Who are the top women in sound?

Last month, the Music Producer’s Guild awards took place at Grosvenor House on Park Lane in London. Thirty-six people were nominated for awards. Only two of them were women. The stark reality that we face is that men massively dominate the world of music production, and that women who want to pursue a career in this area face an uphill battle from day one. 

The good news is that there are some hugely talented female engineers currently blazing a trail in the industry. It is vital that we celebrate their work, and use their example to inspire younger generations of women to follow in their footsteps. To celebrate International Women’s day, Soundgym would like to salute some of these women; recognise their struggles and their achievements.

The MPG awards

Last month, the two women nominated at the MPG awards both went on to win in their categories. Manon Grandjean won the ‘Breakthrough Engineer’ award for her work on albums such as Kano’s ‘Made in the Manor’, Stormzy’s ‘Gang Signs and Prayer’ and London Grammar’s platinum selling debut. Mandy Parnell won the award for ‘Best Mastering Engineer’; last year she mastered albums including Jamie xx’s In ‘Colour’ and Aphex Twin’s ‘Syro’.

Mandy Parnell

In an interview with The Guardian last month Parnell spoke of the difficulties women face in such a male-dominated industry: “You put lots of men in a studio and it’s that ‘Who’s going to be top dog?’ pack mentality. You’ve got to be able to deal with that. I’ve found that I needed to understand technology a lot more than some of my peers. I’d get a producer really challenging me on a technical level, yet they’d want to talk about the football [with the male engineers].”

Emily Lazar

On the other side of the Atlantic, Emily Lazar has been blazing a similar trail. She was the first ever female mastering engineer to be nominated in three separate Grammy’s categories. Something that Elle called “both impressive and concerning” in an interview with Lazar last year. Lazar has mastered albums from artists as diverse as David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters and Madonna, but her journey to the top has been tough: “In all aspects of the industry, it's a difficult road for women. It's not that appealing when something sexist happens to you.

But if you're strong enough, and you can push that aside and keep your goal in mind and remember that you're doing your job–whatever that is, whether it's a producer or an artist or a mastering engineer–because you love it, then all that stuff falls by the wayside”.

Grimes

A great number of female artists now self-produce; from recent Oscar nominee Mica Levi, to Shura to Grimes, who has also been very outspoken about the difficulties faced in the studio by women. In an interview with the Fader she discussed the way she is viewed as a female producer; “I don’t wanna say I don’t identify as a girl, but I don’t fucking give a shit about gender. And the thing that I hate about the music industry is all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Grimes is a female musician’ and ‘Grimes has a girly voice.’ It’s like, yeah, but I’m a producer and I spend all day looking at fucking graphs and EQs and doing really technical work”.

For a while she considered focusing more on writing songs for other people, but finally decided that she had a responsibility to keep working as an artist/producer: “Going into studios, there’s all these engineers there, and they don’t let you touch the equipment. I was like, ‘Well, can I just edit my vocals?’ And they’d be like ‘No, just tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.’ And then a male producer would come in, and he’d be allowed to do it. It was so sexist. I was, like, aghast. It made me really disillusioned with the music industry. It made me realize what I was doing is important”.  

We need to celebrate women like Grimes who are willing to keep on fighting that fight, trying to improve things for women everywhere in the industry. Mandy Parnell is also willing to throw her energy into helping others; “I mentor female engineers from all over the world. I say: ‘Look! Been there, done it, worn the T-shirt – if you get any sexist problems, come talk to me.’ We need to get young women over the fear [and say] ‘You can do this!’” 

She’s right - you can. 

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