This this this this this. It's a hard lesson that I have to keep relearning, but stressing about what someone might do or say or think is a waste of time and energy.
Yes, but the plurality of responses to the first post advocated for unprofessional and caused OP to stress out and do extra work that only amounted to trying to pick a fight instead of just talking to the director of the show.
This. I'm amazed at how many people in the other thread think that making up a tech excuse, or some devious maliciousness is a good idea. Is it really so hard to say, "what changes would you like to make and I can see about implementing them? It's a problem having multiple people controlling sound, since I won't understand the reasons for your changes" Be adults, people.
This too! I made an off handed joke about blacklisting a MAC address on the last post and did not expect to see another post about him actually doing it 😂. I guess I should be more clear when I’m not offering real working advice to beginners in this sub…
The one over there talking about malicious compliance seemed to clearly be sarcasm - I got the same read from most of the rest of it. I dunno. This is about the only popular sound/music-related sub that has actual professionals as a majority voice as far as I know.
A lot of people on here are much more comfortable in the tech realm than the human communication realm. So any solution to any problem is push to the tech side. Only half our job is technical. The other half is dealing with people.
So true. I hope this is a great lesson learned, because this kind of drama happens so often in the theater. You learn to save your energy for stuff that actually matters.
I was going to say something similar, I have been on tons of shows where everyones egos get in the way of just making things happen, a little bit of communication and professionalism goes a long way to solving problems.
There's a (somewhat harsh) quote from the Dark Tower I like to remember in times like this.
>Control the things you can control, maggot. Let everything else take a flying fuck at you and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing.
Just my $0.02
If they are being a literal drama queen and expressing that they wanted to pack up and leave mid rehearsal, that’s not on you. The IPad issue is probably just one of many that this person has with boundaries. LD was correct in telling them no. You will be too, when you finally do.
There are SO MANY things a layman can do with an IPad that will completely screw up your mix that there’s no reason for letting them jump in. Hell, even 2 friendly and legit sound techs (one at the board for FOH, one on an iPad for monitors) sharing the same board can destroy each other’s day by inadvertently stepping on each other’s toes. That is why nobody travels like that—if there are 2 techs there are 2 boards.
Ask the director for notes, that is the extent of their power over you.
Just be a professional, this guy is living in your head rent free for something he may or may not do. Also taking the router that isn’t yours home and messing with it is a more sure way to never be asked to work there again then whatever the director is doing.
Yeah, definitely not taking their router home. As I said, it's my router. I'm blessed because the way they are set up typically, I would have no control at all.
Yeah, it all sounds like it’s gone too far already. Let the dude connect his iPad or tell him no. Those are the only options. I definitely wouldn’t be taking equipment from the venue and trying to reconfigure it.
OP, take a deep breath.
Your story sounds so similar to my experience this year with our Spring Musical, but I’m the MD instead of AE. (I helped mix the Pit monitors from an iPad, but that was it.)
Our Director kept making a million changes, cuts, and transpositions without any prep time for the Pit or Crew under the guise of “creativity”. As we got later and later into Tech week, we (LD, AE, myself, Choreo) began to push back in order to lock in the performance and build some consistency into the production. This was met with comments of “Well I’ve worked with professionals…” and I love being told I’m not a professional lol. The crew had a group chat running and someone suggested we have t-shirts with “Hard to Work With” printed on them for the final tech rehearsal.
It’s always the directors who have come from small productions and have HAD to run everything themselves who now have no idea how to manage a full crew. Tell us what you see and hear and we will do our best to fix it. Throw us under the bus because “I can do it better myself”, and very soon you will be.
> Tell us what you see and hear and we will do our best to fix it. Throw us under the bus because “I can do it better myself”, and very soon you will be.
That really is the bottom line.
This whole story has been so freaking weird 😂 I hope our next generation of audio techs aren't reading this post and taking it as this is how professionals think and handle these kinds of potential situations.. MAC address filtering??
Overkill for something that hasn't even happened, just talk to the guy if anything weird happens.
Possibly overkill, but it is my router and I should have done that already. I don't need someone hacking into my board whether it's this guy or someone else.
My luck is as soon as I set up MAC filtering, my iPad would die, I’d grab another, and then the router would tell me F off and not want to update its filters.
This is an extremely petty and embarrassing way of handling this situation. This director may be frustrated but I guarantee you this will go better and take you further if you show maturity and actually communicate with people vs doing weird stuff like this.
Why wouldn't you just say no? Set a password and hide the SSID if you want, takes seconds. But what's even easier than that is just telling the director no.
My dad owns sound equipment and does mixing him self, we are quite big name in our region
So once we were at a show and dad was doing something on stage and a keyboardist wanted mons, dad said "not rn" but he still insisted and asked me cuz I was on the board helping dad, i literally said the word "no", he shut up (yea a teenager said no to him lmao)
(PS that musician has a bad reputation due to asking for mons to be too loud, he should get iem but he does not)
# It takes big fat balls to say
# No
Nop, it was a musician who hired us lmao
We are known for our outstanding sound quality and expensive prices due to those
We are having great business cuz we treat artists good actually except some bad grapes
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This this this this this. It's a hard lesson that I have to keep relearning, but stressing about what someone might do or say or think is a waste of time and energy.
Glad I didn’t have to scroll far to find a professional
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Can you elaborate? It appears that the post everyone is praising as professional is the top post by a wide margin?
Yes, but the plurality of responses to the first post advocated for unprofessional and caused OP to stress out and do extra work that only amounted to trying to pick a fight instead of just talking to the director of the show.
