Intern Baker Wainscoat - Week 1

Summer Intern Series 2023

Hello! I’m Baker Wainscoat. I’m a new intern at Maple Avenu’s Tapeworks Recording Studio. I’m starting this blog series to keep track and share what my week was like with whoever would like to read it!

My first entry may be brief as I had a bunch of stuff happen to me outside of Tapeworks, but the times that I was in the studio were some of my favorite moments of the week. I began interning for Tapeworks on Tuesday, June 6th. My first day consisted of a tour of the studio and everything it has to offer. It was on this day I also met my co-intern Jade, who coincidentally is from the same town I live in, so we got a kick out of that connection.

Bill gave us a rundown of our responsibilities as interns, so I took notes on specific dated information and took a packeted list of our duties for keeping.

Bill took us around every part of the studio and explained what happens in each room. I have to say I honestly love studio A, the main control room which Bill tracks out of. He’s recently upgraded his monitors in the studio to Focal Trios, which happen to be my dream monitors. So you can imagine my excitement when I walked into the room. The studio is also comfortably lit with possibly one of the comfiest couches I have sat on in recent memory. When Bill was showing me and Jade some projects he was working on, we both sat down on the couch and I just slowly started sinking into it… super comfy!

Later that day Bill recorded an audition for a TV commercial for Lego. It was really interesting to see how he directed the vocalist to change their inflections/delivery of the lines they were given to say. As soon as they started speaking, it was like they were already in the commercial. I hope they get the spot.

The rest of the day consisted of briefly taking out some boxes and editing some acapella groups' recorded tracks. While the work may be repetitive, I learned a ton from Melodyne that I didn't before, and it’s helped me so much in my own personal projects. I left around 4:00 pm on a fairly empty stomach because I totally forgot that I have to pack a lunch now. Jade got my back though, as she offered me some baked bagel bites which we actually delicious.

On Wednesday, I drove back at around 9:40 am, this time with lunch, and saw that there was a podcast session about to begin in the podcast studio. The podcast room is unique, as clients can use our equipment to record, or they have the option to record everything themselves and leave with their project that day. While I come from an experienced background in music production, podcasting is something I want to learn more about and develop those skills further.

While that was happening, Bill showed me the signal flow of the Aduient ASP 4816 console in A. Bill explained everything in a very digestible manner so I was glad I was able to see how things worked in the control room. Once I start hopping on big sessions, I’ll be able to see the workflow in action. After this, we transferred a hardware unit from studio A to B, and then I continued working on vocal editing from the previous day.

Now, from Thursday to Friday, I was out of the studio because my wisdom teeth were scheduled to be removed. Fortunately, I’m recovering fast, so I imagine to be back in the studio next week. I’m looking forward to getting back!