A day in the life of a sound guy

When I'm driving along, every ounce of spring-straining space taken by PA gear, my biggest fear is having to deal with a new venue. As I approach the place that's going to be my workplace for the next ten hours or so, my first concerns are mainly selfish: "where am I going to park, how do I get gear in, how many stairs?" I've set up a rig in a venue that was three landings up, and no lift (in Salamanca Place). There's a theatre, though, in Launceston where a street door nicely opens almost directly onto the stage . . . but the street is a narrow one-way lane, and the nearest parking is about thirty yards away. So I have to park on the footpath illegally and hope that I don't get booked while bumping in. The Stanley Burbury Theatre was designed as a lecture theatre at the Uni of Tas, but it's big, and is sometimes used for concerts. There is talk of operating it on a more commercial basis, and staging many more concerts there. So how do you get gear in? Through the main door, through the foyer, down the steps between the seats in the auditorium and then on to the floor area. Then bumping out . . . all the way up the steps again. They will have to fix that.
 
It's one thing finding the entrance to the venue, but another actually getting in. I test the door . . . it's locked. I walk around, looking for other ways in, but they're all locked as well. "I did say 2pm?" I ask myself, looking at the clock on my phone. I ring my contact. No answer. I sit in the car and rest my head against the headrest. I don't turn the stereo on. I like quiet, and even when I'm driving I'd prefer to hear the sound of the tyres on the road rather than music or talkback radio.
 
"Sorry we're late", my contact mouths through the car window. "We just had to finish watching a TV show. Have you been waiting long?"
 
While they fiddle with more keys than on a piano, trying to find one that fits the door, my apprehension increases, rising to a peak as the door swings open, revealing an enigmatic darkness beyond. "Is this venue going to be nice to me, or am I going to have to fight an unruly, uncontrollable beast the whole night?" One of the worst venues I had to mix in was a community hall in Battery Point. It's old, built like a concrete bunker, with curved walls at each of the long ends. Roof, floor and walls (stone) are all highly reflective. You clap your hands, and the echoes hit you on the back of the head like a machine gun, then rattle around for about three days afterwards. It’s a physical ring modulator. The Hobart Town Hall is not much better. There are so many venues where doing the sound is a matter of survival, a bit like a Formula 1 driver trying to keep on the track in the pouring rain. Trying for subtlety in the mix is impossible. Perversely, I equally dislike dead venues. There is so much sound absorbing material that it's like being an anechoic chamber, and you have to push the system hard to just get above this soul-sucking nothingness. Give me a lively, controllable room and I'm in heaven.
 
"Where would you like me to set up?" I ask, looking askance at the handkerchief-sized stage and the room totally filled with seats. They show me the lighting box up the back. I've had to share lighting boxes on occasion (e.g. Peacock Theatre). It is not good. It's like trying to drive with blinkers. And while I am a reasonably sociable fellow, it can be a patience-testing time, bumping continually into the follow-spot operator and tripping over a tangle of power leads, empty light globe packets and discarded coffee containers. Where I locate myself depends on the nature of the gig. If it is a concert with a respectfully attentive audience, I like to get towards the back of the auditorium. That way I get to appreciate the 'wholeness' of the sound. On the other hand, if the gig is a noisy one, with a bar going and people chatting at tables, I like to get closer to the stage. That way I can mix for the people more intent on listening, and leave the chatterers to their own devices. Trying, from the back of the venue, to get above the ambient noise of excited punters is just asking for an escalation of noise wars. If good sound is important, then I need to be in a location where I can produce good sound.
 
I find myself a reasonable spot, then go in search of power points. Are there any? Do they work? Are they clean?
 
"I'm not getting any power from this power point," I observe.
 
"How strange," they say, "It was okay yesterday. Oh, that's right, it's turned off at the switchboard."
 
"Can you turn it on?"
 
"Yes . . . no . . . the guy with the key won't be here till 7.30".
 
