Episode 1: Rob Witmer

Rob So... I saw Matthew Posner the other day. Shana Oh, yeah. How's he doing? Rob He's doing good. Yeah. He's making more puppets for his winter arts and crafts fair or something like that. Shana I get more comments. Making things. About those puppets. And I'm glad that one of them got to be on stage and the other one walked all around Edinburgh and did, you know, the whole, the Fringe Fest with my daughter's arm playing with other puppets that were like there, which was really fun. So, yeah. So, Rob Witmer who also goes by Robertson Witmer. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. And before we dive into details, can we get to know you a little bit better? Can you share a fun or unique thing about yourself that listeners might not be aware of? Rob Well, I play the accordion and I also play in a steel drum band. So some of the more unusual instruments that you don't normally find. I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a steel drum band program and I was playing in the orchestra, playing clarinet, saxophone, but I was really excited to learn the steel drums. So back, uh, back in the day, I, uh, joined that band and got my own steel drum and started a band in college. And after that, I also became really interested in the accordion in the early nineties, kind of branching out to sort of strange and unusual instruments. I think my background playing clarinet as a reed instrument kind of led me to see the accordion as sort of a multiple reed instrument, which it is, and picked that up and just kind of taught myself, started playing Irish tunes and klezmer songs and just enjoyed it a lot. And then kind of start getting, finding work in theater and using it in kind of cabaret settings and theatrical performances. So. Shana Yeah, I was going to ask how many instruments do you play? Rob Oh, I don't know, probably a dozen or so. I don't really keep track. Percussion, keyboards. I've played a little guitar in my time, but I tend to not do that so much. There's a lot of guitar players out there. Shana Awesome. Yeah, so you already talked a little bit about it. So of all the art forms that are out there, do you consider music, playing composition, what's the thing that you spend the most time with or is there a thing you spend the most time with? Rob Yeah, I've been doing some composing lately. I do a lot of theatrical sound design, which is sometimes working with my own music or sometimes working with other people's music to sort of fit musical cues and things into theatrical presentations. So it's kind of like you create music for a movie or something like that or a podcast, but we're working with live elements, actors, scenery, costumes, things like that. And I really enjoy, I enjoy music in sort of its purest form. I love putting on, you know, an album or a symphony or listening to it just kind of as its own thing. But I find my work tends to be focused on creating music that works with a storytelling in a certain kind of way. So often these are creating very short cues to things like that or things that have a certain kind of color or mood or tempo to them. So kind of writing music for something else is kind of what I spend most of my time doing these days or editing it. Shana Yeah, so tell us about your room or your studio because the podcast is called Go to Your Room and Make Stuff. When you go to your room to make stuff, what's your room like? Rob Yeah, this is my room. This is the basement of our house. And one of the first things when I moved in, I just realized this basement's got nice high ceilings and it's relatively quiet. It's kind of dug halfway down into the yard, daylight basement, they call it. So. I really love having my studio set up down here. I've got another computer off to my left. You can't see kind of my main workstation. When I was sort of teaching sound design, I realized I wanted to be able to have one computer to kind of interact with people over Zoom and then another computer over there to kind of do the other stuff. But I've got a couple of keyboards set up behind me. I've got a bunch of instruments on shelves kind of behind that you can't really see. It's got a little bit of soundproofing. I've done a little bit of kind of rearranging of things to try and make the sound better. We don't hear reflection. I know. Shana We're over Zoom right now, right? Yeah, that's right. Anyone watching who's a voice actor goes, oh, look, that's an RE 20 mic. Really good at fixing those issues, right? Rob So Electro Voice RE 20 Classic Radio Mic. I bought this for a theatrical production a few years ago and then realized, oh, this is a great microphone. There's one at my feet down here. I love it. Of course. Shana Yeah, yeah, it's. Shana Pennington-Baird (04:48.782) Great. Rob And you can, nice thing is you can get up really close on it and it doesn't have much of a proximity effect, but. It doesn't get distorted. