Hayley Jackson: How subjective is the question of ‘good sound’ vs. ‘bad sound’?

Hayley Goldman: Good sound vs. bad sound is hugely subjective. You can have appalling sound on something that’s amazing musically and you can have great sound on something that’s musically crap. In terms of actual sound quality, it’s subjective, but there’s a definite right and wrong. There’s a definite good and bad, regardless of what the original source is. 

What exactly are people referring to when they say that a gig has ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sound?

It’s two fold, really. The average person who doesn’t work in sound will say the sound on a show is good if [what they’re hearing] sounds like an album. But say an artist brought in a load of session musicians to record the album and they’re not touring quite the same combination, the average person might say the sound wasn’t good because they’re comparing it to what they know. 

[On the other hand,] they might just enjoy what they’re seeing and what they’re hearing. They don’t hear anything specific or intricate—as in the different frequencies and what not—just the general, overall sound and think ‘Yeah, I’m liking this. This is the artist that I’ve come to see, I can see and hear all the instruments. This is great’.

It depends. I’ve done gigs that were phenomenal sound-wise, but because it was live and it didn’t sound like [it does on the album]—with the same compression and the same sort of published sound—some people were like ‘Oh, the sound’s shit’. And I was like ‘Actually, no, it just doesn’t sound like what you’re used to!’. Also, they’ll be used to hearing it on their speakers at home and these are much bigger diaphragm speakers, throwing out much bigger sound waves. There are so many factors to it, so it’s incredibly subjective.

So when you’re doing sound for a gig, are you trying to make the music sound like it might do on an album? Or does that differ from show to show?

It depends on the type of gig. Say I’m mixing a broadway show. It’s not that I’m aiming to mix it like an album, but instead my aim is to deliver that musical to the specification of the sound designer. I’m aiming to mix in a particular way that’s exactly the same every single show, which is really hard when you’ve got people singing live, who’re going to sing it a slightly different way each night! There’s a specific sound design though, so you’re reproducing that. 

Now, the way that The Bridgewater Hall works is totally and utterly different—and if I’ve heard an album by any of these people, it’ll be the biggest surprise to anybody. Firstly, I’m not designing the PA. The PA is already in, unless an artist comes with their own PA, but often when they come with their own PA, they also come with their own mixer. So I’m not designing the system, the system’s already designed. All I’m doing is trying to produce what I think is the best mix of their sound and reproducing it in the best way through the speakers. I can tweak the music going in, in terms of choosing what mic I put on each instrument—because each mic has a different dynamic response—and I can affect the sound that [an artist’s] putting in by cueing and compressing and sticking gates on how it comes out. I often don’t know the music well enough [to recreate the sound of a record,] so I’m just putting out what I think is a good, balanced sound. If it sounds like the album, that’s an added bonus, but it’s a fluke!

Even listening to your answer just then, I’m so conscious that there’s so much to the world of sound that I have no idea about! Can you trace your interest in music—or sound in particular—back to when it started?

I’ve known since I was seven that I was going to work in sound. Universal Studios in Florida has an awful lot to answer for! They have what they call a backlot tour, where they take you around the back sets on a trolley. They show you some special effects and do a whole scene where police cars are crashing and flipping upside down, and [there are] bombs going off and fire… And that was it, it was the sound effects. I knew I was going to work in sound.

“That was it, it was the sound effects. I knew I was going to work in sound.”

So it was more so sound itself than music that you took an interest in? Have you ever made music yourself?

So, I play 14 instruments…

Fourteen?! Wow, what do you play?

Clarinet, sax, I sing. I play piano and guitar as well. They’re the main ones, or at least the ones that I teach. I still gig now, but it was the sound—the sound effects—that hooked me. I’ve always been into music, but I knew that sound was going to be my career. Music’s always been a hobby for me. 

Do you ever get FOMO on a sound job when you see other people performing on stage? Or are the two compartmentalised in your mind?

No, they’re mixed. They’re 100% mixed. When I’m mixing a show, I’m mixing it how I, as a musician, would want to hear it, which is where the subjective thing comes in. Because yes, sound can be technically right, but technically right isn’t always pleasing to the ear. [In that way,] being a musician does influence my mix. For example, things like fader moves, I’ll tend to do on musical points—like on a change of a bar or a phrase or something—instead of just bringing it down whenever. I know sound engineers who’ll just go ‘Ooh, that’s a bit loud’ and [turn it down, whereas] I’ll tailor it into the mix so it’s seamless.

