Mixing Seth Meyers: Behind the sound of late night TV

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My day starts.

Usually take the subway in and just kind of chilling out.

That's Fred Hedemark.

And just trying to start off my day and kind of use that time to meditate and just get my mind into the right place before we have a big day at the office.

Fred is an audio engineer based in New York City.

The next stop is 47 Finfield Street, Rockefeller's Venture.

Once he gets off the subway, Fred walks up the stairs and into one of the most famous buildings in the world.

So I walk into 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

I go up to the seventh floor and the seventh floor is where all the control rooms are.

Most audio rooms are pretty dark and they don't have windows to the world, but our room in control room 72 is a little bit different because you can pay to go upstairs and get a tour.

So we actually have glass windows that people can look into to see the productions happening.

This control room is jam-packed with state-of-the-art audio gear.

There are computer screens from floor to ceiling, as well as all kinds of outboard effects, speakers, patch bays, processors, and at the center of it all is a giant mixing board.

Whatever you're picturing in your head right now, multiply it by 10 and you'll get the right idea.

It's very colorful these days, lots of LEDs.

We have testing equipment.

There's a transmission station.

Everything has to be calibrated perfectly because when you work on a late night television show, there's very little room for mistakes.

And for eight years, that's exactly what Fred did.

I was the senior production mixer for Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Good evening, I'm Seth Meyers.

This is is Late Night.

We hope you're doing well.

And now, if you don't mind, we're going to get to the news.

You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC.

For the past 80 years, late night talk shows have been a staple of American television.

From the early days of Johnny Carson.

from New York, the world's fair city, the tonight show starring Johnny Carson to modern hosts like Jimmy Fallon.

From 30 Rockefeller Plaza here in New York City, it's the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

Through the decades, the format of these shows has stayed pretty consistent.

An opening monologue, some comedic segments, celebrity interviews, a performance by a musician or a stand-up comedian, and of course, music from the house band.

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But while the format is pretty straightforward, the sound of late night is a complex beast with many moving parts.

And the person in charge of wrangling that beast is the broadcast mixer, also known as the production sound mixer.

A broadcast mixer takes all of the sound elements of a certain production, music, microphones, sound effects, and mixes them together to create one coherent sound.

In other words, they're responsible for what the viewers hear at home.

On top of that, they also trigger the sound effects during the taping.

Back in the day, they used to have a sound effects playback operator, but they have reduced that position, and the production sound mixers are responsible for playing sound effects.

But the job doesn't end there.

Sometimes they have to be a technical engineer to figure issues out.

Sometimes they have to be a psychiatrist to talk to talent or talk to the directors or producers.

Sometimes they're a manager of a team.

The first secret of working on a late night show is that it doesn't actually happen late at night.

Unlike a fully live show like Saturday Night Live, most late night shows are recorded in the afternoon and broadcast later that evening.

This gives them a few hours to smooth out any mistakes.

But like Saturday Night Live, late night shows are filmed with a live studio audience, so the goal is to do everything in one take.

In the industry, this is called live to tape, and it means a lot of pressure for the production team.

It is a big show, and we're doing it live, and we all want to make sure we do it right and great.

A typical day for Fred would start at 10.30 a.m., about six hours before showtime.

T-minus, six hours.

So the first thing I do when I walk in the door, just look at the console and make sure it's working.

This audio console is pretty similar to the big mixing board you'd see in a music studio.

It's got a bunch of sliding faders that move up and down under the mixer's fingers so they can adjust the volume of different elements, like bringing up the music

and controlling the microphone levels of Seth, his guests, and the audience.

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If even one part of this system fails, it can completely derail a taping.

That's a stumble, and we don't do stumbles.

So every morning, Fred and his team make sure that every component is working as expected.

The first hour is called our ESU.

It's our engineering setup time.

So I go through my room first, make sure everything in my room works.

Then I contact my team.

We go through all the microphones.

Doesn't matter if we're only going to use three that day.

We go through all 24 lavalier microphones, go through all 12 handheld microphones.

Testing check one, two.

We test all my feeds that come from me, which are all the video playback so that the audience can hear it.

This includes any pre-recorded clips, like the fake movie trailers they sometimes make.

Boston accent, probably a Ben Affleck film.

They also check all the sound effects they may use that day.

So they can hear all the funny punches and slaps

and fart noises and all that stuff.

T-minus, five hours.

Once Fred and his team have made sure that every microphone, every cable, and every

is in working order, They're joined by the production team.

The production team are the director, the associate director, all the producers, the writers.

