Hot Seat: Making It In The Music Industry… with Anna Laverty, producer/engineer

TMN has revived Hot Seat to offer our young industry subscribers an insight into what it takes to make it in the music business.

Ahead of Melbourne's eighth annual Face The Music conference, TMN chats to Anna Laverty, a lauded producer and engineer and Songmaker mentor for APRA. During her time working out of Miloco Studios in London in the earlu noughties Laverty worked on albums for Florence and The Machine, Depeche Mode and Bloc Party, among others. Since returning to Australia she has created her own niche, sitting behind the desk for artists including The Peep Tempel, Courtney Barnett, Cut Copy and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.

What are your main pressure points that you focus on within your role? 
Consistently delivering a product that the client is happy with. I try to listen to everyone in the band, the manager and label to ensure they remain a successful band long after the session!

More recently with budgets shrinking I have to draw on all of my experience to work out what we can compromise on and what we can't to deliver a professional, competitive final product.

Do you have a rule of thumb that you’ve adhered to since entering the music industry?
Always be the last one standing...

This goes for each day, I'm almost always the first person to arrive at the studio and the last one to leave at night. And over the years, many people say they want to be a music producer but it takes a lot to actually do it - you have to consistently learn and evolve, make personal sacrifices and, in the early days, work cheap. A lot of people loose steam and end up doing something else.

Do you have any advice for those who want to enter the music industry?
Make sure you want music to be your job! It's ok to do it as a hobby too. Everyone is in this industry for the love of music and not for money or fleeting fame.

But by the same token...never work for free, especially for friends. People won't value you or your time if you don't charge anything for it. 

You’re set to speak at Face The Music in November, which industry issues do you hope are touched on during the course of the conference?
Encouraging collaboration: I think working with other people is so important - letting them into your creative world and trying new and different things. I'm getting excited just thinking about it!

Recording hints and tips: There are no hard and fast rules to recording so I just love chatting to people about what they do and telling people how I get certain tones and results etc and women in audio/music! It's something I'm pretty passionate about and want to be able to encourage other women to get into the industry. 

If you could go back, what advice would you give your teenage self?
Good question! Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Life begins after high school! 

Face The Music takes place at the Arts Centre, Melbourne on November 13 and 14. Passes are available at facethemusic.com.au and member discounts are available from Music Victoria, AAM, APRA, AIR, Collarts, AIM and The Push.