We were lucky to catch up with Nicole Schmidt recently and have shared our conversation below.
Nicole, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
One of the most important aspects of working as a recording engineer, in my opinion is trusting yourself and being confident in your skills. It can be very overwhelming working in a high profile environment surrounded by top industry professionals and I definitely didn’t start out very sure of myself.
From the very beginning of my journey I always felt like I was a step behind on my knowledge in the field. At school most people studying music production had been doing it on their own for years, I started with zero. When I got my first job at a studio that got even more intimidating, since not only my peers had more experience and knowledge than me but I was surrounded by people at the top of their respective fields.
That is why confidence in myself became so important to me. Often I was working with people that had so much more knowledge than me and the only way I was able to keep up and contribute was through problem solving, quick thinking and anticipating people’s needs. I had little moments where a recording session went really well and I was able to be of significant help to people, even though I felt completely under qualified going in to it.
A pivotal moment for me was a session I did a couple years ago with U2 and producer Bob Ezrin. This was the most high pressure environment I’d been in up to that point. I got on the session early on in my time at the studio I currently work at, because Bob specifically asked for female engineers and I definitely was more junior than any engineers that would have been assigned to that session otherwise. I dove in to it and had to adapt quickly to a completely new work flow, all while trying to keep a calm and collected facade so that the artists I was working with would feel reassured and comfortable.
The two main things I learned from this session was that I don’t have to be afraid of not knowing things and that I can trust myself to figure things out on the fly. The latter was huge for my self confidence going forward. I noticed that most times when I didn’t know how to do something, I asked someone in the room for help and by the time they walked over I had already figured it out myself. And if I hadn’t, it wasn’t the end of the world and either someone showed me how to do it or we worked around it in a different way. I had previously been so afraid that my lack of knowledge would get me kicked off of any session if it was discovered. Learning that it wasn’t scary and that it’s perfectly normal to not know everything was so simple, yet so important to me. Having had that experience of exceeding my own expectations of myself and rising to a challenge with no preparation whatsoever gave me a major confidence boost. Especially in a technical field where there are a million ways of achieving the same result, feeling like I can follow the logic of all those different ways is really empowering.
After that session I developed a habit of immediately accepting any sessions or projects that seemed scary and intimidating to me. It’s a really powerful feeling to see something that I have no idea how to do and then figure out how to do it on the fly. And the more I do it successfully with more and more intimidating surroundings the more capable I feel.
That confidence definitely makes me a better engineer and helps me bring a calm energy to any problems that arise. I don’t want the artists that I work with to ever feel stressed or worried if a technical issue or hurdle comes up. And knowing that I’ll be able to deal with unexpected circumstances is essential to that demeanor.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am currently working as a staff recording engineer at the Village Studios in West LA. I grew up in Germany with very musical parents so music was always a big part of my life and a way to express and experience emotions in a safe and beautiful way. I had never planned to make music a career, mostly because I didn’t think that was possible or realistic growing up. My parents were both very supportive of my love for music and encouraged me to go to music school. I initially went for vocal performance but quickly fell in love with the studio world at school. The university I went to has an incredible engineering and production program with outstanding professors. I went into the program just wanting to learn and really fell in love with engineering by the time I graduated. I definitely don’t think I would have chosen to pursue engineering as a career without having the encouragement, support and willingness to share their knowledge of my professors and I am very grateful to them for that.
It’s such a unique profession, where the logical and creative sides of my mind are equally heavily exercised. I absolutely adore being a part of the process of bringing a piece of music to life. It’s such a vulnerable and wonderful state to share the way you interpret the world. I see my job as still ultimately customer service, as I’m making sure to take all thought processes other than the creative one off of the minds of the artists I work with. Whether that be having the right mics set up and ready to go so that when inspiration hits we don’t have to wait but can get everything captured right away or having the right cup of tea and cozy lighting in the room.
Working at a place like The Village gives me the opportunity to work on all kinds of different projects, it definitely does not get boring. In my 3 years here I’ve worked on albums, podcasts, video game and TV voice overs, film scores, commercial video shoots as well as live concerts. I love that I work with so many different people, and I love that I can learn something from every new encounter.
I still spend a lot of my free time writing music and singing, I just enjoy it as a hobby without the pressures of trying to make my own art my main source of income. And I do think that my background in music and artistry makes me a stronger and more faceted engineer.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Firstly, I think it’s so incredibly valuable to approach people and projects with humility. Unless you work in an isolated environment, you will have to work with other people, especially in the creative industry. I personally would rather work with someone I enjoy being around than someone that has all the technical skills but is incredibly arrogant and dismissive about it. So I try to be an open and humble collaborator. I have learned to keep an open mind to other people’s approaches and learn from them instead of making them feel like they’re doing something wrong. And also acknowledging that the more I learn the more I realize how much I have left to learn.
One of the best pieces of technical advice I’ve gotten was from my professor Jason Stokes. He taught us early to learn “concept over construct”. If you just learn what a button does but not how or why, you’ll be on your ass when the button eventually changes. Technology is developing at a speedy rate, but if you understand the concepts behind the technology you use, you can be flexible and adjust as those developments happen.
And lastly, attention to detail and good listening is one of the most valuable skills to have in the studio. As an engineer I often do many things at once. All while the producer and artist might be talking amongst themselves in the room. When they then turn to me and say “let’s go” I want to be able to jump right into what they are ready to do. I don’t want to take them out of the creative process by them having to explain to me what they want to do. It’s important for me to be aware of everything that’s happening in the room at all times. The work I do is often in the beginning stages of the record so if there are noises or mistakes I don’t catch that can really create problems for the project down the line.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
As an industry, music is inherently collaborative. The reason that I’m focusing more on the recording process and not the mixing process is because I love working with and around people. I’m always happy to meet and collaborate with artists, producers and songwriters that like working in an open minded, creative environment. Passion and excitement about the project is super important to me. If everyone involved in the process is excited to be in the room, that ends up showing in the music no matter what genre we work in. People can find me on instagram @the_nicci
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @the_nicci
Image Credits
Graci Burdick, Ashley Eberbach
