Re: What do you do?
Definitely going to have to take on less work in a day, and or communicate better to clients that I have to go at a certain time and are they happy to work around that. The weekend debacle had me wondering why I take on so much - of course, the answer is obvious, the omnipresent pressure of being low income with no savings. I have to start quoting higher too (am I worth it? Perhaps I will be a whole lot more worth it when your money buys my attention for the whole day instead of a window of time in between other jobs...)
There was another, even more terrible night a couple of months ago where I already thought I'd realised this. 5 jobs in one day, one of which suffered terribly with my time stretched so thin and I was convinced by the end of it I'd lose my one long term hire client too. So I've cut back a bit from 5 to 3 (to clarify, this isn't an Every weekend thing, but a sometimes a bunch of jobs come my way and I try and do them all thing) but still biting off more than I can chew evidently. It seems grabbing at the gigs that will make enough to live is undermining being professional at sound tech (not just mixing well but nailing the time management and communication and being reliable etc not to mention by the time I got to the last mix of the day my hearing was starting to suffer) :-(
In the case of last Saturday, there was a guy hanging around by the mixing desk who'd been dropping hints all night that last time this particular band played this particular venue, he mixed them, and that he was their 'regular' tech and only didn't mix this gig because his band was on the bill. I left the mix in his hands and, not knowing who to talk to about having to leave (the person who booked me was the bass player and she was mid set) I left without telling anyone but the tech who took my place. In my objective picture, that gig went on (and as far as I've heard, he actually improved the mix so, Silver lining people!!!!) and the other gig could commence. The fall out from the band that was left and their manager was really intense though. Radiating disappointment. There was the half an hour conversation with the manager when I got back to the venue about how unprofessional that was and how lucky I was the other guy stepped in and how he improved the mix and how disappointed they all were and how average my mixing was and how "no one walked out, but this band can sound a whole lot better than they did today and we expected more". (I haven't the faintest idea why they thought I'd mix them better, every time I've mixed them I've struggled with their need for infinite foldback and it's sounded kind of average). And a more polite expression of that disappointment from the bass player when I sent her an apology message and a long missive from the guitarist the next day about how it's hard for bands to maintain a high standard of performance when the production team walks out half way through and how it sucks that so many sound techs in Adelaide are so unprofessional (maybe it's because we All get paid in string and pretzels....). I almost started to think it would have been better to leave the other band to fend for themselves, I know from past experience they would have been more forgiving (but I have an ongoing working relationship with the other band so of course I'm going to be loyal to them).
To top it all off, I lost my next 2 days to sleeping trying to recover from Saturday.
Not ever letting myself get in that position again, rock and a hard place does not do description justice and nights like that make me afraid I'll never get actually proper professional at this, so much more required than just mixing well. With my 20 20 hindsight vision I can think of a myriad of things I could have done differently that would have made the night better and less of a trainwreck and why on earth didn't I think of and do those those things Before crunch time?!
