Paulius Musteikis
Jon Chvojicek at the High Noon Saloon.
I’ve often felt bad for the person at the sound board. Think of the indignities. The amplified, sometimes demeaning, instructions of a lead singer on stage. The bro who sloshes beer on your shoes on his way to the board to bark for more bass. The grunt work — breaking down the stage in the wee morning hours.
You’d think these guys (and it’s mostly guys — more on that in a bit) would hate their job. You’d be wrong.
“In the end, nothing beats getting to help an amazing artist put on an incredible show,” says Dustin Boyle, sound mixer at the Frequency and vice chair of the Wisconsin Chapter of the Audio Engineering Society.
What makes a sound engineer tick? And what kinds of tics make a good sound engineer? Madison singer-songwriter Evan Murdock says even seasoned performers often don’t have a clue: “As a performer, the sound engineer’s work feels like something of a dark art. I don’t understand it and wouldn’t know where to start.”
I spoke with nearly a dozen Madison live sound pros. They say it starts with training. And knowledge.
Frequency sound engineer Eric Geane says he learned his tricks of the trade in school (Madison Media Institute) and, more so, on the job. He turns “dark art” into science by organizing a successful mix into three parts.
A solid foundation is “banging drums and bass,” says Geane. “You gotta be able to clearly hear the tings of the cymbals while the bass guitar, kick drum and toms shake bottles off the back bar.” Clear, intelligible vocals, he adds, are “the most important and therefore hardest part.” Geane calls guitars, keys, samplers, horns and backing vocals “the movement of the music,” and says mixing them requires small detail work, including muting instruments on the fly when they’re not in use.
Baseline technical approaches vary, but High Noon mixer Jon Chvojicek, a mechanical engineering graduate from UW-Madison, sums it up by saying he “meets the artist right in the middle.”
That balancing act involves perfecting not one but two sound systems: the monitor mix that the performers hear through stage speakers and the front-of-house mix coming at the audience through the club PA. That’s a lot of sonic real estate, and it requires polished people skills along with technical know-how.
Then there’s the problem of musicians who don’t know what they want or are disorganized on stage. Intellasound engineer Dec Dwyer says artists who ask for “a little of everything” are guaranteeing a long night.
“Sometimes what musicians say isn’t actually what they mean,” adds Intellasound’s Bryan Schalburg. “Many times less is more. If a musician’s having a hard time hearing one part, like vocal, I find if I turn down something else in their mix just a bit, suddenly their vocal pops right out at them.”
“Musicians can be a very odd group of people,” adds Bear Sound owner Andrew LaValley. “It’s fairly common to deal with a wide range of personalities in a single group. But this is a service job. It’s in my best interest to get along with the artists and gain their trust. This almost always works.”
“Be respectful,” says Schalburg. “It’s amazing how a performer can walk into a sound check in a terrible mood, but then you are polite, smile, clear in your communication, and suddenly everyone is having a great day.”
Jeffrey Potter
Britny Williams is part of a small cadre of female sound engineers.
The term “sound guy” is a stubborn term with uncomfortable roots in reality. National estimates show that women represent less than 5% of producers and engineers industrywide. There are many theories as to why, but no consensus.
“I couldn’t tell you why there are so few women,” says Britny Williams, one of Madison’s few female engineers; she works as a freelance mixer and full-time broadcast specialist at Wisconsin Public Radio. Williams says live engineering can be a “thankless job,” but she hasn’t experienced much overt sexism on the job. “My lifting limit is lower than my male colleagues, but other than that, it really isn’t a thing. My gender doesn’t occur to me in relation to my job.”
Male or female, if you’re at a sound board you have a target on your back. Unsolicited advice from patrons is guaranteed. I see it as the equivalent of someone with a Netflix account telling one of the Coen brothers how to frame his next camera shot
“The easy part is ignoring the bullshit,” says Geane. “The not-so-easy part is weeding out and accepting the constructive comments. Shame be had if you miss out on learning a new trick just because you let ego get in the way of a stranger’s advice.”
“I genuinely listen to see if they are right,” says Boyle. “It may be that more bass is needed. If an artist has been late to a sound check and I’m in the middle of an on-the-fly mix, and someone walks up and sneers that something can’t be heard — as I probably haven’t gotten to it yet — I may just move a non-active control and ask if that’s better, to which they almost always say yes.”
“I take the compliments with a smile and ignore the criticism, with a smile,” says Majestic Theatre engineer Dan Edwards.
Intellasound’s Declan says the most frequent question he gets from audience members is, “Do you know what all those buttons do?”
“I usually point at one button and say, ‘Only this one.’”
The top complaint among Madison sound pros? Patrons placing or spilling beer on the mixing board.
The outdoor festival season brings its own set of challenges. “Fifteen-minute changeovers at festivals are the bane of my existence,” says Declan. “Who thinks they can get musicians to tear down one full band of gear and set up another full band, set mics, and do a sound check in 15 minutes?”
Other engineers, especially those using their own gear — not a company’s — pointed out the stress related to the constant threat of stormy weather.
“I enjoy mixing outdoors as long as the PA is adequate for the outdoor space,” says Eric Brusewitz, who works the board at the High Noon and was the go-to mixer at the late, great O’Cayz Corral. “It’s refreshing not to have to deal with room acoustics, and it’s a little lower volume, which saves the ears.”
Indoors or out, I entered this assignment convinced that being a sound engineer was a thankless task. I was mistaken.
“During a show I am intimately connected to the musicians on stage,” says LaValley. “I get the privilege of presenting that band in my unique way to the audience. Seeing and feeling that connection between the performer and their audience is pure magic. This is my version of the American dream.”
