Nathan Lively's Blog, page 20

Best Free and Paid Online Training Webinars, Courses, and Certifications for Live Sound Engineers

This is a list of the best free and paid training for live sound engineers online today. I included all webinars, courses, and certifications I could find that required a deep time commitment from the student and excluded shorter demos and casual videos.

Did I miss something important? Comment below and let me know.

Free

Audinate – Dante certification.

Digico – SD9 training.

Harman – Introduction to Audio System Design, Audio System Design for AV Professionals, BSS Audio Signal Processors, Crown Amplifiers, DBX Signal Processors, JBL Loudspeakers, Soundcraft Mixers.

Martin Audio – Free webinar trainings on their system optimization software, control software, and speaker deployment.

Meyer Sound – The webinars section has disappeared from their site, but I dug these up on Vimeo. Here are their videos on MAPP XT.

Shure – Ethernet Networking for Audio, Wired Microphones 101, Microflex Wireless Training, Wireless Workbench 6 Video Tutorials, Advanced Techniques for RF Coordination, Microphone Techniques for Theatrical Productions.

Sound Design Live – Intro to Sound System Tuning, How To Make Money as a Sound Engineer.

Waves – LV1 Mixer Training, Start Mixing with Plugins, SoundGrid Certification.

Yamaha – Training on their CL, QL, and TF consoles.

Paid

Association of Sound Designers – Acoustics & System Design, Vocal reinforcement & Radio Mics, Computer and Audio Networking.

Pro Audio Workshop: Seeing Sound – Insider secrets to quickly and effectively maximize sound system tuning in any room.

SoulSound – Monitors from FOH, Mixing FOH, Stagecraft, How to Set Up A Small Business

SynAudCon – How Sound Systems Work, Principles of Audio, Transformer-Distributed Loudspeaker Systems, Digital Signal Processing, Audio Applications, Sound Reinforcement for Designers.

 

 

This article Best Free and Paid Online Training Webinars, Courses, and Certifications for Live Sound Engineers appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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This Is How to Find the Perfect Show Volume Without an SPL Meter

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Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of Sound Design Live, I speak with Chris Huff from Behind The Mixer and the author of Audio Essentials for Church Sound. We discuss how to find the perfect volume, why your wireless microphones might stop working tomorrow, and what to do when disaster strikes. Plus these questions from Facebook:

Nick: Subs on an aux: yes or no?
Ching: So you do sound measurements with any kind of tools for a reference? Process?
ELMER: Which instrument does he find to EQ the easiest and which instrument is the most difficult?
DARRAN: How long did it take to write the ebook, did he have any obstacles to overcome or ever feel like giving up!
Jeff: Tips for mixing backing tracks and live vocals?

Sometimes people complain about the volume, but really they just don’t like the music.

Notes

All music in this episode J Anthony Allen.
Huff’s eBooks: Equipping Your Church For Audio, Audio Essentials For Mixing Vocals, Audio Essentials For Church Sound

This article This Is How to Find the Perfect Show Volume Without an SPL Meter appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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My Results from 30 Days of Ear Training

Hypothesis: Through 10 minute sessions of daily ear training I will increase the speed and accuracy of my pitch detection and EQ application.

Why: I’m sick of guessing and sweeping with the parametric EQ. I want to nail it every time. I don’t want to fear microphone feedback anymore. Ringing out stage monitors is a waste of time. I want to quickly remove any feedback as it occurs.

Results: After 30 days I made a 13% increase in my EQ ability and tripled the speed and accuracy of my pitch detection.

When it comes to listening abilities, I have always had a growth mindset. I don’t think I’ll ever have golden ears, but I do believe that I can train my ability up to a useful level. This is very important for me and all live sound engineers because we need shortcuts to survive.

During my Live Mix Mastery pilot course last year, I talked to a lot of sound engineers about their biggest problems out in the field. I got a variety of different answers, but the common trend among all of them was the need for speed. Everyone I talked to was confident that they could overcome any obstacle thrown at them if only they had enough time. As a result, I put together all of the best time saving techniques I’ve learned over the years and taught them to 20 students over four weeks.

Every technique I taught has been field tested to deliver results except for two things: pitch memory for feedback detection and EQ training for faster mixing.

With Live Mix Mastery I had a great opportunity to test this with a group of professional audio engineers. Here are the steps we took:

User Ear Doctor in SoundGym to test your hearing.
Schedule 10 minutes of daily ear training in your calendar. Three minutes playing Audio Frequency Trainer and seven minutes cycling through games on SoundGym.

