Kevin Shaw

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Career Trek: The CNIB Years

Something from Nothing… All Over Again

After sitting down with the CEO of CNIB in the fall of 2017, I explained my decision to wind down TellMe TV. Instead of being disappointed, he got excited as he laid out the opportunity for me to join Canada’s largest blindness charity as the program manager for entrepreneurship and innovation.

There was just one problem. There was no entrepreneurship program to speak of. I’d have to create it from scratch—a task I was all too familiar with after building the production department at CHRY  and starting TellMe TV.

CNIB is hyper focused on getting Canadians with sight loss into the work force. The employment rate among those with sight loss hovers around 28% in Canada. Blind people are extremely capable of holding jobs of all kinds and many have chosen to work for themselves as entrepreneurs. 

The Venture Zone

I went to work right away on developing what was dubbed “the Venture Zone”. It was an online portal featuring tips, tricks, hacks and other useful information for 

  entrepreneurs with sight loss. Articles on the portal included everything from how to network with sight loss, to useful and accessible apps for the iPhone that could help you run your business more efficiently. We even began highlighting local entrepreneurs with sight loss who were paving the way for a new generation of trailblazers. 

In my first year, I logged nearly 40,000 kilometres in flights traveling across Canada, meeting entrepreneurs from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. All of the entrepreneurs were bright, enthusiastic and loved to talk about their journeys. We began featuring many of these stories on our portal as well. 

Shane Cashin

Shane is a DJ in St. John’s, Newfoundland. My team put together a video feature on Shane that highlighted his skill as a DJ and his motivational storytelling.

The Entrepreneurs

In my travels across Canada, I met entrepreneurs doing the most impressive and amazing things from building sophisticated software for the military, to running massage clinics, to making greeting cards. Here are just some of the amazing people I met. 

  • Denise Justin is a Toronto-based entrepreneur who runs a fashion line called Say Hello 2 Blindness. Her clothing features the words “Say Hello” in both print and braille. Denise was featured in season 1 of Mind Your Own Business. Click here to watch Denise’s episode.
  • Hillary Scanlon found herself unable to differentiate which waste receptacle was garbage, recycling and organics. She invented WasteFinders—a tactile floor mat that lets anyone know which container is which. 
  • Jenna White is the founder of Jenna’s Nut-Free Dessertery—one of the only 2  certified nut-free bakeries in all of Atlantic Canada.
  • Kim Holdbrook is the founder of Hands That See—a massage clinic run entirely by massage therapists with sight loss in Montreal.

In addition to coaching, motivating and developing a shared set of resources for our entrepreneurs, we also began sponsoring students who wanted to learn what it took to run a business. 

Venture Zone Game

With articles, videos, podcasts and virtual courses, along with in-person meet-ups at CNIB hubs and offices across Canada, we thought we could do a better job of engaging potential entrepreneurs. While some people like the setting of a virtual class with lectures and quizzes, some people learn best by trial and error. What better way to do that than with a game? Games could be fun and be vehicles for learning.

We connected with a company that specialized in learning games out of the UK called Totem Learning. Working with Totem over the course of nine months, we conceptualized and built a fully accessible iPhone game that taught players how to run a production-based company.

Players chose a product, a price point and received some startup cash to get going. In the life of the game, players had to produce their product, market it, brand their company, hire staff and make sales all while keeping an eye on their brand strength, their profit and their spending.

A screen shot from Venture Zone Game

During testing, we noticed players were getting stuck in the early stages of the game. Some players didn’t know where to begin and swiping around the screen was causing players to close the game out of frustration. What we needed were a set of training wheels so the player could get comfortable with the layout of the screen. Then, they could be left on their own to play and replay the game.

I developed the concept of two characters, Jack and Liz, who would be coaches in the game. Jack would be part of a trial mode that got players up and running, while Liz hung around in the game and explained all of the screens and business terms. I found myself wearing my producer’s hat again as I directed our two stellar voice talents to get the right delivery for the game. 

Screen shot of the production screen from Venture Zone Game

After months of hard work, we launched the game on Global accessibility awareness Day, 2019 in Canada and around the world. We not only reached our download goals for the game, we exceeded them with high praise from the sight loss community and a nomination for a Golden Apple from AppleVis—a website for blind users of Apple products.

CNIB Market

At all of my meet-ups across Canada, one or two entrepreneurs would stand up and tell the group  that they were an artist, a painter, a sculptor, a crafter or someone who made hand-made goods. They all wanted to sell their products online, but feared getting lost on sites like Etsy. 