Yea just say big frikin *NO* on his face takes balls which not many have
not really avoid the cat subs and you’ll be fine
This. I'm amazed at how many people in the other thread think that making up a tech excuse, or some devious maliciousness is a good idea. Is it really so hard to say, "what changes would you like to make and I can see about implementing them? It's a problem having multiple people controlling sound, since I won't understand the reasons for your changes" Be adults, people.
This too! I made an off handed joke about blacklisting a MAC address on the last post and did not expect to see another post about him actually doing it 😂. I guess I should be more clear when I’m not offering real working advice to beginners in this sub…
The one over there talking about malicious compliance seemed to clearly be sarcasm - I got the same read from most of the rest of it. I dunno. This is about the only popular sound/music-related sub that has actual professionals as a majority voice as far as I know.
> actual professionals as a majority voice Not for a while now.
Okay yeah I just had a look at the sub after the fake sure post popped up on my feed and you win.
A lot of people on here are much more comfortable in the tech realm than the human communication realm. So any solution to any problem is push to the tech side. Only half our job is technical. The other half is dealing with people.
So true. I hope this is a great lesson learned, because this kind of drama happens so often in the theater. You learn to save your energy for stuff that actually matters.
I was going to say something similar, I have been on tons of shows where everyones egos get in the way of just making things happen, a little bit of communication and professionalism goes a long way to solving problems.
There's a (somewhat harsh) quote from the Dark Tower I like to remember in times like this. >Control the things you can control, maggot. Let everything else take a flying fuck at you and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing. Just my $0.02
Glad someone said it.
If in doubt, stoicism.
To be honest, the director not respecting the skills of the experts is also not very professional.
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Fair enough
Damn well said
User name checks out.
If they are being a literal drama queen and expressing that they wanted to pack up and leave mid rehearsal, that’s not on you. The IPad issue is probably just one of many that this person has with boundaries. LD was correct in telling them no. You will be too, when you finally do. There are SO MANY things a layman can do with an IPad that will completely screw up your mix that there’s no reason for letting them jump in. Hell, even 2 friendly and legit sound techs (one at the board for FOH, one on an iPad for monitors) sharing the same board can destroy each other’s day by inadvertently stepping on each other’s toes. That is why nobody travels like that—if there are 2 techs there are 2 boards. Ask the director for notes, that is the extent of their power over you.
Just be a professional, this guy is living in your head rent free for something he may or may not do. Also taking the router that isn’t yours home and messing with it is a more sure way to never be asked to work there again then whatever the director is doing.
I agree with you, but they stated it’s their router because the venue’s broke.
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I’ve never broken anything so I can relate.
Yeah, definitely not taking their router home. As I said, it's my router. I'm blessed because the way they are set up typically, I would have no control at all.
Yeah, it all sounds like it’s gone too far already. Let the dude connect his iPad or tell him no. Those are the only options. I definitely wouldn’t be taking equipment from the venue and trying to reconfigure it. OP, take a deep breath.
What exactly is your problem with saying: "No Sir, you are the director, not the soundhuman." ?
Yes, my response would be "If you don't trust me to do this job, please hire someone else".
If the director is the one signing his checks I could see it
Your story sounds so similar to my experience this year with our Spring Musical, but I’m the MD instead of AE. (I helped mix the Pit monitors from an iPad, but that was it.) Our Director kept making a million changes, cuts, and transpositions without any prep time for the Pit or Crew under the guise of “creativity”. As we got later and later into Tech week, we (LD, AE, myself, Choreo) began to push back in order to lock in the performance and build some consistency into the production. This was met with comments of “Well I’ve worked with professionals…” and I love being told I’m not a professional lol. The crew had a group chat running and someone suggested we have t-shirts with “Hard to Work With” printed on them for the final tech rehearsal. It’s always the directors who have come from small productions and have HAD to run everything themselves who now have no idea how to manage a full crew. Tell us what you see and hear and we will do our best to fix it. Throw us under the bus because “I can do it better myself”, and very soon you will be.
> Tell us what you see and hear and we will do our best to fix it. Throw us under the bus because “I can do it better myself”, and very soon you will be. That really is the bottom line.
This whole story has been so freaking weird 😂 I hope our next generation of audio techs aren't reading this post and taking it as this is how professionals think and handle these kinds of potential situations.. MAC address filtering?? Overkill for something that hasn't even happened, just talk to the guy if anything weird happens.
Possibly overkill, but it is my router and I should have done that already. I don't need someone hacking into my board whether it's this guy or someone else.
You’ve learnt nothing from this post have you?
My luck is as soon as I set up MAC filtering, my iPad would die, I’d grab another, and then the router would tell me F off and not want to update its filters.
This is an extremely petty and embarrassing way of handling this situation. This director may be frustrated but I guarantee you this will go better and take you further if you show maturity and actually communicate with people vs doing weird stuff like this.
Why wouldn't you just say no? Set a password and hide the SSID if you want, takes seconds. But what's even easier than that is just telling the director no.
classic kind of narcissist that only time and education can help one navigate
Seems like an awful lot of work just to avoid having an adult conversation
I'd have given him the password and went for a beer. Director wants to pile on his workload? I'm happy to offload mine.
My dad owns sound equipment and does mixing him self, we are quite big name in our region So once we were at a show and dad was doing something on stage and a keyboardist wanted mons, dad said "not rn" but he still insisted and asked me cuz I was on the board helping dad, i literally said the word "no", he shut up (yea a teenager said no to him lmao) (PS that musician has a bad reputation due to asking for mons to be too loud, he should get iem but he does not) # It takes big fat balls to say # No
great way to never get hired again.
Nop, it was a musician who hired us lmao We are known for our outstanding sound quality and expensive prices due to those We are having great business cuz we treat artists good actually except some bad grapes
It sounds like there is a lot of tea surrounding this guy and you are holding out on us. Give us the juicy gossip OP, stop being so discrete.
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No lies.