Logically, playing these games to improve our ear training to increase our speed in the field makes sense. But I had never really taken the time to practice with a system and measure my results.

What is pitch memory?

You have listened to your favorite song so many times that you can start singing it right now with pitch accuracy. Unless you were born with perfect pitch (yes, this exists) then you memorized those pitches through repetition. This is how the kid at guitar camp with me was able to identify almost any pitch. Songs were his reference. He had learned to play so many of them that playing any note would trigger his memory of a song and then its location on his fretboard. For me at the age of 18, this was mind-blowing.

I had my first taste of this in college when I set my wake up alarm to the song How It Feels to be Something On by Sunny Day Real Estate. One day I was walking into a piano rehearsal room, humming that song, sat down, and realized that I was singing a perfect A. By accident, I had taught myself pitch memory.

One of the first things you learn in music school is the interval relationships between notes on a scale in western music. Once you’ve got the pitch of any note, you can find the pitch of any other note through the memorized interval or by simply following a chromatic scale. The good news for musicians is that there are only 12 notes. The bad news for sound engineers is that microphone feedback could potentially happen at any frequency. And I guarantee you that it will never happen at the exact frequency of one of the sliders of your graphic EQ.

The only thing that graphic EQs are really good for is ear training, which is exactly what we used them for in Live Mix Mastery. Why did we use 1/3 octave spaced frequencies instead of 1/12 octave, which would relate more to our musical experience up until now? Three reasons:

I didn’t think of it at the time.
Audio Frequency Trainer was the best game I could find.
Audio engineers are more familiar with the whole numbers seen on a graphic EQ. It’s a lot easier to work with 1K, 1.25K, and 1.6K than it is to work with 987.77, 1046.5, and 1174.66.

Audio Frequency Trainer will allow you to set a minimum and maximum test frequency, which is why we visited the Ear Doctor first. There are four levels that increase in difficulty by adding more frequencies to identify. I quickly moved out of Beginner, spent about two week on Intermediate, but never graduated from Pro. That shit is hard!

A technique that I used here, which I found helpful, was to move quickly and get emotional. My intention was to send signals to my brain’s pleasure and pain centers that this was important stuff.

Unfortunately, what I didn’t get to do was try out some feedback detection in the field, yet. I will come back and update this article when I do.

Another important thing I learned is that pitch memory either improves or deteriorates. I stopped practicing after the course ended and while I haven’t slide all the way back down to Beginner, I also haven’t been able to maintain a perfect score on Intermediate.

The mystery of EQ

For many people, EQ is a big mystery. It’s one of the most difficult skills to train because we are always under enormous pressure. Wouldn’t we all love to have 30 minutes to listen to a kick mic while searching for the perfect frequencies to boost or cut. Those of you who have tried this have either never done so again, or moved into lighting.

EQ training at home is another thing that always made sense, logically, but I had never sat down to prove. Although none of these games we used are the same as work in the field with all of the chaos of a live room, they do provide the next best solution in terms of variety and tracking. Any time I have a few minutes I can log into SoundGym and play a game. At the moment, unfortunately, the games are not available for mobile, which is why I schedule my practice sessions for times when I know I will be home.

The great thing about this experiment that we embarked on together is that we didn’t have to worry about how to EQ. We just played the game and watched our results improve. The most enjoyable discovery for me was connecting the sounds I have known for years to specific frequencies. Previously I may have know where I needed to hear a filter, but would have had to guess and sweep up to it. The game Peak Master helped me to finally connect those sounds to frequencies. Here’s what one of my students, Sergio, said about it:

I had a big improvement detecting bothering or missing frequencies by ear.

My big takeaway from this whole experience is to stop wondering how to EQ and improve my hearing instincts instead through ear training. Everyone knows when they hear a problem. The skill is finding it fast.

Did I prove my hypothesis?

Although my students did see improvements in the field in increased speed and accuracy of pitch detection and EQ application, I personally haven’t done enough work to give a firm Yes. That being said, I’m really happy to have discovered a method I can track instead of just hoping for golden ears.

This article My Results from 30 Days of Ear Training appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio

[image error]Here’s how it’s done. The process is simple.

Step 1 – Build relationships (aka networking)

“I need to get myself out there.”

People say this all the time, but many of those same people stop short of taking action. Maybe they don’t know who to talk to or what to say. They might not even know how to talk about what they do.

