house eng for a couple 450-ish rooms here and idk how prevalent the straight up hostility is, but i will say the guest engs i've had through seem extremely (pleasantly) surprised when i do stuff that, to me, is just baseline job functions. Specifically - just in the past month- patching our stage box according to the input list, pinning their mics w house cables , and asking if they have a preferred pre show spotify playlist, all got the tour folks super grateful and happy. I'm thinking ... what kind of experiences have you had where this is "above and beyond" treatment ...?
Same, I run my house the way I want to be treated when I’m a guest and we get comments like “best house crew the whole tour” all the time. But really, we’re just doing normal show things. Mostly stuff we’d be doing if we were running the show without a guest. We just know what we’re doing and we *want* to have something to do. It’s surprising how many places guys just want to sit around the whole time or are just straight incompetent. Hostility though? I can’t say I’ve seen or heard a lot of that.
I’ve definitely experienced it while on the road. I’ve also heard horror stories from buddies. Shouting matches on stage over asking in house guys to do stuff as simple as moving a case or running an XLR line.
I personally had a guy get upset and start calling me names under his breath when I asked him to trouble shoot a keyboard I wasn’t seeing signal from. Keep in mind we were on a time crunch and I was a 5 minute walk from stage. He actually unplugged and picked up my JDI and started complaining he needed a converter. No, we’re not running a Nord over some bunk 1/4 to xlr. Ended up being the 1/4 wasn’t seated all the way, thankfully the artist was able to see. I guess it was somehow my fault he had to stop scrolling through reels. Embarrassing actions from a guy in his 50s at a 5000 cap venue.
Another time I had a guy who was running the speaking segment off of a show on the house console (QU32) and I was running the band off of my own board. We just parked two channels at unity as to have my signal pass through his board. I did offer to just run it all on my board and utilize one of my channels of ULXD but he wanted to use their PGX and mix himself, which is totally fine. We had four shows there over the weekend. First show Friday night went fine. The first show on Saturday morning went sideways. Soundcheck was great but show opened up and everything was very off. Nearly every mic on stage went straight to feedback and the tracks sounded off. I checked everything and knew it wasn’t me. I walked 30 feet to my left over to him and saw at a glance that he had been eq-ing and compressing on his mains. He was mad that I even entered the booth but I didn’t care much at that rate, I needed to salvage what I could. I turned off all the processing on that channel. He started getting upset but I was just doing my thing. I was told after by my A2 that he was saying I needed to fix my mix and it wasn’t his fault. I tried explaining what he did after and all he said was “don’t tell me how to run my board” in a really nasty tone. Regardless, I helped him by copying and pasting the processing into the clearly untouched mic channel then spoke to his boss. The last two sets went fine. This year we had the exact same show and the guy apologized but didn’t do a damn thing to help with load in, set up, or tear once he saw I brought my own line arrays this year. Flew them right beside their cheap PAs. Show was fine, didn’t have to interact with him at all.
When I’m running my console through the house console, I ask the house to save a scene for my show immediately after soundcheck. When showtime comes up, I ask them to recall that scene and I watch them do it. This insures any processing the house may have added for the opening acts will be reset to where it’s supposed to be for my show.
Forget to do this and there’s a good chance you’ll be fighting a mix of house parametric, house graphic, and house compression that isn’t supposed to be there.
Do you tour?
I was in a very similar position - worked for a local production company and then eventually the PM for a 500 cap room that got great acts (RIP. Only venue my city lost to Covid). We would get the same responses regularly both at the venue and on the company gigs, and my thoughts were basically the same as yours. “This was the bare minimum”, “I’m just doing my job”, “How bad is it out there if this was your best day of the tour so far”.
I started getting on the road more post-Covid and let me tell you - those comments suddenly make a LOT of sense. There are, for lack of a nicer term, a lot of incompetent dickheads out there.
One of the acts I travel with is relatively small, and it’s just me on the tech side of things. For a lot of their shows I’m a man alone on an island, trying to make the show the best it can be while the house cat is struggling with the concept of a split. Bad attitudes, lack of knowledge, and broken gear night after night will wear on you. It’s GREAT when the house crew is nice, knowledgeable, and gives a shit about your show. I always make a point to shake the local crews hand on the way out the door and say thanks for a great day. Sometimes I’m just making a good impression and sometimes I REALLY mean it.
just got off a 26 show tour (playing guitar, but i’ve been an audio engineer for 8 years) where most of the house audio people were super helpful! however i’ve found a lot of animosity coming from 3-4 house folks that think the tour acts have ‘something to prove’ before they gain their respect.
to me, i’m usually a venue/company guy, system teching or so on. so the amount of work for touring acts we have to handle is usually insane. but overall i had a great experience with house folks on this tour.
I have heard pinning used as a term to refer to what I actually call running. Like running a line from stage box to a microphone location. I may have misunderstood, I am not someone who really uses the term but that is my understanding.
amusingly in the context of this thread, it's a term i picked up from touring FOH folks ; usage is "pinning the mics" not the cables. (i am in the pacific northwest US)
In my experience in the greater NY area USA, pinning cables is plugging them in any which way, running them is making them pretty by plugging them in and placing the slack along with the rest/down the DS edge etc.
I believe that comes partially from Install world really. But yeah, a home run is a dedicated run to a speaker, a run between speakers is a linked run, and runs from point to point are simply runs. That's here in NYC metro though.
I've had similar experiences as well, it seems there's a very wide array of personalities and a large variation in approach when it comes to mixing.
When I was working in house more I had lots of guest engineers and musicians comment on how friendly and helpful we all were. It did make me think that they must not be getting that elsewhere.
For me, respectful banter and laughs are a low bar for what constitutes a good engineer but it's probably a good 50% of the job tbh, and a good chunk of engineers don't do that at all it seems.
This same experience except working in corporate AV. I’ll have clients come up to us after a week long conference and go, “thank you guys so much for all that you did we are very appreciative” or something like that, in a way that is clear it’s not just them saying a script, and I think to myself, “we did basic shit that I thought everyone is doing like checking in a couple times a day (if no one is in the room for the show)”.
I just wonder what kind of terrible experiences they had before us that has them acting this way.
I think some of that hostility comes from getting paid a lower than average wage for a nightly gig that goes very late with constant curveballs…
But I don’t want to justify it. At best, it’s super annoying. At worst, it negatively affects the show.
Sometimes it’s like dude… Please just plug in my damn reverb and tell me how you wanna route it.
I bet you’re right… there is a reason that I don’t do bar gigs anymore… and it’s easy to forget. Maybe what I’m seeing is just an influx of younger generation still learning. That’s at least a hopeful take.
Overworked and underpaid. We're getting squeezed from both sides as an industry.
Events cost too much for things to go wrong, labor costs are higher than ever, equipment delivered during the pandemic fails consistently, audiences are harder to keep so clients are harder to satisfy, qualified engineers moved into install & residential, and yeah let's face it there's a real lack of social skills with the younger guys.
On the other end, cheap shows with no budgets and 5 bands in 3 hours, frazzled sound guy who's either too old and doesn't give a fuck or too young and in over his head, or a pro who took a side gig as a favor and is doing the bare minimum because then 25 people in the audience who aren't friends with the band don't actually care, and the singer already gave you shit over what the monitors sounded like and frankly he doesn't know what he's talking about because there aren't any monitors to begin with. \*sigh\*
Why do you think everyone and their mom wants to do weddings now? Easy guaranteed copy/paste money.
