12
Three-Pronged Attack
The Pincer Movement of Gender Allies,
Tempered Radicals, and Pioneers
Julianne Regan
This chapter aims to highlight the role of gender allies and tempered radicals,
as they attempt to change a culture wherein they are considered dominant.
It acknowledges some of the self-limiting behaviors exhibited by women in
the field of audio engineering and production and also serves as a reflection
upon the pursuit and attainment of gender equality in the recording studio,
with consideration of the significant role of these gender allies. Factors
potentially contributing to the dearth of women in audio practice will be
addressed from an autoethnographic perspective and will draw upon the
documented experience of music educators, electronic music pioneers such
as Delia Derbyshire, and self-producing artists such as Björk and Grimes.
It also considers anonymous qualitative data gathered via a questionnaire
completed by members of social media groups populated by female profes-
sionals in the fields of audio engineering and sound production.
Since becoming a music practitioner in 1981, I have always worked and
created in a predominantly male environment. The first band of which
I became a member was Gene Loves Jezebel, a post-punk outfit from
Wales. I was the only female therein, but this five-piece enjoyed an overall
androgynous aesthetic. Fronted by twins, whose prettiness bristled with a
muted masculinity, the band became known for its angular dark pop music
and left-field, anti-machismo lyrics such as ‘I’m just shaving my neck for
maximum effect’ (Aston and Aston, 1982). The experience afforded me a
false sense of security about the music industry, in that I found myself in
an egalitarian meritocracy, in which my gender was inconsequential. My
role in the band was that of bassist. I played a Fender Musicmaster short-
scale 30-inch bass, but only because I was a skinny 19-year-old with a
slight frame. Almost as a counterbalance to the perceived concession of
using a smaller than average bass, I used a Carlsbro amp combo. I think it
was a Stingray, but can’t be sure, as it is long since stolen. Whatever the
model, it was heavy in sound and stature, and I took great satisfaction in
that. My time with this band – aside from the toxic sibling rivalry – was a
positive experience, and I was always treated as an individual, and never
as merely a ‘girl’. We enjoyed many tea-fueled deep and wide conversa-
tions allowing me to grow as a person intellectually, and we had a solid
work ethic that allowed me to flourish as a musician.
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188 Julianne Regan
My first encounter with sexism in the world of music occurred as I was
sound-checking for a gig. This was my first gig, not only with Gene Loves
Jezebel, but my first gig ever. I was nervous but determined. A member
of the all-male in-house tech team approached me and leered, “My, that’s
a big instrument for a little girl like you”, before proceeding to ask me
which of the men in the band was my boyfriend. I gave no verbal response,
but was angered by having been singled out as the lone female, and also
embarrassed by the implied sexual connotation of the remark about the
‘big instrument’. But what irked me most was the assumption that I didn’t
know much about bass playing and was quite probably there as a token
appendage of an assumed beau. I knew as much as I needed to know about
bass playing. I knew how to choose, change, and tune my strings; I knew
how to get the best sound from my amp; I knew how to play bass for the
genre of music I was involved in, really well, because in my teen bed-
sit, I had taught myself by listening closely to Jah Wobble while playing
along to PiL’s Metal Box. However, I failed to challenge the behavior of
the stage technician because at that point in life, I was a shy and sensitive
individual with a very rudimentary idea of what feminism actually was,
and indeed, if I were a feminist or not.
Being the bass player was a role in which I felt comfortable. I was under
no pressure to look or dress in any certain way, and I could maintain a low
and sexless profile towards the back of the stage, in black combat trou-
sers and jacket bought from the legendary Laurence Corner Army surplus
store. This happy anonymity was forfeited when I became a singer, which
would eventually happen three years after leaving Gene Loves Jezebel.
My personal experience of music production began with a Fostex 250
porta-studio, which although limited in function, was state of the art in
the early 1980s. I used to clean the heads with Johnson’s Cotton Buds and
nail varnish remover, but then, didn’t we all? Regarding music technology
courses, as far as I knew, they either did not exist or I had no financial
access to them, and so consequently taught myself how to record and mix,
by using the manual and my ears.