Would you say that a lot of that comes naturally, because of that musicality?

I don’t think about it, it just happens. Somehow, [my head] and [my hands] are connected. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes, [my mouth] gets involved, when most of the time, it shouldn’t! But no, I don’t think about it. My hands just seem to know what to do. I don’t actively think ‘Oh, I’m going to bring that instrument down…’, I just do it. It’s all instinct. 

I know that you grew up in Manchester too. Growing up so close to the city, I imagine you had more access to live music than most. Do you think that that encouraged you to explore the scene here, or strangely made it seem less exciting?

The second one. I did go to gigs growing up, but my kind of music is things like theatre, slightly out of the gigging world. It was more me playing than me going to gigs every weekend. I was the kind of kid that would have gone to a jam session over a gig anyday. [That stuff] was there and I could have gone if I’d wanted to, but I’m not really the raver kind of person. 

You mentioned theatre just then and Broadway a few minutes ago. Have you always been engaged in the theatre world?

[Excluding] Bridgewater Hall, my whole career has been theatre. I’ve been touring for what I think works out as 18 years now. I started with a domestic tour of Annie Get Your Gun. Or did I, did Lion King come first? Or American Idiot? They all get kind of mushy. I think American Idiot came first, then The Lion King for six months—they were both sat—and then I toured the country with Annie Get Your Gun. The sound designer from Annie Get Your Gun then took me onto a panto and from that panto, I was invited to go international. Every gig has led to another gig basically, and I’ve been touring internationally [now] for 10 or 12 years. 

Talk to me about training. How did you learn your craft and get to that point of touring internationally?

So, going back to the Universal Studios thing, I wanted to work in sound effects, but fifteen or twenty years ago, that just wasn’t realistic. Media City wasn’t here back then, I wasn’t really up for moving away and I couldn’t afford to live in London, especially not without a job. So I put the sound effects thing on the back burner and thought ‘Right, well if I can’t get into foley artistry, the next best thing is to work on shows’. The Lowry wasn’t here at the time, but [we had] the Palace Theatre and the Opera House, so I was like ‘OK, let’s try and do this’. I kind of pushed my way in, and started working as a casual at the Opera House and the Palace Theatre…

As a casual in the sound department?

A casual general tech, but I always used to push myself onto the sound teams. And because they’re both receiving houses, not producing houses—[meaning] that they don’t have any kit in the theatre, they receive a show and then that show goes and then they receive another show—I’d meet all the the touring sound people. I chatted to everybody who came through. Like, ‘Hey, if you need an extra bod, I’m here, take me with you on tour’. I did a bit of casual work, but mainly worked for free for two years, just [waiting] to get noticed, until somebody said ‘Hey, we need you’. And then I was like ‘Bring it on!’.

So was a lot of your learning done through things like shadowing?

A lot of shadowing. A lot of shadowing, a lot of ‘Yes, I’ll do that’ and a lot of learning as I went, just to get in there and get my foot in the door. It’s a bit different now. There are courses for what I used to do now, but there weren’t at the time. My degree is in Psychology and Music, because there were no degrees in sound.

It’s funny to think of a time when Manchester didn’t have the wealth of opportunity that I think is so widely associated with it now. 

Yeah. Media City wasn’t there, The Lowry wasn’t there… I think The Lowry was just being built. This was around twenty years ago.

Do you remember the first time you were behind a sound desk? 

Like it was yesterday! 

What position were you in? Did you start on Front of House or Monitors?

So there’s another position that you [might not be] familiar with… For a theatre show, you don’t have live monitors. We don’t give a monitor feed because the cast on stage don’t have monitors. They have on stage fallback instead, which will be music for them to sing to, but we don’t give them themselves back, because pumping that amount of vocals back onto the stage is just asking for a feedback loop.

[Instead, I was] what’s called a Sound 2 and they run a backstage plot. They’re responsible for all the mics and they’re responsible for the orchestra pit. I’ve only ever been a Sound 2 and a Sound 1. As a Sound 2, you monitor all the mic feeds, checking that they’re [OK] so that the Sound 1 can do their job. You monitor the microphones in the pit, mic positions, signal strength… You fit the radio mics that are on the actors. Then [Sound 1] will mix the show. 

