Future Yard SOUND CHECK: Live Sound & Production Training Programme

PROJECT DETAILS

Date: July 2025

Location: Birkenhead, United Kingdom

SOUND CHECK is a new training programme from Future Yard in partnership with The Learning Foundry. The course designed to introduce young people to the skills they need to pursue careers in the live music industry. I attended the course to improve my live sound engineering skills, to widen my network by meeting like-minded professionals, and to learn more about other parts of live production such as lights and event management.

I found the course especially valuable as the live sound module at my university course coincided with the 2020 pandemic, which meant I didn't have a chance to get practical experience using the theoretical concepts we were introduced to.

During the SOUND CHECK programme, I had a chance to learn from experienced live sound engineers, event managers and tour managers. We started with the basics, but by the end we were able put on a show starting from load in to setting up a stage, from ringing out speakers and monitors to soundcheck, mixing and then load out.

The desk we used was the Allen & Heath SQ6, which was my first time using this specific desk but I adapted quickly, mostly thanks to my previous experience using digital desks before, specifically the Yamaha TF3, which is the desk I started learning sound engineering on.