personality spectrum

In my experience there are two main roads into the audio field as far as personalities go. The techie and the artist.

Let me explain. To do this job you need to be technical minded but you also need to be musical. I see these two skills as being on a scale. supertechnical on one end and superartistic on the other.

The true techie is not a very personable person, unless around other techies. This person will almost refuse to hook something up unless it is the proper and correct way. They will know the exact model number and specs of most pieces of gear. They take pride in doing things the correct and proper way. They usually have very aggressive personalities. Their downfall is that they tend not to be able to flow or interface with musicians well.

The true artist will just walk up to the system and turn knobs. They may not know what things really are. They won't be concerned about headroom, proper gain staging, nor if the amplifiers are clipping. They are totally into the "feel" of the moment. They take pride in being able to groove. They do interface well with musicians. They tend to have very submissive personalities. Their downfall is that they can't troubleshoot or even tell if something is wrong until there is fire involved.

In my experience, the best audio engineer is a balance of these two worlds. Unfortunately, most techies don't see the value of the artist and visa versa.

The most interesting thing that I find in delving into this is that for some reason church's (especially the smaller ones) tend to attract the supertechs. I think it is because the pastor/music director doesn't understand the equipment and the techie just bowls them over with "techie speak". They think that surely anyone who can spout this foreign language must know what they are up to. The super tech moves in and declares himself king of the soundbooth. Hence the "church soundman" stereotype. The superartist in the group will end up hanging with the band and if allowed may sit and complain about the techie's lack of musicianship.

Just a bad deal all around.

Once this has happened it takes leadership with backbone to right things. A super techie is great when buffered by a more balanced person. A superartist is great in the same situation. But both need to learn the others stuff if they truly want to be great.

1 comment:

ambientchatter said...

I once consulted with a church that was trying to move their supertechie out so a more personable person could get involved. They asked the person to take a summer off - a vacation of sorts. The person actually refused and insisted on continuing to work each sunday.

Now there is a king of the soundbooth!