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[00:00:00] Intro
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Michael: the other day I was listening to a podcast from a man I really respect, Jordan Peterson, and he was in a Q& A session, and he was asked the question, how can I find a spouse? And he thought about it and he thought about it and he said, you know, I don't have an answer for you. You know why? Because it's a bad question.
He said, here's, here's a better question. How can I make myself the most dateable person ever? How can I make it so it is effortless for someone else that I desire to see me as someone they want to spend the rest of their life with? And I think that's wrapped up in this question that I got is what separates the best best audio engineers from the good.
What is it? What are those key qualities that's wrapped up in everything that they do [00:01:00] that makes them rise to the top? Do they have golden ears? Are they just lucky? Do they have the best networking skills? And I'm going to argue for three core qualities with three ways they manifest themselves. And I'm excited to share that with you.
So maybe you're early in your career and you want to know how can I fast track this thing? Not to make it fast, but how can it help? have laser focus on what really matters, this is for you. Excited to share it with you. Let's jump in.
[00:01:27] Confidence, Underpinned by Openness
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Michael: The first key characteristic is by far the most important, and it's this confidence underpinned by openness. That's confidence underpinned by openness. What do I mean by that? In short, it's from one of my good friend, uh, Reese Murphy. His words is, uh, be a G and by G means be. Awesome. Be a boss. Be really good.
I was texting with him the other day and, someone was flown in to help tune the system at a church that, [00:02:00] he mixes at and he goes, Ed, he's a G, and what do I know? It's like, I know from that sentence, that means like, oh, he's a G. Ed's really good and Ed knocked it out of the park. He was able to rebuild this entire system processor from scratch on this old L Acoustics rig, make it sound awesome.
He got out Eclipse audio software and custom made an FIR filter to make sure the front fills match with the mains. He was a G. as we're going to walk through, that's not enough, but first and foremost, Confidence is gained by being really good at what you do. And if you want to learn more about this case, I would check out the book, So Good They Can't Ignore You from Cal Newport.
And that passion is a really bad way to build a career. It's only after you've built up skill sets that are valuable and the market has proven that those are valuable and you receive more offers that you build that confidence and the passion will follow from that. You can of course change your career, but you have to commit [00:03:00] to getting better at something while you're still bad at it.
then build confidence, and then it'll grow. So I want to get that out of the way. And with that, I want you to aim to impress, not to please. This is from Ryan Holiday at the Daily Stoic, and he says that oftentimes, being very social creatures, we want to make sure and please people by being really available.
The first to jump in and say yes, to be ultra nice. But nice and kind are also very different things. You want to be kind with people, but being the nicest person in the room seldom gets you to where you want to go. And I'm saying this to myself because I definitely err on that side of over indexing on my ability to have high affiliation with people.
And you want to be able to impress and move things forward, not please people. Next, you want to be able to own your mistakes. I want you to voluntarily Put yourself on the hook. and what that means is that you are continually saying yes [00:04:00] to hard and high pressure things. Cause it's your gig. If you're getting asked to do something and you have the skill sets to go and do it, go do it.
When I was first Asked to go to the 2020 inauguration and be responsible for making sure that everyone along Presidential Avenue was able to hear what the, the announcer of the parade was saying. And it was handed files that sounded terrible, that I was supposed to make better that was gonna be announcing what part of the parade was passing by That.
Oh my word, this is a big deal. I need to be ready for that. But I had the skills, I said yes, and I put myself on the hook. When I was asked to run sound for a Fortune 500 company's financial meetings where they were talking to Wall Street folks and it would directly impact their stock prices, they needed to be heard clearly.
and any hiccup in the production could alter the way they presented or how they were interpreting and impact the stock price. Again, I don't want to over inflate my [00:05:00] value, but saying you're going to be put in these positions if you're good at what you do. So owning your mistakes when you don't go up to par and make sure you're putting things in place to get better is what makes sure you are a G.
So be a G, own your mistakes, then also be a continual learner. learner. So how are you developing yourself? So if you've been watching my channel for any amount of time, that's probably why you're here. You want to get better at live sound, moving your career forward, and maybe specifically sound system design in tuning.
Those are valuable skills in choosing to develop yourself as big, but I also want to make sure you put it into rehearsal, not practice rehearsal, and we'll get to that in a little bit. So that is confidence underpinned by openness.
[00:05:46] Speed, Underpinned by Attention to Detail
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Michael: Next, we're going to move on to speed underpinned by attention to detail.
Speed underpinned by attention to detail. And the first up here is critical path analysis. So, if you have [00:06:00] not heard of this concept, critical path is being able to zero in on exactly what is most important to move towards the end goal. So if you're building a house, grading has to come first, and before that's probably permits, and before that has to be plans.
But once you get the foundation poured, then you have to have plumbing put in. And knowing the exact order of operations and what needs to happen, depending on timeline, scope, and budget, is really important. Because if the truck was late with your PA, Are you going to be spending two hours tuning the room?
Probably not. That's going to get shortened to 20 minutes or even just two minutes. So how can you, depending on the scope of the show changing, how the environment is changing, the time scale changing, make sure you're getting the right things done in the right time. Order. Order. And that only happens from having tool fluidity.