I saw an opportunity to create a philanthropic shopping destination where CNIB donors could support our entrepreneurs with sight loss by purchasing high-quality hand-made goods with the proceeds being divided up between CNIB and the entrepreneur. CNIB would handle the marketing side while the entrepreneur would focus on crafting.

With a  modest budget, we built an accessible and  fully featured e-commerce platform on Shopify in less than 3 months. CNIB Market had a soft launch in 2020, but the COVID19 pandemic forced the site to be placed on pause. There is still incredible potential for CNIB to fully flesh out this idea and see it through to completion.

My Exit

2020 was also the year I was laid off from one of the most enjoyable  and fulfilling jobs I ever had. I met amazing people from across the country and I got to bring accessible digital products to life. Given more time and with the winds blowing in my favour, I would have transitioned to being a full time developer of digital products. In addition to working with a great team, my favourite memories from CNIB will be working with one of the greatest assistants I’ll ever have. The program, the game and the market wouldn’t have been as great without her help and support.

Over the next year, I’d develop and refine the software for my current startup, begin consulting on accessible design for an education tech company and start a new position with one of Canada’s most forward-thinking banks.

Career Trek: TellMe TV

Entrepreneurs Solve Problems

I was once asked, “How do you become an entrepreneur?” My quick response was, “Find something that irritates you so much, you are left with no choice but to solve the problem yourself.”

 

Several months  after completing my Master of Arts in Media Production in 2011, I found myself waiting for the next big career move to find me. I was still working at CHRY Radio and unsure on what to do with the rest of my life. 

One of the many amusing conversations among the staff at CHRY had me feeling a bit left out. We were all discussing movies and TV shows we were watching and I was clueless when it came to new  shows and classics I’d missed out on after losing my sight. I was determined to catch up by finding as many movies and TV with audio description as I could. 

 

Audio description (or described video (DV) as it is known in Canada) is narration of on-screen activity in between lines of dialog in a movie or TV show. It enables someone with sight loss to get the jokes in a comedy or emote with the story in  a drama. I demonstrated how audio description worked in a TEDx Talk for Ryerson in November of 2014.

 

I had a shelf full of DVDs at home—many of which were still in shrink wrap. Some of them had audio description tracks on them, but I didn’t feel like navigating a series of silent menus to locate and play the audio description soundtrack. I went online thinking, “Surely one of the big online VOD platforms had movies or TV shows with audio description!” I found none.

 

And that’s when the idea struck me like lightning—build a Netflix for the blind.

 

I immediately began typing furious notes as to how I’d accomplish this goal. I couldn’t code well, didn’t know anyone in software or the film & TV industries and I had no clue where to begin. Just like learning to DJ or jumping into audio production, I made the decision to just dive in and start. I asked questions and worked through the contacts I had.

Within six months, I had a working prototype and a name, Zagga Entertainment. I wasn’t sold on the name, but I wanted something with a Z in it and zagga.tv was the first domain I could get. Zagga was slated to be the first fully accessible subscription VOD service of its kind with audio description on all of its movie and TV titles.

 

The Pitches

With a functional prototype and some of my own cash, I took the idea to CNIB—Canada’s national blindness charity whose CEO loved the idea and pledged his support right away. I was also accepted to what was then known as the Ryerson Digital media Zone—a university-based startup incubator. In September of 2013, I decided to jump in with both feet. I left CHRY and pursued Zagga full time.

 

Kevin sits on a sofa at the DMZ with his laptop

 

The Easy Part

Since I Used a screen reader full time, I knew how I wanted the website, and eventually a mobile app, to behave. I quickly learned our accessible prototype wouldn’t cut it when it came to handling the security requirements of the content providers. More on them later. After a crowdfunding campaign, we built the first  full version of Zagga running on the web and an iPad app before financial setbacks forced us to abandon those platforms for a mobile-ready website. We ran this for several months before receiving some help out of the Blu. (Pun intended.)

Blu Focus handled the quality assurance for Hollywood DVDs and digital assets. Its founder, Paulette, got in touch with me and offered me a fully turnkey VOD solution that solved all of our problems for handling security, scalability and accessibility. We changed the company name to TellMe TV and built the next version of the app on the robust VHX platform which was the best thing that ever happened to us. Thanks to Paulette, we launched in 2016 with a few dozen titles including rare content from the National Film Board of Canada, The Film Detective and Entertainment One. 

