How I Mix Music_Part # 18_Break a Leg

The rabbit hole is created by your desire for knowledge

I cannot beat this advice to neophyte recording engineers from veteran engineer/producer Carl Beatty …” if you want to learn how to be an audio engineer go hang out with a real one”.

The key word in my title of audio engineer is engineer. The study of engineering broadcast quality audio products is mostly kinesthetic. It is cultured best by performing the physical aspects of the job. By truly learning that pain is a great teacher. If you find yourself thinking …wow, I’ll never do that again, consider yourself taught well.

There are rules to No Rules. The prime directive of No Rules is No Should’ing yourself. You’d be best served if you did not emerge from the rabbit hole thinking …I should have. Should, has been used quite a bit in this series. It is used as a suggestion, not a mandate.

If you are going to reside down the rabbit hole of creativity you are going to need an anchor to the world above. It keeps you and your project …grounded. Here's a little secret ...the anchor is called physics.

Audio Engineering is a people business. People are weird. People in the entertainment business are even weirder. Katharine Dunn suggested in her book ‘Geek Love’ that the audience is made up of people who become someone else every day just to earn their living. They are called “Norms”. We who entertain them are just being ourselves. It is a self or skill that the norms will pay for to be entertained. So, the norms are becoming someone else to earn the money to pay us, who are being ourselves, to entertain them …so who’s the norm in that equation?

There is a long-standing show biz tradition; wishing someone good luck before a show is indeed Bad Luck.  As you move forward mixing music may I say to you …Break a leg.