A number of generally enjoyable music projects started, floundered, and
ended, yet the Fostex was a constant throughout. I also used the Roland
SoundMaster Memory Rhythm SR-88 drum machine. Both were ana-
logue, and using them felt intuitive and straightforward. Then came the
digital revolution.
I bought a Yamaha RX-11 MIDI drum machine, which could be played
live (real time) or programmed (step). Again, it had a user-friendly inter-
face, just a set of buttons to press for each sound required, be it snare, hi-
hat, and so on. This machine would go on to be used in the band All About
Eve in 1984, in preference to the complications a human drummer might
have brought.
It was a fellow band member who discovered how to download data
from the machine onto a cassette tape so that we could play live to a drum
backing track. It seems that what I called the ‘blip tape’ triggered and
controlled the RX-11. I didn’t understand. This prompted the beginning
of my deferring to others concerning recording technology. One of ‘the
189 Three-Pronged Attack
boys’ could deal with it, and not because I was lazy, but because I felt out
of my depth.
Once the band was signed to a record label, we increasingly found
ourselves spending time in recording studios, with two-inch tape, Studer
machines, SSL desks, and multi-colored patch-bay spaghetti; again I felt
as if I were in back in a technological comfort zone. Mixing was often a
‘all hands on deck’ endeavor, with time cues scrawled on bits of paper
and each band member assigned a number of faders to ride. As time pro-
gressed, automated Flying Faders took over the task, and computers found
their way into the studio control room. However, it wasn’t until our third
album, recorded in 1991, that a MIDI keyboard controller and computer
was used, with Cubase software running.
We worked in prestigious residential studios, including The Manor,
Ridge Farm, Chipping Norton, The Mill, and Hook End, which offered
cutting-edge, top-end equipment. With the exception of a manager at
Ridge Farm, the only other women present would be cooks, cleaners,
wives, and girlfriends. I had become desensitized to the lack of women in
my immediate environment. In fact, the presence of certain wives and girl-
friends could sometimes be quite irritating as it often changed the dynamic
of what was essentially a place of work. Cleaners were seemingly under
the radar, with only the starched white sheets and the next morning’s dis-
appearance of copious numbers of empty bottles to indicate their presence.
The cook at Ridge Farm became a friend, perhaps because, like me, she
was able to become ‘one of the lads’ when appropriate; or rather, she was
very comfortable in male company, without there being any sexual tension
or undercurrent at play.
At no point in my career as a recording artist did I ever encounter a
female engineer, programmer, or producer, on more than just one occa-
sion. The band needed a remix of a single and was given a choice of three
or four names. One of the names was female, and for that reason, I insisted
that we employed her – positive discrimination. But it is quite telling that
I can’t remember her name.
The session was strained. Technically she was as knowledgeable and
creative as any man I had worked with, at that level, and of that there is
no question; but the atmosphere was decidedly strained. We were not a
particularly bawdy group of individuals, but we did share a sense of humor
that could be a little crude and improper. I can only imagine that she felt
uneasy, an outsider, as I was more closely allied to my male band members
than to her. However, it cannot be determined how much of this unease
could be attributed to her being female and how much to her personality
or her sense of professionalism. Personally, although having attended an
all-girls school from the age of 11 to 18, and having had no male siblings,
I had grown to be very comfortable in all-male company. Dr Jim Dickin-
son, a music educator and senior lecturer at University level, says:
some women either have or adopt what are considered to be male char-
acteristics – language, social behavior etc. to t the group dynamic –
or they have these character traits already – I have observed both. If
190 Julianne Regan
this does not occur, the dynamic of a group of men can change when
women are present – sometimes this can be a positive inuence. In my
experience, the intent (rightly or wrongly) is to allow the female(s) to
integrate into the group more easily.
(Dickinson, 2019)
Gender fluidity is currently a significant focus point. Blurred boundar-
ies are being acknowledged and gender traits challenged perhaps more
than ever before. A questionnaire I had designed with the aim of gathering
qualitative and quantitative data for this essay attracted kindly alerts to
how some of my questions were not inclusive. I asked how traditionally
female considerations such as menstrual cramps, PMT, PCOS, and so on
might impact upon performance at work for female producers, engineers,
or programmers, and it was pointed out to me that this made no consider-
ation of transitioning individuals whose performance might be negatively
affected by, for example, hormone treatments. My attempt to remain
robustly inclusive, while inviting males, females, male or female identi-
fying, non-binary, or transitioning individuals to partake in the research,
failed. I semi-abandoned the exercise.