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Yeah. I love that I'm down in a basement with concrete floors, so there's no squeakiness to the floors. Um, you know, it can be a little cold in the winter sometime, but a little space heater works pretty well. And I've got a little bit of, uh, I got some acoustic panels up on the ceiling. There's your blanket. I put some acoustic panels on the ceiling. I sprung for some nice ones, um, that are really up close, which helps quite a bit. So. Yeah, so I can pull out instruments and record here. I've recorded music. Often I'm just recording just me playing my own stuff. I've squeezed a few people in here. They've got a cello player and a keyboard player at one point. If I need to record with a band or a larger group, I'll go to another studio, find somewhere else to go. But for recording things kind of one at a time, layering things in, this works pretty well. And then the sound person in me wants to know what kind of mics are you setting up? Do you have? whole host of mics in here. I have a little kit of mics. Yeah, KSM 44, sure, I think, which is really nice. Large diaphragm condenser. I've got a Trion ribbon microphone. I've got a Sennheiser 421, which I really like. Not a lot. I try and avoid going microphone crazy. I did get a nice warm audio microphone preamp for this. These dynamic mics take a lot of gain to get them up there. So I have that. And then Alan and Heath and a QPAC and a digital interface for all kind of my routing and patching and things like that. Oh, man Yeah, we want we want to go too far down that trail because I love it. I also have a nice shotgun microphone, which is a super directional microphone they would use for on film sets and studios. And that's a really nice one just to kind of, it's actually really cool to put it on headphones and walk around the house and point at various things. Cause it really focuses in on something like, you know, is it a road or a Sennheiser? I have one of each. I have a Sennheiser MKE 600, I think. But it's really, and I've started to use that more and more even when doing like. If I'm going to the theater to record someone speaking, I'll use that because it just rejects so much sound from the room. It can be really nice to kind of focus in on things. I have a 416 and when it's pointed in here at my heart, I have a mechanical heart valve, which a lot of folks know a lot about that. If I point it directly at my chest, I get, I mean, it's amazing. It goes right to the body and picks up the valve. You can hear the click. Shana Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rob So yeah, this is where the magic happens. Lots of instruments, lots of virtual instruments too. I've got keyboards and some plugins where I can write music. My process sometimes, sometimes I'll write directly, just record myself playing, but sometimes I'll actually notate it on a staff. I use the Sibelius notation program. That's really useful if I'm ever going to give sheet music to say an actor who needs to learn a song or record an instrumentalist. So sometimes I just start with the sheet music because I know, oh, and then, you know, then I have it available and I can do a little demo, send it to a guitar player or a violin player and say, Hey, could you record this and send me back the real version? Right. So I'll kind of mock it up with MIDI, things like that. So, um, I have, I have, I don't have a huge amount of, uh, instrument samples, but I tend to kind of buy them as I go. Um, I bought a really nice upright piano sample for a play I'm working on right now. Um, so I like a combination of, uh, synthesized elements and. and real instruments, I think it gives a little, some depth to it. And fortunately, I play a lot of real instruments, which are kind of more unusual, like clarinet, accordion, saxophone, those things can really breathe a lot of life into some sort of, you know, synthesized background, in other words, so. Shana I have to ask with the accordion and just the amount of noise and just the amount of like sound waves coming off of it, does it ever get stuck in the room? Do you have to have bass traps and things set up? I'm just curious. Rob Not too much. I haven't had too much problem in this room. Yeah. I've got a lot of, you know, stuff on the walls, which, which helps. Right. Breaks it all up. Yeah. Yeah. The clutter actually works to my advantage. I think, you know, with the accordion, it can be a very, it's a very mid -range instrument for the most part. So some of those reeds really kind of have that kind of nasally kind of quality, which, which allows it to really kind of cut through and sing in a certain way, but kind of with a. with close micing, I have to be a little more cautious about that. Like am I, am I favoring certain frequencies too much? Because as the reeds are set up on the accordion, you know, they're actually, you know, they're, they're, they're arranged in space. So if you put the mic where the mic goes, of