Excerpted with permission from Sound Girls, check out the full interview here.
UK based sound engineer Kim Watson has been a freelance audio engineer since 1999.
Kim’s foray into live sound started with a love of music and desire to work in the music business. “I always knew I wanted to be in the music industry, I just never quite knew in what respect.” Although having started her training in recording school, she found recording sessions boring and monotonous. Kim was attracted to the challenge of live sound, “having one chance to get it right and then, that moment is gone.”
Kim is an experienced system/fly tech and more than capable of mixing FOH when required, but most often finds herself at the stage end of the snake. “Primarily I tend to end up being Monitor Engineer and these days specializing in mixing IEMs.” The close interaction with the band and the on-stage shenanigans that the audience doesn’t see is one of the things she enjoys most about doing monitors.
She is currently the monitor engineer for The Subways, who she’s been with for going on two years mixing in-ear monitors. The band usually carries their own LS9 and Sennheiser transmitters, and she’s hoping to have them fully self-contained on stage by next year’s tour.
From the start, Kim’s long-term goal has been to be in the top 10% of live engineers. “I was told early on by one of my mentors, to be the best you have to learn from the best. I went out and found out who the top engineers in the world were and read everything I could online that they had written, (through prosoundweb.com and other sites). It’s been awesome over the years meeting, working with, and hearing the engineers I looked up to.”