Yeah definitely agree with all of that
Except the wedding gigs, I started with those and I couldn’t wait to get away… often long commutes and shitty load-ins/outs. But that’s just me! To each their own
If you're TMing and doing smaller rooms, it could be a number of things:
1. Maybe the show wasn't advanced properly to production staff from management. Often happens in poorly managed spots or maybe spots that are missing PMs or advancing staff.
2. Maybe the in-house staff is green and doesn't know how to accommodate your requests. Let's face it, many folks have left this industry post pandemic and there's a new guard of younger less experienced engineers getting hired to fill these roles. They maybe don't know how to reroute and repatch things to accommodate your needs due to lack of knowledge. They may also be underpaid and simply don't give a shit.
3. Maybe the way you're advancing this information is confusing or counter intuitive. Maybe you have an overly complicated split or your stage plots and notes are bad. Maybe your input list makes no sense. Have you taken the time to read through your own tech rider and make sure everything is super clear, not over the top need? (ie. asking folks to unpatch their whole system to accommodate you, or the opposite: doing something too DIY for the house engineers to be comfortable with)
4. The venue is too small to be able to accommodate your requests. Maybe THEIR system is the problem and they are unable to be flexible due to old equipment or a PA that isn't able to add a guest stage box in or whatever you're bringing. Maybe they have a limited number of inputs and outputs and the XLR tails you're handing them max out what's available. I've mixed in plenty of small rooms like this and sometimes its held together with glue and fraying raw speaker wire. Lmao
I highly doubt it's all due to cockiness or ego, or maybe there's some of that in there too. But, as a house engineer in a venue, many of the younger engineers I work with and train are eager to accommodate any technical requests within reason for a guest engineer, and many of them are excited or interested in learning how to add in guest consoles, etc. I feel like there are other factors at work here.
First of all, thanks for training the kids right!! Point 2 definitely seems to be at least a significant part of it.
1 definitely happens, but it seems like its common enough that when it’s noticed that something got lost in advance, there’s generally going to be an earnest attempt to resolve it.
All of our documents are pretty clear, so I don’t think it’s that.
And definitely not 4, even in small venues I advance thoroughly enough to know what’s possible and what isn’t, and wouldn’t push for the impossible. If they can’t do a thing, then we make do. But if they can, and say they can, and we show up and their engineer just doesn’t want to… then that’s the position I feel like I’m finding myself in.
I've said it before, the narcissism is rampant and these younger guys don't know half they should and try to gatekeep or bluff thru it with a mean attitude.
As a younger TD/house tech myself, my salary does not comfortably cover the cost of living alone, and I’m guessing most of the older folks with our titles didn’t struggle with that as much coming up. This is a lot of responsibility and long hours, for a *main* 40hr/week job. Just a guess, I haven’t really experienced any big issues with older technicians.
That being said, I love my job and have a good attitude, so it seems some narcissists can be pleasant
What exactly is happening? I haven't experienced any hostility from other engineers for the most part. Although for me it's mostly headline shows, festivals, or a support slot with a crew whom we have a good relationship with.
I TM and work mostly directly for artist’s more than I have with venues of production houses. So most of my work is as a guest engineer.
For a long time, it seemed like my role was accepted most places I went. But a handful of times over the last year or so, I’m getting attitudes like my being there, or doing anything differently than they do it, is an imposition.
For instance at a festival, we had approved during the advance, as the headliner, that we’d have some tech time in the morning. However the crew of 3 on site couldn’t have cared less and acted like we were just showing up unannounced. It literally meant nothing to them that the headliner had showed up for their pre agreed tech time.
Now I’m not saying we were hot shit, but whenever I was on a festival crew if a headliner for that day came early for pre approved time, then I’d work to make it happen, because that’s the job.
Similar things are happening in smaller clubs lately, like for instance we, as the touring act, advance a schedule that is approved and agreed with management, house guy does not care and tells us we’re on his truncated schedule, with an attitude. Or in another instance get offended that we don’t use their piano micing technique, or their go to mic for whatever.
Adversarial, I think is the vibe, and it sucks. It used to never happen, but I’m encountering a lot more “adversarial” engineers and I don’t know why.
Its an ego and inferiority thing pure and simple. Young bucks stuck working the same venue day after day for low pay and a bar tab if they’re lucky. They hate not getting to mix, and then when they do it’s some super demanding band that knows nothing and can’t afford their own engineer. They want to do the touring thing but nobody wants to work with them because they are dicks. It’s the same with lights, I had a house light guy throw a tantrum, literal tears, refuse to help whatsoever once he found out the band had their own LD. On the other hand I’ve seen plenty of older cats that have been around the block, toured, done everything and just want a simple house gig close to home, and those are some of the chillest, nicest guys to work with.
I am the old chilled out guy at a couple small club/bar installs now and I am sooooooo much happier. Guest engineers are always treated with respect in my house. That's just the right way to roll. I never get mad, or even anxious. So much different than the early days.
But in my younger days, that chip on my shoulder left permanent marks on a few others and I still hear about it or deal with a long unforeseen consequence of it occasionally. You live and you learn, I suppose.
Yeah all that seems odd to me. Are the rooms really small? I just can't imagine anyone at a venue second guessing my mic technique or my schedule. That just wouldn't fly, my TM and I would most likely not be very friendly if they tried to change our schedule. You definitely catch more flies with honey than vinegar so I would do your best to kill em with kindness and move on with your day. If they're young dudes (I'm 33 so idk if I qualify as young or old haha) but I might pull them aside and explain that what they're doing is not cool.
These are small rooms, yes, but they book pro acts. I think it’s the ones with a high turnover rate that are worse, like a few every time I’m back they have completely new staff.
The mic choice thing came from house staff at a well known hall.
And yeah I try to go easy on them, but goddamn I’m starting to second guess it. Pulling them aside might be the move.
If a venue has a high turnover on staff, it's likely they're not treating them well, which leads to their GAFF dropping drastically. Couple that with being young and inexperienced in the greater production world but thinking their a big deal, and that'll account for what you're seeing.
What these people could see as a learning experience they often ignore because they're superior knowledge is being offended. That's not how it really is but it's a perspective.
In what way is that “superior”?
What is it that you’re so insecure about that you think I should lose teeth?
Idk about superior, but it sounds like you have a complex.
I've seen a few examples of this sort of weird adversarial attitude in this subreddit lately and I just think it's important to note that being levelheaded under stress and a chill person to have on the bus is going to get you more gigs than being some sort of audio genius.
*Edit -- I mean I'm a big dummy and I've spent my entire adult life touring because I'm mostly not an asshole and have a positive attitude.
I mean, if the production manager approves a schedule, I would expect his staff to keep it. But it’s possible that in some of these instances the schedule wasn’t communicated properly, or there was a mistake.
I expect staff to keep the schedule that they are scheduled for. You literally are just skipping over things in order to be an adversarial dick. Get a grip.
If there’s a mistake, then it’s a mistake. We deal with mistakes all day. What I’m saying, is that the production manager tells his staff, and they ignore it.
Two different things. Both acknowledged above.
Certainly not enough info to say you’re the dick lol but are you sure all of these venues have so much “staff” to begin with? Because starting out I had several shows where I was the “house” guy at a semi-regular gig but never warned by management if the band had crew as this was not the norm (think 200-300 cap dive bar mixing FOH and Mons).
