The other night I finished a session which got me thinking. The project I was working on wasn't all that interesting to me, in fact I doubt anyone besides the artist involved will ever find much exciting about the final CD. The work wasn't hard, and the mixes came easy and sounded great for what they are — but let's face it, none of us were gonna get rich or famous from this recording.
I've had a lot of jobs in my life, the ones preceding (and coinciding) with being a studio owner/ engineer ran the gamut from food service, record distribution, electronics assembly to post hole digging. I've never shied away from work or been lucky enough to not have to work (except in college — ask me about that crazy scholarship and my parents sometime). When I started my home studio it was for me and my friends to record in. Gradually word of mouth brought me more work — sometimes really cool bands, but also some misogynistic death metal. When I opened Jackpot! (in 1997) I was initially booked up with all my friend's bands that needed to record albums and demos. But one can only have so many friends. As word of mouth, advertising and the Yellow Pages took effect, I started to get more jobs with artists that I didn't know — and sometimes didn't enjoy. The funny thing is that some of the early work I didn't enjoy was actually a lot better than what came along later! Ah, the good old days.
Maybe I've become more tolerant of my job — getting kind of Zen with the responsibilities of helping these people actualize their dreams. Even on the worse days it's better than post hole digging.
I called John Baccigaluppi and we were discussing the idea for this column. He said there are three variables that engineers experience, but I changed it to four:
1. Really great music is being made and you get to be a part of it.
2. Really great people are making the music and they're fun to work with.