PROFILE
Mariana Hutten
By Ahmed Haroon
There are many women in the Canadian music and pro audio sectors that are making their mark in the industry today . Producer and engineer Mariana Hutten is one of those powerhouses . She is an engineer and an educator at Artscape Daniels Launchpad ’ s recording studios , a mastering engineer at Lacquer Channel Mastering , and a mixing engineer for several prominent music and TV projects .
“ I ’ ve also been doing a lot of mixing for the CBC as of late . I do short promo stuff for their communications department , alongside freelance stuff . [ I ’ m ] essentially their backfill , like when people take time off . I ’ m being introduced and trained on some shows and stuff , as I ’ ve done TV and film before that was complementary to my music work . The month before was busy for mastering . It sort of goes that way for me .”
Being a daughter of Latin American immigrants , Hutten moved around the Americas due to her father ’ s job . “ I was born in Brazil and grew up there until I was nine , then I lived in Argentina until I was 16 and moved to Montreal .” There is where she spent her formative years , performing , recording , and mixing for several different bands with the idea of determining a focus for her audio career .
Hutten didn ’ t grow up in a particularly musical household aside from the early exposure to MTV as a child , which her mother used to enjoy herself , being her early 20s . “ My parents don ’ t play any instruments . I didn ’ t grow up watching anybody play instruments in my family or anything .” She was brought up as a strict Seventhday Adventist . “ On Saturdays , you ’ re not allowed to buy [ anything ]; you ’ re not allowed to watch TV . The only thing I could do was sing and listen to gospel music . I think that that had an influence on me because that was one day of the week in which , literally , all I could do was play , listen , and sing .”
Hutten would record , hear , and analyze herself playing music . She ’ d construct full songs by recording parts and looping them around . This would further ignite a curiosity in her to determine how the technical aspects of performance and music-making worked . “ I was somehow more interested in the gear people were using than the music itself sometimes . I would look up the guitar pedals and microphones used and , instead of geeking out about the writing or playing aspect , I was geeking out about that side of music from an early age .”
Hutten capped her early experience with music and sound with a degree in electroacoustics from Concordia University . “ It ’ s technically a composition major , but you also get three years of recording classes and a lot of very specific research-based audio concepts . Some professors there were friends with John Chowning and such ,” Czapki explains . She moved to Toronto afterwards , and jumpstarted an internship at Post Office Sound where she would build up a collage of project credits in music production and doing post-production for ads and films . She would also work in the gaming industry , testing and programming as well as recording and applying sounds to video games . A year-long “ practicum ” at the Banff Centre in Alberta “ definitely leveled up my abilities as an engineer .”
For Hutten , coming from a family of workers and self-starters , there was no way she was going to have her living costs and an unpaid internship financed by her parents . Hence , she took on paid , audio-related freelance projects to pay her way — whether it involved checking out bands and artists at live gigs and offering up her services as a producer and engineer , or helping friends with setting up studios and recording projects .
On the flip side , Hutten ’ s journey into establishing herself as a full-time sound technician has not been as an easy ride . “ The biggest challenge is finding the right rate in a market that is stuck in a very strange phase [ for music ] and getting respected for what I do . The other day I was talking to a friend who is in tech about how easy it is for IT tech professionals , how a six-month boot camp is enough for a fairly stable job right out of school . Meanwhile , in our field , even after nearly 10 years doing this , we always need to work hard to gain the trust of people we haven ’ t worked with yet . And even then , so much of it is based on ‘ the vibe ’ that even if you do everything right , it ’ s still not guaranteed success .”
And to compound the list of obstacles , Hutten also had to convince her family of her chosen professional path . “ I come from a family of engineers – not audio ones – so I constantly had to show them that what I did was serious work . Now , I guess I ’ ve demonstrated enough financial stability that it ’ s no longer questioned , but it used to be !”
Looking ahead , Hutten hopes to inspire up-and-coming female engineers to pursue a career in the sound arts . She has aspirations of providing training workshops and mentorship to young women who want to pursue a career in music and sound tech sector at her Daniels Launchpad recording studios at some point .
Ahmed Haroon is an Editorial and Content Assistant at Professional Sound .
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