course, it has a lot to do with the kind of the sound you're going to get. And on the left -hand side of the accordion, uh, or the bass notes and chords. So sort of lower, lower sounds, but again, a lot of overtones, things like that. There's key noise, bellows noise, but that's all part of the charm of the instrument. Right. So. I try not to obsess too much about like having super clean, pristine sound because I know that some of those things are important and it gives us a sense of life in an instrument track. Just like in a vocal track how if you edit out every single breath, it sounds very unnatural, right? How is that person not breathing? They're not adding it. Shana The AI voice is they're adding breath now. Oh my goodness. And fry. I heard glottal fry on an AI voice. I was like, wow, that's so human -ish. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really proud of the making a room where you can put all your things and see it because one of the things I do is I hung a lot of the instruments, but I have an accordion and eventually I'm going to come take classes with you. I'm just glad it's out because when you see it, you don't have to go search for it. My accordion was in a closet for like the last three years. And if you put it in the closet, you just don't get it out and play it. And wow, I mean, that's where it's, I mean, you have to keep it well dusted. And this is where I slowly learned how often can it be out? How often do I need to have it? It's on its feet. I mean, I make sure when it's stored, it's stored on the feet. Rob Good. Yeah. Yeah. And accordion is, um, it is kind of a vacuum cleaner in a sense when you, when you are pulling it, it breathes and that's why the grill is there with a little mesh. It's trying to keep dust out because you're basically, it's like when you breathe in, you're breathing in whatever is in the air. So if you're in a dusty environment, the accordion, you're basically pulling air, which will eventually get stuck in the reeds and cause a problem. So I have a little dust cover for mine. It's in the other room, but a little thing I made or you know maybe I bought it but they just slipped a little slip cover I guess that's nice didn't if you don't want to put it in the case but yeah having the instruments out and available I love having upstairs I have an acoustic piano my grandfather's piano yeah that used to be in Denver Colorado and got shipped out here when he passed but I love being able to just walk up to the piano sit down and play without having to turn anything on you know with the studio there's sort of that thing of like oh I need to power on this and then turn on the speakers later and turn on the keyboard, it's not a huge problem, but it feels a little bit, there's a little bit of a barrier to being expressive, whereas an acoustic piano or an instrument, a guitar, you can just pick up, that's on a stand in the corner. So I love having those things kind of accessible. I think that's, you know, in terms of like being spontaneous and planning, those things are great. Let's see, talk about any recent projects that you've been working on. Shana What's the stuff you're into right now? I know there's some opera, there's some musicals. Rob Yeah, yeah, I'm working on a production of Romeo and Juliet. It's a Seattle Shakespeare Company and that opens tonight. And that's a sound design for me, which is basically pulling a lot of popular music. Kind of I call it would consider it sort of a playlist sound design, a contemporary setting, lots of musical transitions, things like that. I'm also composing music for the Lehman Trilogy at Act Theater. Opens next week. Shana Oh, cool. Rob And that's an interesting, the conceit is that there's a player piano on stage, which is sort of a, it's a real player piano that they kind of gutted and they've sort of turned into, in other words, it doesn't really make the sound. The sound is all recorded things that I've written that comes through a speaker. And that way they can sort of balance the sound of it a little bit better. But that's been really fun to write. I've written over probably 30 cues for that play so far. And then I'll be working on, once on this island out at Village Theater, a sound design there. And that's a musical, it's kind of a different aspect of sound design that is very important, you know, in terms of like getting the mix of the orchestra and the singers and any kind of sound effects and things like that. So yeah, lots going on in the theater world. Shana And I did some research and there was something that I hadn't known about you at all. And I want to bring it up. So you've done some black light puppetry. I want to hear about that. Rob That's right. I worked as a puppeteer for a long time, um, in the nineties with the company down in Portland, Oregon, toured all around, uh, the Western States, um, performing at elementary schools with kind of big, uh, Bunraku style puppets, um, doing