Little george goes to a wedding

Communities Blog
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         So, Recently I had a conversation with a kid who wanted to be a sound man. I immediately facepalmed in my head. "Don't you mean you want to be a sound engineer?" I asked him, hoping he had just clumped the two together like a lot of people. "No, I want to go around with a bunch of small bands and do sound for them." I was really sad now. This kid was starting to sound like one of the elementary school children that claim to want to be a garbage man, only this guy was 22.  I had told him of my story and how it is not that great of a job unless you get a big band, and those guys want a sound-stage engineer. "yeah, but I just want an easy job, something not too difficult, You never know, I could do your job maybe one day when your not feeling good or something." My head spun, but when I calmed down I said, "sure, let's do it now! go take a shower and put some decent dress clothes on." I threw him a ProSonic Live! polo shirt. He looked at it like he was just handed a G-string. "I have to wear this?" "Yes, you have to wear that. It is a wedding, not a rap show." "duuuude, I thought you just went up there in like, you know..... " "no I do not know" "you know! all DJ like backwards caps and jerseys and bling an shit." "no, it is a catholic wedding, we will be doing the wedding AND reception"

3 hours later

The kid joked around and talked about "getting freaky with da bride" I informed him politly that should he say ANYTHING to the bride or groom in that manor, I would call his pot dealer and so would about 40 of my friends, and say "dude,  _____ gave me your number and said I could crash at your house" 

That seemed to shut him up. We get to the wedding and I start pulling equipment. "dude, don't you have someone to do that?" I thought for a second. Damn, he was right; "yeah, you. Go set these up in front of the pavilion." " the pa-what? I'm not catholic, I don't know that shit."  I was not sure if I should laugh, or die.

Later on, I find this kid hooking things up. I was quite glad he was able to fit a round plug into a much smaller round plug. "it gave me a little bit of a problem, But its okay now. all i have to do is the other three." I looked and saw a sight terrifying. a 1/4 plug from my headphones into the XLR jack of my power amp. Fortunately, nothing was beyond repair.

At this point, nothing is safe. I check and recheck cables.

The rest of the wedding went fine, until he grabbed a bridesmaid's ass. I am so glad she was drunk.

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You know, that's how it is when we're all dreaming about something. When you think of game developer, you think of writing scripts, character design, and seeing all the pretty graphics, when in fact it's a bunch of coding, 3D model design, animation, testing, bug-hunting, and so forth.

When ya think of being a cook, you think of gourmet food, dealing with top-end stuff, and so forth. Not flipping burgers at some fast food restaurant, or cutting up vegetables as a prep cook.

When ya think of a manager, you think really high upper management, like a director or CEO of a medium to large company. Not middle management, or the assistant manager of your local starbucks dealing every day with under-motivated employees that have to deal with the issues of being underpaid and trying to afford rent, utilities, car payments and more.

That's because people dream of being at the top of the professional ladder. They see the glamorous positions, and think that's what they'd like to do. Because they only see the top of the ladder. People tend to be optimists, and don't seem to realize all the hard work people put in to reach that position. For every gourmet chef, there are probably hundreds of fast food chefs. For every AAA game developer, there might be thousands of programmers who write programs that are going to be sold to other companies (like an enterprise-grade employee payment system with direct bank deposits and so forth, with the local taxes and regulations and so forth of that country, state and city)0, working on things they otherwise would never care about or give a second thought to.

That's the thing. People don't start at the top. They start at the bottom, with all the monotonous labor which that entails. And they climb their way there, much like any RPG. You don't start Skyrim with all dragonbone armor and a lvl 81 character with all skills at 100. You start off with prisoner's rags, and hands bound, and climb your way to the top. But people don't play Skyrim for that, they play it to reach the top, and there's a lot of grinding and monotonous quests until you get there. But people don't think of grinding in Skyrim; when you see a screenshot, it's hardly every about a character in prisoner's rags fist-fighting a mudcrab. Most often it's uber-powerful armor, fighting against really powerful creatures in an epic battle.

That's just how people are, and how they think. I guess people fantasize first, and are let down by reality afterwards, and those whom rise to the top are those who put forth the effort to persist and make their fantasy into a reality. But I guess I'll stop now before I become a fortune cookie. =P

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Yeah, you are right. But when someone in the industry tries to tell you what it is like, and you keep on thinking the way you want. You head for destruction. I could wiggle my way into being a live sound-stage engineer, but only for the rock and metal and blues guys. The big ones, like Brittany spears need a LOT of auto-tune. I simply have not mastered that and have no illusions I would need to take some classes on it or intern for it. This guy dreams of doing very little work, AT ALL. It is difficult to teach someone who already knows everything.

4

Yeah. I think the most important thing for someone who wants to become great at anything is a willingness to learn from those with more experience, an open mind that's flexible enough to accept that they haven't thought of yet, and being willing to try new things out to discover through first-hand experience what works and what doesn't. But I guess that's true for just about any kind of knowledge or skill.

I've tried to do some sound-stage engineering at the local church here, when I was helping a friend (I'm not really religious, but the people who went to that church were pretty cool). There's a lot that needs to be done, a keen ear is really important, many hours of preparation go into making sure each microphone is tuned properly, so that no one instrument or microphone is drowning out any other sound, the levels, gain, reverb and all that other stuff have to be balanced out so that nothing is overwhelming and every voice and instrument is clear instead of being muffled either by the room's echo, or anything else.

And having to the master volume whilst increasing the volume of the microphone when someone is trying to speak in the middle of a song so that it doesn't seem too noticeable or abrupt is also a skill which requires a lot of practice. It's often a nightmare to get everything right. We used to spend about an hour or two preparing the settings for each of the six or seven songs, plus another hour or two putting up all the cables, instruments, microphones, etc. I often felt more like a pack mule when helping them. >.< When I started, I figured it would be really easy. It's anything but.

Worse yet is when you're also the guy bringing out ice and water for the crew in the front, and trying to also record each sermon and track the motion of the guy on the front with one arm, and the other arm is trying to handle the mixer. It's almost like being in a circus, with all the juggling of tasks back and forth. >.<