Sometimes, you’ll have a Sound 3 and a Sound 4 as well. They’re both under a Sound 2. They have their own plots in different places during the production and when someone’s got a costume change, [for instance], they might be there to help [make sure that] their mic doesn’t dislodge. Same if there’s a wig change, because the mic goes under the wig. If it’s a big cast performing big numbers, you might have a few people on your team doing that. I’ve always been a Sound 2—so the boss of those guys—or a Sound 1, [who mixes and] is the head of the whole department. 

How would you describe your first time at the controls?

The only way I can describe my first time behind a sound desk is if you imagine yourself driving the biggest double decker bus in the world through the world’s tightest car park with no brakes. That’s the only way I can describe it. There are tight corners to negotiate and things have got to happen at absolutely the right time, [because] that show ain’t going to stop. The feeling is terrifying. The first show I ever mixed was Annie Get Your Gun. 

And did it go well?

So when you take over a mix, you take over bits at a time. The same way you would, say, learn lines, you would practice the mix on the desk. You have a recording that you’re working from and you learn a bit at a time. Then one night, your Sound 1 would do all of the mix apart from the bits that you’ve learned, [which they’d] swap over [with you for]. Normally, you’d start with mixing the outro or the band overture—something that’s not too scary—and then you start building up the scenes until you’re eventually mixing the whole thing. 

The first couple of times, it was fine. But the first time I was in without my boss… When you’re mixing a show, you’ve got all the microphones [on the cast] and all the microphones on the band, and then you’ve also got sound effects that you need to set off at certain times as well. You’ve got lots of different systems and desk cues that do lots of different things. You’re not just mixing a show, you’re mixing a whole lot of things. 

There have only been two mega disasters in my career. One was a disaster of my making and one was an averted disaster not of my making, but maybe the scariest moment of my life. The first time I messed up at a desk, I got my cue stack out of place. I think I’d forgotten to take a couple of cues, [which] was terrifying, and the next cue in the cue stack was a broken window. [The scene was] on a train and I took the cue, so the sound effect went but the glass hadn’t broken on stage, and [the cast] were like ‘Ah, we seem to have broken a window…’. I was dying at the sound desk. 

And then more recently, on the last Sound of Music show I just toured, I was in Mumbai and my whole sound effect rack died—lost power—and it was a show that relied quite heavily on sound effects. It was interesting getting that back on. You’re dealing, on your own at the desk, with a lot of stuff. When things go wrong, you’ve got to think on your feet very quickly. 

Would you say that it’s a stressful job? Obviously, I have no idea what I’m doing, but that sounds incredibly stressful to me!

It’s a good stress. It’s an invigorating stress, it’s not a panicked stress. You can’t do this job if you get panic stressed. If you are the kind of person who spends their life going ‘What if I make a mistake?’, you cannot do this job. You’re human. The people on stage are human. They’re going to forget a line, it happens, and they don’t kill themselves! That’s the attitude you have to take, because [none of us are perfect]. You can strive for perfection and I love what I do, but you can’t live your life going ‘Shit, I messed up’.

One thing I did learn very early on is that you have to live in the moment. Because like I said before about driving a bus through a tight car park, that bus isn’t going to stop and that show isn’t going to stop, so if you’re stuck kicking yourself for a mistake you made three minutes ago, you can’t possibly be mixing right now and that show isn’t going to wait for you to sort yourself out. You learn very quickly to get over things. To go ‘Shit, right, fine, now we’re here’ and you learn to pick it up. 

That’s been a real learning curve for me, learning to let things go. Until I did sound, I was one of those people always turning things over in my mind. Then somebody said to me ‘If you’re kicking yourself, you’re going to mess up again and again and again, because you’re still reliving that moment when, now, you’re here.’. So [in that sense], doing sound has actually changed me as a person. 

How far into the job were you able to truly internalise that mindset?

I had a very good number one—a very good boss—on my first tour. That was when I learnt to mix and also when I was told ‘You’ve got to let it go’. You’ve got to let it go, because you’ve got to be in the now. Because that show ain’t gonna stop. It was then that I thought ‘There’s a lot of sense in that’. Now I take it with me through life, you know?

With you saying that you had a good boss, would you say that sound is the sort of field where you can do all the shadowing and the unpaid work that’s available, but at the end of the day, it relies on someone more senior offering you an opportunity?

For me to get into the industry, I needed a break, definitely. 

