Key Changes: We Can't Give the Industry Enough Playback Engineers As live shows increasingly incorporate a synchronized audio-visual experience, playback engineers have stepped into the spotlight.By
Rebecca Beyer
June 5, 2023
Image by Greg Mably
The dry ice Yusuke Sato B.M. '15 ordered never arrived, so he improvised. Using heat reflective blankets and some broken lantern sticks, he created a shelter of sorts to block the sun from the two laptops-one primary, one backup-he was running to power playback for JP Saxe at the Rise Festival, a two-day concert in the Mojave Desert.
The 2021 event was Sato's first major role as a playback engineer, and Saxe was a big draw, with two scheduled performances (Saxe's 2019 hit song If the World Was Ending had taken on a whole new meaning during the global covid pandemic).
Sato wasn't taking any chances.
I've played festivals in hot places, Sato explains. I've had laptops go down.
But a dead laptop isn't an option for a playback engineer, who controls everything from the clicks and cues musicians hear in their earpieces and the prerecorded studio sounds that play behind them to the synchronization of lights and other special effects.
In my opinion, playback is the most stressful job in live entertainment, says Sato, who has also worked as a session guitarist and in other live sound engineering roles. If my laptop dies, there is no show.
Yusuke Sato
Image by George Lindsay
Increasingly, if there's no playback engineer, there is no show. Today, audiences expect live performances to sound like the studio-produced songs on their Spotify playlists. Because playback engineers-and the ever-changing technology they use-make that possible, the role is in high demand.
We can't give the industry enough playback engineers, says Michael Bierylo, chair of Berklee's Electronic Production and Design Department.
Loudon Stearns, director of Berklee NYC's Live Music Production and Design program, which launched in 2021, agrees, adding that playback engineers are integral to the success of live shows.
Today, the language of the studio is really the language of the song, Stearns says. The effects that are used, the sounds that are used are just as important as the lyrics. Once you get to that point, it's incumbent on us to present that in a live event.
Spacebar and Beyond There are many sound engineering roles in music. At a live event, for instance, monitor engineers are responsible for getting the right sound to the right musicians, and front-of-house engineers mix the sounds together for the audience. Playback engineers control all of that sound, and much, much more.
Loudon Stearns
It's the brains of the show, says Jaymz Hardy-Martin III '00, who has done playback for Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo, among others. It's the membrane. The lighting people are depending on me, the video people are depending on me, and, of course, the band is depending on me. That's job security.
Bierylo says the disconnect between studio sound and concert sound became noticeable as far back as the 1960s. But, until the advent of personal computers, playback wasn't really possible on a broader scale. In the 1990s, Bierylo lugged around a Macintosh SE/30, piping in electronic sounds as part of performances with a band called Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.
Hardy-Martin remembers burning tracks to CDs that could then be loaded onto hard disk recorders; any edits to a show required that the whole process be started over.
It was a superlong process, he says. Between shows, I got no sleep.
Technology has driven most of the changes in playback engineering. The rise of digital audio workstations (DAWs) changed the field dramatically. Playback engineers can now use DAWs to curate entire events from start to finish on rigs they often customize for their own-and their musicians'-comfort. One of the most popular DAWs is Ableton Live, first released in 2001. The software has several versions and is now on its 11th edition.
Ableton Live was a game-changer, Bierylo says.
Jaymz Hardy-Marty
Early playback work-and even some playback today for musicians who are just starting out or have a straightforward live show-was pretty simple, usually handled by a drummer or keyboard player.
It used to be you were just the spacebar guy, says Hardy-Martin with a laugh. You hit the spacebar to start the track and to stop the track.
But modern DAWs allow playback engineers to become musicians in the show. They can jump from place to place in a set at an artist's request and make last-minute changes to arrangements. Daniel Vago Galindo B.M. 14 once quickly recorded the name of a couple who was getting engaged and dropped the audio file into the track for the lead singer, who was then able to announce the happy occasion.
That was very stressful, he remembers.
Sato, who has been touring with corook (Corinne Savage B.M. 17) since last year, says playback engineers help translate ideas into reality.
I love being able to take an artist's vision and not just create it but blow them away, he says. There's no limit.
Expanding Opportunities Sato, who had majored in professional music, took a Berklee Online course on synchronization and began teaching himself Ableton Live during the pandemic because he thought playback engineering skills would make him a better music director. Today, he does playback work on his own and for Electronic Creatives, a company founded by Laura Escud , a prominent figure in playback engineering.
The idea of playback engineering as a skill that can be cultivated and taught is a relatively new one, Bierylo says, adding that Escud has been at the leading edge of that trend.
She trains people to go out and do these shows, he says. She has a whole educational pr