Don’t be like them. Develop a system to regularly and systematically build relationships. Learn how to talk about your work in ways that people will understand.

"Act like a human and talk to people"@NathanDoFrango on getting jobs in the production industry

— Are we Human, or Are we Redhead? (@bobprenger) February 2, 2018

Step 2 – Get referrals

Turn those relationships into referrals.

I think we can all agree that if everyone in the world knew who you were and what you were good at, you’d be booked solid. If you had a million bucks you could afford a media buy-out, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Building your network slowly and intentionally will give you much needed insight into your place in the industry.

Every time I become more clear on who my ideal client is, I’m able to get more of the work that I really love. –Kai Davis

Most sound engineers are just waiting for the phone to ring. Don’t do that. By building relationships and asking for referrals you are generating an unlimited supply of opportunities.

Step 3 – Get the gig

If you are doing the first two steps well then you are staying top of mind with potential cleints and referral sources. But if they are not hiring you and referring you, that’s a problem. New audio professionals on the scene have so much optimism and enthusiasm, but that can quickly turn to panic, fear, frustration, and burnout when they begin to understand the realities of running their own business.

Get to bottom of this problem as soon as possible. Here are some common mistakes:

You are not following up. Sending out your resume once a year is not good enough!
You don’t know how to talk about what you do. “I’m up for anything” is the quickest way to nothing.
You are unclear about audio industry demand in your city. There is always a need for audio. Find it.

Step 4 – Deliver awesome service and be remarkable

If you are great at your job, but people forget about you immediately, you’ll have a hard time moving forward. Even if one client hires you again, they won’t remark about you to other people, which is what you really need to grow your business.

One of the keys to being a successful freelancer is finding an abundance of opportunities to distinguish yourself. This can be difficult in audio when we are the ones in the control room, backstage, and in the dark at FOH. In fact, having a successful event usually means that nobody knows we are there at all. But there are ways that you can be remarkable and still do a great job.

[image error]What does a remarkable sound engineer look like to you? Is it mixing naked or adding sound effects or making the sound check really fun or lifting weights before the show? What’s unique about you that you can use to add value to your service? Your skills, your sense of humor, your values?

Focus on being remarkable instead of great. What are your personal super powers? How can you bring surprise, delight, shock, and awe to your work in an authentic way that would make it impossible for people not to talk about you afterward?

Most of my personal examples are subtle. A Portuguese band started hiring me because I was the first engineer to let them do crazy things with microphones. I said Yes where others said No. A San Francisco sound designer referred me for great gigs because I was the only one who asked for them. A concert producer hired me because he liked my wireless mix system.

The first one was a coincidence, but the second two were planned. Try to get an outside opinion to help you generate some ideas. For the price of lunch you can set up a market research interview with someone who is in charge of hiring people exactly like you.

If you’d like to get my opinion on your business and what you can do to be remarkable, sign up for my free 30-minute Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio one-on-one strategy session. There are 5,841 of you and only one of me, so you’ll need to act fast to get a spot.

Sign up now

During this powerful one-on-one session, we’ll work together to:

Identify the key relationships that you need to get the best gigs.
Uncover the communication breakdown that is sabotaging your success.
Create a next-step action plan.

If you’d like to take advantage of this very special, very limited, and totally free 30-minute Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio private workshop, sign up now.

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This article Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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An invitation for the ambitious

How Anthony Went From Warehouse Tech to FOH Mixer For Cirque Du Soleil

In July of 2016, Anthony Murano hit a wall. The production company he worked for had just entered their slow season, which meant warehouse maintenance and half pay. Anthony wanted to be working on big national tours, making a decent living, and creating an emotional impact mixing for large audiences; instead, he was bored out of his mind and could barely pay his rent. Something had to change.

After a month of stress, Anthony decided to apply for graduate school.

He was rejected.

At first he was upset, but then he realized that maybe grad school wasn’t really what he wanted. Maybe there was another way to create the career he was after.

Anthony had been listening to the Sound Design Live podcast for years and knew that I did some kind of career coaching, but he wasn’t sure what to expect. He signed up for a consultation and during our first meeting came up with a bunch of ideas to move Anthony in his desired direction. We weren’t sure exactly which ideas would work, but we decided on the top ones to test out first.

Here are the main questions we wanted to answer:

What job would be the best fit?
Who can we talk to that does that job?
What is their day like? Do you enjoy the work?
What are the pathways to employment?

