Photo by: Jeffrey S. Otto
With the same skill and virtuosity of
the musicians she's recording, Karen Kane has control of the studio. "OK,
let's go. Let's go. Let's see if this is better. Let's do a little bit and
see if everyone is headphone happy," she said and moves from side to
side of an eight-foot long mixing board at Audio Genesis Studio on Carolina
Beach Road. After everything is coming into the control room to her satisfaction
- perfection, rather - she lets the studio musicians run through the song,
which they have been working on for hours, one more time. She stops them about
a minute into the take. "Wait, wait, wait. What was that? I thought I
heard a clashy note. Let's try it again." The band starts again and makes
it all the way through the piece. They get hard-earned praise - with a touch
of honesty. "That was very nice. I think I heard one wrong note,"
she said, calling them out of the studio to listen to the results. "Come
hear." Ms. Kane's career began in 1970 managing a "Jingle house"
in New York City and then the famed Intermedia Sound in Boston, where Aerosmith
cut the Dream On album. There was an unspoken rule that women didn't touch
the equipment; however, Ms. Kane started playing with the gear at night. She
asked her boss to fire her as a manager and hire her as an apprentice engineer.
He bit, and by 1976 she was one of Boston's first female senior engineers.
By the '90s, she had migrated to Toronto and found her second love: teaching
the art of recording to others. With the snow still flying in Toronto, and
Ms. Kane looking for a change in climate, she packed her bags and headed south,
settling in Wilmington in April 2002. Upon her arrival, she immediately began
teaching and recording. And word of her skills has spread. By the time the
musicians make it back to the control room, Ms. Kane has isolated the wrong
note on her computer and is setting up for the offending musician to fix it.
"It's the epitome of my job to bring up issues that the musicians don't
even know exist," she said later. After three decades in the business
Ms. Kane has no complaints. "Between making records and teaching, life
is heaven," she said. "And I've got the beach. So life is pretty
good at 53."
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