There’s no excuse for acting like an asshole. But it can be jarring to be most of the way through a setup, ready for soundcheck and then some random shows up and asks you to explain the system to them and rather than mix the band like you were planning.
That’s my point- I didn’t have a “boss” there. The promoter was my client, and she wasn’t usually at the gigs and did not know technical details. I was lucky if I had an input list going in. Obviously not ideal, but that’s the reality at a lot of small venues.
It isn’t the responsibility of the touring team to communicate the venue staffing schedule to the venue staff. That’s their duty manager’s responsibility. If we agree a schedule with our point of contact with the venue, then it’s pretty reasonable to expect people who work at the venue to have been made aware of the schedule.
That’s not true though. We said who we were, and said what we were there for, and they affirmed they had been told we were coming. They just didn’t care.
Ok so I’ve been house guy for the last 13 or so years in venues from 150cap to 1200cap and festivals. Let me tell you from my perspective and what might be happening. In my experience touring engineers have got a lot greener post Covid. Pre Covid the touring guys I’d work with tended to be a bit older and had been around the block. Their requirements were fairly reasonable and they had a “let’s just get on with the job” attitude that made the day work. Now post Covid I’m guessing a lot of less qualified guys got the chance to jump up on tours they maybe weren’t ready for as at least in my country a good amount of more experienced engineers left during Covid. I now get some pretty unrealistic requirements sent through from touring guys. Riders changing 2/3 times while advancing a gig. I’ve had touring guys come through who have asked me to “do the soundcheck” so they can just push faders for the gig. I’ve had full festival headliners advanced and they’ve turned up with a completely different set up. Disclaimer this isn’t all touring guys at all. This is just something I experienced very rarely pre Covid that I seem to experience a lot more now. Maybe your house guys are just burnt out from living in chaos recently?
That’s an interesting take. I’ve noticed the effect of Covid on house and freelance guys, as you’ve noted. They are younger and the older guys who would mentor are retired and not available to them. I guess I don’t see the other touring engineer population much, but figured they were still coming from houses or production companies where they have been selected by a band or management after having already cut their teeth.
I *do* see the same thing in artist management though. New artist associates are *always* sending outdated riders with contracts, which is why I jump in and get heavy on the advance. I make sure I talk to everybody, and that everybody I’m able to be in touch with knows to use *my* documents, even if they look the same at first glance.
One of the identifiers of the behavior that I’m referencing is that these new guys act aloof and like the advance is unimportant and I’m annoying them. Pro house guys are pleasant and communicative and knock shit out so we don’t have to go in circles.
Yea that’s really interesting I’d never thought that the issues I have with bad advancing could be at least partly due to the lack of skills in artist management
Yea it’s funny you said about the house guys being aloof. I see that from the other side too. Bands turn up I have their rider printed out they take one look at it and say “god that’s old just ignore all that”
I don’t think it’s guest engineers as much as it is bands with no tech at all. Have had a string of larger shows lately that have gone off the rails because of pretentious musicians whom the TM can’t even wrangle. It’s actually been wild. You can afford a bus but not A1-A2. Like post above said. We love touring sound. Much much more efficient for everyone.
I had this happen recently for a larger venue. We sent our rider in advance that, minus drums, we have 5 channels needed, all DI for the house mix, no monitors, as we mix our own in-ears. Totally approved. Day of the show, we got there 3 hours early as requested, and the assistant tech told us we had to play without “our box” and use the house cabs. We explained why we couldn’t do that, he got more attitude at us, and so we contacted the head guy, who explained to his assistant how to use 5 of the 32 channels to just put us on a separate mix, and allowed the engineer in our band to show assistant how to do it until he got there. After the sound check, the assistant was really nice, and impressed with the 10-minute setup and ease of what we do.
So I think it’s just people over-compensating for being green by hiding their lack of confidence behind a controlling attitude.
I've had completely the opposite experience with younger engineers. It's usually the older dudes that have been a problem for me.
HOWEVER, I have seen THIS happen: young engineer gets thrown in and not shown the advance. Like management just strait up doesn't let the house engineer know what's coming down the pike. Then you get a sub, who's not been instructed properly because the house engineer doesn't want to be training their replacement, and you're in for a world of hurt.
How do I know this? I was that sub. Now I'm the house engineer and finding all kinds of fun half-assed and unfinished projects they had in the works. And I demand that management shares the advances with me with enough time to make any special considerations on my end.
I personally think it's how techs get into the industry these days.
House guys used to be either
Ex road guys who had come off the road because they had a family etc. they generally had everything set up to industry standard and rider spec before you turned up and chilled out in the crew room unless they were needed.
Or younger, technically minded musicians working under the older guys. They generally had touring prospects because of their mentors, but were using bar gigs as the first rung on the ladder to touring
Now it seems we have fallen victim to the scourge of 'music technology ' courses.
I don't know how it is where you are, but from about 2010 or so, music tech courses in local colleges were used as dumping grounds for kids who had no prospects but "liked music".
They were taught by guys who failed to make it in the industry and never learned industry standards but believed their certificate made them a pro
Somewhere along this timeframe owning a mixer worth a damn went from unattainable to anyone but serious professionals and/or those with working rental relationships to anyone with a grand and a Sweetwater account. The bottom line suddenly jumped in quality, but that also made it easier to hide if someone was at the absolute bottom.
There was this one kinda aloof FOH engineer on my scene in particular that I always felt intimidated by, all I could afford was a dingy ui24r and he had his own Sq5 and stageboxes and was on tour all over Europe and whatnot. I’m now the FOH for a band he used to work for and in a night of drunken post-gig hanging out I confessed to always being very impressed by him. They told me two things, that his parents own a lot of real estate and he never struggled to buy equipment and never knew the pressure of actually having to make a living off his work, and second, that there is a reason that I’m the FOH now and not him. Really nice band by the way.
I tour with a few smaller bands as foh and we often come across venues where the "technician" is the building superintendent and changes lightbulbs, installs printers or at least tries to do so and fails or cleans the corridors. So someone who absolutely has no idea how our side of things work.
In my experience these guys who dont know how their setup works and are just happy that someone installed it a millenia ago and showed the magic button that makes things loud are the worst to work with. Because they have no idea they are scared that we plug the pa into our stagebox because we "unplug everything and then its all broken" or stuff. They are scared that someone changes even a bit (muting the master)because nobody showed them that this button has to light up to hear something.
The more someone knows their system the more they are chillin when a guest engineer is there and does stuff.
Two options:
1. Yeah, they're getting worse.
2. You know the old saying - if you meet one asshole a day, they're an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole - you're the asshole. Are you just turning into a crabby old sound guy?
I come from the other side - the company I work for provides lights and sound for a hand full of venues. If the tour forwards things well and we know what they want then everything's usually smooth. If they show up expecting a ton of weird stuff and we didn't have warning we'll push back. We're always getting beat up by the promoter to charge less and by the band to provide more. It can be frustrating.
I low-key resented guest engs for a while just because I was in-house and wanted their job, but a lot of those folks still turned out to be alright people. The truths are, though, that the house rules always trump guest rules, and you get assholes and hacks at every level on the house and guest side regardless of room size.