folktales, things like that. It was pretty high tech for the early nineties. You know, we had a sound system, we had wireless mics, we had lighting equipment, um, and learned a lot about puppetry and just really loved the, the, the storytelling aspects of it. Um, and then kind of created my own company, spyglass theater and, uh, got interested in stories that were, I think it was actually, I saw the movie bugs life, right? Remember that movie? I do. I was like, all these bugs are just talking, which was cool. But I was like, I want to do a puppet show that doesn't have any dialogue where the, Oh, it didn't. It was great. No, it's sort of like, it's like, it's like almost like nature documentary narration that happens. But, um, I just decided that black light was a really, a really cool way to illustrate those. So. Shana And this website is available now. I found it. So you should go on and as you as you spy glass into the website, you go in, you click and it zooms, you click and it zooms, you click and there you are in the world of these bugs. And I watched the whole thing. Rob So, oh, good. My friend Bob Smolenski made that website. Yeah. And I did all the sound. I wrote all the music for that that underscores the puppet show. And we've toured that to schools and festivals and things like that. And it's funny, you know, with the performers dress all in black. velvet which absorbs all the ambient light. You basically turn off all the lights and have ultraviolet black light illuminating the puppets which glow in the dark. Kind of like those dark rides at the theme parks. Right. So the bug show led to another show called Scuba, super cool underwater black light adventure, which we also toured quite a bit. I haven't performed it in a while. Shana A Scuba diver, I have to ask you about this because I was a diver for years. Rob Yeah, you're a diver. Shana Yeah. My thought was, did they do it underwater? And then I got real interested because I've done underwater pumpkin carving, but I have not done puppetry underwater. Rob Yeah. Well, the blacklight puppetry works really well for floating things around. So again, the performers disappear in front of a black backdrop. And this follows a character, I think Professor Nautilus is their name, who dives deep down and encounters the coral reefs, the kelp beds, goes deeper and deeper and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean where the the weird angler fish and mysterious underwater volcano, things like that. So it's a short 40 minute show. We performed it at the Northwest Puppet Center and actually toured it to Hong Kong a number of years ago. So yeah, every now and then a puppet festival comes up and I go and do that. But that's another aspect of things people don't know. Shana That's awesome. That's totally cool. OK, here's some odd questions. Has anyone ever said exactly the right thing to you to get you where you are today? Rob Oh boy, that's a great question. Maybe my friend Alan Landy, who he was a video artist in Seattle and I was my friend and I made VHS movies back in high school. You know, we were, we were just bored out of our minds. So we, we, we made kind of goofy movies and, and he taught us a video editing class. This was really back in the day on the three quarter inch, you Matic video tape systems, but. He was sort of our 911 media arts center. He was kind of our mentor there and taught us video editing and he said, don't stop. That was his advice to us as high school kids, right? Here's this like cool avant -garde artist telling us as high school kids to not stop making art basically. So I would say that was definitely inspiring. Oh yeah. Thank you. I think that's great for all of us. Shana And I love that. On the other side of that. Shana On a bad or discouraging day, what do you do and do you have something that helps you turn it around? Just don't feel like going to the booth that day. I love just going outside and working in the yard or the garden and I oddly get a little satisfaction out of pulling weeds. Just You know, I need in there with the tool and just pulling something out by the roots that, you know, that, that, and just kind of getting rid of it, you know, throwing it in the compost. So, you know, I like planting things too, but I sort of, you know, something about getting down in the dirt and, and, and removing things and just kind of cleaning things up, you know, tied up weird. Where do you get your best ideas? Boy, I don't know. I don't know. I like having sort of a lot of things going on at the same time. They say that multitasking is not, not really good. Like this is the thinking now, right? Like multitasking, you're not really multitasking. It's bad. You're, you're, you're cheating yourself, you know, but I, in terms of like, especially playing instruments, I love playing something on the accordion and then, you know, I'll go upstairs and play the same thing on the piano or something like