Let me tell you about a sound craftsperson called Jason Knoell. Jason Knoell runs H2 Audio out of Provo Utah, and he was the monitor engineer on Pigs Over The Horizon. He made my life so much easier, it was almost too easy.

Jason works with Advent Horizon (the core of the POTH lineup) on a regular basis. With that being the case, he was a natural choice for me to bend my rule that monitor world is not a junior-level position. Let’s be honest, I was also being selfish; I wanted to SEE THE SHOW, DANGIT! In any case, Jason knows what he’s doing. While he’s technically junior to me, industry-wise, he’s not “the new guy” by any means. He’s built a reputation with Advent by doing good work, and I knew that I needed an extra pair of hands on the gig. If I was going to pull off both an FOH mix and the run of the lighting computer, someone else would have to be on point with taking care of the band and FX cues.

Thus, Jason.

(I should also clarify, if I haven’t already, that the only way for junior-level audio humans to become senior-level is for them to take on additional responsibility. At some point, a newer engineer has to run monitor world, or they will never learn how.)

Anyway…

The first major consequence of having someone else running monitors is that my role shifted. For Jason, my job was to be his system tech until everyone was settled in on deck. This meant that, as much as possible, everything was set up, tuned, and “pre-dialed.” The functional goal was that Jason would be able to walk up to the console and get the players what they wanted in a fast, frictionless manner. You better believe that, long before Jason arrived, I spent time trying to get the monitors to have a laser-flat magnitude curve, and also that I wound up the vocals in those wedges to find and correct any problem areas – if the engineer is fighting with the system, the system tech hasn’t executed properly.

The second outcome was that my life at FOH was bliss. I barely had to think about the sound on deck at all. I didn’t have to keep an eye out for players with mix changes. I just had to get the FOH PA to comport with what monitor world was doing. Being able to pour my entire attention into that task was a dream come true. In fact, I might go so far as to say it was one of the easiest, “full production” rock-band mixes I’ve ever done. Sharing the mental workload with another person meant that the “struggle factor” I usually associate with a complex gig simply wasn’t there.

The experience also highlighted that I need to make sure to remember to spend significant time in monitor world myself. I also need to keep some “both sides at once” experience in my toolbox. Mixing for the folks on stage is a perishable skill, and it’s imperative that I maintain a good grasp on it. When life gets too easy, an audio human is liable to get soft – and I don’t want that.

But anytime Jason wants to mix monitors for me, he’ll be very welcome.