 

TellMe TV Video

We worked with Kent Parker, a great commercial producer out of Toronto, to create a video explaining TellMe TV Credits to Jeevan, her guide dog Kizzy and our excellent voice talent Susan for bringing this piece together.

 

 

 

The Hard Part

In the world of film and TV, content is king. Much like location, location, location for brick and mortar retail, content, content, content should be the motto for anyone looking to start a subscription VOD service. This one issue hamstrung us, especially as the market began to mature around us with audio description soon being offered on Netflix, iTunes and other VOD services when we launched.

 

Our customers in the sight loss community wanted top tier Hollywood content with audio description. They, like me, wanted to be included in the water cooler talk about hit movies and TV shows from the past and present. The content providers which included major studios in Hollywood, wanted their pound of flesh on behalf of the directors, writers, actors and other people who had a financial interest in the success of their films and TV shows. For a large universe of titles, the costs began adding up quickly. I was soon stuck with a dilemma: subscribers weren’t coming because we had no content and we couldn’t get the content we wanted because we didn’t have the subscribers.

 

The Hardest Part

With the  market rapidly maturing around us and with our cash running out, I had to make the tough call to pull the plug on TellMe TV in 2018. Calling it quits on a dream is sometimes the hardest thing an entrepreneur will ever have to do, but I have learned quite a bit by taking on the challenge of starting up my own company and blazing a trail into unknown territory. 

 

Lessons for the Entrepreneur

 

Share Your Idea; No One’s Going to Steal It.

You’re the one who was irritated enough to find the solution to the problem. You spent late nights jotting down notes, trying out solutions and pounding away at your code until you found something that worked. Chances are no one else is going to put in the time and effort you have to get to where you are. Attract others to your ideas and they will want to help you succeed.

 

Launch Early

Yes, your product is held together with a shoelace, some duct tape and a safety pin, but someone out there sees the same problem you do and will pay you for that solution. You can refine and iterate, but you shouldn’t wait until everything is perfect for launch, because it never will be.

 

You Don’t Have to Get It Right. You Need to Get It Done.

In my head, I pictured the launch of TellMe TV being a lot like the launch of the iPhone. The service would gleam as I showed off its features to an audience that would ooh and aah over all of the details. Much like my first point, you can’t get it perfect on the first try, but you have to show something for your efforts, especially when investors are waiting to see what you’ve been doing with their cash.

 

Find Your Customers, Then Listen To Them.

As much as you know about your product, your customer may have an insight that simplifies or improves your product in ways you can’t see because of your perspective. 

 

Build A Stellar Team

The vision of TellMe TV attracted several key people to my team including the former CEO of Lion’s Gate Entertainment, a two-time Emmy Award winner and the lady who launched the xbox in Canada.

 

Develop Tough Skin

Conflict, confrontation and hearing the word ‘no’ come with the territory. Learn to lick your emotional wounds quickly and move forward with the mission.

 

Fail Fast

You will fail. Your code will break. You will introduce a feature and realize it was a bonehead decision. You will hire the wrong person. Cut your losses and move forward.

 

Never Give Up

While I had to make the hard decision to wind down TellMe TV, it came after seven years of hard work. There were some days I felt like giving up and many where I wondered if I would have been safer, happier and more satisfied working in audio. Even when the going gets rough, remember all you need to do is take one step forward.

 

Something from Nothing

If I had to choose one regret from my journey with TellMe TV, it would be not launching faster with the content I could easily get. In some ways it would have been easier to build a loyal audience with customers who believed in the vision, but after a couple of years of promising vapourware, it’s hard to build trust and loyalty when the market movers are offering your service as a feature. Aside from that, I regret nothing. I learned a lot, especially about the world of business, accessibility and the often colourful world of tech startups.

By the time I wound down TellMe TV, I had been invited to join CNIB in building a national entrepreneurship program for other Canadians with sight loss. It was an opportunity to build something from nothing all over again and I couldn’t say no to the prospect.

My Radio Production Philosophy

This is an excerpt from Memoirs of CHRY Production—a collection of my thoughts and learnings after a nearly 8 year-long run as the Technical/Production Coordinator for CHRY Radio in Toronto.

Alternative ≠ Mediocre

I never wanted alternative to be synonymous with mediocre. I managed to shift the sound of CHRY Radio because I brought a major market production aesthetic to my work. This is a brief look into my production philosophy I left with the station upon my departure.

