Gear Geek is our chance to shine a light on local musicians and talk about something musicians love perhaps more than anything: their gear. This week we’ve got veteran sound engineer and sound designer Michael Gaster.
Michael has been in the industry for decades, and in that time has become the leading provider of sound and lighting for shows across the Lowcountry and beyond. He’s a brilliant engineer with a true passion for what he does; this is perhaps best evidenced by his recent Quarantine Concerts series that has continually grown in popularity since the onset of the pandemic earlier this year.
Michael has the floor today for a unique and interesting installment of Gear Geek.
I’m curious about your history in the music industry. How did you get started?
I guess it “started” when my oldest sister Amy showed me “The Song Remains the Same” (I may have been 11) and I immediately became obsessed with the guitar and wanting to be involved with music. However, it was when my other sister Carrie took me to see Aerosmith and spent most of the show looking at the production and the sound system that things started to shift. Still playing guitar, I found myself building and tinkering with speakers, figuring out ways to record and manipulate sound not quite realizing the path I was headed down, but I wanted to know more about audio.
Now, where it started professionally was in Spring of 1991. I was 14, and my mother’s best friend’s husband who owned a sound company needed extra help for the St Patrick’s Day weekend with multiple stages downtown and on River St., I was asked if I was interested in joining the crew and even though I really knew nothing about any of it, I was in and did not leave once that weekend!
What sealed it for me was when I “saved the day” during a set change when (RIP) Dave “the rave” Sheppard grabbed a mic to talk to the massive audience at our main stage (located where the Bohemian hotel now sits) and there was nothing! My job during set changes was to sit at FOH and make sure everything was secure (from the partiers). Mind you, I have never been this close to a “real” mixing console before, but I knew if dude was going to be heard anytime soon it was up to me to figure this thing out. I translated the hieroglyphics that were used to label the channels figuring out which mic he was on, how it was routed, brought down the (CD) playback, brought up the subgroup his mic was routed through, and there it was. I just “did sound.”
Within seconds the rest of the crew realized what just happened (their backs were to the audience as they were changing things over), each turned around (I swear it was in slow motion) from the stage looking back to FOH giving me a big thumbs up with a very approving nod! It was at that moment, possibly mixed with another moment that same day, that I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up!
Do you remember where your love of gear came from? Any particular moment that stands out?
Definitely didn’t come from having to move it and set it up!
I would say it has come in different waves for me, with each cycle bringing a newfound sense of excitement of what can be done with these awesome tools. The “love” isn’t just from getting new advancing technologies in my hands but from my own growth and learning what things do.
At first, it really was a matter of getting past the initial hurdle of simply wrapping my head around what exactly these different pieces of gear do and how to make them do what I wanted. Sure I’ve had my moments of ABC-123 gizmo talk, which I typically try to avoid, but I really was/am more focused on what the hell is happening with these pieces than memorizing the fun terms and model numbers.