The sound guy's case

What is in my sound case?

First wig or toupee clips

I use these in alteration with bobby pins to attach a cable to someone.


Next would be Tagaderm tape and medical tape.

Tagaderm or medical tape is super useful to get microphone cables to attach to a person's body.  The great thing about Tagaderm is that is it super hard core and doesn't come off easily. The bad thing about Tagaderm is that it is super hardcore and doesn't come off easily.  It leaves a residue on the cable that is hard to get off. But I have a remedy for that too.

Isoporpyl Alcohol this can sanitize a surface but also can take tape residue off a mic cable.

Floral wire

#30 to be exact.

Its small and can be bent and moved easily.  If I am using a wig line mic on someones face I wrap the floral wire with it about 3 inches from the end then take the wire down to the edge about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch from the head of the microphone. wrap it around the cable once then bend down just before you come to the head.  This allows sweat to drip off the mic without damaging the physical mic. 

For one show I had 8 lapel mics and needed head mics (it was RENT) and so I made head contraptions out of small gauge electrical cable (single style) and attached the mic to the cable using spike tape.  If the cable was blue, orange tape was used. Pink/ green... so on and so on.

There was a sound blog that actually suggested a certain kind of marker in different colors as well as finger nail polish and nail polish remover to repaint the cable to hide in peoples hair and skin tone better. I don't do this but I have thought about trying it.

Would you make the same decision…

Recently, I got an email from the school asking me to take part of a survey. What my school wanted to know was how extensive did my education go for me, as well as how many types of papers I did versus test versus lectures versus types of classes I took. This was interesting to say the least, but while I was filling out the various answers, there was one question that just resonated with me.

If knowing what you know now, would you still choose this institution again.

My answer, NO.

Why, I was failed by this institution. You see, I am not the target audience that they are going for. I am not directly out of high school, I will be 30 this summer. So why should I be upset. From my first day on campus it was a cluster. It was truly a sense of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.  If I needed an answer to a question, I would go to one person, who would send me to someone else, who would send me to someone else, who would send me to someone else. Literally, there was one entire day I spent running around the campus looking for certain people who others said had an answer but in fact didn't.

Then you have the bickering. My department has always had this issue. The professors just don't get along and from a students perspective, they don't want too. I had two of my good friends who used to be student liaisons. What they would do was be available to students who were having issues and then be invited to a department meeting and share these concerns with the faculty. The problem was, the issues the students were having were the professors not getting along. My friends, when they sat in this meeting, watched for 2 hours, as professors made snide comments, argued and berated each other for the entire meeting. Then closed the meeting with, "what's going on with the students?". Seriously, our problem is you.

That isn't even my main concern with the university. Its out for money, the general well being of the student body isn't a concern, instead getting more and more money from each student is. This could be from raising school "fees" more and more every semester, or requiring more gen-ed classes, or even more fees in general.

Let's attempt to break down the program service fee for ETSU. The only document I can find on the ETSU website comes from the 2011-2012 school year.

"The fee is based on the number of credit hours for which a student enrolls and is capped at $531.50 for freshmen and sophomores and $506.50 for all others.  It includes parking, athletics, student activities, and other items.  Students enrolling in certain courses or programs of study will also pay fees to cover additional program related costs."

from What You Should Know About Tuition and Fees

But that itself doesn't break it down, I couldn't get my hands on the most up to date breakdown of Tuition and Fees for the school.  That's ok though.

I recently signed up for summer classes and there is a $750 university charge per class and an additional $500 charge for the summer term. I think that is outrageous. The site doesn't break down what this fee is it just adds it all together.  I want to know what I am paying for.

The Tech Week Sickness

Tech week is a long process, the last year I have only had one show where it truly was a "hell week" but then you are talking about a MASSIVE show that I had been working on for 9 months.  It never fails that when you reach tech week on a show, the tech week sickness starts around the cast and crew. My tech week sickness is generally after tech week is over.  I think that this sickness comes from the lack of sleep and the lack of proper nutrition and food during the long week.

For a tech person, the sickness comes from where you are working. Theatre's are a dusty, dirty, contaminated public space. No matter how clean you keep your tech booth the rest of the theatre will still be dirty. That seat that you have by your board, how many people have sat in it and when was the last time the arms were sanitized. Door knobs are handled by how many people? Even the seats for audience members… think about those.  There are a lot of people that come in and out of the space, wood it cut in and around the space, things are painted, hairspray is sprayed. So there are many fine particulate that are floating around in the space. I worked in one space that in the 9 months I designed for them, they never once changed the air filters, thats not only a health hazard its a fire hazard.

My tech week sickness this time around came the week before tech week, and the week before I even loaded into the theatre. I was on spring break for school, and let me tell you this thing knocked me out. It lasted 18 days total.  It was terrible. It woke me up and made me start taking vitamins again.