I always thought live sound was a thing that I had managed to put behind me in those years, where I was doing “something totally different”. I could not have been more wrong. No matter how much time goes by or how much your surroundings, (and maybe you self), are trying to convince you that you should do something totally different than live sound, it was always there in the back of my head and deep in my heart. Time could not keep this passion down. (more…)
Back home in Denmark I know two very talented women in their mid-twenties and I am envious. I wish that I was their age and just starting out in the industry. On the other hand I don’t, the ten years I spent away from the industry was full of life experience. I obtained a Masters in Science and became an nurse anesthetist. I know I am intelligent and smart and I will always be able to support myself. (more…)
At the end of August, I got the opportunity to work my first festival out of state. Electric Zoo was a three day EDM festival that took place on Randall’s Island in New York. We had five stages, Riverside, Main East, Main West, Hilltop, Spiegal, and Vinyl. (more…)
Last night we successfully completed our first weekend at Austin City Limits Festival. If it was a competition it would be safe to say we won or at least made it into the postseason. (review of show) It was a great show, the weather was not brutally hot or cold and it did not turn into a mud-fest. Both the audience and band brought it. This show at this festival should be put in memory books. Except we get to come back next weekend and do it all over again. Should be a piece of cake right? (more…)
SG Member Malle Kaas has returned to school. She is currently enrolled in the 12 week production training program at Britannia Row. She will be sharing with us her experiences and training this is part two. (more…)
At the young age of sixteen, Magali Couturier happened upon a man setting up for a very small concert in a park. As she watched him set up a couple of tiny speakers, microphones, and equipment, she questioned him. After he finished explaining to her what he was doing, she asked him if that was a real job? When he replied yes she thought to herself that it sounded much more interesting than all of the jobs she had heard about before, and since she always had a love for music it might be worth pursuing.
Magali enrolled in a two-year technical school in France where she earned a degree specializing in sound for Television/Cinema, which she found to be rather useless. She moved to the UK at age 19 where Mags met a small UK audio company and got her start in the business. Some of the lessons she learned working for that company were; “(among how to make a proper cup of English tea!), perseverance, confidence, flexibility, multi-tasking, never to think you know it all, mix with your ears rather than your brain, how to load a truck, and how to lift things a lot heavier than my own weight.” She also picked up skills in accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll, dealing with clients, and all sorts of management skills.
It paid off, and Mags has been working as an independent Monitor Engineer for 19 years. She’s toured with The Dandy Warhols, Rufus Wainwright, My Bloody Valentine, Gary Numan, Duffy, Nick Lowe, Natasha Beddingfield, Lila Downs, Mathew Herbert, and Camille and is soon starting with Marianne Faithfull. Mags occasionally does Production Management as well. Her first tour was with Nils Lofgren. Thrown in at the deep end, she ended up mixing monitors for her company. Mags also spent eleven months managing a US band but recalls that she would never want to do that again.
Mags has had some obstacles to overcome in her early days at the sound company- being foreign (French and working in the UK) young, and female. “There was this one guy who spent every gig we worked together re-doing what I was doing.” She dealt with it by being stubborn, persevering, and having faith in herself. “However the boss of the company believed in me, and he didn’t treat me any different. Actually, he was a very hard boss/teacher, but he pushed me more than I would probably have been able to push myself.” Mags ended up working alongside her boss in running the company for years.
She started working for the Dandy Warhols in 1998 and would still return to the company to work in between tours. Mags did this until 2004 when she became strictly a touring engineer. She now spends her downtime between tours working on her home, an ‘old ruin’ she bought nearly ten years ago in the French countryside. Mags still tries to work at least once a year with the old company, “not mixing but just loading trucks and moving gear around, to keep sane and grounded in this industry.”
Mags loves the constant travel with touring, losing track of time and what day it is, as well as the diversity of the people, places, and culture she sees while on the road and enjoys ‘being a little part of bringing joy and entertainment to the world through music.”
The downside of being independent, however, is that “you never know when the next job is going to come.” The other difficult bits about touring for Mags are “saying goodbye to your touring pals when a tour is over, bad catering, and the lack of a proper croissant and hot chocolate.”
Mags enjoys her alone time on days off, along with running, going to a museum or movie, and “eating gorgeous food.” Her long-term goals include doing what she loves and loving what she does, and right now she wouldn’t change her job for anything in the world.
Advice to anyone wanting to enter the field of live sound reinforcement– “make sure you know the meaning of perseverance.’ Be flexible, open-minded, and have a good work ethic.”
After a bit of a rough show Friday night, we showed up early in the day Saturday to regroup and figure out how to make things go a lot smoother. We did end up catching some heat from our superiors about the hiccups we had the previous night but that was kind of expected. (more…)
I recently worked a Soul Survivor Momentum conference, as a volunteer. I thought it would just involve manning a microphone for seminars… button pressing work. Boring, but I really wanted to go the event and when you volunteer you get to go for free plus meals (win!). So I decided to do it.
It turned out I was wrong. This week long event turned out to be one of the best learning experiences of the summer. I was assigned to work in a venue called Cafe Uno. My responsibilities were manning the microphone for seminars (as I suspected) but then every evening I got to mix a great function band. The venue had two to three hundred people attending each evening, with capacity reaching 1,500 one evening. It turned into a one in – one out policy and at a Christian festival it is relatively unheard of.
Here are some of the things I came away with.
I came away with experience on how to effectively direct stage hands. This may sound strange, but I am so used to either doing it on my own or being the stagehand I did not know if I would be able to effectively direct them. The advice I can pass along to everyone going through this phase in their career (as we all hopefully will) Make sure you make a connection with your stage hand. Do not just start ordering them around. They are a people to and you were once in that position. Find out their skill set. What are they good at? What part of sound do they like doing? What do they want to learn? By finding out these things you will now understand how best to utilize them. This will help keep them passionate and excited throughout the week and what you can teach them throughout the week.
I also go to load an Artic Lorry, (for those residing in the United States articulated lorry- a truck consisting of a tractor and trailer together or a semi…) Everyone has to do it sometime. I don’t have any advice, I just thought it was pretty damn cool!
I had the same function band all week who also stayed on site and were easily accessible. I made a point of spending time and hanging out with them in the ‘teams lounge’. I found having a connection with the band outside of being their sound engineer allowed us to work together better in the evening. I found the difference between day one and day five were polar opposites. It definitely pays to hang with the band!
All in all I had a great time. I went on my own and left having made some great new friends, good contacts and a new appreciation for the guys I work with.
Here is a picture of the biggest evening. We had to bring in extra stewards to man the stage due to some crazy crowd surfing the previous evening. In addition, the venue layout had to be shifted around because the original purpose of the venue was a chilled cafe with a function band playing background music. As you can see it naturally became more like a gig/party vibe.
Thanks for reading.
Recently, I was on a crew of three working a small event at a community college. As the audio engineer on the call, one of my tasks was to set up a small lobby PA before the event and take it down once the theatre portion was underway (the first half an hour or so was one person talking into a wireless mic, so I had ample time to go out and retrieve the PA). The rig consisted of one rolling rack of gear and a large Mackie-powered speaker on a stand. Cake, right? (more…)