When I started my radio career, campus/community radio was synonymous with mediocrity, poor technical execution, bad sound and unskilled volunteers using amateur equipment to produce programming that was easy to ignore. Ads and promos sounded as if they were recorded on a consumer tape deck in a noisy basement by a college student who wasn’t fully awake.
The falling costs of technology and computer processing power put the tools of the major market movers into the hands of the lowly community radio producer. Now, with a quiet room, an inexpensive condenser microphone and multitrack recording software, producers could make radio that rivalled and even exceeded their commercial counterparts.

Creative Writing Strategies

The foundation of building a solid radio spot is recognizing and respecting the limit of time. A 30 second ad should be 30 seconds long, not 27, 31, 33 or 47 seconds.
Once you have a time limit, write to that limit and write creatively.
Every spot should have a good hook that catches the listener’s attention. Develop this skill by playing word games, Pictionary, brainstorming, building mind maps, doing improv comedy and so on. Create pictures in the mind of the listener and write well.

Edit your script. Can you shorten things? Reword them? Use better words? More descriptive words? No words at all?

Allow room for music, sound effects and the personality of the voice talent.

The Jerk Food Festival

One of the announcers I worked with, Clive, had a great bass-heavy voice and could pull off the smooth, sultry “Barry White” vibe. It was the perfect match for the line, “Do you like it hot?” To advertise a jerk food festival.  The rest of the ad came together off of the marriage of Clive’s voice and the opening line.

A fully stocked library of sound effects and production music is a huge help. Certain music or sound effects will trigger ideas for great scripts.
The simpler the idea and the more succinct, the better the execution.
Avoid writing laundry list scripts or scripts with too much detail. Listeners will miss it completely.

 Radio is a bad place for phone numbers. Direct the listener to a website if you can.
Boil the spot down to a single idea and create around that idea.
If you have 3 great ideas for a script, write 3 great scripts.

Subodh Sharma Real Estate Campaign

Subodh Sharma was a regular advertiser on CHRY. With a long term advertiser like Subodh, the challenge was how to keep her real estate firm fresh in the listener’s mind. For Subodh, the strategy was to remind the listener that although he or she wasn’t buying a house now, there were benchmarks in life where you would need the services of a real estate broker. When those benchmarks came around, Subodh was the real estate broker to call. I  developed concepts around a wedding and having a baby, two concepts that were easy to write to. I included the line, “Subodh Sharma is the real estate broker who’ll be there when you’re ready to take life’s next big step.”
Subodh also brought the problem to us that people didn’t know she was a woman. Again, a simple problem I could solve with one line of script.

Running Recording Sessions

I usually try to keep things moving in the studio by having everything prepped for voice talent when they arrive.
Eliminate as much background sound as possible. Pay attention to jewelry, phones and clothing as possible sources for noise.
Monitor your talent, always. Talent should always wear headphones.
I prefer talent stand while delivering their scripts as they can get more air into their lungs and project their voices.
Coach talent if you require a specific kind of read. Emulate the type of delivery you hear on TV or commercial radio. Microphones tend to flatten vocal energy, which is why voice talent may sound like they’re overdoing it when they read live. The recording should sound confident, heartfelt, honest and real.
Be sure the voice matches the tone of the script.
Always listen back to your recordings with talent in the room!

Fairchild construction

Kathryn was a young voice talent I worked with who could easily take direction and deliver a stellar read in one or two takes. 

Your recording session is where proper asset management begins. I record as much as possible by over recording beginnings and ends. You’ll hear a lot of slop if you listen to my raw recording files. You may get magic while someone is warming up, so be sure to capture that. 

Session admin

Label your files and tracks correctly. As a rule, I typically organize sessions in industry standard dialogue, music and effects (DME) layout. This makes it easy to group, move, edit and manipulate your regions/clips in an orderly fashion.
Use effect presets and save your own! Presets save time and frustration in sessions as they minimize mouse clicks. I typically use presets as a starting point and will fine tune for each voiceover.
If you’re manipulating many clips in the same session, learn how to use the Batch Converter function in your DAW.

Editing and Mixing

Show off!!!
Make brilliant edits. Splice like a surgeon. Remove noise, breaths and tiny mouth clicks. Compress and gate like a pro. Put Abbey Road and Gateway Mastering to shame with your EQ-ing and compression. Your final voiceover should be ready to air on network TV during the Super Bowl or the Olympics. Compress and EQ the way you’d EQ for a major label album. Mix the same way. Each spot should contain the same sonic signature as a well-recorded pop record.
My voiceovers sound the way they do because I remove room sound, clicks, breath and mouth noises and piece together 3 or 4 takes to get the read. This may involve splicing phrases and even parts of words together, especially if the talent is great and records a safety take or two.
I record at a safe level, adjust volumes by hand, then triple compress. By the time the vocals are finished, they should sound full and be easily heard on a small speaker at low volume. This is my “clock radio” reference and guides me in darkness.
Familiarize yourself with DSP effects as they can save a noisy VoiceOver.

