There are many things that people ask me about my work, however, amidst all the star-struck banter, not very many people ever ask how much work went into what I do. The truth is “A Metric Ton” of work went into being here today.
Being Prepared To Throw Away The Plan
Oh sure, the usual things like education, hard work, etc... can all be tossed around, but truly the greatest skill you can only acquire is the ability to throw away the plan and adapt to the situation. Think of it like this, if you play guitar, you can play any brand of guitar, so as an engineer you have to be just as versatile when things don’t go according to plan. There is always an ideal we would all like to have in our work, life or whatever, but the reality is that it doesn’t always go the way we really want. This mentality is especially true when you are the engineer for a live event. The best laid plans can go awry in the blink of an eye and what will make you successful is how you handle these changes.
By having the entire rehearsal multi-tracked, this allowed the band to put up all the rehearsal footage on their youtube channel: http://youtu.be/8D1PCQteutE
While they were at it, I was asked to mix the songs for the videos. This meant that I had to flip back into Mix Engineer mode and delve into Pro Tools to mix, talk about unexpected. To say it was an honor to be asked by Butch Vig and Billy Bush to mix the songs would be an understatement.
We had tracked three songs for Yahoo that needed to be mixed while we’re on the road and I’ve got to find time in the day to do this. These tracks need to be done since we are flying to the UK for a handful of shows and I won’t have the Pro Tools rig on this run.
There was no way I was going to be able to mix on monitors so I pull out my trusty Sony MDR-7506 headphones and get to work.
At 3:35 I get the last track done and exported onto the USB stick. I get to FOH with 5 minutes to spare before the show starts! The show goes well and truck gets loaded, we’re in the van on the way to the airport for our departure to the UK. Billy did some mastering to the tracks on his laptop while at 40,000 feet and they went up on the Yahoo site.
After the first set of UK gigs, we fly back to NYC to perform on The Jimmy Fallon Show and a sold out show at Webster Hall, which will be streamed live on MTVHIVE.com. My mix from the console is used for the feed since there is way too much going on to be done on the fly. We are also prepping to go back to Europe for some big music festivals that will keep us busy for a while. I’m sure we’ll have a few challenges along the way.
There is no way to plan for everything, you just have to trust your ability to know your part. Just like the band knows their parts and can perform on any stage, as an engineer you have to be just as versatile and ready to perform.