What The Faculty Advisor Had to Say
We had an opportunity to speak to Rob Jaczko, who served as Faculty Advisor for Berklee's winning entry just a few days before students returned to the school for the fall semester. We asked him to reflect on the experience. Here's what he had to say.

The Value of the Competition
"This is all hands on deck – the team really has to grapple with all the issues that we teach them here at Berklee. It's external – there's that unknown of what other teams are bringing to the table so that pushes them even harder. The challenge of working with one palette of microphones puts a decidedly different spin on the project

It's a great critical listening exercise and that's a lot of what we do here. It's about making choices and deciding if whether those choices represent the appropriate musical solution. "

Forming the Team
"We had two students who were principally behind organizing the rest of the team. They brought this idea to MPrEss, our student music production and engineering club. They had a lottery for selecting the team members, since there's a practical limit to how many individuals can be involved."

The A&R Aspect
"We're fortunate here at Berklee that we have 4,000 students from 75 countries – just a real diversity of talent from all over the world. I can't think of another institution that has this kind of musical pool to draw from. My recommendation was to choose something that showcases this diversity. This year, it was a Jordanian singer singing Spanish. It feels Latin on the surface, but it has other world music undercurrents to the track – it really represents the diversity of our school."

Go, Team!
"The team was really focused and produced a strong collaboration, which is the cornerstone of what we do here.

They had no experience with some of these microphones – in particular the VP88 stereo mic, which was new to the Mic Locker this year. I was really impressed with their inventive engineering approaches.

Another example of that was the use of the KSM32 on female vocals. It showcases the idea of not being pre-disposed to a specific mic. The key of the song, the style of the song, the nature of the singer's voice, the tempo – all these things were considered in making comparisons and a choice. They pulled the KSM32 into the vocal mic shoot-out along with some other mics typically used on vocals. They might have chosen a more typical vocal mic, but ended up with a great vocal sound with this one.

Overall, I was pleased with their organizational abilities, the teamwork aspect, the inventiveness of the engineering and the musicality of the finished product. "

Good Advice
"As pros, we always have an idea of a starting point, but we have to be willing to abandon our opinions when faced with the facts of the moment. The same vocalist on a different day will sound different.

For each mic placement, our teams were conscious about putting their ears in that spot and listening. That's always the starting point, even if you've recorded an acoustic guitar 100 times. Put your ear where the microphone is. Part two of that is real communication with the musicians, to make sure that they're playing in a balance and dynamic that actually works for the room. So, it's (engineers) being open to critical positioning and (musicians) working at the appropriate volume and balance, especially with an ensemble. Two sides of the street."