Course aims to
cultivate more female
recording engineers

A weeklong class on the Big Island starting Monday aims to expose women to the engineering side of the recording industry and either spark or build on inner passions.

The Hawaii Island Economic Development Board is staging the recording engineer course along with the Maui Economic Development Board and the U. S. Department of Labor's Women In Technology program.

This is the third time the course has been taught on the Big Island, due to the tremendous response, according to Skylark Rossetti, the development board's project manager.

"We gear it toward women because we want them to empower themselves, to not be afraid to hook up a microphone in a very male-dominated industry," she said.

In Ron Klohs' 25 years in the recording industry "I have not found a lot of competition with ladies in this field." Klohs is the manager and an engineer at Dolphin Sound in Kalihi Kai. His primary focus is commercial production, but many of Hawaii's top recording artists, including Kealii Reichel and the Makaha Sons, have recorded albums at Dolphin.

"I think an employer would find it unique and quite an opportunity if more ladies joined the field," said Klohs. There are not many job openings in Hawaii for recording engineers, but "it's really not about the job market, per se," said Rossetti.

Students have included filmmakers, videographers and amateur musicians who have full-time careers outside the recording industry, Rossetti said.

"We have full-time ER nurses who play music on the side, but they can now get themselves recorded ... with a little investment they can record their own songs and not be afraid of the technology."

Kenneth Makuakane, Na Hoku Hanohano award-winning producer, songwriter and artist, will serve as the lead instructor.

He will be joined by Kalai Ontai, chief engineer of the Aha Punana Leo Inc. curriculum development division, who has produced videos and recordings.

One exercise has students dissect a song into its various components including production, lead vocals, background vocals, instrumentation and effects, for instance. Students are tasked with deciding which components are good and which are lacking and then they learn how adjusting various components can change the recording.

However, it's not only about transferring live music into recording equipment and throwing it onto tape or disk.

"Because it's an introductory course, the idea is to fill their minds, more than their skill level, with as many components of the industry as possible. They can figure out from there which piece of the puzzle they can get into," Makuakane said.

A student in an earlier class was an attorney who found the contracts, performance rights and mechanical rights aspects of the industry interesting. Another was a high school teacher passionate about creating a recording program for students.

"A lot of students have a passion for kids," many of those from a mentoring standpoint, which takes various forms, from the aforementioned teacher to women interested in learning the technical skills needed to record stories by kupuna and other loved ones, to pass family history on to future generations.

Makuakane is a Big Island native happy to return home to visit family and to share 35 years of industry experience.

"But over and above that, teaching women how to become more self-confident, less intimidated and ... to raise their self-esteem is, I think paramount, over and above the recording aspect," Makuakane said.