That sometimes happens, and so I have no idea of whether I've got a system or not until nearly starting time. But sometimes they point to a powerboard hanging from the wall. There's the power. I ask where all the other leads from it go. One goes to the urn, one goes to the fairy lights, the other goes to a bain marie, and the fourth goes to a long extension into which even more devices are plugged. The urn clicks on and everything shuts down. Fortunately, most venues have good accessible clean power these days, and having to deal with earth loops (or even unearthed circuits), and finding power is a momentary hiccup. Sometimes I'll run everything off the one power point, running an extension alongside the snake. At other times I'll plug the desk and peripherals into whatever I can find.
 
Setting up the stage is not normally problematic, but sometimes there are challenges. I was called in to do a job at short notice. I rolled up to discover that there was an act on the stage, and several acts on the floor of the venue, around which were a cluster of tables. Adding to the challenge were the dancers that would use this floor space as well. I didn't have two systems. And I wasn't sure how I could clear away a floor system so that the dancers wouldn't trip over mike leads, wedges and other gear. It could have been done: speakers could have been flown above this central area, and the performers could have been attired with wireless in-ear monitoring and mikes. But that would have been a major undertaking, and I needed much more gear than I had with me. Besides, there were no anchor points in the roof. In the end, all the performers played on stage, with the dancers enjoying a clear floor space below.
 
Once I've got speakers in place and wired up and the desk and rack connected, I settle for that moment of high expectation. The speakers are wound up, the desk and rack are on, and I've just pressed the play button on the CD player. Master fader on desk is up. I check signal coming in on PFL . . . nice rows of healthy looking lights. Then I slowly raise the channel faders . . . ah, such pleasure! This exquisite joy as the music fills the hall gloriously, sparkling in its clarity . . . the sensation is almost orgasmic!
 
But not all venues are nice to me. The biggest source of mud is in the lower-mid frequencies, and I often find I have to EQ these out. I set up some mikes on stage and start figuring out where my problems are going to be. Some engineers can push the system into feedback and immediately recognise the frequencies ("take out a bit of 160 and some 5k, Mike"). I am not as adept as that, but fortunately I have a real-time analyser that can show me which frequencies are a bit lively. I whip these back into line with a parametric EQ. After a while, I am satisfied that the system is as stable as it's going to get. But that's with an empty venue. It all changes once people are in there, and I have to be alert to these changes. Despite soundchecks, the first few minutes is often a scarey time, and requires alertness and quick thinking. I use digital EQs, which are really neat, with lots of useful tools. But they are not as quick as manual EQs.
 
Setting up the system is an enjoyable time for me. I like a lot of time to do it carefully and tidily, and I don't like rushing it. Haste increases the margin for error. One job I did with little time to spare it seemed I was getting no power to the rack. I changed power points. Still nothing. Maybe the power board in the back of the rack had gone. I plugged on of the EQs directly into the power point. Still nothing. This was weird, because I discovered the power point was fine when I plugged a lamp into it. The I twigged . . . all the racks units were switched off! Switched them on, and up popped the lights, like the gaudy christmas tree it is. It just goes to show that even if you are in a rush, you still need to take your time so that your brain doesn't overheat and have silly lapses like that.
 
Once the rig is set up, my pre-gig stress vanishes, and I can spend the rest of the time until sound checks feeling relaxed and confident. Soundchecks are useful if I'm not sure what the acts entail, but mostly they are there to make the performer feel more secure. After you've mixed for a number of years, your reaction to what's happening onstage becomes almost intuitive. It's a bit like drifitng off into a daydream when you're driving, then you realise you can't remember driving along a particular stretch of road.
 
That is not to say there aren't difficulties. Some performers aren't used to hearing themselves through foldback, and they back away from the mike when they do, which makes them to difficult to mike. The obvious answer (to turn the monitors down) doesn't always work, because if they are not aware of their presence in the monitors then neither are they aware of their presence in FOH, and they can wander around the stage and away from the mikes. Other performers have poor mike technique. They forget where it is, playing their fiddle to the wings. Or forget to adjust when they change instruments. Or cup it in their hands, inducing protesting feedback squeals. Or have no control of their plosives, and pop their 'p's and 'b's like a machine gun. Or talk into from a distance of about two metres. Or have no idea of the proximity effect, getting close and intimate and generating nothing but an unintelligible vocal rumble.
 