that. Right. Yeah. Um, because I feel like it, a gives my. fingers a break and works my body in a different way, which I think is important. I think sometimes people who play one instrument can develop, you know, repetitive stress or things like that. So I like going to a different instrument and stretching different things. If I'll, you know, also if I'm working on a project, if I'm working on some puppets and I'm painting them, well, at some point they need to dry and I'll walk away and let them dry and I'll come over and work on another part of the show. So I feel like I do multitask. Maybe I'm not, but I just, maybe it's just having a lot of different things going on. Shana There's a book and I'm gonna put it in the notes, the show notes. There's several books I've been reading right now, but I'm pretty sure this one comes from one called Show Your Work. And he said, great artists multitask and have multiple projects going on at all times, which keeps the brain firing in all those different creative ways, which is a little different than all the people listening to this who are also doing their homework, which is totally fine. But I think that's the multitasking. We're like, well, Shana Pennington-Baird (20:12.238) How are you talking to someone and you've got three things on? Although the younger generation from my watching tend to do more of that. Rob More multitasking? Shana Yeah, or it's just there's something else on in the background that gets them in the flow state. So there's multitasking, there's flow state, and I think this kind of gets back into flow state if you are on the piano for a while and then you switch to puppetry because I find myself doing that too. And I have multiple projects going on kind of. Which ones am I working on today? Rob Exactly. Yeah, I'm working on several projects at once and kind of bouncing back and forth between those things. I feel like I do get some, you know, sometimes I'll be working on a production of Dracula writing music for that and a production of Black Beauty at the Children's Theatre at the same time, very different shows, right. But there was something that kind of connected them in a weird way. And so it's like, what what two shows am I working on? Is there a line that kind of connects those? So I feel like I get some inspiration from that. Yeah, of course, listening to music and a lot of people. are inspired to write, you know, listening to music, things like that. I love putting on, you know, music, you know, at the gym or in the car and listening to things and then getting an idea for, oh yeah, that's kind of the rhythm I want to hear in this piece, something like that. So definitely I love being influenced by other things and borrowing from other things as well. Shana Awesome. What advice do you have for young artists? So, and what about adults? who are just starting. So maybe it's not just, it's not an age thing. What advice would you have for new artists? Rob Oh, I would say don't be afraid just to kind of get started, just to jump in and throw a bunch of things at the wall or on the table, whatever it is. If you're, you know, you know, making something visual, you know, get all your materials together and just start working. And don't be afraid to kind of edit. I think a lot of, a lot of people could learn from, you know, in terms of like how to create. It's like sometimes it's just taking things away, right? Like, you know, it's all just sort of. Shana Pennington-Baird (22:13.294) arranging and architecture, right? There's 26 letters in the alphabet and there's, you know, 12 notes, like keys in the piano. So it's just how you arrange them, right? So, you know, we'll restrict yourself. Maybe I'm only going to play on the black notes in this, or I'm only going to use words that do this kind of thing. Or, you know, I'm going to, you know, or I'm going to, you know, put all these materials, fabric swatches on here and realize, oh yeah, I really don't, that color doesn't work. You know, pull something away and see what you're left with. So I feel like editing is really, um, can be self editing is really useful. Yeah. And I sometimes go back to an exercise I did in college where take a, this is my sort of related to audio production. Take a five minute song or something like that. You know, put it into garage band or whatever you're using and edit it down to 30 seconds, but keeping the integrity of that piece of music or even a bigger piece of music is a great, like take a, take the first movement of a symphony and turn it into a minute. Right. So what, what about that? Can you retain and edit it down? You know, that, that still tells the story that still has the ups and downs and the arc of that, but maybe just sort of shrinks it a little bit. Right. Right. Interesting idea. You know, I think we've all seen movies or plays where we thought, well, I could have probably cut five minutes out of that. Right. Or, you know, yeah. I think editing is an act