Would you say that shadowing is the best way to get into sound?

It’s the most proactive way to get in. Get yourself out there, go and do a crewing job, go and chat to people… There’s an awful lot of being in the right place at the right time. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time, and [then once you’re in,] you’re only as good as your last job. There are only so many sound designers, so get in with the sound designers. [That way,] when you’re finishing one contract, you can say ‘Hey, what’s coming up?’. Whoever you’re working for at the moment is going to be looking for crew again in the near future.

So beyond a basic knowledge of sound, would you say it’s more about who you know than what you know?

A lot of it is what you know—because like I say, you’re proven on your last job—but it’s also about who you know in terms of who is seeing you work. The more people you work for, the more opportunities there are, especially in the theatre world. I can only really speak to the theatre world. 

With you saying that there were no training courses available as you were starting out, if you were to begin your career again now, do you think a formal course is something you would have liked to do?

I know, because I’ve employed people as my number twos [as they’ve] come out of college, that I knew more from working in the field for a couple of years than they did coming out of a three year degree. So I think I would have done a course because I knew the field that I wanted to get into, but would it stand me in a better stead? I don’t know. Probably not. 

So everything you need to know, you can learn on the job?

Oh, 100%. And every gig is different. If you get hired as a number one for & Juliet and a number one for [The] Lion King, the mix is totally different, the equipment’s totally different, the backstage plots are totally different… A lot of it’s the same, yes—you get the sound from here to there—but how that’s done is always different. Every gig has its own learning curve. 

“A lot of it’s the same, yes—you get the sound from here to there—but how that’s done is always different. Every gig has its own learning curve.”

So you kind of feel like you’re starting again with every job?

To a certain extent. You know when you get there that you’re going to have to colour mics and you’re going to have to fit mics, but what you’re fitting them to… I’ve [worked on a show] where I had to thread a mic through a jacket lapel everyday, I’ve had to fit Pumba’s mic in his pants. I’ve fit mic packs in the back of guitars, I’ve fit mic packs in hats, I’ve had to hide packs on a naked body. Where the hell do you hide a mic pack on a naked body? I’ve had to mic tap shoes. Every gig’s different, you know? Every gig’s got its own challenges.

Is there a traditional soundcheck in theatre? Is the process the same as it would be for a gig?

Yes, but [at Bridgewater Hall], the band comes on, they play and that’s the end of that. In theatre, the actors don’t come in on a soundcheck. What happens is the number one is at the desk and the number two and number three will go through all the [cast] mics, and then go and tap all the mics in the pit. So there is a soundcheck, but it’s slightly different. It’s quite nice. We get there about five for a half seven show and we’ll take about half an hour and go through the rig. [The Sound 1] will flash the system so they know they’ve got all their speakers, they’ll hear all the mics and then it’s ready for the show. 

To jump forward slightly to what you do now as a Senior Sound Technician at The Bridgewater Hall, what’s actually happening in a soundcheck? What are you doing?

So before an act comes in, if we’re using our system, I’ll hear the system so I know [that’s all] fine. At that point, that’s all I can do. Then the band will get in and once the band gets in, they’ll want a little soundcheck, which is normally them playing a song or two. They’ll want to hear the Hall. The Hall’s got a really long reverb tail, so it will sound quite different to most places that they will have played in. 

What does that mean, a long reverb tail?

In its simplest form, an echo. An echo happens when a soundwave travels between two parallel walls, and there are a lot of walls and there’s a lot of space in our Hall, so it’s got quite a long reverb tail. It’s tailored like that because it’s an orchestra hall. It’s made to emphasise the frequencies that are normally missing within an orchestra, so things like bass frequencies. The room has treatment so you can hear the basses or the violins being plucked at the back of the gallery without any amplification whatsoever and a side effect of that is the reverb tail. 

So if you’ve got a band in with a huge PA or a lot of loud instruments, can that work against you?

Absolutely. Because what happens is, as the live sound is happening, it’s mixing with the mush of the reverb tail. 

I recently learnt about PA tuning playlists, which I guess would be especially necessary in venues like The Bridgewater Hall that are somehow acoustically unique. What’s on your playlist and why?

