wtRobina's Technical Manifesto for the Deviant Sound Engineer is an elegant, playful and vital piece of writing for engineers and performing musicians alike. One thing it is not, really, is (that) new. Having been published in 2021, I am frankly a little furious with anyone out there who was aware of this book and did not alert me to it. Now I am here to ensure that you cannot hold the same charge against me: over its bristling 110 pages, wtRobina ranges from succinct and unimpeachable explanations of the tools at sound engineers’ disposal to rhetorical flourishes about the conditions of performance, to deep observations about the relationships between performing musicians and the engineers who connect them to an audience. If I were you, I would stop reading this review here and simply go read the book.
For those of you already ignoring my advice, I want to dwell briefly on how virtuosic a writer must be to define gain, equalisation, PFL, compressors, gates, auxiliary sends and output faders in fewer than two A5 pages. Such an author must be utterly clear, in their own mind, about what these tools are. Throughout the book – but especially in places like this – I was struck repeatedly by an altogether urgent desire to hear wtRobina at a mixing desk. That is because, on top of being virtuosic and clear, the writing is everywhere just so damned musical.
The first half of the book is largely the placement of such technicalities amid a taut, compelling argument that quickly comes to the point: with these tools, the engineer has everything they need to distort sound beyond all recognition. Yet while art has evolved beyond any desire for simple representation, the engineer works in an industry that demands that the engineer avoid abstraction and instead attempt to preserve some illusion of sonic ‘reality’:
To create an optical analogy for what the sound engineer is expected to achieve, imagine: visual elements travel to separate channels of a mixing desk – here comes the sun, a tree, the sky, the sea… The engineer collects the isolated elements, foreground and background, arranging them into a visual scene, taking care that the tree does not obscure the woman, and the sky is located as usual overhead. The house ought to be positioned on land, not in the sea, because absolute expectations have to be met…
Because the time it takes for the engineering process to occur is so short the ‘action’ (musical voice/action of the performer) and its ‘replica’ (the sound emerging from the audio system) are perceived as one and the same thing. But this is the crux of the matter: they are not the same thing:
The overarching point comes into focus: the sound engineer is fundamentally constrained by the expectations of both the performers and the audience. Whether it is the voice of an actor on stage, a band or a full orchestra, the engineer is expected to reproduce a preconception of the sound everyone else thinks they ought to hear:
But is it engineering, or is it, in fact, art?… Performers behave as though the sound-person is fixing their boiler. The boiler works when hot water is required to run from a tap; that is the expectation. A guitarist opens the tap of their instrument expecting the sound they feel from their amplifier to be precisely reproduced in the auditorium. Perhaps a little hotter. That does seem like an act of engineering.
In this light, deviations and/or flaws in that sound become a critical error because they highlight the presence of the audio system and point out that, in fact, we are engaging in a sleight of hand: the professional sound engineer is always manipulating the sound. wtRobina gives an insightful, penetrating discussion of how important Reverb is to this work, and how the best engineers use this part of the illusion to actually draw audiences into an event.
Embedded in but (fairly, I think) mostly outside the scope of the discussion here are the roles of celebrity and money in all this. The PA system might seem like a neutral player, but it is built around capitalist success stories. It has developed along lines that allow it to amplify the experience of those attending sporting events, bathe massive crowds in the words of mega-preachers and bring ever larger audiences into a grander but also more intimate contact with celebrity musicians on stage. Take the current Eras tour as one example: it is necessary and important to the entire idea of concerts like this that each individual audience member really believes that they have heard Taylor Swift herself. Both the intimacy and grandeur of the experience rest in the hands of the sound engineer: Detectable plate-reverb, overaggressive de-essing, feedback or audible auto-tune would not be a sculpting of sound but the destruction of an entire – partially fictional – universe.
I found myself circling back to this imbalance of power in the system, especially in economically high-stakes conditions. It is – even in avant-garde circles – quite difficult to find instances of sound engineers truly embedded in a collaborative creative process, because the sound system is just so powerful. We are no strangers to the problems that arise in the concentration of power when musicians gather, but even a conductor cannot – at the push of a button – forcefully silence every other musician on stage, turn a bassoon into an electric guitar or blow the roof off with a sudden scream of violent feedback.
wtRobina argues that “Engineers need to form bands, now, which they own from the console, located in the audience.” I am not so sure. There are surely some fantastic sound engineers out there who could make amazing things out of the opportunity, but it is hard to imagine that the current culture and economic conditions would – over time – allow them to become anything more than glorified DJs.
Compared to this anarchic dénouement, for me the more exciting answer to wtRobina's question – is it possible to be an avant-garde sound engineer? – is yes, so long as you have the right collaborators and conditions. And though we, in new music, have very little economic or celebrity power, we have exactly such collaborators and conditions available. wtRobina has led me quite effortlessly to the conclusion that it should be normal for any ensemble to have a sound engineer as an artistic member of the group. Sometimes this person will be responding to the needs of a composer, or another musician, but they should be there as a recognised performer, inputting and participating in the making of things. Playing the mixing desk as the musical instrument it is. Sculpting the sound. Painting the air. Just like the rest of us.
