Article

Thursday, November 17, 2011

In Profile: Karl Jackson Chief Audio Technician, United States Marine Band

When Karl Jackson applied for the position of chief audio technician for “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band (USMB) fresh out of DePaul University in 1995, he really didn’t think he’d get the job.

Founded in 1798 by an Act of Congress, the USMB is the oldest continuously active professional musical organization in the nation, with a stated purpose of providing music for the president of the United States and the commandant of the Marine Corps.

“I thought I didn’t have a hope,” Jackson says, “but they interviewed me and within a few months I enlisted in the Marine Corps, moved to Washington, D.C., and went to work.”

Strictly speaking, it was a little more complicated than it sounds. “When a person joins ‘The President’s Own’ they have to secure a secret security clearance for access to the White House,” he notes. It’s a process involving multiple interviews with defense intelligence and, understandably, a thorough background check. “They visited every place I’d lived and talked to people I’d known.”

There’s a lot more to Jackson’s job than working high-profile government functions. The USMB plays approximately 500 shows annually and Jackson’s roles range from mixing and recording those shows, to engineering sessions featuring the USMB and some of the world’s most accomplished musicians at the Corps’ dedicated rehearsal/recording facility, to preserving and archiving USMB recordings (some of which date back to 1889).

Career Path
Although initially surprised he got the position, in many ways, Jackson’s background makes him an ideal fit. He remembers first becoming interested in technology as a child growing up in Buena Vista, CO.

“My father was an electrician, so I had a soldering iron in my hand from a very early age,” he says, laughing. “I remember helping him wire up an organ for a friend of ours when I was really young.” He also had a parallel interest in music and played trumpet throughout high school, then in college, and, for a time, semi-professionally in the Washington area.

It was actually one of Jackson’s teachers at DePaul who suggested he apply for the USMB. But it wasn’t the first time a teacher had an influence on his career path. Jackson says, recalling a school music teacher, Harold Creswell, who was crucial to his early development as a musician. “He was one of the first people to take me aside and say, ‘you know, you could be really good if you applied yourself ’.”

The message was simple, but it stuck and gave Jackson something to focus on at a time when he was just beginning to consider what direction to take long term.

Like Jackson, many of his six siblings are technically minded. “I have four brothers who are engineers, and a sister who’s a math teacher.” There’s also a family connection to the military, he adds.

His father served as a submariner after the Korean War, and two of his brothers currently serve in the Air Force and Navy. In college, however, a career in the military wasn’t on his radar. Rather, Jackson’s own instinct to serve others manifested itself in his volunteer work for organizations like Habitat for Humanity and community literacy initiatives. He also worked for a time as an intern in various Chicago area recording studios.

As it turned out, however, his degree, with its dual emphasis on the sciences – physics, electronics and mathematics – and music theory and performance, made him an ideal fit for the Marines. “Being able to sit down with a complex score, discuss it with the conductors and musicians and edit based on the score is absolutely essential in this job. You have to have strong score reading and musical chops.”

Customs & Courtesies
Now, given Jackson’s security clearance, and the Marines’ reputation as one of the world’s most proficient combat forces, you have to wonder if the job requires any additional skills – such as the ability to take out a heckler armed only with a piece of dental floss, for example?

Jackson chuckles at the suggestion, explaining he was brought into the corps through a process called “lateral entry,” which does not require combat training.

He did have to undergo instruction for the position, but primarily in the customs, courtesies and history of the Marine Corps.

Still, that begs the question: What effects do those customs and courtesies have on his job, and just how “military” are the day-to-day workings of the USMB?

“We’re at the intersection of – probably – the best concert band and the best professional military organization in the world, so both have pervasive impacts,” he says. “We’re part of the hierarchical structure you’ll find in every military, but at the same time, we have to maintain the intimate feeling, the family structure, of a musical organization where we have to treat people informally at times.”

Jackson does refer to the mandate of the USMB as a mission, however, particularly when describing the steep learning curve he faced early on in the job. “One of the challenges was walking into a venue like Boston Symphony Hall with recording equipment and a bag of microphones and trying to figure out how to position mics optimally. It’s tough to hang mics in that room. There aren’t exactly a lot of convenient holes in the ceiling. You have to drop lines in carefully and use fish line to get them exactly where they need to go.”

