So, I'm doing the Facebook exchange thing with a friend of mine. Subject is cooking, and I asked, "Why is it that so many musicians and sound guys I know are the ones who do all the cooking at home?" And her response was immediate and to the point. "Because we have passion for it."
I know, I know. "Oh crap, here he goes again." I talk about passion a lot. And it is because I consistently see the best work out there being done by people with passion. It is a huge, huge thing.
In the past month or so, I have had the honor of seeing some of the best-sounding shows I have ever heard. And guess what links them all? Four engineers of wildly divergent backgrounds and approaches. Three different speaker systems (two of the shows were on the same kind of rig). Three of the shows were on one console and the fourth on something very different. And the two shows on the same speaker system used different consoles. And not one of the three on the same console had the same speaker system. So it was not a gear thing. It was a people thing.
Howard Page beautifully integrated Sting's music with a band and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a treat in every possible way to witness the show. What could have been a feedback train wreck in lesser hands was so "shaded" that it was like listening to-well, I would say it was like listening to a recording, but it was actually better.
David Morgan eschews the use of tools like SMAART and EASE to tune his system, relying on his ears and a high-end golf rangefinder to get distances for delay settings. He does the math and enters the numbers by hand. Out with James Taylor and Carole King, he took what should have been a situation that required sonic compromise and turned it into an evening so enjoyable that my wife/photog and I actually stayed for the entire show and braved the post-show traffic, because we were enthralled. This was an in-the-round show with two sets of front fills and four stereo zones for the main PA, and, walking the room, the only shift I could hear was directional. As I walked from one coverage zone to the next, the tonality of the mix stayed totally consistent. When I went back to front of house and told David that, he muted the PA and fired up his Genelec nearfields, and the tonality was the same. Did I mention no measurement software was being used? David is coming back to Las Vegas on a regular basis to mix Cher at Caesars Palace again soon. We're lucky to have him in town.
Robert Scovill takes a very loud, very old-school rock band and blends the PA in with what is coming off the stage and somehow keeps Tom Petty's pretty soft voice present and on top of the mix in a setting where many engineers would be content to hear the kick drum. You can read more with Robert on page 20.
Finally, Eric Roderick, mixing the Zac Brown band on what is probably the most high-tech speaker system ever conceived – more on that in this month's Production Profile, which begins on page 22 – had a crystal clear mix with a band that offers no place for a mixer to hide. Fiddles, acoustic guitars, tons of vocal harmony – you can't hide behind a thumping hip-hop beat or roaring Marshall stacks.
These four guys working with really varied acts and ranging in age from their 30s to their 60s all had something in common. They were all completely immersed in the music. If they were not actually standing and almost dancing behind the desk they were "chair grooving" and singing along. It was immediately apparent to anyone with any observational skills at all that all of these guys really love what they do, and they have a passion for doing it.
It is easy for me to get caught up in the craziness that is life. FOH is a more than full-time job, plus ProAudioSpace, my work with musicians, a book I just finished writing, doing gigs to get gear reviewed and still trying to make my own band happen is a pretty full plate. And sometimes I find myself thinking, "Oh God. Another show? Do I really have to go to another show?"
But all of the guys I mentioned have something in common with a lot of the folks I see doing lots of jobs on lots of shows. Hell, I even see it in the lampies from time to time. They don't go to work because it is their job and they have to, they take joy in doing a good job because they feel very fortunate to be allowed to do what they do for a living. It is something that I need to try harder to remember.
When you get paid to do what you love, it is not a job. Someone is paying you to follow your passion. And just how cool is that?
