WHAT'S SOME SOUND ADVICE TO MAKE CORPORATE EVENTS BETTER

In this episode we get some sound advice on corporate events from audio mixer John Williams. Prepare to have your perceptions EQ’d! 

You can read the transcript below or listen to Episode 17 on the episode page, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

EPISODE 17 TRANSCRIPT

JEREMY: Alright, so I am here with audio mixer extraordinaire, John Williams. John, this is such a treat because every time I get to see you, you're behind the microphone, and now here you are in front of the microphone. I'm so glad that you were able to join us.

JOHN: Well, thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here.

JEREMY: I will just kick this off by saying that I really wanted to have you on because I love working with you. I find your professionalism to be top-notch. I find your ear to be incredible, but you have a demeanor and an attitude that is so calming and even-tempered. That just makes everything so easy and delightful.

I am curious about what's going on underneath all that. Are you truly that calm or is that just what you're showing everybody?

JOHN: Oh, it's complete and utter chaos. I had my first boss on this side of the business. My mentor, for many years, had two metaphors that he taught me. One was that were like ducks, and we need to be like paddling like mad beneath the surface of the water while maintaining a calm and chill demeanor for everybody to see. The other thing was his father was a pilot in the early days of passenger aircraft. One time, early on, he said, “When you key on that intercom switch to talk to your fellow crew members you want to be like a pilot. You don't want some pilot in an airplane you're flying in going, oh my God or words to that effect.”

You want to think about what you're going to say to some degree before you say it and try to maintain being calm, because chaos is catching and calm is catching, as well, so I do my best.

JEREMY: You're a master. If you're pedaling like a duck underneath the water, you would never ever know it, but we're here to talk about audio. I want to start with just a dumb question which is when we're talking about audio mixing for a corporate event, what does that even mean? What elements are we talking about?

JOHN: We're designing a portable sound system to implement and to adequately cover an audience. What’s adequate is determined by the size of the venue, the program that we're doing, and sometimes the budget to a degree.

Are we there strictly for speech and playback or do we have some live entertainment? Is there a cast? Is there an orchestra? Are we doing top-name touring talent coming in, and we have to meet their rider? We have to incorporate the needs of the event into the design and then put it in the room.

JEREMY: If I didn't know much about audio, I would get that it sounds complicated if the Rolling Stones are coming in and playing on our stage, but if I've got a bunch of executives coming up on stage and a guest speaker or two with an audience of 3,000 people, is it as simple as just throwing up a few speakers and everything's fine? What's the challenge to it?

JOHN: When we start to get into larger event spaces, convention halls, and arenas, you have to start collaborating with other departments and designing based on the needs of the show and what is available, in terms of things like rigging and timeframe.

JEREMY: Give me an example or two of a time it was particularly challenging, you had to work around something, figure out a creative solution to a set, lights, or whatever it was.

JOHN: There was one job that I did, and it was a solid, left to right, top to bottom, video wall in an arena environment. We had top touring acts coming in all week long, and you have to be respectful of the sight lines. Number one to the video wall because, let's be honest, visuals are everything, not entirely everything though.

I like to think that when people walk in the room, the first thing that they're listening to is really what they're seeing, so you have to be cognizant of that and design around site lines largely. That's the big one. Also, we have to work with other departments, in terms of lighting and other disciplines, to get what we need. Getting the sound out to every seat in the environment can be a big challenge. Then add weight restrictions to that, which seems to have become a bigger and bigger problem and expense over the years. It's a dance for sure.

JEREMY: You raise a great point, which is putting so much focus on what we see with these visuals and the graphics. We sort of take audio for granted in a way. If we couldn't hear a band or a presenter, what we could see really wouldn't matter. If we couldn't hear the music or the presentation, we'd be very upset.

JOHN: Yeah, and I try not to harp on this or come off as whiny because a lot of guys in my trade spend a lot of hours at the bar complaining about the fact that it's taken for granted. I view that as a challenge, largely, so while I might groan about it being taken for granted, at the same time I think everybody realizes how important it is at the end of the day.

It's basic communication on one level, and then you take it up to the next level. We're trying to convey emotion, intimacy, and make an impact with what we do. There is definitely a dimension to this, which is an important one that I think most people would agree with.

JEREMY: Absolutely. You mentioned using microphones. There are so many different types of microphones. How do you determine which mic to use?