Depending what genre of music I’m mixing, I’ll have a different playlist, because I always think that you should soundcheck your system with something similar to what you’re going to be working with on it. So if I’ve got something vocally heavy, I might chuck on Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner, because it’s a plain vocal. I want something generally unprocessed—[something that hasn’t been through] a lot of processing in the studio—because then I’m going to be hearing that processing and [that won’t be] on my live stuff. I might stick on something like Luke Combs. He’s a country artist but he’s got some really, really solid drums, so that will tell me if [each part of] my system is in time with the other, because his drums are mega tight. Sometimes I stick on a bit of Mark Knopfler if I’m doing a guitar band. But generally, I’m not so picky. It depends who I’m mixing for and what mood I’m in on the day. 

Again, as someone who’s completely clueless when it comes to sound, what sort of things do you consider when designing a PA system? 

How many boxes I need, how far I need to throw my sound, how much level I need out of it… How many spaces I need to cater for. We’ve got lots of little crevices in our Hall that all need separate feeds because they’re slightly out of the main body [of the room]. So the space, the size of the space, the height of the ceiling, the head height of the audience, because that will affect where we put it… Lots of things!

When it comes to things like gear, is the gear itself or the sound engineer's skill when it comes to using it more important?

You can have the shittest PA and the best engineer, and it will sound just about OK but you can have the best PA and the shittest engineer, and no way will it sound OK. You’ve got to know what you’re doing. 

What do people mean when they refer to someone being either a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ sound engineer?

That’s a bloody hard question! I think you’ve got to know how to listen. A good sound engineer listens and analyses what it is they’re hearing. I think a bad sound engineer is a sound engineer who does things without knowing why. You’ll have people who’ll come to the desk who won’t have heard the room or even heard a single instrument, and will do certain things to the mix. Certain things are OK to do like that. For instance, you might want to take the bass off and the top off in any room you start with, as there are certain frequencies that certain instruments don’t play, so you don’t need them in the mix, taking up space [that could be used] for something else. Like, you can take all the bass frequencies out of a piccolo, because you want to save them for your bass guitar and your kick drum. So there are certain things you can do, but say you were to do that universally across your mix without hearing the room… That’s not advised. Or at least I don’t think it’s advised. It’s not an approach that I would take. If you do things without knowing why, I think that makes you fall into the ‘Do you really know what you’re doing?’ category. 

It’s a really hard question to answer. It’s like [being asked to describe the difference between] a good politician and a bad politician. Just don’t fuck it up, do you know what I mean? I can’t tell you the amount of things that could go wrong, because there are too many, but if you know how to listen and you are reactive, then that [can only be] a good thing. 

So much of an audience’s experience of any live event hinges on the sound and it sounds like there’s so much that can go wrong. Do you ever feel that pressure?

Sometimes. But sometimes there’s absolutely nothing I can do [about a sound problem, and] at that point, I have to rationalise ‘I can’t do anything about it, so I have to let it go’. [Other times,] I go ‘OK, that’s something that I can do something about and that’s something that I should do something about’. But do I take it personally? It depends.

[For instance,] we had an artist in over the last few months and the sound that night was awesome. I walked through the building and the sound was absolutely insane. I mean, I didn’t know the band but the music was amazing, [yet Front of House] still had a lot of complaints because the live show didn’t sound like the album. That’s what I mean about good sound and whether people construe it as good sound. I said to one woman ‘Can you tell me what it is [that’s bothering you]?’ and she said ‘It doesn’t sound like my record at home.’. I was like ‘It’s live, it’s in a concert hall, it’s not in your room at home, it’s not on your sound system at home, it’s not been recorded in a studio…’. That, I can do nothing about. You’ve come for the live experience, so enjoy the live experience! If you want to listen to your album, go and play your album. The sound itself was great. 

So it depends what the actual issue is as to whether I do something about it, or whether I physically can do something about it, because sometimes there’s nothing I can do. You have to take the rough with the smooth sometimes, you know. I want to deliver a quality product, but there are definite limitations on that. You can only act within a certain boundary, and you’ve got to let some things go otherwise they’ll eat you alive. In the same way as when mistakes happen while you’re mixing a show, [dwelling on things] is going to affect your performance. If I’m spending the whole show going ‘Shit, shit, shit, they’re not going to be happy and they’re not going to be happy…’, I can’t possibly deliver a quality mix and that’s where my priority has to lie at that particular point. That’s my job. 

That all sounds very level headed! Are there any nuances between doing sound for something really noisy, like a punk gig, or something softer and more delicate, like a classical concert? What are the nuances of working across different genres?

