Sound Board Technicians are as essential to any music scene as the bands and their instruments. They deal with technicalities that the average person never considers when it comes to going to a show. Handling the assembly and operation of the equipment used to master sound quality. They make sure what you hear is an equal balance of rhythm, melody and flow. In realizing this, we at Orlando 24 took it upon ourselves to give you a look into what it means to be behind the board in the pulsing beat of Orlando sound.

When it came down to selecting technicians we could interview on the subject and essentially get drunk (it's how we say thank you for all the hard work, fuck greeting cards), there were three venues that came to mind. Back Booth, The Social and the legendary Will's Pub, places that have seen their share of the more celebrated bands come through here and given stage time to many groups that originate in Orlando, and none of their sound staff felt at all squeamish about talking to the press. We spoke to Ted Pierce of Back Booth staff, Chris Rea from the crew at The Social and Lance Kamphaus of Will's Pub.

From their relayed experience, we learned that obtaining a role as a House Technician, one who works mainly for a particular venue, is a pretty damn good job. The pay is good, and the atmosphere is enticing. There is little travel, as opposed to being the Sound Technician to a touring band, so one can actually find solace in a place where their job can be quite hectic.

We quickly learned that acquiring the job isn't as much about schooling as it is about experience. “I did go get a degree in recording arts, but a lot of it, probably eighty percent of it, is self taught,” Says Ted Pierce, “I first got into it about five years ago, just traveling with two of my friends bands doing live sound for them... I had a great deal of in the field training prior to ending schooling.”

Being the house tech for a busy venue means you become the main troubleshooter for the night. All the preparation in the world can't save an act from last minute and mid performance issues from occurring. Changing levels, adjusting vocals, running cables and compensating for occasional equipment failure falls on the sound tech's shoulders. “There's lots of odds and ends of audio engineering. You have the front of house guy, larger places have a monitor where one guy will mix out the monitor to the stage and the other guy will mix out the front speakers... At a place like this, my job consists of being a stage manager, a front of the house guy and a monitor guy, essentially.” says Lance as he has a beer with us on the stage at Wills. Lance's trek to becoming Will's Pub's Sound Tech goes back to age fifteen, when he started playing music.

A bass player by origin, he started to dabble with other guitars and soon enough keys and drums, and before long he ended up putting together bands with friends. Well, a band needs gigs, and not every place you go to play at is going to have a sound guy. Lance soon saw opportunity in the situation, regardless of the lack of technical training. “Out of necessity and not having money, you learn a little more every time you go to a show... before long your friends start to hear that you can do sound, so you work a little with them and before you know it you're touring with bands and working in different venues.”

A widespread opinion about Orlando is that our local music scene has been undefined We asked the three techs we interviewed to give us the opinion and analysis on what the landscape looks like from where they sit.

“What scene?” chuckles Ted Pierce. His point, rough though it may sound, is quite valid. And to be honest, the responses from the other two techs weren't that different from Ted's. We haven't held a solid 'scene' in this city for some time now. But we feel the recent years have seen quite a number of local bands form that have added to our city's new musical identity. Nashville has country and a rising hip-hop following. Atlanta has had the southern market cornered on rap for many years, and Orlando, well, the best way to put it is that our new sound can't be locked in to a genre.

Like everything else in our city, our music defies description. We talk to a lot of musicians here at O24. But when we see things from the perspective of the sound technician, the experience feels deepened. Who better to evaluate where we are and where we will go then these men. The one's sweating under the stage lights, hustling one band out and another in, day after day. Knowing every inch and purpose to thousands of feet of cable going to and from the stage. There night begins with the hum of the monitors coming on line and ends well after the last note is played.

As you can tell, we've put a lot of thought into how to describe the experience of how it feels to do what these men do. To be in an indispensable position between the music of Orlando and the column amp. What we could think of wouldn't nearly cover the point as well as what Chris Rea described.

“I can tell you that I've never gone to work and not liked what I do. I've never dragged ass there, I may have been late, but I've never dragged ass. “