Ramblings

I’m on a mailing list (CSC) for church sound/video/lighting techs, although there are many other professions represented as well. Recently there has been a thread running about how some people misinterpret the most normal signals. Here’s a little excerpt from the discussion:

Curt wrote:
>Someone on stage might perceive an awkward glance from the sound guy at
>precisely the wrong moment as meaning something terrible, when in fact it
>was just a reaction to the burrito that the sound guy had for lunch that …

This is so right on. I’ve actually seriously offended someone on stage
before because I made a face about something totally unrelated to them. In
one case it was my own wife and she was terribly upset about it. In these
cases I was hearing something that was wrong with the way things were setup
at the same time that they were nervous about their personal part of what
was going on and my unintentional negative feedback was the last thing they
needed.

So the next time something doesn’t work, or halfway through the first song
you realize that a toddler has reset the compressor settings or maybe
completely re-eq’ed the entire system for you, remember that the angry face,
grimace, or wince of pain may be interpreted by those on stage as directed
at them and you just might hear about it later…

Bill Apodaca