The big thing that my father taught me is not to be afraid to work with mechanical experiments or electronic experiments...He took me to a radio station when I was just maybe eight years old, and I got to see what was going on inside—all the the transmitters and the microphones...I was fascinated...

     In search of a sound effect for progressive groove metal band Hydraform’s album, music producer Sylvia Massy led the musicians out of the studio. “We need the sound of a cannon, and we don’t have a cannon,” she explained in a video shot during a recording expedition in the field. Sylvia’s tone was quiet and instructive—the voice a guide might use to point out features on the trail ahead. But Sylvia was about to blow up something out there.

     Sylvia’s enthusiasm for sound—in this case, loud and pos‐ sibly lethal for mics—might come as a surprise to anyone trained to keep it down. But when she and the band explode Tannerite inside a burn barrel (at the end of the promo clip, which you can find below), it’s impossible not to cheer for the cannon‐like BOOM.

     Play the video to the end, and the initial burst of sound dies off, leaving a long wake of satisfying crackling noises.

     Sylvia even managed to capture the sound effect without damaging her “lovely” Aston Spirit mic.

     “It sounded just like a cannon shot,” Sylvia rejoices, “so we used it in the song. But that day of being out in the field, blowing up Tannerite, was something that none of us will ever forget. It was a real bonding experience.”

So opens the MUSIC Mavens chapter about Sylvia Massy a legendary audio engineer, mixer, and producer with more than three decades of experience and 25‐plus gold and platinum records. She’s also a visual artist, a published columnist, and an educator who advocates, above all else, for experimentation and rule breaking.

(Longing for adventure? Read about Sylvia's life of adventure recording in MUSIC MAVENS.)