything from where I'm sitting in the corner. So Jesse, the singer who has the most beautiful, crystal clear, powerful soprano singing voice, just an incredible vocalist. And I was really excited to be diving into this with her, knowing that we couldn't, we didn't have to feel pressure to get the leads and doubles for every song done that day. So Jess is sitting in this wingback armchair with my dog on her lap. And then Jesse is sitting a little bit in front between us holding the mic. And we do a couple songs. We decide what parts we're going to record later, what she feels good cutting now. And then we sort of dive into the third song. And the song is talking about breaches of consent. And so I think the subject matter in the song and the melody itself follows that feeling of grief and anger and sort of the complex nuances of going through something that feels violating and hard. But it's very beautiful. The melody is very haunting. So she's just finished writing a lot of these lyrics and is sort of sounding out the melody for this song. And you know when someone's singing really close to you, they might not feel comfortable with you sort of staring at them. So I turn around in my chair, I'm facing out into the barn. And Jess, who's sitting in the chair, she's facing me so she can see my face. And I look up at the door. Cause I see this movement sort of out of the corner of my eye as Jesse singing. And it's not Tim and Jordan. It's something entirely different. When I look at the door, what I'm seeing is not a person. It just looks like this eight or nine foot hooded or sort of cowled shadow is just standing there. The Closest comparison I can make is it looks like a shrouded sort of Nazgul type of figure from Lord of the Rings. It doesn't look like it's sucking up the light around it in the way that people will often describe shadow things in different ways. You could still see the light behind it. There was a lamp on, you know, close to the front of the barn. It was. Seemed hooded. I couldn't see its face. I couldn't see eyes or a mouth or hands, but it seemed just very physically there, as if somebody was wearing a thick, very dark, opaque black cowled cloak. But it was very tall, and it was just this very large shadow figure. And I didn't see sleeves. It didn't move its hands. It was sort of standing behind this large post or beam that was structurally holding up that part of the roof. And then it just looked like it had physical weight. It didn't look like it was hovering or flying or floating or anything like that. It did really seem like it was sort of standing there. And I just stare at it. I'm so. I think there's that moment when you see something and you. You. It's like getting doused with cold water or something where you realize what you thought you saw is not what's happening, and your brain's going really fast. That's what was happening. For me, I'm trying to make sense of it. I'm realizing I'm having a supernatural or paranormal experience in this moment. And my first thought is, well, I don't want to ruin the vocal take, so I think I probably gasped, but I think I covered my mouth. And at that point, probably only after a few seconds of me staring at the thing and seeing it and processing that it's not Tim and Jordan, the thing sort of. It didn't twitch, but it's like it noticed that I was looking at it. And very quickly, it sort of zips into the corner of the building. And it was like 8 or 9ft tall. So it's this. If I had blinked, it would have been there and then gone in the space of me blinking. But I was staring at it, gobsmacked and totally shocked. So I saw it do this sort of zip thing into the corner where the kitchenette was, and it was gone. It wasn't like the light around it changed. There wasn't any other movement. It was as if it had maybe just come too close. And Jess, who was sitting in the chair and had watched my face or noticed me, just says to me, you look like you Saw a ghost. You're so pale. Are you okay? And I said, I think I did. And both Jess and Jesse went, oh, my God, no. Where?