However, much of the data collected was valuable, primarily in demon-
strating that many of the males or male-identifying respondents are frus-
trated that gender is still such an issue, with all genders expressing that
they felt frustrated at what they believed to be a protracted rate of progres-
sion. These individuals are gender allies, instrumental in encouraging and
hastening the demise of gender inequality. In addition to assuming the
position of gender allies, a number of them will potentially be tempered
radicals. Meyerson and Scully state that tempered radicals are committed
to the industry wherein they work, even when they support an ideology
that may not resonate with the culture of that industry, and whose radical-
ism “stimulates them to challenge the status quo” (Frost in Meyerson and
Scully, 1995: 585). Their temperedness arises from how they are “angered
by what they see as injustices or ineffectiveness” (Ibid.).
Dickinson has many years of music industry experience as a performer
and producer, and would seem to exemplify Meyerson and Scully’s defini-
tion of a tempered radical. While acknowledging that women in the music
industry still encounter some obstacles that men tend not to, he states that
the current challenge is to:
make females feel condent that they can achieve the same or better
results than men. The lack of numbers is simply to do with a wider
social perception that technical roles are for males – in the same way
there are still very few male nurses or air stewards as these are viewed
as requiring ‘softer communication skills’.
(Dickinson, 2019)
There is some resistance amongst my female peers, and indeed females
I teach, that this perception of a difference in approach in the studio might
overly ‘feminize’ them. However, Dickinson has guided hundreds of
191 Three-Pronged Attack
music students through Production Technology modules at both the FE
and HE levels, and concludes that the female students he has taught differ
in their approach, compared with males, where males tend to focus more
closely on technical elements of production. He states:
This does not necessarily mean that the end product [for female stu-
dents] is any worse – in fact it is often better. They tend to take a more
holistic approach – considering the musical/emotional side of music
production as well as the technical – and this can often benet the
record – whereas sometimes male students obsess about tiny techni-
cal details while ignoring fundamental issues regarding the music and
performance etc. There are always exceptions.
(Ibid.)
Despite the best efforts of gender allies and tempered radicals, there is
clearly some way to go in eradicating the tendencies in some individuals
to adopt traditional roles, whether that adoption be as a result of outside
pressure or self-limiting behaviors.
Respondent X, a classical, jazz, and contemporary musician who self-
produces, pursued a BTEC Music Production course at college, where she
found her lecturers to be less than enthusiastic, encouraging her to focus
on working on her vocals and to aim to become a “really great female
bassist”. She states that her lecturers’ argument was that she should follow
a trajectory in which she already had experience, and that she “wouldn’t
feel very comfortable working in an environment without any other
women” (Respondent X, 2019). Unfortunately for Respondent X, the
environment in which she studied seemed lacking in a culture of gender
alliance, and she did not flourish therein.
Respondent Y, an EDM artist, producer, and programmer, with a bach-
elor’s degree relevant to her profession, says that Production classes at
university felt like a ‘boys’ game’, and that she and other females in her
cohort became disinterested in lessons as they tended to lag behind the
males.
Boys answered the questions and took control of the sound desk when
we were working in the studio. Girls accepted that their job was to be
recorded and not record. Retrospectively, it’s quite funny how the girls
just oated into the live room and the boys would make a beeline for
the sound desk.
(Respondent Y, 2019)
When asked what might have impeded the success of women in the stu-
dio, one respondent offered the succinct response: “Bullshit in my own
head”. Perhaps ‘nonsense’ can replace the word ‘bullshit’ in this state-
ment, as a combination of Imposter Syndrome, ruminative thinking, and
a natural but detrimental response to negative experiences. It is of course
important to acknowledge that Imposter Syndrome is far from an exclu-
sively female malaise. Clance and Imes used the similar term, ‘imposter
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