of creativity as well. Right. And then you, you must do that with podcasting all the time or interviews. You know, you have, you get a whole bunch of stuff and you're going to go find what's, what's the important thing there. So. you know, pulling things out and rearranging them, that's a creative act as well. So don't be, you know, if you don't know what to start with, start with rearranging something else. The show you and I worked on was revamped, edited and shortened four times. Shana Mm -hmm. Yeah, that was broken wide open. And that was where it wasn't long to begin with, but there was so much to take away. It's kind of like clay. It's like, well, that wasn't necessary. Let's get rid of that. Oh, that isn't actually, that's in forward the story either. We can get rid of that. There's no need for this. And then occasionally I'd want to cut something and I think it was Dave who's, you know, sound person also wonderful bass player. He's like, no, you can't cut that song. Okay. No, we won't. But yeah. Less is more. Less is more sometimes. Yeah. And I'll do that. You know, I work that way in terms of sound design for theater shows. Rob My, my tendency is just, is to offer a lot, right? There could be a sound here. There could be a piece of music here. How about this? You know, almost a sort of over, over share ideas. And that's just my. personality, I guess. And then often the director, because I'm working with a director and an entire creative team, you know, they'll say, Oh, I don't think we need that there. Right. I love that moment where just like, yep, you're right. Doesn't need it. They're like pulling something out because then they know that I've suggested something and I had something there. Right. I had an idea ready to go. And if it's not needed, that's totally fine. And I think not taking those things personally is something that's important and maybe hard to learn, but I try not to take those things. if I've written a piece of music and I say, here's that, I think this is great for this moment. And it's like, you know, no, I don't think we need it there or it's too much. Like I try not to take that personally, right? You know? Shana Along those lines for people who've been doing art for a while, do you read reviews? Do you care about likes on social media? How do you handle that stuff? Rob I do. It's hard not to read them, I guess. I'm definitely conscious of the fact that many of the performers in the shows don't want to read them. So I'll be careful not to share things. Yeah, yeah, I'll admit it's nice to it's great to read a review that maybe happens to mention the sound or the music they rarely do Shana Have you had to deal with one stars? Have you had to deal with the the social media a lot of audiobook narrators like the worst thing is you've done the book you do the social media you put it out there there's got like there's like there's 700 four stars five stars and then you get that one one star that must be hard when you think about the most like how do you deal with that? I put my, I try to put my name on those books. That's not, I try to not put my name on those books. Then I don't care because my name is on it and I go, oh wow, that's one star. I, one of those people years ago was told, don't read the review because we had a hundred shows left to do. And then the review wasn't necessarily, I never have read it. I've written it in my mind. Basically he said she should have been selling car insurance, not singing on stage. So that's sad too, because maybe if I'd read it, it really wasn't that bad. But I did learn to read them later. That same show, the other artist, no, no, a year later, a year later, I was doing a show at the bath house. And I did read the review. Everyone's like, Shana you need to read this review. It's phenomenal. And I read it. And he didn't review the other person in the show as well. He was a little off. And his performance changed. It changed for the next 86 shows. Shana Pennington-Baird (27:02.894) And so my lesson from that was I can read them when they're over. When the show is over, then okay, I'll get a good look at it. And I think there's probably a bunch of schools of thought on that because, and I'd be curious to have a director on and ask that question to be like, do you change the show based on a review? Mostly he's saying no, no, no, that's a big no. And all the years I did theater, absolutely not. Rob in the world. It's also a danger, I think, not just reading a negative review, but I think sometimes even a positive review read or interpreted the wrong way can sort of lead you down the wrong path. If there's a review that says, oh, Rob was so great. He sang so loud. Is that going to make me sing louder? Right. Oh, that's the good part of my performance. I've seen that. And then overdo it. Right. So it's like even positive feedback can sometimes be. detrimental. Shana Somebody said throw out the top ones, throw out the bottom ones, everything