Are you talking about a mic’d classical concert? Because if a classical concert is unmic’d, it won’t have a sound engineer. If it’s just the orchestra unmic’d, it’s acoustic. It comes back to what I was saying before about this particular hall being constructed so that you can hear the tiniest [noise] from the orchestra at the back of the gallery with no mic. 

Wow, I didn’t realise that an orchestra wouldn’t have a sound engineer. I just assumed, with their being so many musicians on stage…

Not unless they have singers performing with them. [For instance,] the other night, they had four choir mics and a singer who was mic’d, but the orchestra themselves weren’t. Then it becomes a balancing act, because I cannot push [the sound of] that orchestra, so instead I have to sit the choir and the soloist within that world. I can only sit [those additional performers] within the existing realms of the orchestra and give them more dynamics, otherwise you’re going to have them up here and you won’t be able to hear the orchestra. I have to sit them within an existing structure, if you like, so it becomes a different challenge, which is quite nice. 

[Other times,] we will mic the orchestra, which gives you a lot more control. All of a sudden, you’ve got this orchestra on faders, meaning you can be hugely dynamic with them, so even a mic’d orchestra and a non-mic’d orchestra are very different to work with. Then when you compare that again to a punk band, it’s chalk and cheese. Chalk and cheese.

When you were part of the team on a touring show, did you have the opposite set up? So instead of working with a different show and a different team in the same venue, you’d be working on exactly the same show with exactly the same people, just in a different venue?

Yeah. [For instance,] one particular tour we put down in Singapore for three months, then we moved to Jakarta for two months, then we went to Manilla for about a month, then Mumbai for nine weeks… All over the place for different periods of time. What’s nice though is that you still get your desk. It might be in a different place, but it’s your desk, it’s a set you’re familiar with, it’s the same show with the same cast. Your room sounds different, but it’s your PA, so there’s a level of familiarity there. It’s still your show, the show you know. 

Presenting the same product in different places, were there any nuances that you noticed between locations? Did different audiences respond to different things?

Different audiences respond to different things and different audiences do different things. [For instance,] in Cairo, we had a full-on boxing match in the audience while the show was going on. I don’t know if someone had sat in someone else’s seat or something, but yeah, it was nuts. And we didn’t stop the show!

Are there nuances across different industries too? For instance, is there anything that you do for a theatre show that you wouldn’t do for a regular gig, or vice versa?

The job I’m doing here is different, but from a sound perspective, everything I’ve learnt in theatre, I can apply here. It’s slightly different in that I’m not doing the same show day in, day out, I don’t have a routine and every day is different. But the principles are more or less the same. It’s slightly different, but I’m still doing the same stuff. I’m still producing sound from microphones. So tricky question, but no. 

In your career so far, your work has taken you around the world. Was that ever a consideration—or a motivation—when you first started in sound?

That wasn’t even a consideration when I started. It was only after I’d done that panto and the sound designer rang me up and said ‘Hey, I’ve got an international tour going out, do you want to work on it?’. Up until that point, I’d never even thought about it. 

Another example, I suppose, of taking opportunities when they present themselves.

Right place, right time. It’s all about taking opportunities. And again, it comes down to [that thing of only being] as good as your last job. If you prove your worth to somebody, they’ll want to take you with them. 

Tell me about some of your favourite or most memorable experiences from your time as a freelancer.

My favourite experience was probably building pyramids in Egypt. We were doing The Sound of Music in Cairo, in the same venue as the boxing match I mentioned a minute ago. They’d built this great big 2,000 seater marquee [on a mountain], and they were building the stage [inside] and had to dig the orchestra pit out of the [earth]. They were actually digging a pit into the mountain, which was insane, and while they were doing that, because of all the dirt and the bricks that were there, me and my team were sat playing, kind of like how you’d play with lego, building pyramids out of the dirt. In Egypt. It was nuts. 

My career’s taken me all over the world though. I lived in Macau for two years while working on the biggest water show in the world. That was amazing. [There have been] too many amazing experiences to mention, to be honest.

So why did you want to come home?