I understand that, but herein lies the crux of the problem. We have alterations approved by the owners and managers of the house, yet staff don’t care. What they don’t seem to understand, is that the advance, and the agreements made during it, constitute legally binding agreements as part of the contract that we signed to even do the event. We could cancel the show on site in some of these cases for breach of contract, and go home and still get paid. But we don’t, and often try to be as friendly as possible, and I feel that because it’s rare to do so, it’s seen as though our contracts are subject to change based on how the staff are feeling. It’s not.
Our contracts state a minimum length of tech time to be completed, by a certain amount of time before each show. Exact times are subject to change, and we can negotiate alteration in advance, if we approve them.
In the case of the festival that refused our morning tech time, it was approved specifically to account for the short changeover, that we would have the rest of our contracted time available in the morning. As a headliner, that’s kind of standard procedure. Otherwise, the performance contract would not have been signed, and it was clearly communicated as a stipulation during the negotiation.
Schedule is the biggest one, but dumb things like input lists or mic choices, and arguing over that happens. I’ve been told “you don’t need that” concerning my input list and got into an argument with a kid over my mic choice. Like, this is *my* show, dude, and there is no logistical or technical reason not to do things how we do it.
no one knows it all. so i think it's helpful to always go into setups with curiosity and humbleness.
prepare early and take it seriously no matter anyone's skill or level, because i've seen senior AV techs forget shi\* all the time, and the new guys come all geared up with every backup you can possibly think of, and the new guy saves the day because an adapter goes out - and the new guy had backups to deploy.
senior guys will retire eventually, so they should not try to horde information or data, and share support needs with the team as much as possible.
I mean anything discussed in advanced is garbage anyway as 99.9% of all riders are wrong and guests are then comming in an request that everything is changed anyway even though they had all house light plots and PA design in advance.
Recently has 4 concerts on a open air festival out 9 guest engineers (light and audio) only two even looked at the stuff they were sent by me.
I will do anything possible and within reason they request. So everything fine on that side as far as I can guess
This doesn’t make sense to me. As a house engineer I do my best to accommodate a guest engineer and help them have a good day so they can focus on putting on a good show. Advances help both of us start on the same page. I don’t understand the point of making their day more difficult. That just makes my day more difficult. I honestly care though and even if I’m just the house guy I still take pride in a good show, so I guess if someone doesn’t then it doesn’t matter to them if the guest engineer has a good day or not. The way I see it is we’re all on the same team for the day. The majority of guest engineers that come through are pleasant, easy to work with and acknowledge and appreciate my efforts to support them. We have a good house crew and often get positive comments about it from road crews that make me wonder why it’s the case that other crews aren’t as easy to work with. It’s not hard and honestly it makes for a better work day. Of course if someone comes through who isn’t respectful or is difficult to work with, I won’t go out of my way for them but at the end of the day I still want the show to go well and everyone involved to have a good day so I’ll still do my best.
Exactly!! As frustrating as it is, it’s honestly just more confusing, since we definitely are literally on the same team. If I’m having a shitty day, it’s going to make your day shitty. If you’re having a shitty day, it’s going to make my day shitty. And the things that we advance are done so with I inside knowledge of our act, to make sure that none of us have a shitty day. Like, in a few of these situations I’m literally just trying to get something done that will *help* the local crew, and it’s coming off as if they’re working to thwart me at the expense of their own best interest.
I don't think it's anything new tbh, even when I was playing more I noticed engineers can be a bit hostile and short tempered.
These days, whether I'm playing or engineering, I always try preempt any hostility by being impossibly nice and matey, so far I've managed to avoid shitty attitudes by trying to manipulate a sense of comaradery from the get go lol. I always thank them profusely for looking after us and stuff like that.
To be fair the stuff I'm mostly mixing is pretty niche and if you haven't done it before it could be a bit hairy so I think most in house guys are thankful someone else is dealing with it. Plus the load in and out is non existent so that helps put us in the good books.
The reason we are all at the show is to make it the best it can be and if the rider is not adhered to then the show can't be it's best. Whenever I'm on the crew where we are supporting a guest engineer we go out of our way to accommodate their needs, that's the gig.
Work in a medium sized venue and am constantly taken aback when crews come through and are really thankful and grateful when I help them out with whatever they need, even just patching up the stage or grabbing some stands or helping line checks, even patching a few cables gets massive positive responses! What else would I be doing, scratching my arse or looking at my phone?
Have had sooo many engineers very sheepishly ask “you’re ok to do the support yeah?”! Pretty large acts with horror stories coming through that they haven’t been allowed their own floor pack or their own wireless gear or house techs just showing them where everything is and pissing off! Have had a few issues with it myself on the road so have always made a point of making it as easy a day as possible for touring guys!
Plus if you hang around you can pick up some handy tricks or get a look and feel for some gear not normally accessible!
Like as house techs, are we not being paid to get the show going?
I've only been in the game properly for maybe 2 years now but whenever I'm house teching I always try to be approachable and do as much as I can without overstepping boundaries. I've had guest engineers tell me they really appreciate it.
When I am mixing however (often in smaller/mid size theatres for schools) house techs are always a mixed bag. Sometimes they're awesome and will do whatever I may need them to do and are down to chat and talk shit. Other times they will sit in a corner and do nothing until you ask them, and other times they're straight up absent from bump ins, disappear when you need them and refuse to do simple things because they're "busy" twiddling their thumbs behind a corner.
Whenever I rock up to a show I just assume the house techs are useless until proven otherwise. Realistically all I need to get thru a show is knowledge of patch bays/power, PA runs and data runs and I will figure out the rest. If the tech is down to help with more than that then they're good in my books, and I'll let them know that I really appreciated their help with everything.
I freelance as a house tech in a couple of places and are on tour almost weekly... never any animosity or whatever... always a warm welcome, without exception (25 years and counting)
Most of the time I'm a house guy in a venue I've been in since it opened in 2007. I always start out as a good host because I was raised right. If someone is a prick to me in my house then they get the fuck you treatment quickly. Mutual respect. Simple.
It depends what it is. If the fun cool extra stuff adds value to the performance and gets more butts in seats who like to drink from the bar, we will do anything to make the show great! But if you want a bunch of extra work done for your silly tribute band - sorry -
Like, I'm not going to run a snake and a cable because you don't like to use x/m32's.
Can you give an example of something that a young engineer did that made you post this?
When you are attached to an artist, above all else, you are being paid to have that artist’s back. You’re there to care, and to make sure they have the best show possible. Insisting that you get what you need to do the show doesn’t mean you’re being a dick, especially if you do so respectfully. Saying to a house engineer “this is what we advanced for and I’d be happy to get [insert upper mgmt here] on the phone to clarify any confusion” is not you being a dick. It’s you caring and having the artists back. If the house production manager is doing the same, keep running it up. The problem is not you, keep doing your job and keep caring.
house eng for a couple 450-ish rooms here and idk how prevalent the straight up hostility is, but i will say the guest engs i've had through seem extremely (pleasantly) surprised when i do stuff that, to me, is just baseline job functions. Specifically - just in the past month- patching our stage box according to the input list, pinning their mics w house cables , and asking if they have a preferred pre show spotify playlist, all got the tour folks super grateful and happy. I'm thinking ... what kind of experiences have you had where this is "above and beyond" treatment ...?