in the middle is probably kind of close or maybe don't worry about any of it and just do art. That's a great way of thinking about it. Yeah. I don't remember who said that to me, but I loved it. I was like, okay. Now critique is a different thing. Let's say that's different from criticism a little bit, right? Yeah. Like we, I think, you know, especially teaching, you know, working and critiquing each other's work. I don't know if you do that with your students, but you know, how can we talk about this? Let's listen to what this thing you did and say, yeah, I really like this and this and this. I thought you could have done more of this and this and that. So constructive, constructive criticism, I guess, as opposed to reviews. I think that can be very helpful. I do find it sometimes harder to get, um, get students or young people to kind of think in those ways and to offer up honest opinions and feel safe. I feel like there's a lot of, um, I don't know, maybe just tendency to sort of like not want to open up or worried that you're going to say the wrong thing. So developing a vocabulary for critique and criticism, I think is super important. And especially with sound and music, it's so hard to come up with words to describe sounds. Like how would you describe that sound, right? Oh, it's crunchy. It's, you know, it's shiny or, you know, but we need to figure out words. It's helpful to figure out words that, that help us talk about those kinds of things. Shana So, that's a important, important part of voiceover. there are several workout groups that are designed for that. You go and you have to direct each other, which is sort of, if you're brand new, you might not be great at either performing and or directing. And so you're like, oh, it's great. I have nothing else to say. And in those workouts, that's when you learn about that communication. Does that exist in any way in the music world? I mean, there's jam sessions, but that's a little different. A slow jam at Dusty Strings is not the... place for that. Structured feedback for music is a fascinating thought. Rob I can't think of any off top my head. Yeah, I mean, unless you're working, you know, with a band leader, someone who's very like at the top of their game, you know, who's like, you know, hiring their side people and really kind of, you know, and there are there this exists in the jazz world, I would say, you know, but a lot of just like people coming together to jam like you say, or bands, I would guess that there's, you know, that's pure collaboration and there's often no real leader. Maybe someone's more of a songwriter than the others, but like, you know, does that mean that they have, you know, say over how things are done? I mean, you can look at all sorts of examples in the, you know, from the Beatles to, you know, everywhere up to Miles Davis, but how different bands were worked and how a certain personality in that band was either a strong leader or too strong of a leader. Etiquette. Etiquette in music is a tricky thing. Shana Yeah. And how do you learn that etiquette? I think you learn it by doing it or having a great mentor. Great mentors can teach etiquette. I think it's always good to sort of try and work with people that are at a higher level than you are. You know, so try and find your way into groups that are maybe of, you know, professional, whether it's theater artists or musicians, things like that. Doesn't mean you can't go jam with, you know, just your friends or things like that, but trying to sort of always, you know, work with the best, you know, if you can, or be in, or at least be in a room with them and see how they, you know, how they, how they act. Cool. Thank you for today. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to bring up? Oh gosh. I don't know. We hit enough things. Yeah, we did. This has been, this has been great. This is going to be great. This is going to be so fun to edit. Easy to edit. You know, I guess, you know, uh, is it worth talking about like, um, Like I don't have a website, right? You know, for like music. I know you don't. You know what? Actually, you might. Let's let's talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about like putting your work out there, right? I'm going to ask if you have a website and you can you can honestly answer that at your age and then I'll chime in with sort of the VO stuff. So, so Rob, if people want to find you, do you have a website? I don't really have a website per se. I have some stuff up on a web on somewhere called Reverb Nation, which is some samples of music I've done for shows. You know, I was really like jamming on the MySpace days. Remember when that was more like an audio player and you could put your tracks in on MySpace. It was a musician thing. And then it was another thing. And then it was another thing. I know there's SoundCloud. I just haven't had enough time to sort of get stuff up there and maintain it. I probably