There comes a point that everyone will tell you about when you first start touring—and I never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought that it would hit me—that your body just doesn’t want to tour anymore. You just hit a wall, and that’s what happened to me [last] year. It was January and I was stuck in Mumbai [working on a touring show]. Who gets paid to be in Mumbai? It’s not even on my radar to go as a tourist and yet I’m gifted nine weeks there! It was an amazing opportunity—and I just didn’t want to be there. I loved my show, I loved my job, but something wasn’t right. When I came back to Manchester, I interviewed for Bridgewater, just on a whim. I already had another contract—I had two month’s work with Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak show in Milan and Barcelona—so I interviewed, got the job and thankfully they were like ‘Yeah, [fulfil] the rest of your contracts and we’ll pick it up from there.’. So I went to Milan—and, again, was gifted a month there, I didn’t have to pay for flights, I didn’t have to pay for accommodation—and I was just like ‘I don’t want to be there.’. I was like ‘OK, here’s my wall. I’m done, I need to go home.’. So I [accepted] the job and I’ve been at the venue since. I was just done touring. I needed my own bed. 

“There comes a point that everyone will tell you about when you first start touring—and I never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought that it would hit me—that your body just doesn’t want to tour anymore.”

Having now been home for a while, can you put your finger on why that is?

There is, say, 10% of me that still has those itchy feet to go on tour again but then the rest of me is like ‘Oi, grow up! We’re done’. It’s like there’s a little imp that lives in my ear [saying] ‘Go on!’, and then another part of me is like ‘No, we’re done’. At the moment, that sensible part of me is beating that imp into submission. I think I am done. But the itchy feet are still… I think that’ll always be there. I’m not looking to go out on tour at the moment though. No way. I’m really enjoying it at the hall and I’m here to stay if they’ll have me. 

Having come back after such a long time away, did you notice any particular changes when you first came back to Manchester?

There are definitely, definitely more performance spaces. When I left, the Royal Exchange was just in its rejuvenation phase, and then there was The Lowry and Media City and now Home and Factory International... There are a lot of new things that have sprung up. From a performance point of view, there are lots of live venues developing. Manchester’s growing and it’s great. 

It must be nice for you to be back home, near friends and family too. How do you cope with that when you’re on tour?

When you’re touring, especially internationally, your tour [crew] is your family. You can be away from nine months to a year at a time, even longer, so your tour buddies are your family, absolutely. Not just your family, but your support network. You can’t do it on your own. No way.

With that in mind, it would be remiss of me not to talk about you being a woman in a man’s world…

I live my life as a woman in a man’s world! I certainly did for the first eight to ten years [of my career], but it’s definitely, definitely changing. In all my time touring theatre, I’ve been the single female on the team. Always the single female on the sound team, and a lot of the time, the single female on the whole of the tech team too. That has started to change. There’s been a shift, which is brilliant and I’ve got to say, I’m slightly biased. If I’ve got a work experience student who is female, I’ll definitely put more time into them. I think ‘Come on, one for the girls!’. 

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about that idea of ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’. When you first started in sound, did you ever have any doubts or hesitation about pursuing it as a career given the lack of female representation in the space? Did it ever seem like it wasn’t such a welcoming environment for women?

Hell yeah. Yes. But I’m the kind of person that, once I get an idea in my head, I’m going to make it happen. It was a case of… I mean, like I say, I worked for free for two years and then I got offered the job [that I did]. I would have said yes to any job, but [that one was with] a really nice guy and a really, really nice team. I have worked with some absolute, absolute arseholes though.

I worked with one guy who was such an arsehole to me and the Deputy Stage Manager, who was also female. The stage management team has always been more open to a mix of both men and women [than other departments]. I didn’t say anything, but she did, and she actually got him fired. He was more of an arse to me than he was to her and I should have opened my mouth and I didn’t, and I think that’s because I felt vulnerable being female in that position, so I was grateful to her. She didn’t know, I hadn’t said anything to her, but we were in the wing together one day and she said ‘Does he talk to you like that?’ and I was like ‘...Yeah.’. She actually took it further, but I didn’t have the guts to do that. 

So you do come across some absolute arseholes, but most of the guys that I’ve worked with have been absolute legends, and not only have they been lovely, but they’ve actually taught me a lot. I’m where I am in my career because of some of those guys.

As you progressed in your career and moved into more senior and maybe managerial roles, did you find that junior male team members were ever reluctant to be managed by a woman?

