Berklee Blogs hears from Mabel Leong, beginning her second internship with Mix One Studios in Boston. Mabel tells Berklee Blogs how an internship can show students that one’s opportunities are not limited to the scope of their declared major…

It sounds odd to say this, but this internship has opened my eyes up a lot more to the ‘music industry’ than I thought I knew through Berklee.

One big difference I found between Berklee and my internship is the variety of work you can do is not limited to what you study or have studied. I get the feeling that, at Berklee, your major (or your activity) at the school encourages you to identify with certain roles we think the industry is based on: songwriters, lyricists, composers, arrangers, producers, audio engineers, sound designers, mixers, etc. Yet, I’m becoming more aware that, slowly but surely, anyone could be everything that I mentioned- and more.

My boss David Porter, a former Music Production and Engineering student from Berklee himself, demonstrates this eloquently. Even though the program here focuses strongly on studio recording, song mixing and song production, he works in post-production – primarily with editing and mixing audio for visual media. He occasionally runs a band recording session. On the side, he’s his band’s producer, engineer and guitarist. And don’t forget that he is also the co-owner of Mix One Studios too.

Meanwhile, I have been breaking this mindset myself as well, since it’s getting clearer that while being a recording engineer is a dream job for me, I could- and should- explore the other fields of the music industry that I can be a part of. With my interest in the videogame industry and post-production, I focus a lot more on Dave’s work and observe his processes during his sessions. I also started picking up video game middleware information as well as a little Javascript. Now I think the bottom line is making myself not just the indispensable intern in the recording studio, but to get more skills and tricks up my sleeve to be valuable in more than one way.

 

Bio

Prior to attending Berklee, Mabel Leong was a casual pianist of video game themes and pop songs. Now she takes on the recording and post-production work of her current internship at Mix One Studios in Boston, MA. Along with her strong interest in music production and engineering is her dream job of being involved in video game production. During her time in Berklee, Mabel worked with friends and acquaintances in the recording studio and out, as a DJ for the Berklee Internet Radio Network and a Peer Tutor for the core music curriculum. This is her last semester, and she is making the best of it and is doing what she can before it’s over! Check out her works at soundcloud  and connect with her at Berkleemusic.com.

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