No one likes a perfectionist. Don’t spend an hour hollering into the talkback mic about “dialing in” the perfect verb. Presumably you brought your “cans” to the gig, so use them.
Once the show starts, you’re going to change it anyway, and there’s probably someone close to the PA trying to hang a banner or make some other contribution to the event—and you’re ticking them off. So just stop it.
Besides, you can have more fun tomorrow morning by “tuning the system” with some Whitesnake or Ozzy, waking the hippies out of their drug of choice-induced comas.
Every show is your dream gig. It doesn’t matter that maybe this particular band is lousy, or the humidity is stifling, or…whatever. Every show is the most important thing in your world every day.
And what if the management of your actual “dream gig” is standing right behind you, and you’re not doing your best? What are the odds of you actually landing that gig?
Mix some bluegrass. Inside. In a gym. Doing monitors from FOH. Real bluegrass, not the “sellouts” that went all electrified and stuff. You know, big tube condenser for the band to crowd around, and a half-dozen more mics for instruments, one of which is on a fiddle pointed directly at a wedge due to artist taste. Go ahead. Try it. Rock and country mixers have nothing on the folks that mix this every day. Hats off to them.
Keep the horses in the barn. Just because a system has serious horsepower doesn’t mean you have to use it all…all the time. Be appropriate to the genre. I recently finished a tour with a 60s band that was doing stuff that ran all the way from “The Sound of Silence” to “Good Times, Bad Times.” SPL ran from 68 dB to 104 dB. Dynamics anyone?
If you’re mixing bluegrass and you’re good, you can get as loud as a rock band. Don’t. Other engineers know you’re just showing off, and we’re talking smack about you behind your back, and you deserve it.
There are plenty of other things to be aware of, but I hope to have at least helped spark an internal dialogue on making your shows better for everyone, you included.
Here’s hoping that we all have a great season, and maybe we can catch each other at an event…the day before.
Todd Lewis is production manager at Stewart Sound in Leicester, NC.