Pro Audio Files: I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t decided to pursue music production as a career, the only other thing I might approach with the same level of passion is cooking. Even in my life as a music maker, preparing food is an important part of my day, and something I get a lot of satisfaction from.
4 comments:
This article seems pretty common sense and probably could be taken to anything in production/life. The basic premise is that cooking, and music production is an art and a science. This metaphor could be carried into how cooking is similar to management or building scenery or designing costumes or lighting a show as all these things are arts and sciences. A better way in my opinion is there is factual nature to how to make successful music or be a good manager and there are also opinions, soft skills, and character traits that make successful music or build really amazing scenery. The article talks about the importance of ingredients or in music production having good sound equipment, the importance of adopting a recipe or in music production making sure the music is actually working and you aren’t just following rules, season the right amount or in music production you can do too much or too little when producing music, don’t just use expensive products or in music production you need the right tool for the job, and fusion is good but doesn’t forget the basics. None of these ideas are earth-shattering or really a unique metaphor but I think overall the article was a good read.
As a person that has so many branches of interests, I love reading this kind of article. Back in high school, I often tried to tackle hard class materials by trying to convert them into the field that I knew well. Danny Echevarria was very successful of doing so as well, and I am glad how he figured out the way to combine his two major interests so that they are beneficial to the comprehension for each other. The general topic - spotting the similarities between cooking and sound system - itself was very intriguing as well, because who would have expected to read the article explaining amount the mic connection with the image of Sriracha sauce? Also, I was surprised to see him mention Korean traditional BBQ; looking at the cuisine that I am familiar with made it even easier to grasp the context. This article managed to touch on more generalized concepts of two fields, and I wonder if he could provide more detailed explanations. Perhaps he could assign matching ingredients of the cuisine to each different parts of the sound system and explains he sound system in a way how we cook particular dish.
I agree with Alexander that this really is a philosophy for life, not just cooking or music production. I'm constantly applying skills from every discipline within theatre across all the other areas. There's certainly a reason that for a year or so all the undergraduates take the same design and production courses. On one hand, yes it is important to understand all disciplines for the sake of working with them on a production team, however there's also a shared sense of artistry and craft that we learn by exercising those other muscles. Most of the points in this article can easily apply to other areas, for instance lighting design. Approaching a look or a scene in lighting comes from using the right instruments, color, placement, texture, and intensity to name a few. Assembling a look involves carefully selecting these ingredients, mixing them with good proportions, and not overdoing it with intensities and effects. Like Gordon Ramsey says, "let a handful of quality ingredients do the work". Its a great analogy that isn't limited to the music or sound world
I don't know much about sound but this article made me happy. I suppose there are many things in our everyday lives that we can relate to our careers. On this same note, my Dad always likes to mess with me and say that I treat my baking like it's a piece of art (mainly because I'm big on the presentation and I always feel the need to get a good picture when it's done). Truth is, I can relate my baking to art. For starters, the clean up is a pain. Whenever I'm done baking and I see all of the tools that I have to clean, my existence hurts a little. Same with cleaning up after paint...it's a process that I'm not the biggest fan of. On a more positive note, with baking, you have all these small ingredients that you want to come together and tell a story in your mouth. The butter needs to cream well with the sugar. The flour needs to bring everything together. The oven brings it to life. In the same way, with a painting, you have these colors and lines and shapes telling a story. The mediums and surfaces bring them together. The paint techniques brings them to life. With both, you have a beautiful creation in the end. Just, don't eat the painting...
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