JOHN: Sometimes the decision is determined for you by the preference of the person presenting, and that makes it easy in a way. Let’s just quickly list out the mics. Number one is a handheld microphone. Generally, if it's used correctly, nothing sounds better. It’s like holding a big capsule up to your lips to speak or sing. Nothing will surpass that. Then people want to have their hands free to gesticulate, so then we go on to probably the most common solution, which would be a lav microphone.

BETHANY: This is behind the scenes Bethany breaking in with a fact check. A lav or a lavalier microphone is a small mic clipped to the presenter's clothing that is plugged into a radio transmitter worn by the presenter. The term lavalier originally referred to a necklace with a pendant that was applied to the microphone in the 1930s when they first started hanging microphones around the neck.

JOHN: They've gotten a lot better over the years. They're very dependable, but you do reach a point when you can't quite get as much volume as you want. If you have somebody that is incredibly soft-spoken or you're in a loud environment, that would be a challenge to a lav microphone.

Then there's the head-worn microphones, and they're great most of the time. However, they do come with their own challenges. About a year ago I had a presenter that insisted on wearing a head-worn mic, but she also insisted on wearing her earrings, which were like one-inch hoop earrings. They were clacking against this mic, and she would not take them off no matter how much we begged. You had clacking audio going out over a webcast. This is a top 20 corporation and everybody in her company was listening. To her, it was what she needed and she wanted to be comfortable.

That brings up another part of the conversation. We always shoot for a hundred percent, but sometimes you can't get a hundred percent. Sometimes you have to realize that for other reasons. If you're making other people happy or comfortable, you're achieving that hundred percent, so we have to recalibrate. You have to moderate your ego in this or your expectations, do your best, and then move on.

JEREMY: That must be when the duck paddles underneath the water.

JOHN: We, internally, do a lot of hand-wringing over those moments when things aren't quite going perfectly. I'm a believer that you need to jump in and correct the problem. It's similar to any sort of crisis management. I think worrying about it doesn't solve the problem. I think if a microphone is not working right or whatever the problem might be, you've got to take the medicine, jump in, correct the problem, and hopefully everybody's appreciative of that and understands that we did what had to be done.

JEREMY: In other words, if there's a panel going on or someone's alone up on stage and their mic just isn't working, there's just nothing you can do. Let's send someone out there with a new mic. Take 30 seconds and get a new mic on them, and then everyone will be able to hear.

JOHN: Absolutely because at the end of the day, you're conveying a message and you're spending a lot of time, effort, and money crafting this message. If it's going to hinge on a 30-second moment of correcting it versus not correcting, then let's just get over it and move on.

We live in an age where we've all been watching TV shows and we've all been to presentations, theaters, and concerts, and we've all seen things go wrong. We realize that things do go wrong in life. It's how you deal with it and how fast you can deal with it that matters. Not that it happened necessarily.

JEREMY: It's interesting, on a corporate event you've obviously got the audio, lighting, and a lot of technology allowing us to see and hear what's on stage. It seems like, from an audience perspective, audio mistakes happen more frequently. Is that true?

JOHN: I don't necessarily think audio mistakes happen more frequently, but I think, yes, they're more noticeable when they happen. I think that speaks to how critical audio is to communication. Our minds have a very low tolerance for flaws in it because it almost becomes binary. It's either working or it's not. When it's not working, it's a huge distraction.

JEREMY: It's a great point. Before I was doing corporate events, I was doing theater. We always had the attitude of never wanting to admit a mistake on stage. We know what's supposed to happen, but the audience doesn't know what's supposed to happen. You just keep going.

9 times out of 10, they're not going to notice. If a light cue is wrong, a lot of times they won't notice. With audio, to your point, you're much more likely to notice. In a play, if there was supposed to be a doorbell ring but it was a gunshot, you're probably going to notice, or if an actor is talking and his mic goes out so you can't hear him, you're going to notice. It puts a different amount of pressure on you.

JOHN: It does. Amongst the folks that I've worked with over the years that are audio technicians, they’re highly self-critical and really don't care to accept bad audio flaws and things like that. We work very hard to avoid that in the first place. Part of it is when we talk about collaboration and having to play well in this big sandbox that we work in, it's knowing when you are going to stand up to say this is going to be a problem. Sometimes when you do that, you don't get what you feel like you need because that's just life, right?

