Who's In Demand

Who's In Demand

  • FoH Engineers

    Votes: 3 9.4%

  • Monitor Engineers

    Votes: 8 25.0%

  • System Techs

    Votes: 11 34.4%

  • Equipment Designers

    Votes: 1 3.1%

  • Patchers

    Votes: 5 15.6%

  • Equipment Owners

    Votes: 2 6.3%

  • Warehouse Equipment Staff

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • Total voters
    32
Max Warasila

Max Warasila

Graduate
Feb 20, 2013
1,217
72
48
Richmond, VA
I just started thinking about things for a minute and I thought I'd start a poll/discussion thread about it: which sound job is really in the most demand or the hardest to find good people for?

Feel free to rant, but stay respectful and as objective as you can be.
 
Re: Who's In Demand

RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS said:
A good patch bitch is the hardest spot to fill! Everyone wants the glamorous jobs mixing or teching, no one wants to patch. On a busy festival the patch bitch can make or break your day. I personally like playing that roll and would much rather do it than mix these days.
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+1

ive done tons of mixing, but I don't really care to do it all that much anymore. Perfectly happy to tech or patch or wrangle RF.
 
Re: Who's In Demand

While I agree with all of the people above in that techs are key, I think Monitor Engineers are the most in demand at the moment, for the following reasons:

1) Unlike patch/RF/techs, its all about the relationship with the band
2) Monitors is becoming harder, IEMs have forced monitor engineers to increase the quality of their mixes, and lowering costs of these products, as well as the increasing capability of consoles has increased the quantity of mixes.
3) FOH is all political, whereas monitors is just more about how happy the band are, and that can be a tricky challenge.

I started out doing FOH, and I still do a lot of it, but increasingly I get calls to do Monitors, as it seems the demands there are getting higher and higher.

In short, I spend a lot of time now doing anywhere from 8 to 20 stereo IEM mixes, plus wedges etc... All the IEM mixes need to be as polished as a FOH mix, sometimes moreso...
 
Re: Who's In Demand

brian maddox said:
+1

ive done tons of mixing, but I don't really care to do it all that much anymore. Perfectly happy to tech or patch or wrangle RF.
Click to expand...

Wow!!! Wish I felt that way! Staying with my usual rant...:)...every single system I see deployed at any show seems to be hooked up and working correctly, so those jobs seem to be filled adequately. Once the band starts....
I don't know many NASCAR drivers who would rather work in the pit than drive! For those of you who don't mix anymore, are your replacements as good or better than you would be? I can never get over my concern that the audience gets the best show possible.
Thanks!
 
Re: Who's In Demand

John Chiara said:
I don't know many NASCAR drivers who would rather work in the pit than drive!
Click to expand...

I'd say that FOH and monitors is working in the pits, the "drivers" are up on stage, and the patchers and riggers are more like the guys and gals back at the workshop etc. ;)~;-)~:wink:
 
Re: Who's In Demand

John Chiara said:
Wow!!! Wish I felt that way! Staying with my usual rant...:)...every single system I see deployed at any show seems to be hooked up and working correctly, so those jobs seem to be filled adequately. Once the band starts....
I don't know many NASCAR drivers who would rather work in the pit than drive! For those of you who don't mix anymore, are your replacements as good or better than you would be? I can never get over my concern that the audience gets the best show possible.
Thanks!
Click to expand...

But there are plenty of guys in the NASCAR pits that want nothing to do with driving. And for a lot of very good reasons, not the least of which is the stress level that comes with the challenge.

I have no idea if my 'replacements' are as good at mixing as i am/was. I do know that i've done just about every kind of music you can imagine enough times that, assuming there is talent on the stage and a decent rig, getting a good/great mix together is just that not much of a challenge anymore. And if there isn't any talent/rig there... Well, let's just say i've done all the fecal embellishment i care to do for one lifetime.

Don't get me wrong. There was a time in my life that i absolutely loved mixing and pursued it with a laser-focused passion. But i'm just not there anymore. I am glad there are those younger and more energetic than i ready to step in and take up the torch. So, yay you!
 
Re: Who's In Demand

Chris Johnson said:
While I agree with all of the people above in that techs are key, I think Monitor Engineers are the most in demand at the moment, for the following reasons:

1) Unlike patch/RF/techs, its all about the relationship with the band
2) Monitors is becoming harder, IEMs have forced monitor engineers to increase the quality of their mixes, and lowering costs of these products, as well as the increasing capability of consoles has increased the quantity of mixes.
3) FOH is all political, whereas monitors is just more about how happy the band are, and that can be a tricky challenge.

I started out doing FOH, and I still do a lot of it, but increasingly I get calls to do Monitors, as it seems the demands there are getting higher and higher.

In short, I spend a lot of time now doing anywhere from 8 to 20 stereo IEM mixes, plus wedges etc... All the IEM mixes need to be as polished as a FOH mix, sometimes moreso...
Click to expand...