Over the next six months, Anthony used a process of diligent industry research and relationship building to expand his network and focus in on three touring companies he wanted to work for, including Cirque Du Soleil. When it came time for Anthony’s interviews, he not only had the confidence that he was the best fit for the job, he also had the background knowledge to impress the interviewers.

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Fast forward to today: Anthony’s not stuck in a warehouse making minimum wage. He’s on tour around the U.S. with Cirque Du Soleil. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

(P.S. At the same time that Anthony got the Cirque tour offer, he was also offered two other, shorter tours that he’d applied for earlier. In Anthony’s words, “I guess when it rains, it pours.”)

UPDATE: 1 year later, Anthony continues touring with Cirque du Soleil as part of the three-person audio team for Luzia. In his own words:

This job is fantastic. The cast and crew are great and take good care of us with the food and housing. I have started rotating into the FOH position and I’m learning a ton of new things.

This article How Anthony Went From Warehouse Tech to FOH Mixer For Cirque Du Soleil appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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This Marketer Will Make You Look at Your Career Totally Differently

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play or Stitcher.
Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of Sound Design Live, I’m joined by the world leader in marketing education for freelancers and consultants, Kai Davis. We discuss the biggest mistakes new freelancers make, how to start your first outreach campaign, a simple process to conduct market research, and the Outreach Blueprint.

[image error]The most impactful marketing tool is repeated direct personal contact.

Notes

All music in this episode by The Riot Professor.
Books:

Outreach Blueprint
The Positioning Manual
Start with No


Two of the best decisions Davis made to get more of the work he really loves:

Being clear with himself about who his ideal client is (industry, field, problem, solution).
Be ruthless about letting go of projects that are not a good fit.


Biggest freelancer mistake: You are undifferentiated from your competitors.

You need to specialize. “I have 5 years of experience solving this issue.” This will help make the value clear for your clients. Can you narrow the market so that you are one of the top service providers just by shrinking the pool of people you are marketing to? Try to specialize until it feels a little comfortable. You can always adjust from there. When we reach that level of specialization, ideas start coming to us. You’ll know when you are starting to have the right positioning when someone responds positively with understanding and action ideas.


Outreach: Any mode of communication that helps us stimulate a conversation and build a relationship with a prospect or a past client or referral source in our target market. Alert them that you are available and here to help.
For the price of lunch you can set up a market research interview with someone who is in charge of hiring people exactly like you.

Can I take you out for lunch or coffee near your office and just learn more about the events you’re producing?
What sort of events are coming up over the next 6 months?
What technologies or equipment are you looking for people to specialize in?
Where do you hire consultants? Where do you need help coming up?
Now you’ll be able to reach out and continue that conversation in the future.


Steps you can take now

Make a list – Start small so you can experiment in a confined area. Past clients, colleagues, and industry contacts.
Use a schedule – When will you reach out?
Plan what you will say – Assume that people will not respond to your first email. What will you say in your second, third, and fourth email?
Repeat. Change the list of people.


Quotes

Emailing humans to start conversations with them about their business, their pains, and their problems.
Outreach to maintain your relationships doesn’t have to be hard. You need a list of people, a schedule, and to know what to say.
I discovered Seth Godin’s blog and read the entire archive twice.
Every time I become more clear on who my ideal client is, I’m able to get more of the work that I really love.
Clean your client list and over time you are able to move from where you are today to where you want to be in the future.
Just by having that metaphorical shingle out there that says, “I work with this specific kind of client to get the best results,” people would start approaching me and I would start getting more referrals.
The people who just emailed me once and never followed up, that signals to me that this isn’t really a priority on their side.
If someone isn’t responding, it’s not because they hate me. It’s because they are busy. So let me find a way to follow up that finds value.
Continue following up until you get a yes or a no. Otherwise, we don’t have any data with which to move forward. No response is not a no.
If it’s a coin flip, what are ways I can use a weighted coin? What are things we can do to maximize our luck surface are?
Asking for the No let’s us get to the objection. Once we understand that objection we can refine our marketing to better address it.
I credit a large majority of my success over the last four years to mastermind groups that I have joined.
Working with a business coach is an incredibly valuable experience to help you set goals, understand what you want to achieve, and move towards that as a destination.
Nobody accomplished it on their own. The truth is, everyone is a little bit broken and that’s ok.

This article This Marketer Will Make You Look at Your Career Totally Differently appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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How Much Do Live Sound Engineers Make?

