Sound waves to Light Shows

From Sound Waves to Light Shows: Technical Theater Years

Part 2: Where bedroom recording skills meet the demands of London’s nightlife scene

Post-education, I entered the arena of live sound with the confidence of someone who had built recording studios and understood acoustic principles, but absolutely no idea what running a professional venue actually entailed. Like most of my career moves, I would learn by doing - often under pressure, frequently making mistakes, but always absorbing everything I could.

Bar Nightjar: Jazz and Learning Curves

My first professional gig was part-time sound engineering at Bar Nightjar, a small but vibrant jazz bar. Coming from the controlled environment of recording studios, live sound was a completely different beast. No second takes, no post-production fixes - just real musicians playing real music to real audiences in real time.

The intimate setting meant every mistake was audible, but it also meant I could build relationships with the performers and understand what they needed from the sound system. Jazz musicians, I learned, have very specific requirements and aren’t shy about letting you know when things aren’t right.

To fill out my time and pay the bills, I picked up other freelance gigs, including quality control work for DVD & Blu-ray at Metropolis Chiswick. The attention to detail required for media QC actually complemented live sound work - both demanded technical precision and the ability to catch problems before they reached the audience.

Portugal Interlude: Hotel Chains and Disillusionment

A opportunity arose to run lights, sound, and media centers for a hotel chain in Portugal. It seemed like a step up - more responsibility, better pay, international experience. In reality, it was unfulfilling work that felt more like digital maintenance than creative technical contribution. The systems were standardized, the requirements predictable, and the work felt disconnected from any artistic purpose.

But even mundane jobs teach you something. I learned about larger-scale technical infrastructure, dealing with corporate bureaucracy, and most importantly, what kind of work actually energized me versus what just paid the bills. The Portugal stint confirmed that I needed environments where technical skill served creative expression.

Shoreditch Serfdom: Learning Through Scarcity

Upon returning to the UK, I leveraged my mixed experience and landed a position as Technical Manager for Shoreditch Bar Group. Not to be too harsh but I’d describe them as “a dysfunctional organisation responsible for the serfdom of Shoreditch but a playground of broken systems scattered around a local radius.”

However, a warehouse of broken toys was also educational in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. The organization was chaotic, under-resourced, and constantly firefighting, which meant I had to become resourceful fast. When something broke, you fixed it yourself or it stayed broken. When new technology was needed, you figured out how to make it work with whatever budget existed.

I learned to program ShowCAD lighting control systems by necessity, not through formal training. I picked up electrical and electronic repair skills through trial and error (along with a few shocks and scars). The environment of scarcity forced innovation and self-reliance in ways that well-funded operations never would have.

Most importantly, I learned that dysfunctional organizations often create spaces for people with broad skill sets to thrive. When specialization breaks down due to resource constraints, generalists become invaluable.

Going Independent: Building Spaces for Music

Eventually, I’d had enough of Shoreditch serfdom and decided to form my own company with other technical managers I’d gotten to know from around various venues. The decision to go independent was partly about autonomy, but mostly about working on projects that actually mattered.

My first major commission came from my old employer at Bar Nightjar - they wanted me to build the stage and sound system for their sister venue, Oriole. This would be a space designed for live jazz seven days a week, which meant the audio system had to be exceptional and the staging had to work for a wide variety of performers.

Success with Oriole led to other venue commissions: a high-end bar/restaurant in Monument called Mber and another in Soho called Swift. Each project required understanding not just the technical requirements, but the atmosphere the owners wanted to create and how the sound and lighting systems could support that vision. Building venues from scratch was far more satisfying than maintaining hotel media centers. These were spaces designed for human connection, artistic expression, and cultural exchange. The technical systems I installed would shape thousands of conversations, performances, and experiences.

EggLDN: Techno and the Art of Controlled Chaos

Around this time, I also started picking up club gigs and got contracted as Technical Manager for EggLDN, a well-known techno club. If jazz venues required precision and clarity, techno clubs demanded power and spectacle.

I typically found myself managing freelancers or operating lights for various well-known acts. The technical demands were intense - coordinating complex lighting sequences with pounding beats, managing crowds that could get rowdy, troubleshooting equipment failures in environments where stopping the music wasn’t much of an option.

I learned to program Avolites lighting desks the same way I’d learned everything else - by playing with them until they worked the way I needed them to, though to be fair I found some time to gain an official 101 qualification. The club environment was unforgiving of mistakes but incredibly rewarding when everything came together.

One of the most memorable (if challenging) gigs involved working with a notoriously difficult artist who was, shall we say, particular about his technical requirements. Managing personalities became as important as managing equipment - understanding what artists really needed versus what they said they wanted, and finding ways to deliver both.

The Graveyard Shift Toll

The entertainment industry runs on late nights and weekend schedules. While I loved the creative technical challenges and the energy of live performance, the graveyard shifts were slowly killing me. Your body isn’t designed to work from 8 PM until 10 AM multiple times per week, and your social life suffers when you’re working every Friday and Saturday night.

More fundamentally, I started to feel like I was optimizing the wrong system. These venues, while culturally valuable, were essentially entertainment for people who made their money elsewhere. I was becoming very good at making other people’s experiences better, but I wasn’t clear on what I was building toward for myself.

The combination of physical exhaustion and existential questioning created what I now recognize as a classic transition point. I had developed valuable skills - technical problem-solving, project management, working under pressure, dealing with difficult personalities - but I was ready to apply them to something that felt more meaningful.

Following the Money Trail

In my relatively ample spare time (which often meant afternoons when everyone else was at their day jobs), I started digging into what I came to recognize as systemic legal corruption. Following the money led me into learning about the global financial system, and concern about money printing led me to “buy out” of fiat currency into silver.

This investigation would pretty quickly lead me into the waters of digital currency and a second encounter with Bitcoin. But that’s where the real adventure begins - the transition from optimizing sound systems to questioning monetary systems, from managing lights in clubs to exploring the deeper structures that govern human activity.

The technical theater years had taught me that complex systems could be understood and improved through hands-on experimentation. I’d learned to diagnose problems under pressure, adapt quickly to changing requirements, and deliver results even when the infrastructure was less than ideal.

These skills would prove essential as I moved from the relatively stable world of audio engineering into the wild west of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The graveyard shifts had been preparation for a different kind of all-nighter - the 24/7 global markets and unstoppable protocols of decentralized systems.

Patterns and Preparation

Looking back, the technical theater years were about more than just learning sound and lighting systems. They were about understanding how technical infrastructure shapes human experience, how constraints force innovation, and how complex systems can be improved through careful attention to feedback loops.

Every venue had its own personality, its own requirements, its own quirks. Success meant understanding not just the technical specifications, but the human needs the technology served. A jazz club needed intimate clarity; a techno venue needed overwhelming immersion. The technology was never the point - the experience was the point.

This human-centered approach to technical systems would become crucial as I moved into blockchain technology, where the technical complexity was orders of magnitude higher but the ultimate goal remained the same: creating better ways for humans to coordinate and exchange value.

The graveyard shifts were ending, but the real nocturnal adventures were just beginning.

Next in the series: “Following the Money: From Gold to Bitcoin” - where concerns about the legal and monetary systems lead to a fateful discovery of cryptocurrency and the beginning of a much stranger journey.