Berklee Blogs hears from Mabel Leong, beginning her second internship with Mix One Studios in Boston. Mabel tells Berklee Blogs how sometimes the best opportunities to get ahead are in “routine” tasks…

The most common advice I heard for studio internships are either one of the following: step up, take initiative, stand out, be THE intern, color-code tracks and always top up the coffee etc. In other words, it’s the onus of the intern to be on the ball and (hopefully) be spotted for it. This view is far from wrong, and it was the mentality I had when this internship started. As the intern, however, my work seems to run either routinely or event-ly. Routine work are the admin tasks that many internship articles write of, like coming in first to clean up the studios, take out the garbage, make the morning coffee, etc. The events are the actual studio sessions that occur, that have recently picked up in speed.     A number of sessions occurred that have been both smaller in setup and huge in the making. 

As such, it’s easier for me to take initiative as an intern in the routine work, where there are more opportunities present to make a good presentation of myself than the more sporadic sessions.  Sessions here are preset and streamlined that not much needs to be done to get the session going – good for the engineer and talent, but not so good for me to take initiatives setting up. The most I can do, I feel, is keeping the talent and engineer comfortable with refreshments and keeping out of the way until I’m needed for assistance.  But I hope that if I stay alert and keep my eyes peeled, the opportunity would present itself one day when I can step up to the plate and be essential to helping the session that day.

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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