Then there are the foldback addicts. They like the foldback really loud. That's okay if the venue will allow it, but sometimes in a smaller venue, the foldback is louder than front of house needs to be. This is nasty, because the audience hears sound mostly coming from the back of the monitors, or reflected off the stage back wall, and this is awful, sludgy stuff. I can only hope that my diplomatic skills can convince them a softer foldback would be beneficial.
 
There are those who go: "Can I have more of my guitar i the mix . . . yes  . . . that's good . . . but now I can't hear the others, can you put them up a bit please . . . now I can't hear the guitar, can you put me up?" and so on.
 
Or:
Mr Banjo: "Could I have more banjo in the foldback?
Mr Mandolin: "Can I have more mando; I can't hear it because of the banjo?"
Mr Banjo: "More banjo, please. The mandolin is too loud"
 
And on it goes in an endless 'more me' spiral circulating into a crescendo of foldback fever.
 
There are also the backline bombadiers, whose only Italian is fortissimo. Amps are dialled to atomic explosion loud, and drums are hit with sticks as thick as two by fours. Even right out of the mix they are seriously overpowering.
 
However, I generally manage to convince the players, and manage to find, a balance that keeps everyone relatively happy. Sometimes there are tricky egos to deal with. Most of the time, the source of these problems lies in insecurity, and if I can deal with the insecurity, assuring the performers that they are in safe hands, things work out fine. In my early days of mixing, there were two engineers that were, in effect, my mentors. One was a technical wizard, and could make systems do two-and-a-half backward pikes. He knew every impending feedback frequency by name. However, he had little empathy for the performers. He came, did his job, and had little time for on-stage cantankerousness. The other was not quite as technically proficient, but he developed a huge rapport with the performers. He recognised that performers are nervous before they played, and did his best to put them at ease. So I stole as much of the technical I could from the first, and as much of the empathy I could from the second.
 
The greatest cause of undesirable noise is, in fact, from performers. The two most common causes are flat batteries in their pre-amps, pedals or whatever (as a source of teeth-gnashing distortion and hiss), or dodgy leads (crackles, hums and silence). So I hand out spare batteries and leads. I often get an accusatory stare from the stage when a guitar goes missing, to be followed with a sheepish apology when they realise they've forgotten to plug themselves back in after re-tuning. Or with great panache, the guitar player whips the lead out of his guitar and there is a thump through the system because I couldn’t hit the mute in time.
 
Does that make me a spotless saint? Not really. I make heaps of mistakes as well. If the venue is acoustically friendly, I will leave all the stage mikes on. But if it is unstable, I will mute channels that are not in use at the time. Alas, sometimes I forget to unmute when they start up again. This time the accusatory stare is justified. At other times (even though I colour code them) I lose track of which mike is where, and I'm wondering why one voice is getting louder while the the other still can't be found . . . until I discover I'm shifting the wrong fader. Then there are the times I forget to mute the system when changing a mike, or forget to switch the phantom power on in the first place and wonder why I’m getting nothing from the condensers.
 
Once the night has started and I'm happy with system stability, I can afford to relax a bit. My aim now is not to make sure things are working and sound good, but to make things sound better. Every performance tells a story, and through the desk I can add to this story by making the mix reflect and reinforce it. This is my 'flower arranging' analogy; taking the individual components and creating a soundscape that's greater than the sum of parts. And this is the real buzz to mixing, where the magic for me is, and why I continue to ruin the muscles on my car and the springs in my back (or maybe that should be the other way around).
 
Eventually the night comes to an end. The audience has gone, the performers have gone, and there are only a couple of organisers left. With luck, they will leave me to pack up in peace. I could do with help, but I have a particular way of packing up that helps me make sure I don't leave anything behind. I am so scattered-brained that if I don't have this procedure, I could easily forget something. And the last thing I need is some helpful soul coiling up the mike leads for me, wrapping them around and around their elbow.  However if there is distance or height involved in getting stuff out, I am exceedingly grateful, and I’m willing to sacrifice my method for able-bodied participation.

I eventually get home, dead tired, yet it takes me an hour or so before I’m ready to count sheep. But before I do, I check the calendar for the next gig. I can’t wait!