Recording - November 2019 - 72

FadeOut
MASTER THE CRAFT AND
THE ART WILL FOLLOW
By Aaron J. Trumm
One of my earliest mentors was a man named Dale, but we
always called him 'the old man'. He was a documentary producer at the local public television station where I got my start.
I worked under him as a work study generalist, but he quickly
put a camera in my hands and, recognizing my bent, had me
heading up sound on set within weeks.
Dale and his other protégé Manny brought an artfulness and soul
to documentary making that I've rarely seen matched. We were the
wild men of KNME, the ones with big beards and foul mouths, and
it often seemed to me that we were flying by the seat of our pants.
Some days, we'd grab a Hi8 camera and a pistol grip boom and
go down to the worst parts of town just to see what we would find.
It may have seemed crazy to me at the time, but one of Dale's
favorite things to say to us was, "Master the craft, and the art
will follow." What he meant is this: amateurs try to be creative
first, thinking up wild ideas and then trying to figure out how
to make them real. Professionals do this too, but what they do
first is work hard to understand their craft. That gunslinger you
think doesn't have a care in the world? He doesn't, but that's
because he's so well prepared.
An audio engineer from the days when audio engineering
required actual engineers, Dale taught us to know our tools
very deeply-how light, sound, physics, gear, and even people worked. He taught us to prepare thoroughly and to love the
craft. For me, this meant that it wasn't enough to know where
the record button was. I wanted to know how to white balance,
what an iris does, how to manipulate the f-stop, what kind of
lavalier would actually work in a noisy environment, and what
a change in light would do to a long shoot.
Sure enough, as Dale predicted, the more I learn, teach, and
write about the craft, and the more I understand the mundane
details and deep fundamental concepts, the more creative I
feel. There's nothing to block the creative flow when you genuinely know your medium and your tools.
That's one of the major reasons why I enjoy writing for RECORDING. When it comes time to teach something, there's no
choice but to know it inside and out, and when I do this, I tend
to find the creative wellspring as a reward.
72 RECORDING November 2019

It seldom fails. Take a deep dive into the subtle and elusive art of cleaning and punching up low end in a mix, and
you find your mind conjuring up a song laden with sick kick
drums and slick bass lines just so you can mix them better
than you've ever mixed before. Learn what happens when
you correctly treat a room, and suddenly you've got nothing standing between you and that cello masterpiece. Get a
systematic view of the mics available in a particular budget
window and what you can expect to hear from them, and
suddenly you can picture an elusive vocal mix with no question about how to achieve it.
There's an interesting and tricky balance that goes on here.
Some recordists are absolute perfectionists. Some believe there
are details that don't matter. Try asking a Facebook group
about MP3s and see how many answers you get. The one thing
that remains constant though, is that the more knowledgeable
an artist is, the more empowered they are. That's why we continue to debate the physics, science, and psychology of sound
and music. We want to know. We want to have an unburdened
creative flow. We seek mastery.
When we're young, we want it quickly. We often want to
skip the boring stuff and get straight to being wildly creative.
We worry that we need to chase the art, or it will fly away
without us. That's OK too, but sometimes we tend to go great
guns without preparing, only to wonder why the final product
isn't what we envisioned. Our sifus, senseis and mentors tell us,
"Master the craft." We say, "But we want the ART!"
As it turns out, the muse is attracted to skill. That creative
spark we all seek and hope for is enflamed and incited by our
mastery and love for the craft. The muse seeks the artist that
will do it the most justice. Every time you learn something about
how to make the art, the art comes sniffing around.
After all, as The Old Man says, master the craft and the art
will follow.
Aaron J. Trumm (trumm@recordingmag.com) is a recording
musician, producer and songwriter. He's @AaronJTrumm on
Facebook and Twitter-feel free to reach out!

Recording - November 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2019