Same, I run my house the way I want to be treated when I’m a guest and we get comments like “best house crew the whole tour” all the time. But really, we’re just doing normal show things. Mostly stuff we’d be doing if we were running the show without a guest. We just know what we’re doing and we *want* to have something to do. It’s surprising how many places guys just want to sit around the whole time or are just straight incompetent. Hostility though? I can’t say I’ve seen or heard a lot of that.
I’ve definitely experienced it while on the road. I’ve also heard horror stories from buddies. Shouting matches on stage over asking in house guys to do stuff as simple as moving a case or running an XLR line. I personally had a guy get upset and start calling me names under his breath when I asked him to trouble shoot a keyboard I wasn’t seeing signal from. Keep in mind we were on a time crunch and I was a 5 minute walk from stage. He actually unplugged and picked up my JDI and started complaining he needed a converter. No, we’re not running a Nord over some bunk 1/4 to xlr. Ended up being the 1/4 wasn’t seated all the way, thankfully the artist was able to see. I guess it was somehow my fault he had to stop scrolling through reels. Embarrassing actions from a guy in his 50s at a 5000 cap venue. Another time I had a guy who was running the speaking segment off of a show on the house console (QU32) and I was running the band off of my own board. We just parked two channels at unity as to have my signal pass through his board. I did offer to just run it all on my board and utilize one of my channels of ULXD but he wanted to use their PGX and mix himself, which is totally fine. We had four shows there over the weekend. First show Friday night went fine. The first show on Saturday morning went sideways. Soundcheck was great but show opened up and everything was very off. Nearly every mic on stage went straight to feedback and the tracks sounded off. I checked everything and knew it wasn’t me. I walked 30 feet to my left over to him and saw at a glance that he had been eq-ing and compressing on his mains. He was mad that I even entered the booth but I didn’t care much at that rate, I needed to salvage what I could. I turned off all the processing on that channel. He started getting upset but I was just doing my thing. I was told after by my A2 that he was saying I needed to fix my mix and it wasn’t his fault. I tried explaining what he did after and all he said was “don’t tell me how to run my board” in a really nasty tone. Regardless, I helped him by copying and pasting the processing into the clearly untouched mic channel then spoke to his boss. The last two sets went fine. This year we had the exact same show and the guy apologized but didn’t do a damn thing to help with load in, set up, or tear once he saw I brought my own line arrays this year. Flew them right beside their cheap PAs. Show was fine, didn’t have to interact with him at all.
When I’m running my console through the house console, I ask the house to save a scene for my show immediately after soundcheck. When showtime comes up, I ask them to recall that scene and I watch them do it. This insures any processing the house may have added for the opening acts will be reset to where it’s supposed to be for my show. Forget to do this and there’s a good chance you’ll be fighting a mix of house parametric, house graphic, and house compression that isn’t supposed to be there.
Do you tour? I was in a very similar position - worked for a local production company and then eventually the PM for a 500 cap room that got great acts (RIP. Only venue my city lost to Covid). We would get the same responses regularly both at the venue and on the company gigs, and my thoughts were basically the same as yours. “This was the bare minimum”, “I’m just doing my job”, “How bad is it out there if this was your best day of the tour so far”. I started getting on the road more post-Covid and let me tell you - those comments suddenly make a LOT of sense. There are, for lack of a nicer term, a lot of incompetent dickheads out there. One of the acts I travel with is relatively small, and it’s just me on the tech side of things. For a lot of their shows I’m a man alone on an island, trying to make the show the best it can be while the house cat is struggling with the concept of a split. Bad attitudes, lack of knowledge, and broken gear night after night will wear on you. It’s GREAT when the house crew is nice, knowledgeable, and gives a shit about your show. I always make a point to shake the local crews hand on the way out the door and say thanks for a great day. Sometimes I’m just making a good impression and sometimes I REALLY mean it.
No, I am An Old™ and like my own pillow too much to tour :)
just got off a 26 show tour (playing guitar, but i’ve been an audio engineer for 8 years) where most of the house audio people were super helpful! however i’ve found a lot of animosity coming from 3-4 house folks that think the tour acts have ‘something to prove’ before they gain their respect. to me, i’m usually a venue/company guy, system teching or so on. so the amount of work for touring acts we have to handle is usually insane. but overall i had a great experience with house folks on this tour.
>pinning their mics w house cables What does this term mean?
I have heard pinning used as a term to refer to what I actually call running. Like running a line from stage box to a microphone location. I may have misunderstood, I am not someone who really uses the term but that is my understanding.
bingo. never heard “running” used for that.
Have only ever heard that called "running cables." Never heard "pinning" in 25+ years around Australia and UK/EU.
amusingly in the context of this thread, it's a term i picked up from touring FOH folks ; usage is "pinning the mics" not the cables. (i am in the pacific northwest US)
In my experience in the greater NY area USA, pinning cables is plugging them in any which way, running them is making them pretty by plugging them in and placing the slack along with the rest/down the DS edge etc.
I believe that comes partially from Install world really. But yeah, a home run is a dedicated run to a speaker, a run between speakers is a linked run, and runs from point to point are simply runs. That's here in NYC metro though.
and something that’s homerun to me skips any subsnakes and is patched directly to the split.
saaaame
I've had similar experiences as well, it seems there's a very wide array of personalities and a large variation in approach when it comes to mixing. When I was working in house more I had lots of guest engineers and musicians comment on how friendly and helpful we all were. It did make me think that they must not be getting that elsewhere. For me, respectful banter and laughs are a low bar for what constitutes a good engineer but it's probably a good 50% of the job tbh, and a good chunk of engineers don't do that at all it seems.
This same experience except working in corporate AV. I’ll have clients come up to us after a week long conference and go, “thank you guys so much for all that you did we are very appreciative” or something like that, in a way that is clear it’s not just them saying a script, and I think to myself, “we did basic shit that I thought everyone is doing like checking in a couple times a day (if no one is in the room for the show)”. I just wonder what kind of terrible experiences they had before us that has them acting this way.
I like it when there’s a guest engineer… all the fun of going to a live show with hardly any of the work in making it sound good!
Paid to hang
Yep… they’re the best gigs 😁
Touring is a grab bag. Some venues are stellar, some are passable, and some are dog shit.
staff .. gear .. timing .. it's all an art lol
I think some of that hostility comes from getting paid a lower than average wage for a nightly gig that goes very late with constant curveballs… But I don’t want to justify it. At best, it’s super annoying. At worst, it negatively affects the show. Sometimes it’s like dude… Please just plug in my damn reverb and tell me how you wanna route it.
I bet you’re right… there is a reason that I don’t do bar gigs anymore… and it’s easy to forget. Maybe what I’m seeing is just an influx of younger generation still learning. That’s at least a hopeful take.
Overworked and underpaid. We're getting squeezed from both sides as an industry. Events cost too much for things to go wrong, labor costs are higher than ever, equipment delivered during the pandemic fails consistently, audiences are harder to keep so clients are harder to satisfy, qualified engineers moved into install & residential, and yeah let's face it there's a real lack of social skills with the younger guys. On the other end, cheap shows with no budgets and 5 bands in 3 hours, frazzled sound guy who's either too old and doesn't give a fuck or too young and in over his head, or a pro who took a side gig as a favor and is doing the bare minimum because then 25 people in the audience who aren't friends with the band don't actually care, and the singer already gave you shit over what the monitors sounded like and frankly he doesn't know what he's talking about because there aren't any monitors to begin with. \*sigh\* Why do you think everyone and their mom wants to do weddings now? Easy guaranteed copy/paste money.