So, how much money do live sound engineers make?

As you can imagine, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Instead, I’d like to show you a few profiles that represent a cross-section of the industry. Keep in mind that the numbers included below are very specific to one location and person.

PROFILE 1: San Francisco Bay Area
Nathan Lively – Sound Engineer/Designer (That’s me!)

Presently I split my time like this: 90% education through Sound Design Live (that’s this site!), 10% corporate events. I have lived in 8 different cities across 3 different countries over the last 20 years, though, so these numbers have evolved over time. For most jobs, I’m paid as follows:

$550/day working on corporate events. These are mostly subcontracting situations where I receive a percentage of the total labor charges.
$180/day working on concerts. I was usually hired directly by the venue.
$80,000/year touring with the Ringling Bros. Circus. This is the most I ever made.

I have also worked as a theatrical sound designer and contracts ranged from $500 to $2,500. It was fun and could potentially have resulted in more money, but it was hard to put together a workable schedule. Rehearsals and meetings would conflict and I would have months of down time. On my first theatrical tour mixing FOH I earned $550/week ($2,200/month).

In Slovakia I made €75/day ($93) subcontracting. In Portugal I earned €150/day ($186) working for the band O’QueStrada. The first sound engineering job I ever had in Portugal paid €35/day ($44), and I was just happy to be able to stay in the country. After that first show I went to the bar down the street that was so small that you could only squeeze in, order your drink, and walk back into the street. I spent half my money on two caipirinhas and felt great.

Here’s an overview of my business income and expenses in 2015:

2015 Income

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2015 Deductions

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Here’s an overview of my business income and expenses in 2013:

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PROFILE 2: Prague (Czech Republic)
Steve Smith – Sound Engineer & Musician

Prague rates look like this:

50€ to do live sound for one concert in a small club using their gear.
75€ to be soundman for one night at a club with two stages, two bands, and one DJ crew.
250€ to do sound for a show where you bring mics and an FX rack.
200-400€ for a wedding gig where you bring the sound system and DJ.
50€ per musician for a band.

For a more in-depth look at Steve’s work experience, check out Making A Living As A Sound Engineer, Part One: How To Get Paid and Make A Living As A Sound Engineer, Part Two: How To Get Played.

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PROFILE 3: Bratislava (Slovakia)
Michal – Sound Engineer & Musician

60€ as a helper for local gigs, but €100 for a corporate party.
700€/month as a broadcast sound engineer (rate has held steady for the past 15 years).
100€ for composing and recording 72 different sounds for an iPad app.
I also do technical support for the most famous band in our country. For one gig I get 180€,  but it takes three days of my life: one day to pick up all of the equipment, one day for the gig, and one day to return it all.

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PROFILE 4: Athens (Greece)
Dimitris Sotiropoulos – Sound Engineer/Designer

The live work I take offers anywhere from 100€ το 400€ depending on how large the “pie” is to cut. For the past three summers I have been doing monitors for a well known Greek duo, which pays 300€/event at the moment. Most live gigs during the winter take place in bars or small cafes, which involves more work setting up, running cables, and doing both FOH and Monitors for 3-4 people. Negotiated fees can range anywhere from 100-250€/event.

I try to take any audio related project at present, since we’ve been in free fall — the economy that is — these past years. Here are some examples of summer projects and their negotiated fees:

1,500€ for renting out some of my studio equipment to set up a remote recording location in a country house for an album’s pre-production sessions.
150€/day to rewire a studio, which reminded me how challenging it can be to get the normaling right on the patchbays, keeping cable lengths to a minimum, and satisfying my OCD with regard to having everything as neat as possible. It took me ten days to get it up and running to minimum prerequisites; then again, it was only me and a soldering iron. Need a week or so to wrap it up with no more downtime.
600€ for a sound design project for a cosmetics company’s social media video campaign.
350€/day (negotiated) as a backup recording engineer at a three-day festival in Athens (suntan lotion was not provided).
300€ plus expenses for the following: organizing and assembling a complex stage plot and rider for a concert on an island in the Ionian Sea, with limited resources other than those packed and shipped on time by the rental company; programming four shows for both Avid Venue Consoles (FOH-Monitors) for the two acts that night on the boat trip there and the night before into the early morning; and recording the first act via direct outs from the monitors console to my HD Rig (32ch). A nightmare of timing and organization.
1,500€ for booking a lockout recording session next month for a week.

Read more about Dimitris’ work experience at The State Of Sound Engineering In Greece.