Take your time with the mix and monitor on everything you can. High volumes, low volumes, every kind of speaker.
You cannot mix on headphones! It’s an inaccurate representation of what is happening in the air when you’re listening to studio monitors. Use headphones as a reference when mixing, but don’t rely on them as being accurate, no matter how good they are.
When mixing high energy night life spots, you will be required to shorten music beds, splice music and create montages. In terms of editing music, you should know how to edit beats and bars, create loops, match bpm and perform music crossfading.
If you don’t know how to scrub audio, learn. This is what will make your editing much faster and more precise. I don’t know any full-time commercial engineer who uses waveforms to edit.

Jeffery Osbourne concert

An example of a night life ad for Jeffery Osbourne in concert requiring mixing, crossfading and sound effects. Danae Peart, the voice talent in this spot, has a great TEDx Talk on radio and media.

Mastering

This is what truly set my spots above those of other campus/community stations.
Become familiar with companders, multiband compressors, volume maximizers, mastering plug-ins, mastering EQs, stereo expanders and harmonics generators. This is the big secret I don’t usually give away, but every ad on the air has gone through some type of multiband mastering.
There should be no difference from spot to spot in terms of volumes or EQ signatures. I tend to go for a bright, ear-pleasing sound with articulate bass, a bump between 3 and 5 kHz and added air above 10 kHz with moderate compression. I use long decay times and faster attacks to get the material to sound pretty flat once it goes on air.

Roshé Clear Water

Another highly produced ad that brings together great voice talent, production and scripting. The amazing voice talent enthusiastically repeating, “I’m drinking Roshe!” is a lovely Toronto-based singer/songwriter named Mel Dube.

Effects

If you listen to ad agency radio spots you’re not going to find a lot of reverb and delay, especially for commercials for products and services. I tend to mix fairly dry as I find reverb distracting and it’s very easy to abuse.
There are obvious times where you will use reverb and delay, such as recreating environments like a train station, kitchen or sports stadium.
In high energy and night life ads, effects should be used carefully. It’s easy to fall in love with delays and reverbs. It’s harder to know how much is enough. As a general rule, pick 3 effects for an ad and vary the effects throughout the script.

Career Trek: The Radio years

My Early love Affair with Radio

When I started high school, I thought I wanted to be an accountant. In Grade 10, I joined the A/V Crew and fell in love with the technical arts. In grade 11, I won a local radio contest and got to sit in on the production of a major market morning radio show—limo ride and all.
While the antics of the hosts, Jesse & Gene, had me in stitches, I was paying wrapped attention to Perry, the show’s producer as he flew around the studio, cutting audio tape, jamming commercials into cart decks, running the board, cuing the hosts, playing CDs and being the proverbial glue that held the show together. I was sold; THIS is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Just over a year later, I started a closed-circuit radio station at my high school before leaving to pursue a degree in Radio & Television Arts at Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan) University. After graduating and working freelance for several years, I had enough material to assemble a small demo which I sent to a tiny radio station in North York, Ontario in the fall of 2005.
I had applied to be the station’s creative producer, writer, audio engineer and technical coordinator—in other words, the entire production department. The salary was less than a living wage today, but it was a start.

The Demo Spot

I was asked to produce a radio spot for CHRY’s People Powered fundraising campaign. Using my crude set-up at home, this is what I submitted.

After two interviews and my demo, I got the call. I wasn’t selected as the candidate. I was crestfallen and figured I’d remain in the freelance world a bit longer. Two weeks later, the phone rang again. The first candidate didn’t work out and I was offered the job. I took it and started my new full time gig as the Technical/Production Coordinator at what was then called CHRY (now Vibe 105 TO).

Amplifying the Alternative

This is a production demo I submitted for a national award in 2007. It didn’t win.

In 2005, the production facilities at CHRY were barebones to say the least when I walked in on my first day. Besides a slow computer and a Rode Broadcaster microphone, I had nothing—no headphones, no script stand, no licensed production music, no sound effects and no volunteer staff. My manager got the JAWS for Windows screen reader installed on my office and production computers for which I am eternally grateful. This one piece of software allowed me to independently work with advanced audio production software and keep a job for nearly 8 years.

