Check One Two

If you have ever been to a “gig” you will have heard roadies and sound teams up on the microphone, “check one two, check check, one two onnnne two two t t t two”.

Make all the jokes you want about roadies not being able to count above two or some of them struggling to get above one, they actually do this for a reason. 

My sound engineer buddy told me that in the phrase “Check one two” you get the main sounds you are tuning your sound system for.

Think about that. 

In the “check” you get “ch”, “eh” and “k”. 
You get the “w, “u” and “n” in “one” and in “two” you get the hard “t” and the “ooo”.
It also can test across a vocal range and some of the popping you can get on T and P words.

About now you are probably thinking, “who cares, I am not an audio engineer!” 

Think about what you do. What do you do to test that everything works as it should? Do you have a standard way to cross check your output for quality?

Many spreadsheets I have worked on over the years have had erroneous formulas in them that I only picked up by doing some simple cross checks of totals. From my auditing days (a long time back) I picked up the 10% sample test. Rigorously testing 10% of my data to be sure it was accurate. Some at the beginning, some at the end, as well as random middle samples.

At the very least a spell check, grammar check and reading important correspondence out aloud helps me test the flow and effectiveness of the piece.

What about you [First Name]? How to you test your work? Even if “Check one two” doesn’t do it, something else will.

PS Click the image above to see a 70 second video from my recent Gala Dinner hosting for Master Plumbers with more on this.

PPS If you want to see a real gig in action, the choir I sing in “Mood Swing”, has a performance in Melbourne on Sun Sept 18. Click here for details and tickets.