05/17/2024
Memoirs of live sound engineer:
Last night I was too busy/overwhelmed to take any photos or video. We had an amazing mix of artists that were performing ethnic hip hop/folk music and I really wanted it to sound amazing.
My challenges were that not all the artists showed up to sound check on time, some of the gear I was using wasn't operating properly and I was also recording to 2 platforms (one of which was my first time using), so I was definitely being pushed as an engineer while trying to keep everything on time.
As if that wasn't enough, there was this guy who came with the bands and asked if he could sit behind the soundboard and hang out. The lighting technician and I kinda rolled our eyes because we know he was gonna be talkative and interrupting our work flow. Luckily, he was super nice, almost overly nice, if he wasn't I would have definitely of had to have a talk with him and ask him to give me more space. I was already super busy and to have someone talking to me and trying to "help" me do my job was getting quite annoying. He did recognize that I was getting a bit annoyed and backed off a bit but also persisted to tell me how the production was going. Apparently he was good friends with some of the artists.
After his friends played he told me how great of a job I did and reassured me that he saw the issues that came up and how I addressed them and still pulled off a beautiful event. Then he handed me some cash and his card, which I was kinda throwback about because that had never happened before. He looked me in the eyes and asked me to please email him. I took the cash and card and put in by the soundboard then carried on with the rest of the show.
Later that night after the show, I was having a drink and a coworker came up to me all hyped up about how she met a grammy award winning sound engineer and shook his hand. Apparently the annoying and friendly guy was a grammy award winning sound engineer and after all the stress of a pretty involved work shift I was super delighted to know I got a thank and praise from a sound elder who obviously know about the industry and craft the I do.
I slept well that night.
