Matt Jones, Sound Designer

“I am not too much of a theater geek. However, I love music and audio technology, and theater is a great medium to practice both of those passions. I joined sound crew my freshman year, and I had no idea what I was doing, but it was an experience that led to me gaining experience and falling in love with mixing sound. Mixing sound is like being the conductor of a huge orchestra. You’re in control of the volume, tone, distortion and every other aspect of every person on stage. Mixing is an art, and no two people mix the same. Just like how each musician has their own style, soundboard operators have their own style. Prepping for sound is a lot of setting up and assigning microphones. We set up speakers and the communication system, hang choir mics, program the mixer and find and download sound effects. Sound crew is also an educational opportunity, so we teach new crew members skills like cable wrapping, micing actors and mixing a show. Recently there was a frequency auction that sold a huge range of frequencies to be solely used by TV stations, so that eliminated six microphones from our arsenal. We got replacements, and we’ve been making them work with the set of mics that were not affected by the auction. We were pretty sure we got everything figured out, but we had some issues with the frequency that Nick Berry, the lead actor, was using, but I don’t think it’ll be a big problem.”