Adventures in audio engineering: Jett Galindo gets the sound down

The American music technology industry is dominated by men—in fact, they make up more than 95 percent of audio engineers and sound mixers, producers, programmers, technicians and designers in the US. Anyone told they would be meeting a sound engineer named Jett would be forgiven for thinking they would be meeting a man. And they would be wrong.

Jett Galindo's parents have been managing bands since she was born in the mid-Eighties, with one of them responsible for some of the best jukebox earworms around: Aegis.

“I was brought up in a musical family,” Jett told GMA News Online, “but my parents actually discouraged us from pursuing music [as a career].”

She explained that her folks felt that a career in the music industry was a gamble. “I never really thought that I’d end up in music anyway,” she said, “but I love music and love technology.”

Galindo’s engagement with both technology and music date back to her adolescent years, when she started developing websites and doing graphic design work in high school, and eventually taught herself non-linear video editing. She became part of the Ateneo College Glee Club in university, where she finished with a degree in psychology.

Taking a risk

It was after returning from a tour in the US that she made up her mind to pursue a music career. To this day, she notes, there aren’t any full-blown study programs for the field outside workshops. “It’s not really a common career choice,” she admitted, “it’s not really a lucrative [one], and it’s really a risk.” So she decided to pursue studies abroad.

To gain some experience, Jett started off working at Jesuit Communications, where her work as training coordinator at the Garage, the group’s multimedia training arm, led her to discover that JesCom had its own recording studio. Here, she began her apprenticeship with the studio’s own engineer.

At the same time, she became part of the Ateneo Chamber Singers. In 2009, with the encouragement of her friend GP Eleria, she entered the Berklee College of Music, where she got into the Music Production and Engineering program after a competitive admissions process.

There, she continued her training as a soprano while learning more about the nuts and bolts of music production. She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in music.

Moving up

As for being a woman in an industry filled with men, Jett says she has always heard stories about discrimination, but she only felt it mildly during her studies. She said that humor really helped her—sometimes, she made fun of the stereotyping herself. But her experience really helped, too. She often ended up saving the day for her classmates when they were hitting the point of disaster. She was surprised to find, though, that she was not treated differently in the music industry itself. “I feel that there is a more equal playing field,” she said, “and that is a good sign.”

Galindo’s tenacity took her far. After an internship at New York’s Avatar Studios, a recording studio with a very good reputation in the industry (and where, like most interns, she made the coffee). She ended up working with them for a year as a recording engineer.

Her break came when, during her internship, she was the only recording engineer around, and funk bassist and producer-in-residence Jerry Barnes got her to work with him in his studio.

Barnes was so impressed that he chose her to become his full-time engineer. During that time, among other things, she recorded Roberta Flack for a radio ad. But it was when Flack found out that Jett was a soprano that she, a music teacher herself, played the piano while Jett sang an aria. Her boss recorded that session.

In May 2013, after eight months, Galindo moved to Los Angeles to join the Mastering Lab, where she worked with veteran mastering engineer and Grammy winner Doug Sax. Mastering, Jett explains, is the last stage of the audio engineering process, after mixing and recording. Jett likens it to the touch-up and and framing of a painting.

Jett was recommended by one of her professors at Berklee, Sax told GMA News Online. He said that people feel very comfortable around her, saying, “In my business, that’s quite important because we deal with musicians and artists, and there’s sometimes tension.” He added, “She really cares, she loves music, and she understands music.”

Upcoming work

Jett's projects so far with the Mastering Lab include albums by Toad the Wet Sprocket (a Kickstarter-funded one) and, oddly enough, an album Jett recorded while in New York: the Brazilian band Jota Quest’s next album. (That was a coincidence.)

What Jett really wants to do at some point is to help the classical music recording scene in Manila. There are very few female sound engineers here (Hazel Pascua, Shinji Tanaka’s colleague at Sound Creation Studios, was a name Jett gave), but none of them know how to record classical music. “We’re way behind in that,” she said, compared to the North American and European recording industries.

Jett Galindo’s enthusiasm, skills, and heart have taken her places, and being a woman has not stopped her. “It didn’t matter to me that [this turned out to be] a male-dominated career path,” she said. “I just knew that I wanted to do it.” And of course, she is making it.

And yes, she did mix one Aegis album. — BM, GMA News

For more information on the work of Jett Galindo, visit her personal site: http://www.jettgalindo.com.