The sound of Late Night television is a complex beast with many moving parts. In this episode, we step inside the daily hustle of Broadcast Mixer Fred Hedemark as he and his team bring the sound of Late Night with Seth Meyers to life. Along the way, Fred reveals the highs and lows of working on a high-adrenaline, live-to-tape TV show, and shares some never-heard recordings from his years on the show.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Hara Noda - Pyramid
DEX 1200 - Malhana
High Horse - Caveman
High Horse - Let Go Gecko
Ennio Máno - Woodblock Print
High Horse - Sloppy Joe
Hara Noda: Blues
White Bones - Last Laugh
White Bones - Others
Sven Lindvall, Daniel Fridell - Smelling the Fog
Clamshell - Deacon Jeanie
Matt Large - Conant Gardens
Shannon Lauren Callihan - Don’t Make Sense [Rework]

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View Transcript ▶︎

NYC Subway: Stand clear of the closing doors, please!

Fred Hedemark: My day starts, um, usually take the subway in, and just kinda chilling out.

[subway accelerates]

This is Fred Hedemark.

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.

NYC Subway: The next stop is 47th/50th Streets-Rockefeller Center…

[sfx: sounds of getting out of station, walking through streets of NYC]

Once he gets off the subway, Fred walks a few blocks down the street into one of the most famous buildings in the world.

[music in: Hara Noda - Pyramid]

Fred Hedemark: [sfx: footsteps] So I walk into 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

[sfx: elevator door opening]

Fred Hedemark: I go up to the seventh floor and the seventh floor is where all the control rooms are. [sfx: going up elevator]

Fred Hedemark: 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. [sfx: chatter, camera shutter sounds] 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, switchers, 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 ten, and you’ll get the right idea.

[sfx: electronics]

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: I was the Senior Production Mixer for Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Seth Meyers: Good evening, I’m Seth Meyers. This is Late Night, we hope you’re doing well, and now if you don’t mind, we’re gonna get to the news.

[sfx: applause / cheers]

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.

Old NBC Promo: 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…

Carson Announcer: From New York, the world’s fair city, The Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson.

…to modern hosts like Jimmy Fallon.

Fallon Announcer: 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.

Jimmy Fallon: Hit me 5 times!

[band plays]

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.

[music in: DEX 1200 - Malhana]

Fred Hedemark: 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 all the sound effects during the taping.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

[music in: High Horse - Caveman]

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.

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

For Fred, a typical day would start at 10:30 AM, about 6 hours before showtime.

Countdown: T minus: six hours.

[music in: High Horse - Let Go Gecko]

Fred Hedemark: 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 guest and the audience.

Seth Meyers: What was your Star Wars experience like?

Samuel L. Jackson: My Star Wars experience was most excellent.

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

[sfx: sudden stop]

Seth Meyers: 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.

Fred Hedemark: The first hour is called our ESU, it's our Engineering Set-Up 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. It doesn't matter if we're only going to use three that day. We go through all 24 lavalier microphones, we go through all 12 handheld microphones.

[sfx: tap tap testing testing 1-2]

Fred Hedemark: We test all my feeds that come from me which are all the video playbacks so that the audience can hear it.

This includes any prerecorded clips, like the fake movie trailers they sometimes make.

Late Night Clip: Boston Accent. Probably a Ben Affleck film.

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

Fred Hedemark: So they can hear all the funny punches [sfx: punch] and slaps [sfx: slap] and fart noises and all that stuff.

[sfx: fart]

Countdown: T minus: Five hours. Once Fred and his team have made sure that every microphone, every cable... and every, um [fart noise] ** is in working order, they're joined by the production team.*

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: So we are there to facilitate them. We can rehearse, we can do whatever they want to do that day.

Countdown: T minus: Four hours.

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

[sfx: lounge music: Ennio Máno - Woodblock Print... tape FF effect]

Countdown: T minus: three hours.

[music in: High Horse - Sloppy Joe]

After lunch, Seth Meyers and the writers will rehearse the monologue with a test audience. These are random people that happen to be in the NBC gift shop, or even outside on the street.