Over time, he developed his own system, he says. “Through experimentation we came to the conclusion that a near coincident technique, supplemented by some flanking mics and judicious use of spot mics, gave us the best chance of not only capturing ensemble balances, but the stereo field and the location of an instrument on the stage.”

Working at some of the most iconic venues in the nation with the USMB has awoken in Jackson a keen interest in acoustics, an interest that has prompted him to contemplate how best to combine the various skills and interests he’s developed over the past 16 years.

And as he becomes eligible to retire from the USMB in a few years, he is considering pursuing a Masters degree in architectural acoustics, with an eye to transitioning into a career in performing arts facility and acoustical design at some point in the future.

Fulfilling A Mandate
When it comes to live sound, Jackson doesn’t walk into a series of similar venues, with the same gear and the same band night after night. Shows range from full concert band to smaller orchestral, jazz and contemporary country music ensembles, at venues running the gamut from school gymnasiums to Carnegie Hall to the Lincoln Memorial.

Touring is only about 5 percent of the gig and many performances requiring larger systems are outdoor summer shows and, with a few exceptions – like a series of concerts the USMB was invited to play in Switzerland at the invitation of The World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles in 2001 – mostly in the continental U.S.

Put mildly, some shows and some of the musical selections performed are more complex than others, particularly when it comes to fulfilling the USMB’s mandate to introduce new music to audiences. Among them, for example, a symphony including some decidedly non-traditional components: “Shotguns going off in the concert hall and marching bands in the middle of the audience, things like that,” Jackson says.

In every case, whatever the case, when recording and mixing the band, Jackson’s approach is to stay out of the way of the music.

“There’s a lot of sound coming off the stage. My goal is to subtly reinforce that without washing it out. That’s one of our most important values,” he adds, “to be low visibility and just as transparent to the musical product as we can be. If nobody knows we’re there, we’re doing our job right.”

For events like the January 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president, Jackson doesn’t mix the show. His focus during inaugurations specifically is on being an intermediary between those calling the show and the front of house position and, perhaps more importantly, managing playback when necessary. That’s an absolute necessity at events the entire world is watching, where nothing can go off the rails.

“One of my most important roles is to ensure that even if every instrument in the band is frozen solid, a block of ice, that there’s still ceremonial music.”

Backups for inaugural celebrations and other large-scale events are usually recorded in the USMB rehearsal facility, and they have resulted in some standout moments for Jackson. Among them, a session featuring Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill and Gabriella Montero recording a quartet piece by composer John Williams for the inauguration.

“Hosting that session in my facility was one of those ‘is this real’ moments,” he says, as has been meeting - if only briefly - each sitting president since the mid-1990s.

Jackson working in the freezing January 2009 weather at the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the U.S. (click to enlarge) For more photos of the system for the 2009 inauguration, click here.

Preserving A Link
He’s grateful the USMB took a chance on him early on, and is also proud of his role in preserving the musical heritage of “The President’s Own” and in contributing to it with the recordings he’s engineered. But he seems to take the most pride in being part of an organization that – for those who have served in the Corps and the armed forces in general over the course of time – is integral
in preserving a link to their past.

“That may be a tie for first place when it comes to the best part of the job – the audience reaction,” he says. “I can’t count the number of times that people have talked to me about their experiences,
or their parent’s experiences in the military, and how meaningful it is to them to feel proud about that, or to regain that pride in their service.

“Frequently, we’ll be doing a concert in a high school and the place will be packed, 2,500 people, all sitting on bleachers. We’ll play ‘The Marine’s Hymn,’ for example, and I’ll look over and see a Korean War era veteran struggle to get up from his seat and stand at attention. That is the best part of putting on a Marine Band concert; talking with folks and gaining a deeper appreciation for what they’ve contributed to our military and our country.”

Based in Toronto, Kevin Young is a freelance music and tech writer, professional musician and composer.