I realized after i wrote it that my first post in this thread didn't answer the question posed at all, but instead just talked about me. oops. :)

i think the points you make here are excellent ones and i would concur with them. Back when i started in the biz, i knew a couple of very smart, capable sound guys who did nothing but monitors owing to the fact that, while their technical and people skills were top-notch, they had no natural 'ear' for mixing. and those are their words, not mine. Face it, mixing wedges is all about giving the artist what they want no matter how bad it sounds within the limits of reason and physics. IEM mixing is whole 'nother beast altogether, and the really good IEM monitor guys i come across now are more likely to be ex-studio guys than ex-system techs. A good/great IEM mix is indeed in some ways actually more difficult than a FOH mix, although you need please only one person per mix. :) But the margin of error is very narrow in IEM mixing. I use IEMs as a player now every week and while i mix my own in-ears i am constantly amazed at how obvious very small mix changes are in my IEMs.

So that being said, i think good IEM guys are probably the hardest spots to fill.
 
Re: Who's In Demand

Max Warasila said:
I just started thinking about things for a minute and I thought I'd start a poll/discussion thread about it: which sound job is really in the most demand or the hardest to find good people for?
Click to expand...

Max,

You're missing some important positions for a shop large enough to have all of the above specialties. There are LDs, riggers, loaders, rf techs, stage manager, TD, show director, video people, shop foreman, bench repair techs, fabricators, guys who do CAD, drivers, designers, purchasing, accounting, etc.

Among the jobs listed IEM monitor engineer is the one that takes the most skill, in my opinion. And I say that as someone who prefers system tech work. System tech work is about physics. If you understand the physics of wave propagation, transducers, and signal processing, as well as the physics of measurement, then you'll have the skills to wrangle the PA. Lacking those skills makes system tech work seem daunting, but most technically minded people can learn the physics with effort.

Guys that can wrangle a dozen plus quality ear mixes with often very different requirements, that's a totally different ballgame. I think one almost needs an innate knack for it.
 
Re: Who's In Demand

Phil Graham said:
<snip>

You're missing some important positions for a shop large enough to have all of the above specialties. There are LDs, riggers, loaders, rf techs, stage manager, TD, show director, video people, shop foreman, bench repair techs, fabricators, guys who do CAD, drivers, designers, purchasing, accounting, etc.

</snip>
Click to expand...

I was trying to keep the amount of categories down, but I agree that many of these were missed. I wanted to add a management category for SMs, TDs, so on and so forth, but I thought that that one might bring some trouble concerning bad bosses. There's a lot of work out there that needs to be filled for sure, and I'm glad you brought them up in the discussion. It's the genius of a forum!
 
Re: Who's In Demand

Good system techs. I need a SE who can point the PA at the crowd, not the back wall. A guy who can align the whole system properly, and steer low end effectively. Someone who can make the transition from the main hang to front fills to outfills very smooth. Someone who can make it sound consistent everywhere in the venue. They're hard to come by. A lot of people can put a PA up in the air. Very few can do it well.




Evan
 
Re: Who's In Demand

Evan Kirkendall said:
Good system techs. I need a SE who can point the PA at the crowd, not the back wall. A guy who can align the whole system properly, and steer low end effectively. Someone who can make the transition from the main hang to front fills to outfills very smooth. Someone who can make it sound consistent everywhere in the venue. They're hard to come by. A lot of people can put a PA up in the air. Very few can do it well.
Evan
Click to expand...

Yes. Couldn't have said it better.
Oddly enough these same, elusive people can often throw a decent live mix together quickly.
 
Re: Who's In Demand

Tom Manchester said:
I do all of those, often simultaneously. What I need right now is another one of me who can do all of those things listed above reliably.
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Maybe if Dmitri Itzkov's reeeeeaaaalllly ambitious 2045 project succeeds, you'll be able to do exactly what you need - clone yourself with an "avatar" and a digital copy of your brain. I believe you would need Avatar C, projected for 2030-2035 :lol:

FWIW I think that whole 2045 project is pretty crazy, but fascinating nonetheless, and the research $$$ will be beneficial regardless of the project's stated goals. 2045 Initiative
 
Re: Who's In Demand

RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS said:
A good patch bitch is the hardest spot to fill! Everyone wants the glamorous jobs mixing or teching, no one wants to patch. On a busy festival the patch bitch can make or break your day. I personally like playing that roll and would much rather do it than mix these days.
Click to expand...

And most people willing to patch dont know the differance between an input and an output. The "light girl" where I work would like to be one, (I was on a different job this day and someone else was with her) one day she had her laptop plugged in for music, she wanted to unplug it and pack up before the fireworks started, she was told it was in 15, & 16, she unplugged the outputs 15, & 16 (which happened to be the line array) the fireworks display was pretty quiet from that. As far as good system techs go, if you have signal, your output patching should be the first thing you check. Still don't know why that wasn't done by the SE on that job.
 
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