Who's On Sound?

SAE (School of Audio Engineering) is the world's leading educator in creative media industries. Established in 1976, SAE has 53 campuses in 27 countries offering certificates through to degrees, students getting practical, hands-on training with dedicated teachers in world-class facilities. SAE and The Hi-Fi have gotten together to provide the opportunity to study a Diploma of Sound Production (Live Sound) in a real venue, The Hi-Fi, in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, under the guidance of SAE's world-class audio production team.

Lance Krivé, Head VET coordinator/lecturer for SAE Institute, Melbourne, is one of the people behind the development and implementation of the course, and his CV is, to say the least, positively mindboggling. Between 1984 and 2001, he worked as monitor engineer/studio engineer for Stevie Nicks, was the playback engineer on Madonna's 1990 Blonde Ambition World Tour, crew chief backline and guitar technician on Michael Jackson's Dangerous and History tours, house engineer at The Palace in Hollywood (when not on tour) between 1993 and 1998… You get the picture. Since arriving in Australia in 2001, Krivé has been house engineer for The Mercury Lounge, East Brunswick Club and Ferntree Gully Hotel, and still does live sound every weekend.

“I'm really excited about this course,” Krivé admits. “I've been trying to get something like this going for seven years with SAE. When I first got there I said, 'You need more live sound!'

“With live sound, if something doesn't work or it doesn't happen right, there's no saying, 'Go get a coffee, we'll fix it in a minute',” he continues. “You're in front of people who want to see a show go non-stop with no problems, so everything's very 'in the moment'. Every room is different and what you're doing is taking your sound monitoring system, which you know well, and you're putting it into rooms that are unknowns, and in addition to that, you have your soundchecks, which are empty rooms that are going to be completely different that night when people are in them.”

Then of course there are rooms that have inhouse systems, “and sometimes there can be a great system and sometimes it can be a really lousy system, and you just have to make it sound good”. All these aspects and much, much more are covered in the course, and students get to learn it on the latest stuff – Avid digital consoles and so on – which fits in perfectly with the gear students will encounter when they go into any of The Hi-Fi venues for the practical part of their course.

“Hands-on is critical,” Krivé reminds us. “The only way to learn is to be thrown into it – you learn to swim and swim well. The Hi-Fi set-up is great – it's got a Line Array in there [ten Outline Butterfly Line Array speakers in Melbourne, 20 in Sydney and 12 in Brisbane, and six Outline Subtech 218 Sub Speakers in all three], they've got a Avid venue console for front-of-house and an Avid SE48 for monitors, Way Loud wedges, which are fantastic for the musicians up on stage, and great microphone choices. You can do any international or national act there easily.

“The point is, you can't find big recording studios any more so really this is the only way to make a good living from sound engineering. [And] even if we go into a recession, people will always be performing to liven people up and make them happy, so wherever there are bands there are needs for engineers.”

The course will provide practical, professional training using a combination of live and classroom sessions. Course work will include bump-in, soundchecks, watching live mixes and bump-out, which all means eight or nine hours per gig. On completion, the industry-focused diploma is a career pathway to higher education with the option to transfer into the SAE's Bachelor of Audio Production. You'll find SAE Melbourne at 235 Normanby Rd, South Melbourne, SAE Sydney at 55-57 Wentworth Ave, Surry Hills and SAE Brisbane, Riverside Drive, West End, so for details on this and any course on offer call 1800 723 238, and VET fee-help is of course available.