They'll check things like cameras and lighting, props, and choreography, while Fred and his team give them any audio support they might need.

So we are there to facilitate them.

We can rehearse, we can do whatever they want to do that day.

T-minus, four hours.

And then we break for lunch at about 12:30 for an hour.

T-minus three hours.

After lunch, Seth Meyers and the writers will rehearse the monologue with a test audience.

These are just random people that happen to be in the NBC gift shop or even outside on the street.

Every day, they would get on a little PA and say, hey, does anybody want to go upstairs and see a monologue rehearsal from a late-night show?

And they'd bring like 40 people up into our studio.

T-minus, two hours.

At that point, Seth runs through his monologue to see how well the jokes land.

It's the way that the writers can judge if their jokes are funny or not, and then they'll choose which ones actually end up in the monologue that night.

This also gives Fred a chance to rehearse any sound effects he might use for a joke, or even make some up on the fly.

Here's a clip from a monologue rehearsal that Fred remembers well.

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It's a reminder, if you riff way longer than you're supposed to,

they'll come up with a sound effect.

T-minus, one hour.

At that point, the 8G band will come out and they'll do their little sound check for probably about a half hour.

The 8G band is the house band for Seth Meyer's show.

It's led by comedian Fred Armison on drums, with other drummers filling in when he's away.

After that, the band goes backstage and everyone gets ready for the audience to come into the studio.

All the props are put away, the curtain is closed, everything is just set for the show.

And then they start doing the load in for the audience.

The audience comes up to the eighth floor and files into the theater.

T-minus, 30 minutes.

Once everyone's in their seats, it's time to get them primed for the show.

Our warm-up comedian, Ryan Reese, comes out and just tries to get them all foaming at the mouth and laughing and just in a really, really good mood.

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After the warm-up routine comes a warm-up song.

Ryan will go ahead and introduce the HG band, and they will all come out and they will play one song for the audience to get them all warmed up.

After all this warming, the audience is really starting to simmer.

Ryan will then come back out and then introduce Seth.

Seth comes out to a full audience.

Everybody's super excited and surprised because they didn't know he's coming out.

So everybody's really happy.

He says, thank you very much for coming here, tells them about some of the do's and don'ts of the show, but makes it very lighthearted, tells a couple jokes.

By this point, showtime is looming.

When Seth comes out, it's like literally three minutes to showtime.

T-minus, three minutes.

While things are coming to a boil on the eighth floor studio, one floor below, the technical team is doing their final checks.

During that time downstairs, we're just double-checking on stuff, making sure the script is all correct, making sure all of our video elements for the closer look are in.

A closer look is the key segment of late night.

It's an extended monologue about current events and oftentimes the production team works on it until the very last minute.

There's so many graphic elements and so many sound bites that are for that first act so graphics are still being loaded in.

And Fred is keeping track of all these last minute changes, making notes in his script.

I'm talking to my team, making sure they're all good.

I make sure I hit record on Pro Tools, make sure I hit record on my backup records.

T-minus, two minutes.

Seth finishes addressing the audience.

He always says, in a minute, not even a minute, I'll be right back out here.

We'll start the show.

Goes backstage, looks in the mirror.

I check his microphone signals, make sure everything's solid there.

And then the countdown begins.

T-minus, one minute.

The director calls out the one-minute mark and the associate director starts counting down.

She counts down for a minute and then she'll give a 45 and then make sure that we're all recording.

And we say, yep, speeding.

Speeding is audio engineer lingo for recording.

Edit speeding and I'm speeding and

Airbase says, have a great show, have a great show, have a great show.

And then, you know, it's like 15 seconds and then 10,

9.

With every second in the countdown, 8.

The energy rises, seven, the anticipation builds, six, and the crowd gets more and more frantic.

The audience is clapping at five, and they're usually really loud at that point because they're super excited.

They're actually at a TV show, and it's going to be recording, and they're going to see it that night.

Then the band kicks in, the band leader counts them in, and all of a sudden you hear the band play.

A second later, it opens up Ron's microphone.

That's a great feeling when I hear Ron talking, and I also hear him kind of booming through the PA as well because everything is just super loud at the top of the show.

Like rock concert loud.

Beatrice the HG band.

The entire show is not like that, but the beginning is just pure audio energy.

And then you see Seth walk out.

He sits down on the chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, Seth Mod Meyers.

Good evening, I'm Seth Meyers.

This is Leigh Night.

We hope you're doing well.

And now if you don't.

And we're off and rolling.

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For eight years, Fred was the broadcast mixer on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Now, what the viewers here at home is a beautifully mixed episode, with all of the sound elements perfectly balanced.

