I have been behinda console since Iwas fifteen.
Ceejay Onyenali has spent fifteen years behind live consoles, from a church sound department as a teenager to stages watched by millions. He works front of house, monitors and broadcast — and trains the engineers coming up behind him.
It started in the sound department at my church, the way it starts for a lot of Nigerian engineers. I never left.
I studied Biochemistry at university and spent most of it in the tech room. By the time I finished I was Technical Director of my fellowship, running the team and the audio for services, conferences and every event that needed sound.
That is where I learned the part nobody teaches you, which is how to keep a team calm when the show starts in ten minutes.
Fifteen years on.
I work front of house, monitors and broadcast for concerts, conferences, worship gatherings and large scale productions.
Rooms of a few hundred, and streams watched by millions.
You know a mix is working when nobody mentions it.
Nobody walks out talking about the vocal sitting right or the low end staying out of the way. They talk about the artist, or the message, or the moment they will remember. That is the job.
Most people learn this by making mistakes in front of a live audience.
It costs them years. It cost me some. Mentorship is how that gets shorter.
Explore TrainingRaise the standard of live audio here, build systems properly, and leave behind engineers who are better than I was at their age.