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PROFILE 5: Stockholm (Sweden)
Unne Liljeblad – Music Producer & Mix Engineer

My income comes from a lot of different activities.

3,200-10,000 SEK ($390-1,200)/song for mixing: That includes everything from start to finish: revisions, adjustments, instrumental/a-cappella/TV-Mix versions, and so on, as well as basic mastering. The client gets both the 16-bit “mastered” mix and the 24-bit mix without limiting on the stereo bus so that they have the option of mastering elsewhere.
4,000 SEK ($500) for vocal recording with a professional coach: I do this together with my business partner who is a song coach. We spend about four hours recording vocals (that’s how long a singer lasts when performing at the top of their capabilities) as well as the many hours it takes us to comp all the best pieces, use melodyne to manually tweak timing and pitch as well all the FX processing needed. Usually this takes another five or six hours. Since it’s split between two people it’s not very profitable, but we have had many great singers as clients and have been working to build up our vocalist casting service, so we’re hoping for some return on that investment in the future.
25,000-200,000 SEK ($3,000-25,000) for music production for commercials: The cost can vary quite a lot. We’re two people working on these projects and we often have to pay musicians and singers out of that same budget. Most of the songs are between half a minute and one minute ten seconds long. We write and produce everything from scratch. Since we license our work and don’t sell it outright, we have the potential to make more money from the same music in the future. We’re currently in the process of getting our music included in many licensing companies’ catalogs.
6,000-7,000 SEK per month ($900-1,000) for vocal classes: We run a small vocalist program out of our studio. For this we hire two additional vocal coaches and someone who helps us administrate everything. After all the expenses and with with our employees, this basically covers our expenses for the studio.
Finally, we also run a small record label with three signed acts, one of which we are both a part of. This currently only costs us money, but we have high hopes for the future.

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PROFILE 6: London (England)
Darryn de la Soul – Found of Soul Sound

Having last done a live mix in 2010, these are the wages I received. To my knowledge, nothing has changed since then! Wages have been pretty much static for the 15 years I’ve been involved in audio.

£150-200 ($232-309) for a nightClub.
£180 ($278) as the house engineer for live bands.
Anywhere between 2 beers and £200 ($309) as a the band engineer for a live band depending on how much I liked the band and their financial means.
£150-250 ($232-386) for up to 12 hours for Corporate events.
£160-230 ($247-355) on festivals for whatever length day.

Learn more about Darryn’s work in my interview with her: Learn from the Sound Engineers for Tori Amos, Prodigy, and The White Stripes Online.

As musicians and audio professionals, there can never be enough sources of income.

Get Started Today!

*

This article How Much Do Live Sound Engineers Make? appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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How To Become A Sound Engineer

[image error]The truth is, anyone can become a sound engineer.

Getting your foot in the door feels like the easy part because if you show up at the right time you could get a job immediately with no prior experience. The hard part is sticking with it and moving up.

Being a sound engineer is hard; lots of people want to mix the biggest festivals, but only a small number make it to that high level. You could say that those people are naturally better engineers than the rest of us, and maybe they are, but I think a bigger truth is that they have superior emotional intelligence and work ethic.

So how do you harness your own emotional intelligence and work ethic to set professional goals and find success? Let’s take look at Dave Swallow’s article How To Become A Sound Engineer, which asks these two questions: 1) Why do you want this job?; and 2) What do you crave?

Why do you want to become a sound engineer?

You need to work out why you want to do this job. If you are after fame and fortune, you are in the wrong job. If you want to hang around and be friends with famous people, you are in the wrong job. If you want and crave credit for the work you are doing, you are in the wrong job. If it sounds great, the band gets the credit. If it sounds terrible, you get the credit. However, if you love music and understand how it works to its core, then maybe you’ll just make it. This is a hard industry full of people who will try and stab you in the back just to get your gig because they don’t have one. And unfortunately this is the reality. -Dave Swallow

More specifically, if you love live music and crave the emotional thrill of experiencing it with a group of people, then you might make it. But those moments of musical euphoria can be few and far between. You’ll work with bands you dislike. You’ll work on corporate events with no music. In our interview, Swallow says that he doesn’t even go out to shows anymore. I’m the same way. Even when you start out with the craving, it weakens over time and your interests change. How do you maintain that drive?

Answer: Through an interest in technical proficiency and the pride of a job well done.