Kevin at CHRY Master Control

At the time, CHRY’S sonic signature ranged from a noisy mix of over-compressed, reverberant and poorly equalized material to a few slickly produced jingle IDs that ran during station breaks. The overall aesthetic definitely sounded gritty, unfocused and very grass roots. I thought we could do better as a station and as a sector.

CANADA HELPS PSA

An example of the pro sound I brought to the station using tight compression, subtle effects and EQ, not to mention Talia, a stellar voice talent from Toronto.

The day-to-day was about managing the chaotic and often hectic worlds of radio spot production. I wrote, recorded, edited and mixed radio ads, promos, public service announcements, station IDs and other on-air material. My production philosophy was to produce high-fidelity material using the tools I had at my disposal—a computer with audio production software and a high-quality condenser microphone. I discuss my production philosophy in this post, but sufficed to say the station’s sonic signature evolved to being indistinguishable from major market stations with bigger budgets and more resources. We became equal players, sonically speaking with no difference in audio aesthetics when sweeping the dial.

Canadian Women’s Health Network PSA

The original version of this national spot was poorly recorded with a terrible VoiceOver and bad levels when it was sent to us from the NCRA. I re-recorded with an amazing voice talent, Jayde, who brought the spot to life.

Over the next eight years, the staff and I built CHRY’s production department to be recognized and envied nationally in the campus/community radio sector. Besides producing award-winning radio creative and refining the station’s sonic signature, I left a legacy of documented best-practices, policies, procedures and sage advice for the person who stepped into my shoes so we would never backslide into producing audio that made the listener cringe.

Award Winning Fundraising Spot

This spot campaign for our 20th anniversary fund drive won the award for creative Production from the National Campus/Community Radio Association in 2008. A fantastic voice talent, Greg, anchored the spot and gave us the “institute” vibe we were looking for.

How I Adapted

Thanks to a supportive staff and volunteers, great assistive technology and the chance to prove myself, I excelled as a radio producer who happened to have sight loss. Among my colleagues, I was known as the sound engineer or the producer and never “the blind engineer” or “the blind producer”. Many of our ad clients never knew their spots were being written, recorded and mixed by someone who couldn’t see.

As mentioned prior, I used JAWS to do everything on the computer. I ran  Sony SoundForge with custom JAWS scripts, Adobe Audition and a handful of VST plug-ins. My Audio Arts console was labeled with braille and other tactile marks which help me orient myself to the board. The station itself was small and easy to navigate, however the York University campus where CHRY  was located was immense and less accessible than my alma-mater. Having a great crew of staff and volunteers helped in incalculable ways when it came to miking up remotes or getting to station events.

Working as a freelance audio producer had its perks. I got to work on projects that were of interest to me, but my first full-time gig in radio helped me refine and hone my craft. I’m convinced that working at a radio station is the coolest job in the world. For me, every day was different with new challenges, amazing people and something new to learn every time I walked into work. I left the station in 2013 to pursue my first tech startup, TellMe TV, but I was grateful to be a part of something bigger than myself.

Feature on Jazz Singer Emilie-Claire Barlow

This was a full-length radio feature on Emilie-Claire Barlow, a wonderful jazz singer formerly from Toronto. This feature came about early in my tenure and was the first really long format piece I’d edited and mixed.

Career Trek – Freelance Audio & Music Production

My career as an audio and music engineer stretches back to the late 90s when I was in my third year of Radio & Television Arts (RTA) at Ryerson. I learned the layout of our 32 channel Tascam audio console and how to operate the remote control for our DA-88 recorders. My third year group recorded a local Toronto funk band and I immediately fell in love with the entire multitrack recording process.

While at school, I read Stanley R. Alten’s Audio In Media from cover to cover and absorbed everything I could about audio production for radio, television, music and sound design—EQ, compression, gating, effects, acoustics as well as all of the intricacies of working in a multitrack recording environment.

Love Method — Reaching the Sun

A career in audio production was nearly impossible to start by working for someone else right out of school. I had applied to several audio jobs in Toronto with no luck, but found myself in demand as a freelance audio producer for friends and friends of friends who wanted to record EPs and albums. This often meant recording in noisy spaces such as bedrooms, churches and other noisy environments on a wide variety of gear.

Karen Pace – Worship Medley

Karen Pace – Worship medley

As I built up my skills as a problem solver in the audio engineering space, I eventually found myself playing the role of producer more and more. This culminated in the largest project I managed from start to finish—a full Christian pop album for a friend who is a very talented singer. We  recorded, mixed and mastered at several top tier recording studios in Toronto and launched the album in 2006.

