Behind the boards with Detroiter Krystalle Hill

he hardest part of being a black woman in audio engineering is being taken seriously.

“No matter where I go in audio, it’s always a higher echelon of people who are Caucasian; there was no ‘me’ in the picture,” Krystalle Hill, 35, says. “And when I talk to them, they’re like, ‘Oh wow, you really know what you’re talking about!’”

When Hill isn’t working at the Guitar Center as a sales associate, she’s running her own business called Krystalle Klear Soundz, where she counsels singers and bands with their music. And, much like music, Hill tries to find a consistent alignment to support her learning in her community, whether it’s with clients or those around her. She explains her business by focusing not on just being a studio but an educational facility that seeks to include all ages.

“I’m a product of Detroit Public Schools, and kids don’t know that they can apply music to a math problem and work it out in that way. They don’t know they can apply it to science or physics.”

Hill hopes to diversify the field of audio engineering with a message for women – especially women of color.

“All it takes is for women to understand that they can do it, that there’s a market for them,” she says.

She began her journey when her older brother was killed at 24. She enlisted in the Army at 22, becoming an exceptional mechanical engineer and serving for eight years. After her service, Hill lost her younger brother when he was 17 – a block away from where her older brother was killed exactly nine years earlier. Distraught, she decided to move to Texas to enroll at The Art Institute of Houston, where she would graduate as an audio engineer.

“Both my brothers were rappers and they didn’t get the chance to build their dreams. It wasn’t until I really got into (engineering) that I began to understand why my life took the course that it did.” Hill says. “Mind you, I didn’t know anything about audio. All I knew is that I loved music. I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with music.”

Hill returned to Detroit with the passion and efficiency in audio as well as the ability to apply it in every aspect of life, whether providing troubleshoot analysis or bringing out the best in others.

As for herself, Hill says the career has motivated her to help Detroit youth.

“I want to start a school to teach our kids to get acclimated to instruments, let them touch them and feel them,” she says. “A lot of times adults don’t want you to touch instruments because they’re afraid kids are going to break them. Let them break it! And then teach them how to fix it.”