PROFILE
Swann Barrat
By Maxime Brunet
S
wann Barrat is an FOH engineer, tour manager, and live sound
instructor based in Vancouver, by way of Le Blanc, France.
Growing up in France, Barrat started attending shows in
her early teens and developed a passion for both live music
and collecting live recordings from her favourite bands.
“I spent a lot of time analyzing how they sounded – from the
horrendous, distorted sound of a show recorded with a mic in the
crowd to the crystal-clear board recordings,” she says. “When attending
shows, I became very interested in the changeovers and watching the
crew set up the stage and test microphones, and I realized I wanted
to be a part of that.”
Barrat believes one must understand the physical aspects of
sound in order to be a good engineer, so she chose to study electri-
cal engineering in university. At the end of her two-year course, she
was offered a stagehand internship at a live sound venue in Poitiers,
France called Le Comfort Moderne. She recalls immediately realizing
that this was the perfect job environment for her.
After graduating, she decided to move to Vancouver. “I was 20 years
old, wanted to travel, and believed finding work in France would be a
bit tough. I chose Vancouver after falling in love with the scenery on
a vacation there the year prior. It was the time of MySpace, too, and
I got in touch with a few bands that I wanted to play with. I ended
up playing with a band called Wintermitts for a few years and did my
first cross-Canada tour with them in 2007. I played drums, guitar, and
glockenspiel. There were six of us and we swapped instruments a lot
– a real sound tech’s nightmare! We played small venues and cafés
where there were no sound techs, so I also ran sound for us on some
nights with the board side-stage.”
Barrat received her formal audio training at Vancouver’s Pacific
Audio Visual Institute (PAVI). Although she ultimately found the cur-
riculum to be lacking in the live sound department, she was offered an
internship through the school at the Biltmore Cabaret – a well-known
live performance venue. She was subsequently hired as the house
technician and worked there until 2012.
Having worked in live sound for more than 10 years now, Barrat
is currently a house technician at the Fox Cabaret. As a touring FOH
engineer and tour manager, she has put in time with acts including
The Harpoonist and The Axe Murderer, Hannah Georgas, The Belle
Game, Dan Mangan, The Pack a.d., and Kim Churchill, among others.
She particularly enjoys the smaller venue and theatre tours due to the
connection they foster between the performers and the audience.
Like many women in audio, Barrat has faced some discrimination
on job sites due to her gender and young age. She offers this piece
of advice to young women entering the field: “In those situations
– they still happen from time to time – I’ve learned that your work
speaks for itself, so usually when I show up at a venue and have to
deal with someone with assumptions about me, I just do my job the
way I always do it and once they realize I know what I’m doing, their
attitude tends to change.”
She has been teaching at the Nimbus School of Recording and
Media since 2014. Prior to her appointment, the school did not offer
a live sound class. Barrat was contacted by one of her former PAVI
teachers, Shawn Cole, who was an instructor and curriculum devel-
oper at Nimbus at the time, and asked if she would like to develop
a course. As she had been on the road non-stop for the past three
years, she welcomed the chance to spend some time at home and
jumped at the opportunity.
Barrat wrote the live sound course curriculum, and updates it
frequently. “It follows the trends in the industry,” she explains. “There
are a handful of other instructors for the course as well who help with
the updates and can share their expertise with the students. We try
to make it as hands-on as possible, with access to local venues where
we take our students to shows once a week, as well as a live room
with a full PA and stage at the school.”
She finds teaching to be a very rewarding experience, and par-
ticularly enjoys seeing the kinds of employment opportunities her
students are offered after graduating from the program. She also
enjoys working with ex-students on gigs.
In the future, Barrat would like to run a tour pre-production and
writing space outside of the city, where musicians can come and
work on their artistic visions. In the next year, she will be working on
developing a series of workshops for beginner musicians on topics
such as how to communicate with a sound tech, sound check pro-
tocols, and so on.
She is also currently working on a very exciting project with The
Harpoonist and The Axe Murderer, so stay tuned…
Maxime Brunet was introduced to audio at the age of 17 through community radio. She now works as both a club and touring FOH engineer. She developed
an introduction to sound class, The DIY Audio Tech Workshop for Women+ , which she has taught throughout Ontario.
18 PROFESSIONAL SOUND