(Editor's note: ML Procise was PSW's live chat guest on March 18. Click here
to read the transcript.)

ML Procise

Showco’s senior vice president of sales, ML Procise, spent a good portion of his 27 years with the company as a mix engineer. With nearly 3,500 stadium and arena rock shows under his belt including 13 years with ZZ Top and extended tours with Michael Jackson and Genesis, Procise knows the ins and outs of live sound. In the early nineties, the six time nominee for Mix magazine’s Engineer of the Year award made a decision, while mixing for alternative bands such as Alice In Chains, to spend less time on the road and more time with his family.

Procise finds working on the other side of the live sound business gratifying. “When you believe in the product and you’re a user of the product . . . it became a natural fit for me. The fact that I had a very successful career as a mixing engineer with a lot of high profile artists helped. It gives me credibility. The people I’m trying to sell to are guys like myself-other engineers.”

He still finds himself out on the road every now and then mixing for bands such as Green Day, Rage Against The Machine, The Wallflowers or Limp Bizkit. “In most cases I’m filling in for a client who might be doing a one off and their regular engineer is on another project. They feel comfortable with me because of my experience and the relationships I’ve cultivated.”

Building good client relationships, according to Procise, is part of the reason why Showco has been successful these last three decades and says the company won’t be changing the way they do business, even after the merger with Clair Brothers. “The Clair Brothers recognized the importance of keeping Showco’s trade name and identity in the forefront. They’ve let Showco operate autonomously and we keep our client base separate. It’s the Showco name, crew, products, and team. The beauty of it is the technologies now live together in Pennsylvania. The two biggest sound companies in the world have a very formidable collective R&D effort that has been assembled. We have more human resources and equipment resources to offer our clients on a bigger global basis. It’s a win-win situation for everybody.”

As the companies learn from each other’s strengths, Procise says one of the qualities that impressed the Clair Brothers most was Showco’s three-tier training program, something most companies do not offer their employees. “It’s real people teaching real education criteria with real education materials. We’re concentrating on the service and technical side of the sound reinforcement business. We’re not hanging a carrot out there saying, “Come work for Showco because you have aptitude in live sound reinforcement and we’re going to make you a big time mixer.” We want you to come work with us and we’re going expand what you’ve already learned and teach you to be the greatest systems engineer to serve our clients. The goals are very succinct and focused.”

Education is close to Procise’s heart. In addition to being a strong advocate of Showco’s training program, ML was a founding member of the live sound workshop at Syn-Aud-Con. Howard Page now does the workshop on behalf of Showco, once a year immediately preceding NAMM. Nothing though, according to Procise, replaces experience. “The guys with the most experience get the more consistent and accurate results over and over again. You can only learn that through doing it. It’s comes from doing every different kind of venue and carrying every different kind of situation.”

In addition to his duties as salesman and consultant at Showco, filling in as mix engineer for client’s that need his expertise, and teaching the occasional live sound workshop, Procise also works extensively on the preservation and protection of hearing. He finds it unethical to mix a show wearing earplugs, but says there are some things mixers can do to protect their hearing. “I teach things like minimizing listening to music over headsets. Why expose your ears to loud SPL in a close proximity via headsets for instance? When you’re mixing from 80, 100 or 120 feet away you’re not going to catch any hearing damage. You’ll get some hearing fatigue depending on how much distortion you’re getting from the speaker system via the band, but it’s more the concussive effect of a rock show at close proximity that’s dangerous to damaging your hearing.”

“For instance, even when I do line checks I prefer to do it with a pair of studio monitors rather than putting on a headset. What if something in the amplifier has a problem where it might spike your hearing or it comes blasting on unexpectedly by accident for one reason or another? I also try to give my ears as much rest as possible. After a show I like a quiet environment to think about things and let my hearing and my ears recover.”