Fred Hedemark: Every day, they would get on a little PA and say, [sfx: PA on switch] [PA filter] “Hey, does anybody want to go upstairs and see a monologue rehearsal from a late night show?” And they bring like 40 people up into our studio.

Countdown: T minus: two hours.

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

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Seth Meyers: North Korea has reportedly finished building a water pork. Uh sorry, a water pork… That’s when you put a pig on a waterslide. Very rich people do that for entertainment. “Release the pig down the slide… Who am I to judge? I put pigs on slides.” [SFX] It’s a reminder, if you riff way longer than you’re supposed to, they’ll come up with a sound effect.

Countdown: T minus: one hour. [8G Band - Seth Meyers Closing Music in]

Fred Hedemark: 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 Meyers' show. It's led by comedian Fred Armisen 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

[sfx: audience chatter / queue chatter]

The audience comes up to the 8th floor and files into the theater.

[sfx: crowd hubbub]

Countdown: T minus: Thirty minutes.

[music in: Hara Noda: Blues]

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

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Ryan Reiss: I played football when I was younger, but I was a bigger dude, I was about 300 pounds. Bad food addiction. Food addiction is the worst addiction you could have, ‘cuz you can’t stop. Can’t go cold turkey, ‘cuz cold turkey’s delicious.

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

Fred Hedemark: Ryan will go ahead and introduce the 8G 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.

Fred Hedemark: Ryan will then come back out and then introduce Seth.

[cheering]

Fred Hedemark: Seth comes out to a full audience. Everybody's super excited and surprised because they didn't know he was 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.

Fred Hedemark: When Seth comes out, it's like literally three minutes to show time.

Countdown: T minus: Three minutes.

[music in: White Bones - Last Laugh]

While things are coming to a boil on the 8th floor studio, one floor below, the technical team is doing their final checks.

[tech team noises]

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: There's so many graphic elements and so many soundbites that are for that first act. So graphics are still being loaded in.

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

Fred Hedemark: I'm talking to my team, making sure they're all good. I make sure I hit record on Pro Tools *[sfx digital button push]. Make sure I hit record on my backup records *[sfx: more buttons].

Countdown: T minus: Two minutes.

Seth finishes addressing the audience.

Fred Hedemark: He always says, “In a minute, not even a minute, I'll be right back out here and 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.

Countdown: T minus: One minute.

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

Fred Hedemark: She counts down from 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 engineer lingo for “recording.”

[sfx: press record button]

Fred Hedemark: Edit speeding and I'm speeding and Music Mixer speeding and we're all good to go.

In the final seconds before the show, Fred has a ritual. He looks out the window of his control room at the Music Mixer who's sitting across the hall, and the show announcer Ron, who's in a voiceover booth. All three of them will stop what they're doing for a second.

Fred Hedemark: So we all stand up, we face each other, and we salute each other everyday, right before the show. Everybody says, "Have a great show. Have a great show. Have a great show."

Fred Hedemark: And then, uh, you know, it's like 15 seconds and then 10…

Fred Hedemark: 9…

With every second in the countdown…

Fred Hedemark: 8…

The energy rises…

Fred Hedemark: 7…

The anticipation builds…

Fred Hedemark: 6…

And the crowd gets more and more frantic.

[crowd sounds]

Fred Hedemark: 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.

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

[clip in: Late Night opening sequence]

Fred Hedemark: A second later, I open up Ron's microphone…

Ron: It’s Late Night with Seth Meyers…

Fred Hedemark: That's a great feeling when I hear Ron talking and I also hear him kind of booming through the PA as well, ‘cause everything is just super loud at the top of the show, Like rock concert loud.

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

Fred Hedemark: And then you see Seth walk out, [sfx: crowd sounds swell] he sits down on the chair, and “Ladies and gentlemen, Seth Meyers.”

Seth Meyers: Good evening everyone, I’m Seth Meyers. We hope you’re doing well, and now if you don’t mind, we’re gonna get to the news.

Fred Hedemark: And we're off and rolling.

After the break, it's showtime.