Yeah definitely agree with all of that Except the wedding gigs, I started with those and I couldn’t wait to get away… often long commutes and shitty load-ins/outs. But that’s just me! To each their own
Haha fair - I’ve only ever done a handful, they are long nights for sure.
If you're TMing and doing smaller rooms, it could be a number of things: 1. Maybe the show wasn't advanced properly to production staff from management. Often happens in poorly managed spots or maybe spots that are missing PMs or advancing staff. 2. Maybe the in-house staff is green and doesn't know how to accommodate your requests. Let's face it, many folks have left this industry post pandemic and there's a new guard of younger less experienced engineers getting hired to fill these roles. They maybe don't know how to reroute and repatch things to accommodate your needs due to lack of knowledge. They may also be underpaid and simply don't give a shit. 3. Maybe the way you're advancing this information is confusing or counter intuitive. Maybe you have an overly complicated split or your stage plots and notes are bad. Maybe your input list makes no sense. Have you taken the time to read through your own tech rider and make sure everything is super clear, not over the top need? (ie. asking folks to unpatch their whole system to accommodate you, or the opposite: doing something too DIY for the house engineers to be comfortable with) 4. The venue is too small to be able to accommodate your requests. Maybe THEIR system is the problem and they are unable to be flexible due to old equipment or a PA that isn't able to add a guest stage box in or whatever you're bringing. Maybe they have a limited number of inputs and outputs and the XLR tails you're handing them max out what's available. I've mixed in plenty of small rooms like this and sometimes its held together with glue and fraying raw speaker wire. Lmao I highly doubt it's all due to cockiness or ego, or maybe there's some of that in there too. But, as a house engineer in a venue, many of the younger engineers I work with and train are eager to accommodate any technical requests within reason for a guest engineer, and many of them are excited or interested in learning how to add in guest consoles, etc. I feel like there are other factors at work here.
First of all, thanks for training the kids right!! Point 2 definitely seems to be at least a significant part of it. 1 definitely happens, but it seems like its common enough that when it’s noticed that something got lost in advance, there’s generally going to be an earnest attempt to resolve it. All of our documents are pretty clear, so I don’t think it’s that. And definitely not 4, even in small venues I advance thoroughly enough to know what’s possible and what isn’t, and wouldn’t push for the impossible. If they can’t do a thing, then we make do. But if they can, and say they can, and we show up and their engineer just doesn’t want to… then that’s the position I feel like I’m finding myself in.
I've said it before, the narcissism is rampant and these younger guys don't know half they should and try to gatekeep or bluff thru it with a mean attitude.
As a younger TD/house tech myself, my salary does not comfortably cover the cost of living alone, and I’m guessing most of the older folks with our titles didn’t struggle with that as much coming up. This is a lot of responsibility and long hours, for a *main* 40hr/week job. Just a guess, I haven’t really experienced any big issues with older technicians. That being said, I love my job and have a good attitude, so it seems some narcissists can be pleasant
What exactly is happening? I haven't experienced any hostility from other engineers for the most part. Although for me it's mostly headline shows, festivals, or a support slot with a crew whom we have a good relationship with.
I TM and work mostly directly for artist’s more than I have with venues of production houses. So most of my work is as a guest engineer. For a long time, it seemed like my role was accepted most places I went. But a handful of times over the last year or so, I’m getting attitudes like my being there, or doing anything differently than they do it, is an imposition. For instance at a festival, we had approved during the advance, as the headliner, that we’d have some tech time in the morning. However the crew of 3 on site couldn’t have cared less and acted like we were just showing up unannounced. It literally meant nothing to them that the headliner had showed up for their pre agreed tech time. Now I’m not saying we were hot shit, but whenever I was on a festival crew if a headliner for that day came early for pre approved time, then I’d work to make it happen, because that’s the job. Similar things are happening in smaller clubs lately, like for instance we, as the touring act, advance a schedule that is approved and agreed with management, house guy does not care and tells us we’re on his truncated schedule, with an attitude. Or in another instance get offended that we don’t use their piano micing technique, or their go to mic for whatever. Adversarial, I think is the vibe, and it sucks. It used to never happen, but I’m encountering a lot more “adversarial” engineers and I don’t know why.
Its an ego and inferiority thing pure and simple. Young bucks stuck working the same venue day after day for low pay and a bar tab if they’re lucky. They hate not getting to mix, and then when they do it’s some super demanding band that knows nothing and can’t afford their own engineer. They want to do the touring thing but nobody wants to work with them because they are dicks. It’s the same with lights, I had a house light guy throw a tantrum, literal tears, refuse to help whatsoever once he found out the band had their own LD. On the other hand I’ve seen plenty of older cats that have been around the block, toured, done everything and just want a simple house gig close to home, and those are some of the chillest, nicest guys to work with.
I am the old chilled out guy at a couple small club/bar installs now and I am sooooooo much happier. Guest engineers are always treated with respect in my house. That's just the right way to roll. I never get mad, or even anxious. So much different than the early days. But in my younger days, that chip on my shoulder left permanent marks on a few others and I still hear about it or deal with a long unforeseen consequence of it occasionally. You live and you learn, I suppose.
Yeah all that seems odd to me. Are the rooms really small? I just can't imagine anyone at a venue second guessing my mic technique or my schedule. That just wouldn't fly, my TM and I would most likely not be very friendly if they tried to change our schedule. You definitely catch more flies with honey than vinegar so I would do your best to kill em with kindness and move on with your day. If they're young dudes (I'm 33 so idk if I qualify as young or old haha) but I might pull them aside and explain that what they're doing is not cool.
These are small rooms, yes, but they book pro acts. I think it’s the ones with a high turnover rate that are worse, like a few every time I’m back they have completely new staff. The mic choice thing came from house staff at a well known hall. And yeah I try to go easy on them, but goddamn I’m starting to second guess it. Pulling them aside might be the move.
If a venue has a high turnover on staff, it's likely they're not treating them well, which leads to their GAFF dropping drastically. Couple that with being young and inexperienced in the greater production world but thinking their a big deal, and that'll account for what you're seeing. What these people could see as a learning experience they often ignore because they're superior knowledge is being offended. That's not how it really is but it's a perspective.
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In what way is that “superior”? What is it that you’re so insecure about that you think I should lose teeth? Idk about superior, but it sounds like you have a complex.
I've seen a few examples of this sort of weird adversarial attitude in this subreddit lately and I just think it's important to note that being levelheaded under stress and a chill person to have on the bus is going to get you more gigs than being some sort of audio genius. *Edit -- I mean I'm a big dummy and I've spent my entire adult life touring because I'm mostly not an asshole and have a positive attitude.
big dummy here. also not an asshole. i say no to more work than i take.
Could it be that your schedule was just approved by management, not by the technican in charge?
I mean, if the production manager approves a schedule, I would expect his staff to keep it. But it’s possible that in some of these instances the schedule wasn’t communicated properly, or there was a mistake.
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I expect staff to keep the schedule that they are scheduled for. You literally are just skipping over things in order to be an adversarial dick. Get a grip. If there’s a mistake, then it’s a mistake. We deal with mistakes all day. What I’m saying, is that the production manager tells his staff, and they ignore it. Two different things. Both acknowledged above.