But during the taping, Fred's on an audio feed with the entire production team, where they're all giving rapid-fire instructions.

Okay, everyone, here we go.

Stand by.

Have a good show.

Have a good show.

Three,

two, dissolve.

Set 10, announced.

Dissolve.

Got it.

Set two.

Dissolve.

Ready for.

Lex is on three.

12 jumps.

Take four.

Tough to shoot, not knowing them.

Ready two.

Two.

During the show, it might be quite busy where you have one hand on the console mixing microphones and then you have the other hand firing off sound effects to go with whatever sketch the writers have written for the day.

There are dozens of individual microphone signals and various guests coming and going.

So the sound of late night is a team effort.

Fred is one of the primary audio engineers, also known as an A1.

Along with Fred, there are three other A1s, each with their own set of responsibilities.

The first is the music mixer, who works on the seventh floor with Fred.

So, the music mixer mixes all the music, house band, guest band, and basically sends that feed to me.

That way, Fred never has to think about individual instrument levels.

Instead, he can control the overall music level with a single fader.

Then there are two A1s upstairs in the studio.

One is the foldback mixer and he's responsible for the in-ears or the stage monitors for the house band and guest band.

These monitors have dedicated mixes for the musicians so they can hear what they're playing.

And then we have our front-of-house engineer who is responsible for mixing everything for the audience which is in the studio.

Along with four A1s, there are also a couple of A2s.

A2s are audio assistants.

We have one that is designated for production and one that is designated for music.

The production A2, Bianca, is responsible for making sure that Seth and all of the guests are mic'd properly.

She's my eyes and ears on the eighth floor, and she's always in constant communication with me during the show.

Finally, there's the music A2, John.

John is in charge of all the equipment that's on the house band stage, and he will also be the one that orchestrates the rehearsal for the guest bands.

This team has to be a well-oiled machine because once the cameras are rolling, there isn't much room for error.

There's a lot going on.

There's a lot of technical things that could go wrong.

For instance, the studio had some persistent radio frequency issues that would cause microphones to drop out.

We knew the problems there and we're trying to fix it.

And it's very hard to try and fix something that's invisible, but you're the one that has to answer for it if something happens.

So just to have that in my brain the entire time thinking, okay, is Seth's microphone going to be okay for this show or is it going to drop out at some point?

That can be very stressful.

But no matter how hard Fred prepares, snafus still happen.

Here's one from the first season of the show back in 2014.

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I'm here with my guest Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Now growing up, everyone knew there were nine planets in the solar system, but several years ago.

Right in the beginning of our show, the big news story was Pluto was not being recognized as a planet anymore.

We had Neil deGrasse Tyson on

and one of our writers was coming out dressed as Pluto.

We haven't had someone in the audience tonight that wasn't too happy about the demotion of Pluto and he has some things he would like to say.

In the sketch, the writer is dressed in a bluish-gray Pluto costume, looking like a giant dumpy blueberry.

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Weren't expecting to see me here, were you?

No, no, I guess I wasn't.

So it was made out of some kind of foam or something, and we had a lavalier microphone on the inside, right below his chin, gaff tape on the inside.

Yeah, well, it's easy to talk about someone behind their back when they're billions of miles away.

Unfortunately, it got so warm in there that the gaff tape peeled off and the microphone dropped and was on the bottom of the planet instead of the top of the planet.

If you were in the audience that day, it would have sounded something like this.

Well, now it's your chance.

You got something to say.

You say it to my surface.

Alright, that's fair.

Pluto, I'm very sorry.

We don't really redo things and do second takes for sketches, especially with a live audience.

So at the end of the day, I had to go back in there and try to repair it as best as I could.

Once Fred worked his magic in post-production, this is what it sounded like on air that night.

Well, you know what?

I've had enough of your rules and your knowledge and your understanding of the way things actually work in human existence.

Other sketches called for very specific sound effects.

We had a sketch where there were two writers, and in the middle of it, they break out into a fight scene.

This country has gone insane.

I've lost all hope.

I know it would make you feel better.

I'm not giving you a hug.

Well, then, how about a big stunt sequence?

And they kind of go away, and they actually have two stunt doubles come in and do like this 30-second fight scene.

You know, they want music underneath it.

They wanted every punch and kick and everything have a sound effect.

And I'm like, you guys are going to like pre-record this, right?

And then marry it together and post.

They're like, no, we're going to do it live.

There was probably about 20 sound effects total in the 30 seconds.

To work up to this, they rehearsed the fight scene multiple times that day, with Fred triggering the sound effects in real time.