Deanna — Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)

My last recording gig was in 2010 when I recorded a full Toronto rock band for my graduate thesis on the accessibility of ProTools. There, I had the luxury of working in an acoustically treated studio on an SSL AWS-900 mixing console.

Heartcore – Blue

Heartcore – Blue

Amidst all of this, I took on recording projects that were a little out of the ordinary including an audio book, VoiceOver demos and lots of PA audio gigs where I was mixing bands live in a room.

I came alive as an audio producer. There’s something fun and exciting about patching in a reverb and riding the faders to add the extra energy a song needs to be ear-catching and hooky. Despite my passion for the craft, a ton of connections and having some of the gear, I began realizing a career in audio was not as easy as it sounded (no pun intended).

Studios were difficult to start and run by the time multitrack recording became ubiquitous. Large studios with big rooms were slowly closing and pop music production was moving away from recording live instruments to using samples.

I will, one day, get back into recording and mixing (the latter being my passion), but I will do it as an expensive hobby rather than a career. As life would have it, all of the late nights as a DJ and the long days as an audio producer were about to pay off with my first full time gig when I sent a demo to a small radio station in north Toronto.

Career Trek – The Mobile DJ Years

This is the first post in a series that will take you on a journey through the highlights of my working life. I have essentially worked my entire career without sight. A lot of that work was work I chose to do when no other companies would hire me after I graduated what was then called Ryerson University with a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Radio & Television Arts. Throughout my journey as an entrepreneur and as an employee with sight loss, I’ve had to solve problems in order to get the job done. I’ll explain how I did it as best I can.

Jump In and Figure it Out

I’ve always loved listening to the artful skill of a mix DJ at work. Listening to radio in Toronto while growing up, I was transfixed by DJs who could beat match, cut and scratch music from a wide variety of musical genres. I had a desire to learn, but figured the startup costs were too prohibitive for me to own turntables, a mixer, speakers and then amass a collection of vinyl LPs.

 

While attending university, my friend Rebecca introduced me to a popular night club DJ—DJ Thomas—who spun music for a Saturday night retro broadcast on a popular Toronto radio station. He used the denon unit week after week and pulled off flawless mixes from a giant case of CDs he traveled with for his DJ gigs. While in conversation with DJ Thomas and Rebecca, I mentioned that DJing was something I wanted to learn.

At the time, there were no courses or schools where you could go to learn to be a DJ. Everyone just “figured it out” on their own.

Rebecca told me to just jump right in and teach myself. I did just that. Thanks Rebecca!

DJ Thomas showed me his rig which held one of the first Denon twin CD decks built for DJs. The unit let DJS play CDs at variable speeds and precisely cue songs using CD frames. This made tempo synchronization and cuing as easy as it was on vinyl.

 

After finishing my first year of university, I rented one of the  Denon decks without a mixer. I learned to mix by connecting each CD player in the Denon to separate stereo systems and working the volume controls independently. My crude bedroom set-up was clunky and awkward, but I had enough to teach myself how to work the unit and get familiar with the controls as well as the tiny collection of CDs I owned. In under a month, I was spinning at my best friend’s 21st birthday party—my very first gig.

 

Kevin stands in front of a mixer and rack of DJ equipment at a party.

 

How I Adapted

Learning the controls on the Denon decks was not that difficult. There were few buttons and each one was sized and positioned in a way where I could memorize what each key did and where it was, so no need for braille labels.

One of the most challenging parts of being a DJ with no sight was selecting CDs. I had a standing rack of 200 CDs, plus 3 or 4 road cases holding many more. Labeling each one with braille was impractical, so I began memorizing the layout of each rack and case using cues from the spines of each case to guide me on which CDs were where. For example, an album in a cardboard digipack would break up the column of CDs and give me an anchor to chunk the order of CDs above and below.

Every so often, I’d grab the wrong CD during a gig, but have enough time to put it back and grab the correct one before the playing track ended.

After several gigs and some saving, I purchased an upgraded Denon deck with jog and shuttle controls along with a very simple DJ mixer. Friends would accompany me to gigs with a cash incentive. I saved money in the long term by renting the PA and lighting gear I needed for each gig. This allowed me to customize each event with the right gear so I wasn’t keeping massive speakers in my inventory if I was playing a small wedding for 50 people.