should. If you know any website designers. Do you feel like you need it? How does most of your work come to you? Yeah, that's a great question. question. I'm very lucky. I was born and raised in Seattle. I've lived here all my life. I've got a long history just in this area and been lucky enough to just sort of get work from word of mouth. So I tend to sort of just one thing leads to the other. So I've never really had to have like that calling card. Occasionally someone out of town asked for my sample of my work and I certainly send them things and I have things posted, but it's not like a big flashy here's my website, here's all my music, you can come listen to everything. So I probably should, I don't know. I don't know. I think people who are coming and are new onto the scene and don't have that wealth of connections, I think these days having a website is a very good idea if you're new. Shana But I would also, because in voiceover we recommend, because there's a lot of people in voiceover, they don't have websites, are you kidding? They've done 150 TV shows, you can find them on IMDB, they're ancient. It's just they don't they don't bother that's but they but they've been in the business for a long time right so yeah yeah these days having a website's a good idea they can hear your samples a lot of the younger people hiring as we all get older one first place as they go is your insta I can't even say it is instagram I just can't I can't be cool they're gonna head for me a website is with some social media links on it Shana Pennington-Baird (33:52.686) you know, the fancy link trees, all this stuff. It's all really great. And it does give you that lovely, my daughter and I were talking, she's 13. She loves to be able to go onto the people she admires and listen to their backlog of work. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's a good idea, maybe it's one way to market. But I would say for anyone coming in, buy your name as a domain, whether you do anything with it or not. And then make sure that your name, like Google yourself, Google yourself because. There's a student of Seattle Voice Academy and she Googled herself and she found out that she shared a name with a porn star. A very successful porn star. And no, she did exactly the right thing. She changed her name to a shortened version of the first name and she did first name, last name, VO. And then to this amazing website and the bottom corner of her website gives a nod to the other, her name. See, it links back. So it's so respectful. And it keeps, and I don't think she does erotica, but it's one of those fun things where you do want to find out. And some people have stage names and some people use their real name. And I know a lot of audio book, like I have three names that I use to do audio books with. And in that case, you can DBA doing business as, where you change, you literally have to go, you have to go form a LLC Limited Liability Corporation as a DBA doing business as to get paid. there was a voice artist I couldn't pay. I had to redo the check because they didn't do that step and couldn't deposit the check. So if you're going to do voiceover, music, anything under another name, and you're not being paid through a third party like some of the publishers will just pay you anyway, you have to set up a DBA to get paid. Yeah, I've done that for Spyglass Theater as well because who is Spyglass Theater? Well, it's essentially me, but it needs to have that DBA. That's right. Yeah, I think a website is super important, whether it's that or it's music on SoundCloud or things like that, but some way to have things out there. And I do have that. I have spent less time doing that than I have just kind of doing the other kinds of things. But yeah, it's and you know, it's like a portfolio of your work. And I know a lot of graduate students in theater and design, you know, it's easy. I think the one the set designers and the costume designers and the lighting designers have beautiful websites with Shana Pennington-Baird (36:16.142) color photographs of all their scenery. And I think a website is really great for something to look at. And it can be very striking. Audio is always harder audio and music, because you have to kind of sit down and take the time to listen to it. You know, and plus a lot of the work I do, if I'm doing music, it's sort of a little more ambient or esoteric. It's not going to sound good on your phone, you know, and like, you know, you, so sometimes it's only a part of that whole art, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This little tiny, you know, tone. may be really effective in context watching a production, but just hearing it just on your headphones, it's gonna be like, what does that make sense? So I feel like some of that stuff I don't really need to put out there. People can kind of come find me if they need to. Cool. Well, Rob, thank you for your time. Thanks, Shana. This was super fun.