MIDROLL

[music in: White Bones - Others]

For eight years, Fred Hedemark was the Broadcast Mixer at Late Night with Seth Meyers. Now, what the viewers hear 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 all give rapid fire instructions.

[music in: Sven Lindvall, Daniel Fridell - Smelling the Fog]

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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 miked properly.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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 mics to drop out.

Fred Hedemark: We knew the problems there and were 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 could 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.

Seth Meyers: Welcome back to Late Night. 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…

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Seth Meyers: We happen to have someone in our 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 blueish-gray Pluto costume, looking like a giant dumpy blueberry.

Pluto: Hello, Neil. Weren’t expecting to see me here, were ya?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Uh, no no I guess I wasn’t.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

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

Fred Hedemark: 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.

[Pluto’s line is quiet and muffled]

Pluto: Well now’s your chance. You got something to say, you say it to my surface.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Alright, that’s fair. Pluto, I’m very sorry.

Fred Hedemark: 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 and 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:

Pluto: 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.

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

Writer 1: This country has gone insane. I’ve lost all hope.

Writer 2: I know what would make you feel better.

Writer 1: I’m not giving you a hug.

Writer 2: Oh, well then how about a big stunt sequence?

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

[sketch fight clip in]

Fred Hedemark: You know, they want music underneath it. They wanted every punch and kick and everything to have a sound effect.

[fight scene up]

Fred Hedemark: And I'm like, “You guys are going to like prerecord this, right? And then marry it together in post?” They're like, “No, we're going to do it live.”

[fight scene up]

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

[fight scene up]

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

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

[fight scene up]

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

[fight scene up]

Seth Meyers: Hey you two, knock it off!

Fred was so proud of that sketch that when people would tour the set, he would load up the scene for them. Then, they could try to trigger the sound effects in sync with the action.

Fred Hedemark: Like, "Yeah, you want to play with some sound effects? Check it out. Try and match their kicks and punches."

[music in: Clamshell - Deacon Jeanie]

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.

Fred Hedemark: The show's pretty straightforward, really. You know, it's like, interview, interview, or interview, sketch, interview, music. Finally, the last segment ends.

Fred Hedemark: 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 and 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.

Fred Hedemark: And he says, “Special thanks to all of our guests tonight, and thank you to our band, and thank you to 8G band.”

Seth Meyers: I wanna thank my guests, Henry Winkler, Brandon Hunt everybody. I wanna thank Connor Denis and the 8G Band. Thank you for watching. We love you everybody.

[8G Band closing theme in]

Fred Hedemark: And then the 8G band will play their closing theme out while the audience is still clapping.

Fred Hedemark: At that point, Seth is saying thank you to everybody, and then all of a sudden he looks to the audience and waves to them, says goodbye, and he exits stage left. And Seth walks out, first thing he does is take his microphone off, gives it to Bianca, and he goes back to his dressing room.

[music in: Matt Large - Conant Gardens]

At that point, Seth's job is done, and the audience starts filing out. But Fred still has work to do.

Fred Hedemark: I'm downstairs, getting ready to revisit all of the issues that I might have had. Things that I might need to fix that night.

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

Fred Hedemark: Any plosives [add plosive] 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 be rebalanced, remixed, I'll bring it back up and 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 VO artists, and mixing and editing for hours in Pro Tools. But a job like Fred's is unique.

*[music in: Shannon Lauren Callihan - Don’t Make Sense [Rework]]

Fred Hedemark: The really cool thing about being the broadcast production mixer for late night is that we get to do both. We get to do 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 and yang. 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's 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.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Fred Hedemark: I miss the production team. The best production team I ever worked with, just a lovely, lovely bunch of people. Had the best boss in Seth Meyers. Couldn't have asked for a nicer guy, a better guy, that treated his team incredibly well. And really took care of them.

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.

Seth: I have not 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 everyday. To get off at Rockefeller Center, and walk through the doors of that iconic building.

Fred Hedemark: 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.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more at Defacto Sound dot com.

Other Voices: This episode was written and produced by Daniel Semo. It was story edited by Andrew Anderson and Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Joel Boyter.

Thanks to our guest, Fred Hedemark. To learn more about his work, visit audio fred dot com.

I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.