Not so many years ago, before the digital revolution, there was a clearer distinction of defined boundaries in regard to places, things and ideas. Telephones were connected to a wall or a desk, and if one wanted to receive or make calls from a certain location in their home or office, they’d need to have an extension of their phone line installed in the desired area. If anyone was away from their home or office when the phone would ring, then the incoming phone call would most likely be missed, thereby leaving the caller and the recipient unconnected.
The phone itself was an event that required the cooperation of two individuals with at least one of them being in a very specific location to receive the call. Businesses had very defined hours, and if one were to miss their window of opportunity and call after hours then they were out of luck and could not contact anyone unless the company had an answering service in place.
Multi-tasking
All of this changed with the advent of answering machines, pagers, email and cell phones. Boundaries became blurred and less defined, and multi-tasking has not only become the norm, but it has also developed into a way of life which is required of all of us if we expect to succeed in our endeavors.
Granted, multi-tasking does have its limits. For example, we all understand that a baseball team cannot have its pitcher catch at the same time as he is pitching. It would also be pretty absurd for a manager to ask his outfielder to play both center field and right field at the same time so that the team could save a little money. A catcher might be able to call the game from his position (assuming he could be impartial regarding strike calls), but one certainly wouldn’t expect him to be the pitching coach as well. That said, I am not a big fan of multi-tasking, and yet I do it all the time — with varied results.
In my early days of doing sound in clubs, the normal M.O. for the sound person was having to do the front of house mix and monitor mix from the same console, especially in smaller venues. Combined with doing the stage set-up for multiple bands, the audio person, by default, was then responsible for three jobs, and often, in the smaller venues, the responsibilities extended to being the lighting person as well. Of course, all the technical production was channeled through the “House Technician,” so that on top of the other jobs, there was also added the fourth position of production manager. When I was starting out in the world of live audio, I didn’t know any better, and I was happy to have the job(s), but as my skills and understanding of the business grew, I was amazed to find that the borders surrounding an audio engineer’s job description were malleable and not clearly defined.
FOH and Monitors
I found myself moving into better jobs. This meant bigger venues, name acts and better equipment, but the attitude still persisted on the behalf of the club owners that audio was a one-man job. At the same time, the bands were becoming more demanding and discriminating in their needs, and it became an important part of the small venue formula to provide these touring acts with a semblance of concert sound. After imploring a club owner to upgrade his house system, he finally relented and brought in a full eight mix monitor system but, claiming poverty, he refused to hire another engineer — despite my protestations. I can’t say it was an easy time, but again, I was happy to be working, and I received a good education in running a stage, doing eight mixes of monitors and mixing front of house. The main issue I had was getting from the front of house position to the monitor board when a band member requested one change or another in the middle of a show.
It was hectic, but I was making it work, until one evening when I had a show with Parliament-Funkadelic and Chuck Brown as the opener. The show was scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. and both bands showed up late at about 7 p.m. The doors were open to the room and I was on stage with a boatload of equipment trying to sort out my channel list and stage layout for two large horn bands. I remember that while I was standing on stage lost in my own audio hell, an engineer friend of mine walked by and commented that I looked like I could use some help. Without hesitation, I hired him on the spot and never looked back. From there, I went on to hire a stage technician and also a stage manager for dealing with the bands. While I was still multi-tasking doing the production and engineering, I was relieved to be free of the other three jobs.
In the meantime, I was doing brief stints on the road with various jazz artists and found myself once again doing two or three jobs. Now, I enjoy being busy and making a little more money as I go about doing my work, but I found myself in the position of being tour manager, production manager and audio engineer.
Mono-tasking
After a few tours I relinquished as many positions as I was able, and I remember my relief the first time I went as only a monitor engineer. My duties included doing monitors for the band and nothing else. I was busy, but not crazy busy, and I had time to concentrate on doing the job I had been hired to do.
Multi-tasking seems to be an integral part of the business we have chosen, and for those of us energetic types that need to keep ourselves occupied at all times, multi-tasking is sometimes a blessing rather than a curse. On the other hand, stretching ourselves too thin with too many responsibilities only dilutes the best of what we do in each job. Especially now, with our accelerated means of communication, doing production management, tour management and audio would leave us answering texts, emails and phone calls in the middle of sound checks and shows. While many of us are skilled at multi-tasking, I think that advancing the next 10 shows while mixing the current show is a bit much to ask of any engineer.
Audio may look easy to those on the accounting end of a venue or tour. To them, it may appear that we have a plethora of free time when we are not “just spinning the knobs on the console.” Yet audio is a real job, with its own particular demands and concerns, and — regardless of whether one is doing front of house or monitors — there are a lot of people depending upon us to do it right.
To put it in perspective, nobody ever asks the tour bus driver to advance shows while he is “just” driving along in the middle of the night.
