Monday 25 July 2011

I'm not listening.

Whilst doing PA on Sunday; something struck me (and it wasn't a bible thrown by an elderly woman because the sound was too loud....) Sound engineering can be psychological



Working with different personalities can be very interesting and rewarding. You sometimes need to develop conflict resolution skills when you have competing for space in the monitor mix. More interesting though is when you have a singer asking to be louder in the monitors and the moment you put your finger on the knob they give you the 'thumbs up' to say that they are fine and they can hear.

At first I thought that this was just the placebo effect but having thought about it yesterday, whilst enjoying a lovely afternoon sitting in the garden with my amazing wife, I came to a startling conclusion..

When you move your finger towards the desk to increase their level - the singer begins to 'listen' to them-self in the mix and isolate them-self thus enabling them to hear better.

I was talking about this to a friend at work this morning whilst getting our morning coffee / chewing the fat about our respective weekends and he came up with an interesting take on it that was quite profound. So credit to Richard for this:

"It is like that with God.. He is speaking to us all of the time but so often we get distracted by the sounds of life that surround us and distract us."

If we can learn to filter that out and listen - we can then quite easily discern God's will for our lives/

Sometimes it takes a friend to 'move their hand towards the desk' and really focus us.