If we were touring, like rock and roll touring, you walk in and you see a huge stack of speakers left and right. When you're sitting in the upper bowl, it may well be into the video screen. That is largely unacceptable in what we do. That's just one example.

JEREMY: I think what you're saying ties into a lot of what we were talking about before. We do take it for granted a little bit. When the audio mixer is suggesting that if such and such takes place it's going to be a problem, some people might be tempted to say that it's going to be fine. They're thinking about the fact that if you can't see the video screen or if you can't hear the presenter, you're really going to be quite unhappy. Those things are bad.

JOHN: That’s a big part of the pressure because it is a team effort. We're all collectively working to make you, the creative directors and producers, happy. Ultimately, it goes up to the folks who have contracted us and pay the bills. Nobody wants to walk away with that feeling of disappointment in their gut. It just stinks, and we do everything we can possibly do to avoid that.

It's easy and we spend a lot of time dwelling on what can go wrong or what does go wrong. Certainly, things do go wrong, but I would say in the 30 years I've been in the business, the success rate improved astronomically. Equipment is more dependable. We've all learned collectively. Everybody is just top-notch in their trade, most of the time, in the events that I'm working on. We have a lot to be proud of.

JEREMY: I didn't know that. That's good to hear that things really are improving and it's getting easier. You're talking about the satisfaction of getting it right and that when things go well, that feels really good.

What is it about those jobs you've had that you get really excited? I imagine a lot of the work you do is very similar, but there must be those moments where it is a challenge, I haven't done this before, this is going to be difficult, this is going to be fun, this is going to sound great, or whatever it might be.

Can you think of an example or two of things that have come your way that you really were excited about and got a lot of satisfaction out of?

JOHN: When we're in that last song of walk-in and getting ready to swell the music, dip the lights, run that opening video, or whatever it is that we're going to do, I have to say that's what has kept me doing this for 30 years. It's great, there's energy in the room, and that's why I keep doing this. That's generally there a hundred percent of the time.

It just feels amazing and great that I'm in control of what I control, which is, even if it's just swelling, the volume on that last song, coming in right with that opening video, or the tension that's created by a little silence in the room before we run that video. I feel like there's a collective energy, we all can feel it, and that's amazing.

JEREMY: I think that feeling of being able to be able to control the energy in a room of that many people with the push of a button or the slide of a fader is exciting. The difference between getting it right and getting it wrong is millimeters.

JOHN: True.

JEREMY: It's milliseconds. When you get it just right, when everybody calls the sequence perfectly, and you feel the audience go through exactly what you were hoping they would go through, it's magic. There's nothing else like that.

JOHN: I love going in for a week with people that maybe I haven't seen in a few months and creating this event, this energy, and working with a client. Hopefully, we'll have a few artistic and interesting moments. We'll convey the message and then we're done. We've done it once and then we move on to the next challenge.

In terms of things that I'd like to do more of or try again, I love a live cast, whether it's one actor or a cast on stage. Then, add some live instrumentation to that. That's a really fun energy and a level of creativity that I'd like to have the opportunity to do a little bit more often.

JEREMY: We're going to do it, John, you and me. We're going to get in a room, get some musicians, and it's going to be great. I can't wait.

In terms of audio, are there things that you think live events could be doing to use audio better?

JOHN: I'd love to consider using audio as a stand, in terms of audio montages of spoken word, and maybe even using the darkness to help focus and convey the message. I feel that the spoken word, minus any visual stimulation, can be very powerful.

JEREMY: I love that idea. Do you think it would feel like a mistake? How do you let the audience know that you're doing that on purpose?

JOHN: If it felt like a mistake and was that sudden, it would be dramatic. I think I've done this before with a pharmaceutical meeting, and we dropped the lights. We listened to the words of the patient and what their experience was with their challenge. It works. It absolutely works. You can feel your heartbeat, and you can feel the energy in the room when you do something like that.

JEREMY: Yeah, that's great. I think we're always looking for ways to capture the audience's attention, and much of the time, you're thinking about things you can add. Sometimes it's better to subtract what we can take away to really get people to focus on what the message really is here.

I love that. That's a great tip. I'd love to move on to our Lightning Round.