So what I mean by that is that you've done the reading, the homework, and you have the reps to be able to be comfortable in that seat and with those tools. [00:07:00] Being a freelancer, I'm thrust into new environments all the time, and that's what keeps me on my toes. But before a show, if it's a piece of gear I haven't used, or if a console I haven't used, I'm looking, how can I make sure and not be brand new on the ground?
Can I be If I can't get my hands on it, am I watching tutorials? Am I, do I have to make sure I have the manual downloaded and ready to go before I get there? Can I find a local production company that has the gear and voluntarily ask to get in their shop and make sure I feel comfortable? Cause that's what a production company isn't paying you for when you're on staff is to have you comfortable with the gear.
They're asking you to come in already knowing what's up there. There may be some gray areas and how everything fits together. And there's our, always some amount that happens on site as far as to coordinate what's going on, but you have to have the core fluidity and fundamentals before you get there to make sure it all goes well, which flows into being able to problem solve under high pressure.
I remember doing a gig where the mix position [00:08:00] is in a booth or control room that's separate from the room, so you can't hear the PA, so you're on monitors. And about 90 seconds before we went live, the engineer got on comm, who was in a different location, and said, Hey, I just lost audio on the stream. So I got walk in music in the room, and I'm having to figure out, okay, where did we lose that?
So I knew there was a rack room that had my I. O. and was feeding all the video gear. So bottom line, ended up tracing it to a mispatch in Dante Controller. And of course, I have my head like this, which means you are in Dante Controller, I'm patching things, and I get it back. We're cool with I think 15 seconds to spare, so I'm like, whew, okay, we got it, and they're counting down show, show starts, my presenter gets up on stage, and I'm like, cool, yeah, we're fine, we're fine, we're good.
About 10 seconds later, someone walks up to our booth, which just has a pane of glass, and just taps on it, and I open the window, and I'm kind of confused, and they go, what We can't hear. And what I had done was accidentally [00:09:00] unpatched one of my AES outputs on my Rio that was feeding the amp rack that was going to the left side of my PA.
So my entire left PA was unpatched. So, embarrassing moment, but I had to move quickly and figure out, oh my word, there was this high pressure thing I had to solve before we went live, but I moved too quickly and got too flustered in that moment and ended up causing harm elsewhere. So moving with a level head, knowing the clock is ticking, but moving slow, because slow is smooth and smooth is fast, right?
[00:09:33] Professionalism, Underpinned by Being A Good Hang
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Michael: Moving on to our last key characteristic is professionalism, underpinned by a good hang. Alright, so what do I mean by this? First, I want you to be able to look the part. I'm not talking about how attractive you are, how tall you are you, your gender, your ethnicity. I'm talking about how you carry yourself and particularly how you dress.
is it a way that lends itself to the gig? I understand, [00:10:00] especially in a tour environment, pretty much anything goes. I get that. I haven't toured a whole lot, but doing a lot of corporate gigs and stuff that's that environment, you are expected to have a certain level of dapperness, if you will, moving to that environment.
Even if it's a load in day, you're going to have clients on site who are probably in suits walking around Asking what's up. So if you're in just this torn up Pantera t shirt and cargo shorts and boots that are still muddy from your last festival, that's not a good look. So being able to be clean, presented, and professional even on load in days is really important if you're wanting to move forward in that type of environment.
Again, every environment is different. I'm not speaking for everywhere, but just look at where you're going, maybe in advance and make sure and ask your production manager What are those expectations for what I look like on the gig?
After you look the part, you want to make sure and not be a diva, be a team player. I wish I didn't have to say this, but it's, you're only one apart of the whole, which [00:11:00] kind of goes back to my, my idea of systems thinking that I've gotten lately. I've been chewing on a lot is that the audio department exists within production and production exists within the event and the event within an overall like marketing campaign.
And so there's lots of Russian dolls above us, but if you have to be, know that specific part in which you are supposed to bring your own skills to the table and bring that forward. So you're only one part of that whole, and, but you have to realize maybe something's not going the lighting department's way.
Can you adjust the way your PA is hung to make it easier and faster for them to get their rig in the air? And you having a really good grasp of that whole system and knowing if and when and how you can compromise is really important to make sure that can move forward. And lastly here. I want you to be able to take care of business.
That means sending invoices on time. Always schedule it the following month, or every Monday, I look at the prior week's gigs and Monday morning I [00:12:00] send them all out. Um, and make sure you can keep your dates. So that's keeping a clean and accurate calendar and communicating even when things do come up or accidentally do get Double booked, owning that, and moving on.
I want you to be able to show up on time. And again, looking the part, prepared with your tools ready, knowing what is supposed to happen with the first hour of that load in. Did you read those documents? Even if you're gonna be figuring out a lot later, at least knowing how to start off a gig well is really, really important.
[00:12:33] Recap
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Michael: Okay, here's our recap. I want you to have confidence. And everything you do, I want you to have speed, but also fluidity. I want you to be professional. If you're able to embody those three core characteristics, there's no cap on your career. As long as you're learning and getting better and putting yourself out there, I really think you can grow and have your career flourish.
I would love for you [00:13:00] to let me know below what has served you well in your career. What am I leaving out here that has really helped you develop yourself, not only in the roles that you have, but yourself as a person? What key characteristics? Please let me know below in the comment section. My name is Michael Curtis.
Thank you so much for watching today and listening, and I appreciate your time. Catch you next time.