Part of the reason I currently take lots of corporate work that I would have declined in the past is that my craving shifted; where I used to want emotionally satisfying music, I now crave the personal satisfaction of a job well done. Even if from the outside it appears that the event is falling apart, I pride myself in remaining calm and not losing my shit. This is both a necessity for maintaining sanity and also creative problem solving.

I’ll argue with Swallow on his second point though. I’ve never had anything but respect and support from my colleagues. We look out for each other and help each other out. That being said, I’ve never worked on a top-tier concert tour, so I believe him if he says that the competition is bloodthirsty.

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What do you crave?

The key to my own success is already written in the prelude and introduction in the book. And what you will find in there is only that I had a dream, and I believed I could do it. I wasn’t always able to get a job as a sound engineer at either end of the multicore. I had many different jobs in the industry including tour and production managing, driver, and merchandiser, and most of the time these jobs were doubled up even tripled up. I’d do anything, just as long as I met people. -Dave Swallow

A lot of people get depressed on tour. I know, I’ve been there. Being deprived of your normal network of relationships and habits is a great emotional challenge and that no one thinks about. While I was battering Dave Swallow with questions about how he deals with the shitty parts of being a sound engineer, the most important (and understated) thing he said to me was: “You can get stuck up your own ass, but as a sound engineer your job is to make it sound as good as you can. What are you going to do? Moan about it or get on with the job. I don’t see any point in getting stressed about it. It is what it is. These things happen and it’s part and parcel of being on the road. Things will go wrong. If you stress about them, you’re not really doing yourself any favors or anyone around you any favors, so just chill.”

That didn’t really sink in until the second time I listened to his interview, but it’s so important. I often get upset about the conditions of the job and the state of the industry, but getting upset doesn’t help anyone, and it’s a killer if you want to keep doing show. Anyone can get a job as a sound engineer, I promise you. Getting your foot in the door is the easy part. It can happen by accident. Sticking around is the hard part.

I really like this thought: “I’d do anything, just as long as I met people.” Swallow’s first tour was six months of unpaid work. Are you crazy?! Yes and no. Networking is the most important thing in our industry. Swallow repeats several times in our interview how important it was that he “got on” with his colleagues, both crew and artists. Swallow got that first tour after working at a music venue for six years because a local band liked him. I got my first concert tour with the band O’QueStrada because they liked me (and the fact that I would let them do crazy things with microphones like distance group miking in a tiny venue).

[image error]The “I’ll do anything” mentality does not just mean painting floors and making coffee, it’s also staying open to opportunities in live audio. In concert sound there are a lot more sound engineers at work than just the FOH engineer. The stage monitor engineer, the microphone tech, the stage hands, the system tech, the audio production manager, and the live recording engineer are all equal contributors to high production quality, and each position has its own set of challenges and benefits. For example, the stage monitor engineer has a far more personal relationship with the artists during the show than the FOH mixer. Once I had the opportunity to mix monitors for John McLaughlin and his band. Imagine how cool it was that everyone on stage, including McLaughlin, had to learn my name!

Every time I go to see my favorite band, Sigur Rós, I go up to the FOH engineer after the show and ask him how he got his job. He always says the same thing: “Oh, they just knew about me from other work I had done.” In college I used to read every TapeOp Magazine from cover to cover, desperate to deconstruct the sound engineer’s career path. It was always a let down, because there is no step-by-step method. Why? My guess is that the industry just isn’t that developed yet. Think about professions with well-defined career paths and guidelines. They are older and more organized, like the medical and legal industries.

This industry is still very young and, as such, is constantly changing. Just remember that if you want to make a career out of it, you must be professional, responsible, and courteous at all times. -Dave Swallow

Swallow’s career story isn’t complicated. He met someone with connections, asked for help, did well, and one thing led to another. The impressive part is that he stuck with it through all of the shitty parts of the job. Sure, he works with celebrities and great artists, but that shine wears off after about 500 miles of touring. Hear Swallow’s career path starting at 35m40s in the interview below.

Hey you, yeah, you there reading this. What drives you to continue to be a sound engineer? Comment below.

For more on career paths, read the Education chapter of Sound Design Live: Build Your Career As A Sound Engineer.

This article How To Become A Sound Engineer appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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Where do clients come from?

I love being a live sound engineer and I love my clients. I just need to find more of them.

Great. How are you going to do that?

I don’t know.

Ok. How did you find your last client?

I don’t know. It was a guy who knew a guy.

