Any Fool

Fathers are full of advice, mine was and so am I. My father was an aeronautical engineer. His favorite saying was “…son, any fool can fly an airplane, but that fool will eventually end up on the side of a mountain”. The same holds true for DAW’s and Recording Studios.

This engineer’s empirical knowledge says, anyone can learn DAW software but put that person in a class A recording studio and they will eventually choke.

To Choke; an act in which a team or a person collapse when they are expected to win no matter what.

I just saw it happen. It happens to the best of us at the worst of times. As cops and firefighters are held to a higher standard, so are recording engineers. We are not allowed to choke under pressure.

The engineering of musical content, capturing another’s artistic expression, is one hell of a responsibility. It is not one to be taken lightly; it annoys me when I see it happen.

 I watched a young engineer abuse a drummer.

To my friend who I saw abused in the studio ...I’m sorry. I saw it happen and did not metaphorically slap the abuser myself.

Doing so would have made me the abuser and have prohibited me from sharing it here.

An engineer will be faced with many challenges in the seemly simple task of ...let’s say recording a drum set. There's a lot that can go wrong both mechanically and socially in that seemly simple process. Don't be a dick.

Let me take it back to the beginning. When you fly, do you fly with the comfort of knowing nothing will go wrong or do you fly with the knowledge that if something does go wrong, you'll have the highest level of professionalism manifesting itself to save you and everyone else’s ass.

With professionals at the controls, you most likely wouldn't even know you had a problem.

 

 Some problems are hard not to notice. You don't want your pro to Choke at times like these. Capt. Scully is no fool, he's a pro who saved these people's lives just doing his job.