Daniela Pardo Quintana won Gold for her submission in the Traditional Studio category.
Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?
My name is Daniela Pardo Quintana. I'm 25 and I come from Bogotá, Colombia. I'm currently doing my master degree in sound recording at McGill University, and I've been playing piano since I was 7 years old.
What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?
Throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded by music, as most of my family members are musicians, some professionals and some not. Back in high school, I took 2 years of music classes, mainly focused on colombian folk music. There, I understood the importance of keeping our traditions and customs alive, reflected through music. After that I went to the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and got my degree in music, with emphasis on Sound Engineering, and I also took 3 years of piano performance while doing my degree, as I didn't want to stop being a musician. I've always recorded folk/traditional instruments whereas the rest of my peers recorded piano, strings, brass and so on. Once, during one of my recording classes, my professor told me: “you should keep doing that. Sadly it is not common for students to record this kind of instrument and music”. As I heard this, I felt inspired and happy because I was achieving my goal of exploring folk music recording and I had started to fall in love with recording and mixing. It's that same love which brought me here today. My country has an important musical richness and one of my contributions to its legacy as a Colombian is to become an excellent recording engineer in order to work with folk music and show it to the rest of the world.
Tell us about the production of your submission. What is the story behind it? What inspired it? How long did you work on it? Was it your first entry?
This track was part of my bachelor degree's portfolio. The beauty of nature was the main inspiration behind it, specifically focused on the element of water. The name of the song, “Yaku”, comes from the Quechua indigenous language, which means water. We recorded it in two different sessions; the first one focused on the instrumental part and the second one focused on voices. Surprisingly, during the voice recording session, the musicians brought some folk percussion instruments, which I was not expecting to record. However, it's as if magic started to spark as they started to play them. That's when the concept of water made sense to me, as those instruments generated the sensation of a flowing movement, like waves, and created organic sounds through their musicality. Then the percussionist started to improvise an indigenous singing, which I wasn't expecting to record either. Basically, the voice overdubs' session turned into a beautiful, creative and improvised session between the musicians and I. This is my 4th entry. I’ve participated in AES Colombia 2017 and AES Mexico 2018 (silver award) and also LATAM AES Uruguay 2018 (bronze award).
What/Who made you join AES?
During my studies, our professors always encouraged us to join AES and participate in all the workshops, lectures and events we could. When I found the AES Student Recording Competition, I saw an amazing opportunity to meet new people, show my work to the judges and acquire new experiences during the conferences. So I immediately joined AES to participate and it was really worth it!
Tell us about your favorite experiences at the 148th AES convention online.
For me, this 148TH AES Convention online has been the best so far! Although I was not able to meet people in person, this online version gave me the chance to participate in the Recording Competition without it requiring me to travel to Vienna which, in my case, would have been very difficult. Also, in the previous AES Convention, you would sometimes have to choose between two or three amazing events, because they were at the same date and time and you could only attend one of them. Following this, you can watch the conferences online on the website anytime until the end of June which is amazing because of the amazing opportunity to acquire knowledge which you would normally not have the chance to because of scheduling issues. So, all the online experience by itself was wonderful, and provided many different opportunities of learning and getting more involved in the audio industry. I would like to mention two very special moments which I will remember forever. The first one was the conference by Darry de la Soul, about building a career in Sound Engineering. As a student, this presentation was very useful to build my path in the field, I found it to be providing efficient and logical tips and tricks. Finally, the best experience was when I heard my name as the gold award winner in my category. Unbelievably unforgettable moment!
Posted: Thursday, July 23, 2020
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