Andy Rogers, BBC.

Andy Rogers talk today was very insightful! I’m totally jealous of what he does however long the hours are and stressful it may be. He’s been working with Radio 1 for 25 years, in control of the live music side of things. Live Lounge, acoustic sessions and live streaming are often his forte, along side engineering at festivals for the station. Andy records mainly at Maida Vale and has recorded some of the greatest artists around.

Andy dabbles in DJing from time to time and also runs the odd workshop or two for BBC Introducing which is a great way of picking up on new the majority of which are unsigned, talent from across Great Britain. Artists submit tracks online and get picked regionally to be played on the radio or on the BBC Introducing stage at various national festivals. It’s a great way for new talent to be discovered. Past participants include The Ting Tings and Florence and the Machine. Recently he has recorded the likes of The Black Keys, Chase & Status and Jessie J just to add to the hundreds of credits he must have.

Recording festivals sounds like a stressful environment to work at as an audio engineer as he went on to explain. They take a split from the main mixer that goes to their truck (their truck has all the equipment and other gear needed to mix a live performance to the best possible standard) which they then have to mix as quickly as possible as the turn around to get it on air is so quick. He uses Ableton Live in those situations, and went through an example of what he would do. With the raw audio he took from a band at a festival a few weeks ago he loaded it up on Ableton and let some of us get involved in mixing it. I learnt a lot about the basic techniques you could use to instantly make a live track sound, well at least a bit better! He very much reiterated that the noise from the audience or from microphones that were picking up signal they shouldn’t (for example a vocal mic picking up cymbals and a snare) should not always be tried to cut out (gate), as it will lose the ambience of the performance.

It seemed a lot of the audience were impressed and stimulated by his talk and I imagine may consider this line of work in the future. I left in awe of his work ethic, as I feel you must be a pretty determined, patient, focused and enthusiastic guy to be such a guru in the BBC for so long.

By Claudia Waller, a level 3 student in Music Technology.