ProSoundWeb: It’s a milestone moment in an engineer’s career when the call comes to work with an artist whose music means something to them personally. Working with emerging artists is great fun and it can be inspiring to hear new music, perhaps introduce a band to working with monitors, and play a part in them learning their stagecraft.
4 comments:
I got to experience this firsthand-although not in person. Over the pandemic, an upcoming artist who I really admire was learning to do their own lighting design for their shows, and I reached out, made a good first impression, and established that relationship and that connection, as well as got to help them with syncing cues to a midi input. I really enjoyed that experience, and I learned a lot from it, and I think the most valuable takeaway was exactly what this article was saying. It's incredibly important in this industry to make connections like that, and to foster an environment of collaboration between performers and technicians. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed. Another experience that was really valuable to me was busking a mini-concert for my school, with a performer who was currently off tour. It was my first real foray into interacting with a performer one on one, and getting to understand their creative process and those insights was really critical to my work as a designer.
I found this to be a pretty insightful article. I think the concept of being a good mixer for a band can seem simple, but obviously the execution and the necessary soft skills are pretty involved. They’re skills that are applicable to anyone, anyways. I’m not going to declare myself a mixer in any way, but I think I’ve been around mixers enough to understand that the job is a lot of communication. Everything’s happening in real time, and they need to be able to communicate quickly but effectively. I was a bit disappointed that this article treats all music stars like great people. I was hoping it would talk about what to do when you meet difficult musicians. For example, I’ve been told that Bon Jovi was a terrible guy to work tech for, and it doesn’t seem to me that reflective listening would be effective for all types of people.
This was such an interesting read. I think sound is fascinating, though I sometimes say “it doesn’t work with my brain, or I don’t have a sound tech mind” as a more visually oriented designer, I think that it’s uses and capabilities are so cool and people who are able to harness that and make such awesome art are so incredible. The idea of fostering a working relationship with people is super useful for literally any job or situation. Often in the entertainment industry I hear of designers and directors, or certain relationships like that “pairing up,” like how you’ll see some film directors always using the same production designers, as they know what works for them and can easily communicate. In terms of mixing sound for concerts, it seems like it can be different though also sometimes go the same (like they mentioned mixing for upcoming artists), though the thought of making something so classic (for older well known artists) sound as everyone expects it to be is somewhat terrifying. It was cool reading the tips for doing that better.
Some of the points in this article are so interesting to me. For instance, I was expecting that the advice might boil down to treating popular artists like normal people and not being overly awkward or obsessive about them, which the article definitely does say, but at the same time, one of the first points is to do a ton of advance research into the person by listening to podcasts, reading interviews, etc. And I totally don’t disagree––I think that can be a really useful tool when working with someone new. It’s just kind of odd to think that there is this expectation to get familiar with a person’s reputation and online presence when they are ultimately just another person, and obviously they don’t have to do that for you. Again I don’t disagree that it’s a smart move, it just stood out to me for some reason. Especially when some of the advice is to pay particular attention to their language patterns and essentially mimic them to build rapport (reflective listening). Fascinating.
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