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If you tell me that you need to find more clients, the first thing I will do is ask you how you found your current clients. If you already have a strategy that works, you just need to do more of that.

Let’s try that right now. Think about your last gig. Who hired you? How did they find you?

Nine times out of ten, people do not have a strategy at all and their answer is: from a guy who knew a guy. This is not a bad thing. It simply highlights the truth that the audio industry is based on personal referral. It happens like this over and over. When someone needs to hire a sound engineer, they don’t go to Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, or Craigslist. Although there are job boards and marketplaces, none of them attract the project managers, tour managers, and labor bookers who are hiring sound engineers. Instead, they call a friend. Why?

The audio industry is based on personal referral.

Earlier I said that this fact in and of itself is not a bad thing. That bad thing is that when most people learn this they give up and never build a strategy for generating more personal referrals.

And I totally understand, because I struggled with this for years. If finding new clients is reliant on someone else, how can I have any control over the situation? How can I have any agency in my own business?

So you can continue to fight it and pretend like everything is fine, or you can decide to do something different.

Acceptance is the first step. The growth of your business and career is directly connected to personal referral. The second step is taking responsibility and deciding to do something about it. Unfortunately, many people then decide to invest themselves in a common audio industry myth, that finding more clients is based solely on your performance.

If I do good work, more work will come.

I wish this were true. Honestly, I do. But it is only half-true.

I spent many years believing in this and trying to make myself a great live sound engineer by investing in technical education, tools, and on the job experience. But it didn’t move the needle, at least not in a significant way towards building a thriving business.

I can see why a lot of people believe it, though. If new clients come from word of mouth, then all you need to do is be remarkable enough that someone will remark about you to someone else and you’ll be booked solid in no time. Sounds great. There’s only one problem: being a live sound engineer is not a job with many opportunities to easy distinguish yourself. In fact, the better you are, the less people will know about it. If you do a good job, you are invisible. Like a silent ninja, no one knows that you are even there.

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So how can you be remarkable in a job that awards you for being invisible?

Short answer: I don’t know.

I have some ideas, but I can’t say that any of them really work. Your time will be better spent on a proven method: the powerful combination of doing great work and leveraging personal referral.

You can’t force other people to refer you and remark about you, but you can tip the scales in your favor. Even if you believe nothing that I have said up until now and are convinced that finding clients is all based on luck, then I suggest increasing your luck surface area.

What’s a ‘luck surface area’?

Luck = Doing * Telling. The more you do and the more people you tell about it, the larger your Luck Surface Area will become.

(Slightly edited from the last paragraph in this article.) –Kai Davis

And of course, this obligatory quote:

Chance favors the prepared mind. –Louis Pasteur

At this point, if you’ve accepted that the audio industry is based on personal referral and is not a meritocracy, then you will start to consider working on your business instead of just in your business.

Great, so I’ll get started building a website and designing business cards.

This wouldn’t be a bad idea if it was carried out with the intention to serve your clients. But it’s a bad idea for most people because it turns into a lot of wasted time and busy work.

So what then? Should I just go around asking people for referrals?

Exactly, but not so literally. Instead, ask for connections: I really enjoyed mixing your band last week and I’d like to work on more projects like that. Could you introduce me to one more person?

Or: Thanks for meeting me for coffee yesterday. I was wondering, is there one more person you could introduce me to?

The Method

Do good work.
Build relationships. (Tip: be human)
Don’t ask for work. Ask for referrals.

So where do clients come from? They come from personal referral (aka word of mouth).

How do you get more referrals? You ask for them from your warm contacts (aka people you have built relationships with).

Looking for some help in applying this strategy to your own work? Sign up for a free strategy session with me and we’ll see if we can come up with some ideas together.

This article Where do clients come from? appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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How to Be a Self-Starter in the Audio Industry

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I speak with filmmaker and host of Roadie Free Radio, Larry Milburn. We discuss how to be a self-starter in the audio industry and the many career paths of a sound engineer.

No one’s going to hand you a job in this industry. There is a large amount of self starting.

Notes

Roadie Free Radio: Check out these episodes

Sean Quackenbush
Chas Sandford
Courtney Taylor
Karrie Keyes
Fela Davis


Quotes

One of the common threads that I’ve found with people is that they’ve all had a ferocious desire to learn.
No one’s going to hand you a job in this industry. There is a large amount of self starting.
You gotta be nice to people. That’s the best promotion you can do.

This article How to Be a Self-Starter in the Audio Industry appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

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