Tell us about your current job/career path.

I'm currently working as an audio engineer in a post production house called Oso Audio. Based in Toronto, we specialise in doing all things audio for advertisements, short films and music videos. It's a team of two creative directors and three engineers. Since we're a small team, everyone gets a chance to do a lot of different things day to day. It could be sound designing a commercial, recording a Voice Over , being in a client session, doing a music search or mixing and mastering a spot. 

Right now, I'm moving into more of a music producing role as we do a lot of original composition jobs. There's a few different stages to this, first you talk to the client and see what music they'd like on their ad, you then send them some music references of what you think could work and there's a bit of back and forth like that. Once we've settled on some references I'll then go away and write a music brief explaining what instrumentation needs to be used, what emotion we're looking to capture, if there's any specific moments in the ad that need to be hit etc. They can be quite prescriptive. I'll then send that out to different writers we work with and ask them to send a demo by a certain deadline. If I have the time to write a demo, I'll also pitch on the job. Once all demos are received I'll give a couple of rounds of feedback to the writers and then once I'm happy, I'll present them to the client. And hopefully they like something! I'm quite enjoying this new role as you're always working on something new and the briefs and styles of music are always changing. 

Did you enjoy your time in CMP?

I really enjoyed my time in CMP as it gave me an array of different skills going out looking for a job. It opened me up to a lot of different audio avenues that I hadn't thought of before like electronics, coding, audio for games, which I found myself getting more and more into. Being able to immerse yourself in all these different subjects in the first couple of years and then being able to decide what you like is great as it gives you time to try new things that you may not even have considered. You get a lot of freedom in your final years as well to explore what you like and want to specialise in, which is great. 

All the lecturers at STC we're not only lovely people but amazing resources. You get out of it what you put in and being able to ask as many questions as you want was a huge help. The lecturers were very accommodating and would happily give you the time even out of class hours. 

How did it help you with your career?

When I think about it now, there are a lot of ways that CMP helped with my career and not even the most obvious ones of learning Pro Tools (learn your shortcuts!) or how to set up a microphone etc. But for me specifically now, meeting tight deadlines, explaining and showing your work to client/lecturer and even writing briefs. It has definitely helped with my career more than I thought it would when I was starting the course. It helped develop my skills on how to critically assess and listen to audio and learn technical aspects such as mixing. There are so many aspects that it helped with it's hard to pin them down, so to sum it all up; I think the way CMP opens you up to all these different facets of audio, if you engage with them, you come out with a really concrete spectrum of knowledge that will benefit you when you're looking for any job in the industry.

March/April 2023