Student secures internship with legendary recording studio

Second year Creative Music Technology BA(Hons) student Kalev Villem has secured an internship at legendary Finnish recording studio Finnvox.

Founded in 1965, Finnvox is the longest running studio recording facility in Finland, and it holds twelve world class recording studios within its walls.

We spoke to Kalev ahead of his placement to find out how the lessons learnt on his course helped him to secure the prestigious internship.

I think the biggest skill I've developed that will help me is being super comfortable in an industry-level space and getting in as much studio time as possible.

 

What will you be doing on the placement? 

It’s hard to say exactly what they have in store for me, but I expect it’ll be something along the lines of assisting producers and lead engineers in one of their studios. There will probably be a lot of setting up microphones, amplifiers, instruments, DAW projects (music recording software)

I’m hoping that, as time goes on, I’ll be able to do some basic recording and (fingers crossed) production myself. They’re very interested in giving the interns as much experience as possible based on our individual career goals, so for me, they said, they would give tasks along the lines of reworking existing songs into different genres and mixing some multi-tracks. But time will tell.
 

How have your studies helped develop the skills that you needed to secure this placement?

I think the biggest skill I've developed that will help me is being super comfortable in an industry-level space and getting in as much studio time as possible.

Also, getting a good grip on the basics of my field of music production such as fundamental mixing tools, tried and tested recording techniques, and a robust understanding of the role of a producer will be super important to perform well there.

As for getting the placement, I think the confidence in my ability to do (or rather, learn to do) whatever they would need me to do was the big one, as apart from the interview there wasn't a super arduous vetting process. Also, having a good general sense for the field, and what they might expect from me combined with some people skills and professionalism.
 

What are your career ambitions?

After university, I’m going to continue putting out my own music as an artist and I hope to become a sought-after producer. Ultimately, my goal is to put a lot of great music together with a lot of awesome artists.

I really love the process of coaching an artist through the creation of a song, and all the big picture decisions that go into it. This requires a good grasp of the nitty-gritty details of production, which I've definitely made a lot of progress on at Falmouth. 
 

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