[AUDIBLE THUNDER]

These are three questions that we ask at the end of every episode. The first one is, who's your biggest get? A speaker, entertainer, or subject matter expert that you would either love to see at a live event or someone who you would love to coach.

JOHN: There are so many, but I would say, Sarah Burrell. I am a huge fan of hers, and I've seen her live. I saw her show, and I saw a concert that she did at Madison Square Garden online. I think she'd be fantastic, especially if she somehow worked into an event or something like that. There's one.

JEREMY: Alright, let's do it. Let's get her. Sarah, we'll make some phone calls.

[JOHN LAUGHS]

Second question, what is one thing you wish presenters did more of or less of?

JOHN: Speak up. You just need to speak up because if you don't speak up, you don't come across with as much power. You don't appear to be as committed to your message. On a technical level, I have to start raising that microphone volume up to compensate, and then we're starting to accentuate sibilance.

You're starting to get into the realm where we could even get into ringing in the room if I've had to make a few compromises along the way. The assumption is that everybody in that audience is interested in you, likes you, and wants to hear what you have to say.

BETHANY: This is behind the scenes Bethany breaking in with a fact check. Sibilance is a noise that can occur when the S sound is smeared, exaggerated, or distorted. Cranking up the volume can amplify this impact, making it even more pronounced.

JEREMY: What would you say to a speaker? If someone that never presented in front of a crowd like this before and they don't know what a microphone is going to do for them, what would you tell them to do?

JOHN: I would say that you reach the front row with the volume of your natural voice. We'll take it from there, and everything will be wonderful. If you can speak loud enough from the downstage center and the person in the front row can hear you loud and clear, we're golden. That's my go.

JEREMY: I like that. That's great, very clear for them. I love that.

JOHN: The same thing, of course, that is even more challenging at times are panel discussions because you're surrounded by a group of peers. You're next to each other, so you don't really need to speak up. Nobody really speaks up when they're two or three feet away from another person. It's not natural, but as a sound engineer, I still need you to do that. That's a tough sell sometimes but necessary.

JEREMY: That's great advice. Last question, what is something, could be a book, a movie, a song, whatever you like, that was a big influence on you and particularly, if possible, influenced your professional career?

JOHN: I'm going to have to buy a lot of drinks at the bar over this one because there's a lot of ongoing mockery over sound engineers that like anything to do with Steely Dan, but I'm going to say it anyway. Steely Dan Asia was one of the first albums I ever bought, and it just influenced me immediately and forever. Its sound is correctly done. Everything makes sense and it's just beautiful to me.

JEREMY: Why do you get mocked for that?

JOHN: A lot of us have, over time, used Steely Dan to soundcheck the room and to tune the system. Since everybody was using Steely Dan, it became subject to mockery. “Oh, this guy's using Steely Dan again?” It can't possibly be that Steely Dan is the only band to use to tune a room. Then there was a joke that came out in the past few years that was, what is the sound engineer for Steely Dan used to tune his room? I think he may have replied, Steely Dan. I'm not sure.

[JEREMY LAUGHS]

JEREMY: Well, John, thank you so much. I really appreciate you doing this. I always love it when you're in a room. I always feel, like I said, very calm. I know I'm in great hands. You've got such a terrific mind for what you do, and you make the process so easy. Thank you and I really do look forward to being in a ballroom or a convention hall with you again.

JOHN: Me too. It was an honor to be here. Thanks for asking me.

JEREMY: Well, getting to talk with John about audio was ear-opening. For me, there were tons of takeaways, but these are the four tops.

                     • Number four, audio mistakes don't happen more frequently. They're just more noticeable.

                     • Number three, if there's a problem with an onstage mic that can't be corrected, the best thing is to send someone out with a new mic and move on.

                     • Which kind of brings us to number two. It's important not to take good audio for granted. After all, if you can't hear the speaker or the musician, what's the                                point?

                     • Number one, tell your presenters to speak loudly enough to be heard clearly from the center of the first row. The mic can do the work from there.

Look, I could talk about this stuff all day. If you want to talk to us about today's topic or anything about live events, check out our episode notes for more information or just go to proscenium.com to drop us a line. Send us a guest suggestion or tell us why you would make a good guest. We would love to hear from you because at Proscenium, we help presenters do their best in front of their most important audiences. As we like to say, we help brands perform. I have a sneaking suspicion that we can help your brand perform.