When I fell into my first proper job as an engineer, I knew very little about what I should actually do. I was asked to mix a theatre show which a director I knew was putting on at the local Theatre Royal. I turned up full of passion and with a patchy knowledge of an old Allen & Heath analogue desk and the most basic of signal path from mic to speaker. I was confronted by a Yamaha LS9-32 and 12-ways of Trantec S5.3 radios with Sennheiser MKE-2 lavalier mics. Oh and a 10 piece Orchestra…

Fortunately for me, the venue was pretty small and the nature of the old theatre meant that micing the orchestra was unnecessary; I just had to keep the mics (firstly) audible and (secondly) natural sounding. I fumbled my way through the week long run learning by trial and error, as to how I could get the vocals sounding remotely warm and natural. I’d never used lavalier microphones before so I didn’t know that their omni-directional pick-up pattern meant that I would be met by plenty of phasing issues between actors, which wouldn’t go away unless I line-mixed or at least dipped the offending mic, as appropriate, during dialogue. Finding myself in the deep end also taught me quickly how to EQ out the most offensive frequencies.

Before this show I had mainly mixed bands at college. The combination of poor playing, a reflective room, a long-unserviced console and a small PA meant that learning EQ techniques was very difficult (read as “impossible”) as there was so much reflection (or plain unpleasant noise) you rarely heard anything worth attempting to EQ. That and the constant fight with the guitarists (i’m allowed to say this, I WAS one) to turn their amps down on the matchbox sized stage.

As I was studying music at college, part of my course covered recording technology which covered DAW’s, signal flow and basic micing & mixing techniques; there was, however, no Live Sound module and so everything I did in the theatre that week was either an educated guess, based on what I might do in the studio or just plain luck.

The show went alright. So ‘alright’ in actual fact, that a few months later I was offered a job mixing a bigger show on tour. I can’t help but feel though, that it was pure passion that got me through that week and left me standing at the end of it. The knowledge for me, came second to passion and I continue to learn on every job I do and every book I read. I like to admit that there is still an awful lot I don’t yet know and I always look forward to getting back off tour and working with hire companies & venues or in warehouses preparing the rigs and building racks in an attempt to enhance my knowledge of patch, build and system design. It’s an area which is all too easy to gloss over by having an experienced production engineer or sound designer on hand with the flow diagrams…

How might things have turned out it I had the knowledge but no passion?