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When you envision a career in live sound, the first thing that likely crosses your mind is the front of house mixer at a huge concert, surrounded by lights and exploding flash bombs. In reality, live sound is increasingly making its way into more mainstream environments, such as business meetings, resorts, cruise ships, theatres, churches and houses of worship, and the thriving touring market. This trend may be, in part, due to the pervasiveness of .mp3's. With greater every day exposure to music, people are attending concerts and shows in droves. This, coupled with the increased standard of sound production, has made live sound one of the fastest growing audio employment opportunities.
Concerts
While the front of house mixer remains top-of-mind, many other individuals contribute to the successful execution of a live concert. Of these, nobody is more important than the monitor mixer. The monitor mixer creates the mix that the band hears while they are performing. Often a band's perception of the success of their live show is most directly affected by the quality of the sound that they hear while performing!
Conversely, a fan's experience of the same show would be more heavily impacted by the skill of the front of house mixer. It is the front of house mixer that makes sure all audience members can hear the audio clearly and at an appropriate volume.
These days, with many bands bringing multi track digital recorders to capture their live show, the front of house mixer often performs the dual role of recording engineer. Once captured, these tracks can be mixed on the tour bus and uploaded to CDs for shipping, or files for downloading, the very next day.
In addition to the mixers, there are many others who play an integral role in delivering an amazing show: on stage assistants make sure that knocked-over microphones get put back in precisely the right spot; workers rig speakers and set up the stage; a designer specs out the hall to determine exactly how much equipment is needed and the best way to optimize the system so that the sound disperses as evenly as possible to every single person in the audience.
Together the efforts of all these individuals combine to make for an incredible live audio experience that keeps the fans coming back for more.
Cruise Ships, Resorts and Theatres
A very popular career option for graduates these days is sound technician for a cruise ship theatre. The shows mounted on cruise ships are usually elaborate, requiring the cruise ship audio technicians to constantly be on their toes, and resourceful enough to ensure every production goes off without a hitch.
|As a bonus to doing what they love each day, cruise ship sound technicians have the opportunity to travel the world and save money in the process, since the cruise ship looks after providing lodging and food for all its employees.
Whether out at sea or on land, delivering great theatre sound is always a challenging and rewarding endeavor. Numerous sound effects and cues must be precisely triggered, while dozens of wireless and ambient microphones must be concealed, either on the performers or on stage.
AV Technician
Any time there is a convention, or large-scale meeting, you'll always find a sound engineer close by. AV technicians often get to travel as much as cruise ship technicians, to meetings and conventions all over the world. As an AV technician you never know who you will be putting your next microphone on, including presidents, prime ministers and even royalty!
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