And I was able just to do it over and over and over and over again until it was like almost muscle memory.

And when it came to showtime, I was really happy I did that because we just, we nailed it.

Hey, you two, knock it off!

Fred was so proud of that sketch that when people would tour the set, he would load up that scene for them.

Then they could try to trigger the sound effects in sync with the action.

Like, yeah, you want to play some sound effects?

Check it out.

Try and match their kicks and punches.

On Seth Meyers, a sketch with live, rapid-fire sound effects is a bit of an outlier.

Most of the time, the show follows a fairly predictable setup.

The show's pretty straightforward, really.

You know, it's like interview, interview, or interview, sketch, interview, music.

Finally, the last segment ends.

So, the last few minutes of the show, usually Seth is saying good night.

So, we come back up from black, and you'll hear the crowd applauding.

Seth will either be standing in the audience, or he'll be sitting at his desk with a guest,

or he'll be standing center stage with the guest band that had just played.

And he says, Special thanks to all of our guests tonight, and thank you to our band, and thank you to HE band.

I want to thank my guest, Henry Winkler, Brendan Hunt, everybody.

I I want to thank Potter Dennis and the AG Man.

Thank you for watching.

We love you, everybody.

And then the AG band will play their closing theme out while the audience is still clapping.

At that point, Seth is saying thank you to everybody, and then all of a sudden, he looks at the audience and waves to them, says goodbye, and he exits the stage left.

And Seth walks out.

First thing he does is takes the microphone off, gives it to Bianca, and he goes back to his dressing room.

At that point, Seth's job is done and the audience starts filing out.

But Fred still has work to do.

I'm downstairs getting ready to revisit all of the issues that I might have had and things that I might need to fix that night.

Things like a lavalier microphone that peeled off of Pluto's chest or a writer's punch that landed without a thwack.

Any plosives on microphones, I'll go ahead and try to repair.

If Seth's microphone dropped out for a reason, I'll have to copy and paste the desk mic over, you know, so we have continuity on his voice.

If anything needs to to be rebalanced, remixed, I'll bring it back up in Pro Tools later on and fix it.

The studio audience may have heard those imperfections, but when the show airs later that night, what the viewers get is pristine, perfect sound.

Broadly speaking, sound mixers usually come in two forms.

One group works in live audio, sliding faders and balancing the signals at events like concerts, film sets, and sports games.

The other group works in the studio, recording musicians or voiceover artists and mixing and editing for hours in Pro Tools.

But a job like Fred's is very unique.

The really cool thing about being the broadcast production mixer for late night is that we get to do both.

We get to do the live mixing as well as do all the fixes at the end of the night.

And that's pretty rare when it comes to broadcast mixing.

I kind of think of it as the yin gang.

To have the skill set to be able to run Pro Tools and think like an editor while you're mixing a live show is a challenge, but it was also really rewarding as well.

Fred left the job at late night with Seth Meyers in 2022 when he moved away from New York City.

But sometimes he still misses the fast-paced thrill of working on a late night show.

You know, it's fun.

It was entertaining, sometimes educational, and just really happy to be part of a production that's made a lot of people laugh for the night.

But what he misses the most are the people.

I miss the production team.

The best production team I ever worked with.

Just a lovely, lovely punch people.

I had the best boss in Seth Myers.

Couldn't have asked for a nicer guy, better guy that treated his team incredibly well and really took care of him.

And that feeling was mutual.

While the show was being recorded remotely, Seth ended an episode of late night with a special message for Fred and the rest of the sound team.

I have not once in six years done a show in the studio that ended with one of them saying to me, hey, we forgot to hit record, so you have to do everything again from the beginning.

Something that has happened multiple times in this attic.

Fred also feels incredibly lucky that he got to work in New York City all those years.

To ride the D-train downtown every day, to get off at Rockefeller Center, and walk through the doors of that iconic building.

One of my dreams has always been to work for NBC Entertainment, especially at 30 Rock, with those three shows in the building, Tonight Show, Late Night, and SNL.

There's no other place in the world like it, and I will never take it for granted.

And I was so appreciative and so honored to be part of the late night franchise.

20,000 Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of DeFacto Sound.

Find out more at de facto sound.com.

This episode was written and produced by Daniel Seema.

It was story edited by Andrew Anderson.

and Casey Emerly.

With help from Grace East, it was sound designed and mixed by Joel Joel Boyd.

Thanks to our guest, Fred Hedemark.

To learn more about his work and to see photos of him in his audio room at late night, visit audiofred.com.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

Thanks for listening.