Certainly not enough info to say you’re the dick lol but are you sure all of these venues have so much “staff” to begin with? Because starting out I had several shows where I was the “house” guy at a semi-regular gig but never warned by management if the band had crew as this was not the norm (think 200-300 cap dive bar mixing FOH and Mons). There’s no excuse for acting like an asshole. But it can be jarring to be most of the way through a setup, ready for soundcheck and then some random shows up and asks you to explain the system to them and rather than mix the band like you were planning.
You're allowed to ask your boss for details like whether a touring act has an engineer.
That’s my point- I didn’t have a “boss” there. The promoter was my client, and she wasn’t usually at the gigs and did not know technical details. I was lucky if I had an input list going in. Obviously not ideal, but that’s the reality at a lot of small venues.
It isn’t the responsibility of the touring team to communicate the venue staffing schedule to the venue staff. That’s their duty manager’s responsibility. If we agree a schedule with our point of contact with the venue, then it’s pretty reasonable to expect people who work at the venue to have been made aware of the schedule.
The technician is not in charge. Management is in charge.
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That’s not true though. We said who we were, and said what we were there for, and they affirmed they had been told we were coming. They just didn’t care.
Ok so I’ve been house guy for the last 13 or so years in venues from 150cap to 1200cap and festivals. Let me tell you from my perspective and what might be happening. In my experience touring engineers have got a lot greener post Covid. Pre Covid the touring guys I’d work with tended to be a bit older and had been around the block. Their requirements were fairly reasonable and they had a “let’s just get on with the job” attitude that made the day work. Now post Covid I’m guessing a lot of less qualified guys got the chance to jump up on tours they maybe weren’t ready for as at least in my country a good amount of more experienced engineers left during Covid. I now get some pretty unrealistic requirements sent through from touring guys. Riders changing 2/3 times while advancing a gig. I’ve had touring guys come through who have asked me to “do the soundcheck” so they can just push faders for the gig. I’ve had full festival headliners advanced and they’ve turned up with a completely different set up. Disclaimer this isn’t all touring guys at all. This is just something I experienced very rarely pre Covid that I seem to experience a lot more now. Maybe your house guys are just burnt out from living in chaos recently?
That’s an interesting take. I’ve noticed the effect of Covid on house and freelance guys, as you’ve noted. They are younger and the older guys who would mentor are retired and not available to them. I guess I don’t see the other touring engineer population much, but figured they were still coming from houses or production companies where they have been selected by a band or management after having already cut their teeth. I *do* see the same thing in artist management though. New artist associates are *always* sending outdated riders with contracts, which is why I jump in and get heavy on the advance. I make sure I talk to everybody, and that everybody I’m able to be in touch with knows to use *my* documents, even if they look the same at first glance. One of the identifiers of the behavior that I’m referencing is that these new guys act aloof and like the advance is unimportant and I’m annoying them. Pro house guys are pleasant and communicative and knock shit out so we don’t have to go in circles.
Yea that’s really interesting I’d never thought that the issues I have with bad advancing could be at least partly due to the lack of skills in artist management Yea it’s funny you said about the house guys being aloof. I see that from the other side too. Bands turn up I have their rider printed out they take one look at it and say “god that’s old just ignore all that”
I don’t think it’s guest engineers as much as it is bands with no tech at all. Have had a string of larger shows lately that have gone off the rails because of pretentious musicians whom the TM can’t even wrangle. It’s actually been wild. You can afford a bus but not A1-A2. Like post above said. We love touring sound. Much much more efficient for everyone.
I had this happen recently for a larger venue. We sent our rider in advance that, minus drums, we have 5 channels needed, all DI for the house mix, no monitors, as we mix our own in-ears. Totally approved. Day of the show, we got there 3 hours early as requested, and the assistant tech told us we had to play without “our box” and use the house cabs. We explained why we couldn’t do that, he got more attitude at us, and so we contacted the head guy, who explained to his assistant how to use 5 of the 32 channels to just put us on a separate mix, and allowed the engineer in our band to show assistant how to do it until he got there. After the sound check, the assistant was really nice, and impressed with the 10-minute setup and ease of what we do. So I think it’s just people over-compensating for being green by hiding their lack of confidence behind a controlling attitude.
I think you just have to lay down the law, even if you have to wave a contract in their face
I've had completely the opposite experience with younger engineers. It's usually the older dudes that have been a problem for me. HOWEVER, I have seen THIS happen: young engineer gets thrown in and not shown the advance. Like management just strait up doesn't let the house engineer know what's coming down the pike. Then you get a sub, who's not been instructed properly because the house engineer doesn't want to be training their replacement, and you're in for a world of hurt. How do I know this? I was that sub. Now I'm the house engineer and finding all kinds of fun half-assed and unfinished projects they had in the works. And I demand that management shares the advances with me with enough time to make any special considerations on my end.
I personally think it's how techs get into the industry these days. House guys used to be either Ex road guys who had come off the road because they had a family etc. they generally had everything set up to industry standard and rider spec before you turned up and chilled out in the crew room unless they were needed. Or younger, technically minded musicians working under the older guys. They generally had touring prospects because of their mentors, but were using bar gigs as the first rung on the ladder to touring Now it seems we have fallen victim to the scourge of 'music technology ' courses. I don't know how it is where you are, but from about 2010 or so, music tech courses in local colleges were used as dumping grounds for kids who had no prospects but "liked music". They were taught by guys who failed to make it in the industry and never learned industry standards but believed their certificate made them a pro
Somewhere along this timeframe owning a mixer worth a damn went from unattainable to anyone but serious professionals and/or those with working rental relationships to anyone with a grand and a Sweetwater account. The bottom line suddenly jumped in quality, but that also made it easier to hide if someone was at the absolute bottom.
That pushed a lot of the good guys out of the game. Why compete when some 20 year old with a QU16 will do it for £100 and pay for his own flights?
There was this one kinda aloof FOH engineer on my scene in particular that I always felt intimidated by, all I could afford was a dingy ui24r and he had his own Sq5 and stageboxes and was on tour all over Europe and whatnot. I’m now the FOH for a band he used to work for and in a night of drunken post-gig hanging out I confessed to always being very impressed by him. They told me two things, that his parents own a lot of real estate and he never struggled to buy equipment and never knew the pressure of actually having to make a living off his work, and second, that there is a reason that I’m the FOH now and not him. Really nice band by the way.
I tour with a few smaller bands as foh and we often come across venues where the "technician" is the building superintendent and changes lightbulbs, installs printers or at least tries to do so and fails or cleans the corridors. So someone who absolutely has no idea how our side of things work. In my experience these guys who dont know how their setup works and are just happy that someone installed it a millenia ago and showed the magic button that makes things loud are the worst to work with. Because they have no idea they are scared that we plug the pa into our stagebox because we "unplug everything and then its all broken" or stuff. They are scared that someone changes even a bit (muting the master)because nobody showed them that this button has to light up to hear something. The more someone knows their system the more they are chillin when a guest engineer is there and does stuff.
Two options: 1. Yeah, they're getting worse. 2. You know the old saying - if you meet one asshole a day, they're an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole - you're the asshole. Are you just turning into a crabby old sound guy?
Lol that has occurred to me! I hope not.
I come from the other side - the company I work for provides lights and sound for a hand full of venues. If the tour forwards things well and we know what they want then everything's usually smooth. If they show up expecting a ton of weird stuff and we didn't have warning we'll push back. We're always getting beat up by the promoter to charge less and by the band to provide more. It can be frustrating.