The craziest thing that ever happened to me was, we were touring with a rack that I’d built—this great big daddy rack, full of amps and full of kit, in a great big flight case—and I remember turning up to a venue, and the casual worker we had for the week—because we’d have the touring crew and then a pair of [local] hands—had obviously come in [thinking] ‘I am the big I am’ and had analysed the rack. He was there a little earlier than me—you know, eager beaver who wanted to impress—then I came in and I don’t know who the heck he thought I was, but he proceeded to talk me through the rack I’d built and then said ‘Well, if you need any more information, the operator will be here in a minute’. I was like ‘Thanks, [but] I’m here now’. I’ve never seen anybody go so red. I don’t know who the heck he was expecting, but he wasn’t expecting me, that’s for sure. [And] that totally does still happen. People don’t expect to see [a woman with] blonde, straightened hair on the floor, laying cables. 

Do you think that’s changing?

You see a lot of females in crews now, you see a lot of female engineers. And I would say that sexism does still happen, but much, much less [than it did].

Good on you for having the resilience to get through it and keep working towards your goals regardless. 

It was hard. The early days were hard and to this day, there’s imposter syndrome. I stand at a desk and go ‘Shit, why am I doing this? Do I know what I’m doing? Do I?’.

Do you think that doubt comes from something internal, or that it’s maybe the aftermath of those experiences earlier in your career?

I think it comes from a [desire] to be perfect, a little niggling lack of confidence and a lot of living in a man’s world going ‘Am I actually good enough to do this?’. It’s a great big mix of things, and I think it’s very individual. It’s an individual feeling. You know, you rationalise it and you go ‘Hey, you’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years. It’s a desk, it’s a show, it’s going to happen whether you like it or not. Just go with it’ and you bring yourself back to the now again. A lot of issues are in your head, so you’ve got to bring yourself out of your head and back into the now. 

Aside from that, is there anything else you’ve learnt on the job that you feel you’ve carried over from your professional life to your personal life, or maybe even vice versa?

The music side of me I bring to sound. I 100% believe that me being a musician makes me a better mixer. [Then on the other side of things,] there’s the whole ‘being in the now’ thing, and learning how to prioritise what to worry about.

Because I’m so self-analytical and used to beat myself up over the tiniest things, [it was transformative] when my colleague said to me ‘You reprimanding yourself in your head means you’re not mixing right now’. When you think about it, how much life do we miss out on because we’re too busy talking to ourselves in our heads, beating ourselves up for no reason? I like to think that that’s come with me. I still beat myself up, but there’s a little part of me now that says ‘Oi, live in the now’. 

How do you reconnect to your passion for the job if and when you find it waning?

I never have. I’ve never lost my passion for sound. I lost my passion for being where I was, but I still loved the job and if somebody had said to me ‘Do you want to do this show in your hometown?’ I’d have been there tomorrow. I genuinely love what I do. It wasn’t the sound that was the problem, it was where I was and where I wanted to be, and who I wanted to be with. But yeah, I can honestly say I’ve never lost my passion for sound. 

Do you still enjoy live performances in the same way as before you started working in sound?

You have to switch it off. You have to switch it off. If you go to see a gig, the easiest thing to do is sit there and go ‘I wouldn’t do that…’. You could spend your whole life doing that. But the more you go out to gigs, the more you get used to switching it off. You’ll never enjoy anything ever again if you don’t. 

In terms of your career aspirations for the future, what do you think in terms of now? Is it the artists that you want to work with or the venues, for example? For a lot of people, touring would be an aspiration, but obviously you’ve already ticked that one off. 

I’m kind of living in the now. I’m home from tour, I’m enjoying being at home and I’m enjoying my job. My job is settled. There are very few things to consider right now. I’m just plodding along and I’m quite liking it. It’s a much slower pace than touring and right now, it’s what I need. As for what the future holds, it depends how settled I get, you know? I’m happy right now and I could be happy in ten years or I could be bored out of my mind in three, I don’t know. Right now, my future is short term, as in I’m really enjoying where I am and as long as I’m enjoying it, I’ll stay. 

Is balance more of a priority now? I imagine that it’s hard to get away from work when you’re on tour.

I actually have less time now than on tour and I work more hours now than I used to on tour. But somehow, that doesn’t matter, because I’m where I need to be, you know? I’m home.

Do you think having been away for so long has given you any perspective on what makes Manchester as a city so special?

Manchester’s got a particular vibe. It’s a welcoming, lively city. I don’t just want to be here because it’s home, I want to be here because it’s Manchester.