I spun weddings, first communions, fundraisers and a couple of night club gigs. Over the 7 years I worked as a DJ, the biggest gig I did was for 300 people for my best friend’s parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. I had also amassed a large collection of music and learned a few lessons along the way. 

Lessons Learned

  • Be prepared for everything. Have a backup for your main DJ rig and be prepared to switch immediately to keep the party going.
  • Know your music. Be familiar with your bar counts, in and out points and be prepared to mix disparate genres such as cultural music, rock and reggae. This is what sets you apart and develops your versatility.
  • Know your tools. You should be an expert on how to set up and operate your gear and know every button and function. On the flip side, keep your tech load simple. Sometimes beat matching from song to song is more than adequate without adding a sampler, stutter effects and scratching.
  • Practice and make your mistakes at home. When you’re driving a party at a wedding or night club, there are no redos for a poor mix, so be sure you know what you’re doing when the dance floor is open.
  • Know your audience. Scratching and cutting means nothing if you can’t choose the right song to play. A fundraiser for executives in their 50s is going to be a very different mix than a high school dance, so play to your audience. Your personal tastes come second. 
  • Carry yourself professionally. Use business and rate cards. Be clear with your contracts. Arrive on time for set-up. leave on time after strike. Clean up after yourself. Return calls and e-mails promptly.
  • Perceptions matter. As a DJ with sight loss, walking into a venue with a cane can elicit non-confidence in people who don’t know you can do the work. Your job is to prove them wrong by exceeding their expectations. Use correct spelling and grammar in your correspondence. Make eye contact, shake hands firmly, be agreeable, apologize when necessary and take the high road if you’re dealing with a jerk. Address people by name and say please and thank you. These little things go a long way in building your reputation when you’re starting out.
  • Build a great team. I succeeded as a DJ because I had great friends around me who were willing to drive me to gigs, set up speakers and tell me when people were leaving the dance floor. No one succeeds alone, so surround yourself with great people who are invested in your success.

I left the DJ world in 2005 after selling my DJ rig. If I do get back into it, it will be an expensive hobby.

Today, a DJ with sight loss can easily get set up with a Mac running VoiceOver, accessible DJ software from Algoriddim and accessible DJ controllers such as the Pioneer DDJ SX3. These tools can put you on par with your sighted counterparts.

If you’re going to venture into the world of being a mobile DJ, have a plan and set goals for performing a certain number of gigs in the first 30, 60 and 90 days. Build good habits for practice and be prepared to make sacrifices with your time. The DJ world can be fun, but it is hard work.

 

My Old School Mix

Here is a set of 80s and 90s old school hip hop and R&B that was fun to mix. The Denon DM2500 had a crude sampler which I used for parts of this mix. Enjoy!

My Current Startup: MenuVox

Imagine that you’re like me, and live with sight loss. Picture yourself at the table in a busy cafe or restaurant. How do you read the menu?

You don’t read braille. Your server is too busy to read the menu to you. Your OCR apps aren’t cutting it. Scanning a QR code takes you to an inaccessible photo of the menu and the restaurant’s website is a mess. You feel uncomfortable asking for help and so you get “the special” without knowing your favourite meal is available.

My latest startup, Menuvox, solves these problems with a location-based app and service that pushes an accessible restaurant menu right to a diner’s smart phone. 

I got the idea for MenuVox after I found myself alone in a chain restaurant—trying very hard to navigate the restaurant’s website on my mobile phone. It was a mess. I thought, “there has to be a better way to do this.”

MenuVox solves a number of problems with the dine-in experience for those with and without sight:

  • Eliminates the need for braille menus. Braille is expensive to produce and fewer than 1 in 4 in the sight loss community read braille regularly. 
  • Increases dignity and independence for people with sight loss.
  • Improves hygiene and reduces viral and bacterial transmission. Since the menu is on the user’s phone, no need to share menus or print disposable paper menus.
  • Improves the efficiency of serving staff. Less time spent reading the menu aloud to a customer with sight loss is more time spent serving others.
  • Reduces app clutter. One app works in every location that supports MenuVox. No need for multiple restaurant apps on your phone.

Unlike other apps that focus on delivery, discovery, reviews or reservations, MenuVox is focused on the experience of being at the table. The app lets the  user adjust the display settings of their phone to make the text more legible or have their screen reader read the menu aloud. Since the app is location-based, there’s no need to scan QR codes or scroll through a list of nearby restaurants. MenuVox will even work in underground malls and food courts.

MenuVox is poised to launch in 2022.