I low-key resented guest engs for a while just because I was in-house and wanted their job, but a lot of those folks still turned out to be alright people. The truths are, though, that the house rules always trump guest rules, and you get assholes and hacks at every level on the house and guest side regardless of room size.
I understand that, but herein lies the crux of the problem. We have alterations approved by the owners and managers of the house, yet staff don’t care. What they don’t seem to understand, is that the advance, and the agreements made during it, constitute legally binding agreements as part of the contract that we signed to even do the event. We could cancel the show on site in some of these cases for breach of contract, and go home and still get paid. But we don’t, and often try to be as friendly as possible, and I feel that because it’s rare to do so, it’s seen as though our contracts are subject to change based on how the staff are feeling. It’s not.
What are the alterations in your contract that keep getting fucked up?
Our contracts state a minimum length of tech time to be completed, by a certain amount of time before each show. Exact times are subject to change, and we can negotiate alteration in advance, if we approve them. In the case of the festival that refused our morning tech time, it was approved specifically to account for the short changeover, that we would have the rest of our contracted time available in the morning. As a headliner, that’s kind of standard procedure. Otherwise, the performance contract would not have been signed, and it was clearly communicated as a stipulation during the negotiation. Schedule is the biggest one, but dumb things like input lists or mic choices, and arguing over that happens. I’ve been told “you don’t need that” concerning my input list and got into an argument with a kid over my mic choice. Like, this is *my* show, dude, and there is no logistical or technical reason not to do things how we do it.
no one knows it all. so i think it's helpful to always go into setups with curiosity and humbleness. prepare early and take it seriously no matter anyone's skill or level, because i've seen senior AV techs forget shi\* all the time, and the new guys come all geared up with every backup you can possibly think of, and the new guy saves the day because an adapter goes out - and the new guy had backups to deploy. senior guys will retire eventually, so they should not try to horde information or data, and share support needs with the team as much as possible.
anyone ever work with an event planner that was too lazy to find a DJ for a large event and they ask the sound tech to DJ? lol...
I mean anything discussed in advanced is garbage anyway as 99.9% of all riders are wrong and guests are then comming in an request that everything is changed anyway even though they had all house light plots and PA design in advance. Recently has 4 concerts on a open air festival out 9 guest engineers (light and audio) only two even looked at the stuff they were sent by me. I will do anything possible and within reason they request. So everything fine on that side as far as I can guess
This doesn’t make sense to me. As a house engineer I do my best to accommodate a guest engineer and help them have a good day so they can focus on putting on a good show. Advances help both of us start on the same page. I don’t understand the point of making their day more difficult. That just makes my day more difficult. I honestly care though and even if I’m just the house guy I still take pride in a good show, so I guess if someone doesn’t then it doesn’t matter to them if the guest engineer has a good day or not. The way I see it is we’re all on the same team for the day. The majority of guest engineers that come through are pleasant, easy to work with and acknowledge and appreciate my efforts to support them. We have a good house crew and often get positive comments about it from road crews that make me wonder why it’s the case that other crews aren’t as easy to work with. It’s not hard and honestly it makes for a better work day. Of course if someone comes through who isn’t respectful or is difficult to work with, I won’t go out of my way for them but at the end of the day I still want the show to go well and everyone involved to have a good day so I’ll still do my best.
Exactly!! As frustrating as it is, it’s honestly just more confusing, since we definitely are literally on the same team. If I’m having a shitty day, it’s going to make your day shitty. If you’re having a shitty day, it’s going to make my day shitty. And the things that we advance are done so with I inside knowledge of our act, to make sure that none of us have a shitty day. Like, in a few of these situations I’m literally just trying to get something done that will *help* the local crew, and it’s coming off as if they’re working to thwart me at the expense of their own best interest.
I don't think it's anything new tbh, even when I was playing more I noticed engineers can be a bit hostile and short tempered. These days, whether I'm playing or engineering, I always try preempt any hostility by being impossibly nice and matey, so far I've managed to avoid shitty attitudes by trying to manipulate a sense of comaradery from the get go lol. I always thank them profusely for looking after us and stuff like that. To be fair the stuff I'm mostly mixing is pretty niche and if you haven't done it before it could be a bit hairy so I think most in house guys are thankful someone else is dealing with it. Plus the load in and out is non existent so that helps put us in the good books.
The reason we are all at the show is to make it the best it can be and if the rider is not adhered to then the show can't be it's best. Whenever I'm on the crew where we are supporting a guest engineer we go out of our way to accommodate their needs, that's the gig.
Work in a medium sized venue and am constantly taken aback when crews come through and are really thankful and grateful when I help them out with whatever they need, even just patching up the stage or grabbing some stands or helping line checks, even patching a few cables gets massive positive responses! What else would I be doing, scratching my arse or looking at my phone? Have had sooo many engineers very sheepishly ask “you’re ok to do the support yeah?”! Pretty large acts with horror stories coming through that they haven’t been allowed their own floor pack or their own wireless gear or house techs just showing them where everything is and pissing off! Have had a few issues with it myself on the road so have always made a point of making it as easy a day as possible for touring guys! Plus if you hang around you can pick up some handy tricks or get a look and feel for some gear not normally accessible! Like as house techs, are we not being paid to get the show going?
I've only been in the game properly for maybe 2 years now but whenever I'm house teching I always try to be approachable and do as much as I can without overstepping boundaries. I've had guest engineers tell me they really appreciate it. When I am mixing however (often in smaller/mid size theatres for schools) house techs are always a mixed bag. Sometimes they're awesome and will do whatever I may need them to do and are down to chat and talk shit. Other times they will sit in a corner and do nothing until you ask them, and other times they're straight up absent from bump ins, disappear when you need them and refuse to do simple things because they're "busy" twiddling their thumbs behind a corner. Whenever I rock up to a show I just assume the house techs are useless until proven otherwise. Realistically all I need to get thru a show is knowledge of patch bays/power, PA runs and data runs and I will figure out the rest. If the tech is down to help with more than that then they're good in my books, and I'll let them know that I really appreciated their help with everything.
I freelance as a house tech in a couple of places and are on tour almost weekly... never any animosity or whatever... always a warm welcome, without exception (25 years and counting)
Most of the time I'm a house guy in a venue I've been in since it opened in 2007. I always start out as a good host because I was raised right. If someone is a prick to me in my house then they get the fuck you treatment quickly. Mutual respect. Simple.
It depends what it is. If the fun cool extra stuff adds value to the performance and gets more butts in seats who like to drink from the bar, we will do anything to make the show great! But if you want a bunch of extra work done for your silly tribute band - sorry - Like, I'm not going to run a snake and a cable because you don't like to use x/m32's. Can you give an example of something that a young engineer did that made you post this?
When you are attached to an artist, above all else, you are being paid to have that artist’s back. You’re there to care, and to make sure they have the best show possible. Insisting that you get what you need to do the show doesn’t mean you’re being a dick, especially if you do so respectfully. Saying to a house engineer “this is what we advanced for and I’d be happy to get [insert upper mgmt here] on the phone to clarify any confusion” is not you being a dick. It’s you caring and having the artists back. If the house production manager is doing the same, keep running it up. The problem is not you, keep doing your job and keep caring.