AUDIO
BUILDING UP ‘ OLD SCHOOL ’ AUDIO SKILLS | Jeff Hawley from the film “ September 5 ”
I am often struck at random moments with ideas for this monthly ‘ Audio with Jeff Hawley ’ column . Sometimes I ’ ll be reading an esoteric work of analytic philosophy and somehow see a connection to reverb or compression in live sound . Other times I might be in leadership or management training at work and realize how the content might apply to training and building worship tech teams . This time the flash of inspiration came as I was watching the movie September 5 . RogertEbert . com describes the film as one which “ takes viewers inside a TV control room in 1972 , where ABC Sports broadcasters face an unprecedented crisis : gunmen from the Palestinian militant group Black September have infiltrated the Olympic village , killed two members of the Israeli athletic team , and taken nine others hostage .” The connection to worship audio mixing may not be readily apparent . Let me explain .
In one scene in the ABC Sports broadcast studio , we see a collection of analog audio gear alongside what was then the state of the art — a live tv production switching rig . Even in color ! As the harrowing crisis unfolds , the production team are shown to be absolute pros at thinking on their ( technical ) feet . Need to patch in a phone call from a separate system in real-time ? Place the phone speaker near the live mic and turn up the gain . Need to directly wire in the output of an analog ( POTS ) phone handset to the input of the switching audio rig ? In one pivotal scene , the ABC audio technician unscrews the handheld phone receiver and grabs his soldering iron and goes to town crafting the necessary connection and ( presumably ) output level converter as the broadcast rolls on . Now THAT is impressive .
This brings me to the point of this month ’ s article . How many of us have the basic ‘ old school ’ technical know-how to do such a thing ? I think I ’ d probably check Amazon for a readymade converter and hope the Prime delivery gets it there before the moment passes us by . I have repaired and crafted my fair share of custom XLR cables in the past and know my way around a soldering iron , but I am nowhere near the level of the ABC Sports techs shown in
September 5 . I argue that the closer we can get to their ‘ get ‘ er done !’ mindset , the better . We may not be in truly ‘ life and death ’ situations , but time is often a key factor when things go wrong and we need to move fast to keep the show rolling ahead . I also want to be careful not to assume that all of the younger bunch of techs out there lack this particular skillset — that is certainly not true . But I have encountered an increasing number of less experienced audio techs who see their job as starting and ending at the touchscreen of the FOH console .
Am I suggesting we train the entire volunteer tech staff on how to solder up vintage phone components to our fancy digital console on the fly during the service ? Certainly not . But I do think that sometimes the ‘ tech ’ part of being a technical team member shows up as being more about how we create advanced digital console matrix routing or calculate time delay for our fill speakers or tweak the latest Waves plugin . Can anyone on your team troubleshoot ( and repair ) a bum guitar cable ? This scenario is also a bit like some of the super bebop jazz
88 March 2025 Subscribe for Free ...